On the same day that the Supreme Court announced that it would take up the challenge to President Obama’s healthcare reform law, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) launched the Health Care Innovation Challenge, a competitive program that will award up to $1 billion in taxpayer-funded grants to applicants who will “implement the most compelling new ideas to deliver better health, improved care, and lower costs to people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP…” At a press conference, on Monday, Ms. Sebelius said, “Efforts like these to improve the health of communities and reduce cost while sparking the economy are a priority of the Obama administration.”

Using the Obama administration’s new theme of “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan which refers to Congress’ inability to obtain the votes to pass the president’s Jobs Act, the secretary said, “In recent weeks, Congress has failed to act on the full jobs agenda, so we will continue to do what we can.”

A new Rasmussen poll, however, indicates that most American voters oppose the Obamacare jobs plan, and believe the president should wait to enact the plan in order to reach an agreement with Congress. 63% of those polled said that the president should wait to work with Congress.

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Peter Schweizer’s new book Throw them All Out, (full disclosure: Peter is a friend and I had a miniscule part in editing the book) chronicles the long running graft in Washington.    Congress is exempt from insider trading laws, which allows them to profit in ways none of the rest of us can.  This reality has created an emerging industry of gathering business intelligence by trolling the halls of Congress.  In the movie Wall Street Gordon Gekko taught Bud Fox the value of information and where to get it, but instead of stalking Gekko’s archrival Sir Larry as Fox did in the movie, now Bud would be trolling the halls of Congress.  Given the incentives and complete moral breakdown of the system, this outcome should not really be surprising.  The federal government has been accumulating power for years and with power comes opportunity to use it in whatever way one wishes.  I cannot say the current political class is any more corrupt than its predecessors were but I can say there seems to be more opportunities than before.

The missing part of Schweizer’s otherwise excellent analysis is how the regulatory process enables all of this.  These profit opportunities are only possible if the Congressmen actually have the information and that is where the regulatory process comes in.  The regulatory process provides Congressmen numerous opportunities to gather that inside information on which they can trade.

The process is pretty simple really:  Congress proposes or passes some new law that requires regulation of an industry.  This gives the industry an incentive to influence the legislation and the ensuing regulations and thus start lobbying.  The lobbying effort involves a number of goodies accruing to the members of the oversight committee as well as campaign cash.  This part of the process we all know.  But the next step is rather insidious, in the name of protecting the people the committee holds hearings, has taxpayer paid staff do research and grills the business managers about their operation, when in reality it is nothing more than intelligence gathering for the next stock trade.  The ongoing lobbying provides opportunities for continuous information exchange as well and before you know it the Senator has beaten the market again.  Statistically, we should not expect anyone to consistently beat the market, especially not a group of amateurs and yet members of Congress are beating the market by several standard deviations above the professionals.

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Today, in 1945, trials against 24 Nazi war criminals began in Nuremberg, Germany.

Despite all the talk of fixing it, California’s budget is still a mess. One of those “fixes” was implemented last summer when the state Legislature increased revenue projections by $4 billion to avoid balancing the budget. Of course, the problem with using such “phantom money” is that it often has a habit of disappearing when you need it most. And it has disappeared just when money for schools is needed. Now deep cuts are on the table. The people lose again.

Naturally the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the state will receive virtually none of the $4 billion in projected revenue, forcing the state to make some tough decisions in the coming weeks. On the table are major cuts to the education budget, including shortening the school year by a week, not to mention cuts to in-home healthcare programs, and programs for people with developmental disabilities.

Obviously Californian’s budget needs all the help it can get but it looks like it’s business as usual in Sacramento. For instance, an upcoming ballot measure sponsored by a career politician would baffle anyone that truly understands the mess California is in. The so-called California Cancer Research Act coming before voters in June, asks California voters to raise taxes by nearly $1 billion for a whole new perpetual bureaucracy. That is unacceptable to voters. Maddeningly this new program doesn’t even guarantee that the money will be spent in the state! Apparently former state Sen. Pro Tem Don Perata, the career politician pushing the measure, thinks Californians who already paying some of the highest taxes in the nation should reach deeper into their pockets just to potentially send that money across state lines to benefit others. And all the while the budget for the education for those same taxpayer’s kids is about to be slashed.

So, what is the “solution” proposed by Democrats in Sacramento? Raise taxes, of course.

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OBAMA:  It’s finally happened.  O’Reilly’s obtained copies of my college records and interviewed an old weed buddy.  The wingnuts will have an orgasm when they learn I took a course at Occidental called “Bongs Through the Ages.”

JAY CARNEY:  The Factor’s devoting a whole show to the revelations next week, sir.  Word is, he’ll read excerpts from your Harvard Law senior thesis, “Tart Reform: a New Paradigm for the Oldest Profession.”

OBAMA: Good lord!  I’ll be ridiculed for something I didn’t even write.  How do we stop this?

DAVID PLOUFFE:  Posing as a fired MSNBC whistleblower, I’ll e-mail O’Reilly and set up a meet in Fort Marcy Park tonight, sir.  You call in a favor from the Teamsters.  Tomorrow morning, joggers’ll find old “Fair and Balanced” clutching a note expressing remorse for forging documents meant to discredit you.

OBAMA:  Um, maybe something less extreme.  Leon?

PANETTA:  Our Black Projects team developed a marble-sized nuke that’ll fry transmissions in a localized area, sir.  I can task a Predator to deliver it over Fox Headquarters as O’Reilly goes on.

OBAMA:  Set it up.  But we need a cover story.  Janet, order the National Weather Service to warn of severe thunderstorms in the vicinity just before detonation.

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Orange County, California is often referred to as the “Most Conservative County in America”. But County Supervisors have made a mockery of that title by increasing spending by $145.8 million, in a year of lower property tax collection. Now that the County has started running out of cash, they simply diverted $73.5 million from the school’s share of property taxes to stop lay-offs of 490 County unionized employees. Conservatives support small government, low taxes, and prudent spending. The County protecting their union buddies at the expense firing 865 school teachers doesn’t sound very conservative to me.

I published a report last week: “California has Drawn Down 85% of its Credit Lines”; where we first reported the State of California has a $13 billion budget short-fall and has already pulled 85% of their available credit lines. I warned the state might start short-checking schools and local government in an attempt to avoid laying-off politically active state unionized employees. But I had no inkling that a big County with an upside-down budget would be the first to rip-off schools to shield powerful union friends.

Orange County has a dicey history when it comes to playing games with other-peoples-money. In 1993, I discovered that the County was trying to cover a $180 million budget short-fall by leveraging the County and the local school’s payroll accounts by 500% and speculating in the wild and woolly world of derivatives. When I confronted the County they claimed what they were doing was “perfectly legal”. I tried to get the FBI, the Controller of the Currency, and the State Attorney General to stop this egregious activity. I was told that: “Government makes laws to regulate the people, not to regulate themselves.” A year later Orange County filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Of the $2 billion in losses, local schools portion was $93 million.

In 2006, I ran and was elected as Orange County Treasurer to succeed Republican John Moorlach; now a Supervisor. When I came in office I discovered the $8 billion County pension plan was leveraged with $22 billion of derivatives. It turns out that the County had granted their unions the highest public pension benefits in the nation by spiking their pensions. To avoid having to actually pay for the higher costs of the benefits spike; the pension plan was secretly taking conspicuously bad investment risks. It took me a year of battling with County officials to get the pension to drastically reduce risk in 2007. Had the County not sold the derivatives, they would have suffered $2 billion in losses in 2008 Credit Crisis.

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Football fans understand that each game played either moves a team forward toward the conference playoffs, conference championship, and Super Bowl, or toward the role of spoiler, where their role is to affect the outcome of the seasons’ top teams. While they watch their favorite players, they recognize that one injury can make the difference between a good season and a bad season unless there is depth in the team’s capacity. The ability of a team to work together, weather, home field advantage, seasoned leadership, knowing the other team’s playbook, all of this factors in when developing a championship team. True fans understand the complexity involved in bringing home the ring.

Politics also involves such complexity and as we ramp up toward the 2012 election, it behooves the citizenry of this country to become educated in the strategies used by both parties to enhance the viability of their candidates while reducing the credibility of the opposition. For those who enjoy politics, following the primaries is as compelling as watching the football season unfold, and for the populace as a whole, a much higher stakes game is being played that goes beyond who will gain the office of chief executive. The 2012 election has the potential to influence the direction of our country for many years beyond a presidential term of office.

Strategy 1: Discredit the messenger. Within a party and between the parties, this strategy is used to cast doubt in the mind of the voter as to whether the person running for office has the intellectual or moral capacity to lead our country. While it is important to get to know each candidate, to understand his or her strengths and weaknesses, it is also critical to remember that we are not always given the choice of voting for the best person to hold office; we are given a choice of picking the better person to become president. We need to have a set of criteria that this person must meet, much like the ideal candidate for a job. While most people cannot meet every expectation, it is the combination of skills and personality that makes a person the most viable choice. What traits make a good president? Part of this depends on the challenges that person will face. What experiences have prepared the candidate for this role? How has the candidate dealt with adversity, job growth, managing others? What problems face this person going in? Does the person have the depth to understand the long as well as the short term impact of each challenge in relationship to any solution being proposed? Does the candidate exhibit the intellectual capacity to weigh all considerations against a long term goal for leadership? What future does this person envision for our country?

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According to the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA), Connecticut has been identified as the top financial “sinkhole” state in the nation. IFTA, a nonpartisan and nonprofit organization that works for greater accounting transparency across all levels of government and business, reports that the Constitution state is at the top of a list of five states which are in the worst financial position. According to the organization’s Financial State of the States report, Connecticut has $29.4 billion worth of assets, but only $10.1 billion are available to pay $63.4 billion of bills as they come due. In addition, each Connecticut taxpayer’s financial burden is $41,200.

The report indicates that the other four states considered to be financial “sinkholes” are New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, and Kentucky, all of which have a per taxpayer burden of over $23,000. However, Wyoming, North Dakota, Nebraska, Utah and South Dakota are considered “Sunshine States” because either a per taxpayer’s surplus or nominal per taxpayer’s burden exists in these states.

Interestingly, Republican Gov. Dave Heineman of Nebraska, a “Sunshine State,” was invited to Hartford by Democratic and Working Families Party Governor, Dannel Malloy, of Connecticut for a regional economic summit in October. Gov. Heineman’s description of his success in bringing about the largest tax cut in his state’s history, and Nebraska’s 4.2% unemployment rate- the second lowest in the nation- drew a sharp contrast to Gov. Malloy’s explanation of his experience in “straigtening out the state’s finances” by enacting the largest tax increase in his state’s history.

“I believe we’re moving in the right direction,” Mr. Malloy said. “The reason I did what I did with respect to the budget was so that I could look business in the face and say, ‘Listen, I believe we’ve got the bulk of our problem behind us. We’ve balanced a budget. We’ve taken the steps necessary to wrestle a structural deficit to the ground and we move forward.’ ”

Sheila Weinberg, founder and CEO of IFTA, however, disagrees. Ms. Weinberg said that Connecticut’s “state officials say their budgets are balanced but do not include employee pension and healthcare obligations in their calculations.”

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CHICAGO – If well-known people want to avoid controversy, they should avoid making ugly comments about respected citizens and public officials, particularly in public.

That’s a lesson Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has yet to learn.

Last week, while researching footage of Lewis for a documentary project, we at Education Action Group came across a YouTube video of Lewis giving the keynote address at the recent Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference in Seattle.

During the course of her remarks, Lewis attempted to draw a few laughs by making fun of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s speech impediment.

“Now you know he went to private school ’cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed,” she said.
Lewis went on to laughingly talk about her former marijuana use during her college days.

“I spent those years smoking lots of weed – self-medicating,” she said. “Self-medicating – thank you! Sounds like you all did, too. Oh, I’m sorry, there’s kids here. I wasn’t supposed to say that, right? Too late!”

We thought Lewis’ comments were highly inappropriate for the leader of one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, so we released the pertinent clips of the video to the media.

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Lone Republican NLRB Member Brian Hayes shut out of process…

It seems that Friday afternoons are always the time to drop job-killing news on America’s job creators. In this case, the union appointees within Barack Obama’s National Labor Relations Board have issued a press release stating they will be issuing their final rule on ambush elections on November 30th.

In mid-June, the union-controlled NLRB issued a Notice of Proposed Rule Making on the procedures governing NLRB-conducted elections. Despite the fact that unions already win more than 60% of all secret-ballot elections and the median time frame between a union petition for and election and the election itself is 38 days, the proposed rule change would like shorten that time drastically, creating an “ambush” union campaign on targeted employers and employees.

When the NLRB’s union appointees issued the notice, it was met with a tremendous outcry from America’s employers, as well as the sole GOP member at the NLRB.

The board’s lone Republican, Brian Hayes, issued a vigorous dissent, saying the proposal would result in the type of “quickie elections” union leaders have long sought. Hayes claimed elections could be held in as little as 10 to 21 days from the filing of a petition, giving employers less of a chance to make their case.

“Make no mistake, the principal purpose for this radical manipulation of our election process is to minimize or, rather, to effectively eviscerate an employer’s legitimate opportunity to express its views about collective bargaining,” Hayes wrote.

On Friday afternoon, with controversial SEIU lawyer Craig Becker’s recess appointment to the NLRB ending at the end of the year (rendering the NLRB unable to issue the rule change), the NLRB issues a press release stating that it would be issuing its decision on November 30th. (more…)

Today, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

“3 Reasons We Shouldn’t Bail Out Student Loan Borrowers” is written and narrated by Nick Gillespie and produced by Meredith Bragg.

About 3.33 minutes long. Go to Reason.tv for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notifications when new material goes live.

As the cumulative total of student loan borrowing approaches $1 trillion dollars, calls to forgive some or all of that debt are mounting. Federally guaranteed student loans make up more than half that total and Barack Obama is pushing to cap the amount any borrower must pay back in a given year and forgive outstanding balances after 20 years.

Among Occupy Wall Street protesters, calls to bail out student loan holders are arguably the single-most voiced demand and sites such as Forgive Student Loan debt beat the drum for immediate and widespread relief.

But forgiving student loan debt is a very bad idea for at least three reasons.

1. These loans are voluntary. All borrowers are excrutiatingly well-informed of how much they’re borrowing and how much they’re going to have to pay back.

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From KMOV.com:

A woman, who was participating in the OccupySTL protest, reported to police that a man sexaully assaulted her while she was in her tent. A St. Louis City Police Officer says the mayor could have prevented it.

Brian E. King, 38, was charged with 1st Degree Sexual Misconduct after police said he crawled into the victim’s tent and touched her breast. The assault happened on November 8th at the encampment that used to set up in Kiener Plaza.

A blogger from St. Louis posted a video of St. Louis Police Sgt. Gary Wiegert talking about how the mayor could have prevented the attack. In the video, Wieger says, “I believe if the mayor would allow the police department to do its job and take care of this problem and not allow these tents to be set up, this sexaul assault woudn’t have happened. This is what happens when politics gets involved with police work.”

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BigGovernment.com has obtained records of Massachusetts Democrat Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa Heinz’s stock portfolios that show almost perfectly timed pharmaceutical stock trades during the Obamacare debate, which fattened their already enormous personal fortune.

The documents further support allegations of suspicious trading leveled during Sunday’s 60 Minutes report about the explosive new book by investigative reporter and Breitbart News editor Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out.

Sen. John Kerry’s position on the powerful Senate Finance Committee’s Health Subcommittee gives him direct access to critical information regarding health care policy. In July 2009, pharmaceutical industry representatives met with key members of Congress to flesh out the Obamacare bill. Then, in November 2009, with the bill’s passage was looking more likely, the Kerrys’ portfolios reflect a drug stock buying spree.

First, $750,000 worth of stock in drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals was added to their portfolios at around $50 a share. Once Obamacare passed, the value of the stock rose to $62 per share. Subsequently, in 2010, a portion of Teva holdings was dumped from the Kerry portfolio, resulting in tens of thousands of dollars in capital gains (exact profits are unclear because politicians are only required to report ranges, not exact dollar amounts). (more…)

When Scott Brown upset the Massachusetts Democratic establishment by winning the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for a generation, he ran as a Republican. This cycle, facing the “founder” of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Elizabeth Warren, he appears to be running away from conservative principles.

Brown’s most recent capitulation is his support for a floor vote for President Obama’s nominee for the uber-regulatory agency known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Brown’s announcement undercuts not only his Republican colleagues who are fighting to limit the power of this new government agency but of the principles of limited government he professes to support.

Unfortunately, Brown may not be alone. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) is purportedly seeking a deal with the White House to get fellow Ohioan Cordray confirmed despite ethical questions about his behavior as the state’s Attorney General. Insiders are always concerned about the Maine Senators and Alaskan Lisa Murkowski. If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Portman, Collins, Snowe and Murkowski need to buck up and support their colleagues.

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Last month, Big Government reported that Occupy Wall Street activists were using “human shields”–veterans, women, the young, the old, and the disabled–in the hope of provoking police to use force against them and winning the “battle over images.”

That initial report focused on the use of veterans and disabled protestors. This week’s Occupy protests provided more evidence–specifically involving the use of the young and the elderly.

In Portland yesterday, this Occupy activist put an infant between himself and police on the front lines as he shouted at officers:

In Seattle on Nov. 15, an elderly woman was pepper-sprayed in clashes between Occupy activists and police. Whether provoked or accidental, the incident created the hoped-for sensational image:

And in New York yesterday, activists from Occupy Wall Street taunted children walking to school, prompting one observer to call the Occupy activists “terrorists“:

Photo: CBS New York

The “terrorist” label was driven home on Nov. 14 when three men claiming to be Occupy Portland protestors were arrested carrying glass-shrapnel bombs. (more…)

From Politico:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested Friday that unions took over the Occupy Wall Street protest yesterday.

“A vast percentage of the people were union members protesting — some private unions and then some municipal unions — and they had, you know, organized signs and leadership and that sort of thing,” Bloomberg said on WOR radio station Friday. “So it really wasn’t the protesters that have been in Zuccotti Park or that you see around the country.”

Bloomberg added, “It was just an opportunity for a bunch of unions to complain or to protest or whatever they want to do.”

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The Wisconsin Medical Examining Board says there is “no way to determine what kind of evaluation was actually made.”  The MacIver Institute has compiled the video that shows exactly what type of evaluation was going on.

So much for the argument that renewables don’t compromise our national security the way fossil fuels do – but try telling an environmentalist as much. While it was first reported more than a year ago that wind farms were interfering with military radar, making airplanes disappear from sight on screens and cluttering those same screens with the blade-rotation changes of turbine blades, not much was said on the matter until this month, when the Department of Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) proudly unveiled the Renewable Energy and Defense Database. The REDD is an interactive tool that allows renewable-energy developers to locate military installations with a view toward avoiding them in deciding where to construct future projects.

According to a Nov. 9 DoD press release, the “labor-intensive, very time-consuming project” was primarily an effort of the NRDC and didn’t cost the federal government a dime. Unfortunately, this assessment fails to take into account the hefty national security toll wind farms have already taken – and will likely continue to take unless the current premium placed on “green” energy isn’t removed.

As of 2008, wind turbines had compromised almost 40 percent of U.S. long-range radar systems (h/t masterresource.org). Here’s just one example of how: In 2007, two wind-farm projects slated for the area near Travis Air Force Base in northern California came before the county planning commission. The base and a county airport land-use body sought to have the projects delayed until turbines’ effects on radars could be further studied. But when, the following year, a project supporter donated $1 million to the base, Col. Steven Arquiette, commander of the 60th Air Mobility Wing at Travis Air Force Base, “was told by his superiors to accept the money and withdraw his complaints,”according to Masterresource.org blogger Lisa Linowes, despite the fact that nothing about the plans had changed substantially.

Now pilots coming in to Travis are urged to turn on their aircraft’s transponders as a way of announcing their presence, since they still cannot be seen on radar. This poses a sizeable security threat given that it could easily be emulated by terrorists – and has been. As Linowes notes, among the first actions the Sept. 11 perpetrators did was turn off the transponders of the planes they hijacked.

Wind farms have also dramatically slowed the Federal Aviation Administration’s review time for project proposals. While it once took a month for construction of a project to be approved or be declared hazardous, now similar projects stand to wait up to three times that long.

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