In July, I had a post on Big Government about an article in the El Paso Times which detailed an alleged gun smuggling operation into Mexico from El Paso, TX and/or Columbus, NM. The weapons being smuggled were not part of the 2,500 guns Holder & Co. let walk into Mexico from Arizona, but were alleged to have been regularly transported from the Dallas/Fort Worth area into El Paso or Columbus in an operation overseen by Obama’s State Department.

The weapons smuggled weren’t .22 rifles, .410 shotguns, or pellet guns. Rather, we’re talking about “anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era [as well as] grenade launchers, assault rifles, handguns, and military gear including night-vision goggles and body armor.” According to at least one former DEA official and one “CIA contract pilot,” the weapons were being sold to drug cartel members in Mexico, where they were being stockpiled for use at an unspecified future place and time.

And just as I currently think of Holder when I read of the DOJ’s complicity in Fast and Furious (because the Attorney General is top dog there), so too when I read about the alleged smuggling out of El Paso and Columbus overseen by the State Department, I wonder what Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton knew (and knows).

With this alleged smuggling in mind, I re-read some of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speeches on border violence from 2009 and 2010 and I found myself wondering: Is Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) going to question her on these matters?

After all, it was while in Mexico in March 2009 that Hillary delivered a speech on border violence in which she outraged Americans by blaming the U.S. for the crime being committed in Mexico:

We know very well that the drug traffickers are motivated by the demand for illegal drugs in the United States, that they are armed by the transport of weapons from the United States to Mexico.

And exactly one year later, in March 2010, she stood on again on Mexican soil and said:

We accept our share of the responsibility. As I said when I first came here a year ago, I think standing right here on this stage, the United States is your partner and your supporter. We know that the demand for drugs drives much of this illicit trade, that guns purchased in the United States – as we saw some of the examples outside – are used to facilitate violence here in Mexico.

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Today, in 1941, the Japanese attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. would enter World War II.

The news of UC Davis police pepper spraying innocent #OccupyUCDavis revolutionaries shocked and outraged the nation. One can only imagine how outraged the nation will be once it learns of a shockingly underreported story that the Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System published last week. “Marines face OC spray” details the following:

One at a time, instructors lined up the augmentees, stood three paces away and sprayed real OC in their faces. The spray ran down their foreheads and into their eyes, causing them to immediately close. The Marines exhibited uncontrollable tearing, coughing, choking plus an extreme burning sensation on any exposed skin from the OC spray.

Outraged yet? If not, you will be soon! And if you are, well you may just want to stop reading now lest the next sentences drive you into uncontrollable hysteria.

After being sprayed, the augmentees had to navigate through an obstacle course of Marines holding pads, representing potential attackers. The SAF Marines fought through the course blindly throwing punches, knee strikes and baton strikes.

So, it wasn’t enough torture just to spray American citizens in the face with pepper spray, the federal government then forced them to run through an obstacle course even as they were incapacitated! Clearly, the legacy of George W. Bush lives on.

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Today’s congressional insider trading hearings led by Rep. Spencer Bachus showcased a carefully selected list of expert witnesses designed to protect the status quo and thwart real reform.

Among Rep. Bachus’s list of experts were Indiana University Professor Donna Nagy, Jack Maskell of the Congressional Research Service and Robert Walker, who formerly served as a lawyer on the House Ethics Committee. All three argued that current laws are fine as written. However, when Enforcement Division Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission Robert Khuzami was asked whether the SEC had ever brought action against any member of Congress or congressional staffers for insider trading, Mr. Khuzami confessed that if they had he wasn’t aware of it.

Rep. Bachus’s shell game is hardly a surprise. In the wake of the 60 Minutes investigation and my book’s revelations about Rep. Bachus’s 40 stock options trades during the 2008 financial crisis, he is desperately trying to reposition himself as a reformer, going so far as to now announce a plan to have members of Congress establish blind trusts. That is great as window dressing, but why not give the American people a clear picture of what is actually going on in Washington?

For starters, instead of stacking the deck, Rep. Bachus should have had a panel of experts who hold diverse views. Why not call a witness like UCLA Law Professor Steve Bainbridge who, in addition to being an expert on insider trading laws, has sounded the alarm bells for years on the insufficiency of our current laws?

Moreover, why not have an honest discussion about the fact that the SEC has never pursued congressional insider trading cases? We know the answer. Congress approves the SEC budget every year. And remember what happened when the FBI investigated Rep. William Jefferson for taking bribes? Congress threatened to slash the FBI budget!

The American public has lost faith in our political leaders precisely because of the sort of ridiculous show that Rep. Bachus put on today.

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We are currently having a rather asinine federal tax rate debate – how to offset on the federal ledger the one year extension of the payroll tax diminishment.

Lost, sadly, is the discussion of whether or not we should be so doing.

This is in fact not a “tax cut” at all – not in the income tax sense of the word.  It is a reduction in the payments made to the Social Security program (SSI).

A reduction which – definitively – does nothing to create jobs or “stimulate” the economy.

Because no one in the private sector makes any permanent decision based upon temporary government policy.

If they can’t afford to permanently hire you, a temporary tax cut doesn’t make it any more feasible.  A part of why our egregious unemployment problem has persisted under the current, temporarily lower payroll tax rates.

This lack of policy permanence – which has been rampant throughout the Olympic-ly overactive Obama Administration – is a large contributor to the uncertainty that has plagued us and our economy lo these last nearly three years.

Meanwhile, the per person Social Security payment reduction is tiny – about $20 a week.

Keynesian dreams aside, government spending doesn’t “stimulate” the economy.  2009’s $787 billion – plus inordinate interest – didn’t.  Twenty bucks a week per employee certainly won’t.

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The concept of one man one vote is essential to the freedoms of the American Republic. Allowing people to vote more than once, or allowing people to vote who by law don’t have that right, partially disenfranchises those Americans who are legally voting. The weight of the legal votes is watered-down by the inclusion of illegal votes. I would argue that protecting the concept of one man one vote should be a top priority of our government.

Progressive politicians and organizations of the progressive persuasion argue that making people prove their eligibility to vote, will suppress voter turnout, especially in the minority community.  But the only minority who will be disenfranchised will be people who have no legal right to vote.

Like most progressive organizations, the NAACP will do just about anything to ban states from requiring ID to vote (or register), so their latest tactic is to get the UN to call the requirement for voter identification, (hold on you may be surprised by this) racist!

The organisation will this week present evidence to the UN high commissioner on human rights of what it contends is a conscious attempt to “block the vote” on the part of state legislatures across the US. Next March the NAACP will send a delegation of legal experts to Geneva to enlist the support of the UN human rights council.

Wait a second. The UN Commission on Human Rights?? No worries for the state legislatures, they will blame it on Israel like they always do.

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Tea Party leaders in Wisconsin are happy with what they are calling an overwhelming response to their efforts to verify the signatures on the Governor Scott Walker Recall petitions.

In one day, more than 1,000 volunteers from across Wisconsin and the nation have already signed up to help two Tea Party groups verify the petitions in the upcoming gubernatorial recall.

“The response [Monday] has been overwhelming,” said Ross Brown of the Tea Party group, We the People of the Republic, one of two nonprofit organizations sponsoring the project. “Verify The Recall has become a national story less than 24 hours after it was announced.’

Brown’s comments came in an email update to supporters. His group is partnering with The Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty to sponsor the online VerifyTheRecall.com project. It is at that website where volunteers can sign up to enter the data from the handwritten petitions.

The groups announced that more than 1,200 individuals signed up on the website in the first 24 hours since the site was launched.

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Mid-size city Austin, Texas is expecting to spend $1,000,000 of taxpayer money on the Occupy Austin movement, effectively eating away at claimed reductions in the city’s police overtime budget only two months into their fiscal year.

According to the Digital Texan…

Occupy Austin has been inhabiting City Hall Plaza for two-months and at today’s Austin Public Safety Commission meeting came stunning news: The Austin Police Department has spent $412,000 policing the Occupy Austin protest since it began on October 6 through November 19. That figure is almost certainly higher today. The Commission admitted that the city could be on the hook for over $1 million before too long.

To put the $1 million figure in perspective, you need look no further than the city of Austin’s own budget for 2011-2012 – that’s what the city was hoping to save on police overtime this year. Austin’s fiscal year starts on October 1^st. The city budget made the following assumption…

The Police Department is generating savings by delaying the start of the next cadet academy by six months and reducing its overtime budget by $1.0 million, from $9.3 million to $8.3 million, to be more in-line with actual overtime costs experienced over the last few years. In the past three fiscal years, actual overtime expenditures have averaged $7.5 million.

What are Austinites getting for their money? In a pattern that’s been followed all over the country, the ‘Occupy Camp’ in Ausitn has become largely a homeless camp. The Digital Taxan…

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Much has already been revealed about the Obama administration’s cronyism when it comes to the Department of Energy. 80% of Department of Energy green loans are tied to President Obama’s most prolific donors including the now infamous Solyndra solar panel company and the Robert Kennedy Jr connected Brightsource which also deals in solar energy.

The tentacles of President’s green cronyism extend beyond the Department of Energy though. The Navy recently launched its largest biofuel test ship as part of an effort to reduce the Department of Defense’s dependence on fossil fuels (emphasis added):

The Navy is investing more than $500 million in the budding biofuel industry with the hope that it will be able to supply enough alternative fuel so the maritime branch can cut its dependence on fossil fuel by 50 percent over the next decade, said Cmdr. James Goudreau, director of the Navy Energy Coordination Office.

The biofuel that went into the destroyer was a 50-50 blend of petroleum and a hydro-processed algal oil produced by San Francisco-based Solazyme, which has been changing the genetic makeup of algae to construct a new generation of fuels.

The US Navy reports that this roughly half a billion dollar  investment is the “single largest purchase of biofuel in government history”:

Responding to that challenge, in August 2011, the Secretaries of Agriculture, Energy and Navy announced an intention to invest up to $510 million during the next three years in partnership with the private sector to produce advanced drop-in biofuel to power military and commercial transportation. While that investment awaits Congressional action, today’s announcement uses the existing authority – leveraging Defense Department procurement – to support this energy security goal.

[...]

“This historic contract is a major step forward for America’s energy security and the advanced biofuel industry in our country. Solazyme has delivered more than 360,000 liters of 100 percent algal derived renewable diesel to the U.S. Navy for their fuel certification program to date. The United States leads the world in advanced biofuel technology, and the Departments of Agriculture, Energy and the Navy have been instrumental in coming together to spur commercialization and grow our lead,” said Jonathan Wolfson, CEO, Solazyme. “We are honored to be working with the U.S. Navy and DLA-Energy in driving forward the Navy’s effort under Secretary Ray Mabus to source 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. And we are proud to be teaming up with Dynamic Fuels on this contract.”

Solazyme is not just any biofuels company, and its continued partnership with the Navy is not without crony connections. Its strategic advisor is T.J. Glauthier, Obama donor and part of President Obama’s transition team, as Solazyme’s website states (emphasis added):

TJ Glauthier is an advisor and corporate board member in the energy and “clean tech” sector. He advises companies dealing with the complex competitive and regulatory challenges in the energy sector today. He also served on President Obama’s White House Transition Team, where he focused primarily on the energy portion of the economic stimulus bill.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech discuss Medicare’s quarter-billion dollars spent on penis pumps for elderly men, how this is indicative of larger Medicare fraud and how lobbyists perpetuate the system.

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When asked about the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in October, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren praised it to the hilt. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do,” she told the Daily Beast. Yet when pressed in November on the OWS adherents’ increasingly violent tactics, she told a Boston TV interviewer: “Everybody has to follow the law. There’s no exception on that.”

But Warren’s apparent disavowal of the tactics of OWS and like-minded community organizers may not be shared by Richard Cordray, President Obama’s nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Warren designed. Cordray has long supported ESOP, formerly known as the East Side Organizing Project, an Ohio housing advocacy group that has distinguished itself by storming into banks and launching plastic “shark attacks” on the lawns of private homes. ESOP’s leaders brag about what they call their “organized hits” on banks and other targets, which have included the home of the late Congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp.

As Ohio treasurer and attorney general, Cordray lobbied for state and federal funding for ESOP and publicly praised funders of the group as “the real heroes.” And in a highly unusual move for a nominee awaiting confirmation, Cordray returned to Ohio in October to be the keynote speaker at the group’s gala dinner.

Since his nomination in July to head the bureau created by the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law, Republicans have held fast against confirmation. But largely, they haven’t made Cordray’s state record an issue. They have focused instead on structural defects in the agency’s design, such as the massive new powers the bureau will have to ban financial products it deems “abusive” and its lack of accountability to Congress.

These criticisms are valid, but they may not be enough to hold Senate Republicans together without criticism of the nominee’s merits. Just before Thanksgiving, Scott Brown (R-Mass.), facing a tough reelection challenge from Warren, became the first GOPer to commit to voting for Cordray. The Democrat-controlled Senate plans to hold a vote on his confirmation this week, possibly as early as Tuesday. Human Events‘ Neil McCabe reports that in addition to Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, other GOP targets for Cordray supporters include Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Tennessee’s Bob Corker, and Cordray’s home state Senator Rob Portman of Ohio (though Portman seemed to reaffirm his opposition in a statement to Human Events last week).

But Cordray’s support of ESOP needs further scrutiny, particularly since as head of the bureau, he will have the power to help funnel federal support to ESOP and like-minded community organizers with virtually no oversight by Congress. And a report by Bloomberg News suggests that Cordray specifically blessed ESOP’s “organized hits” on banks and homes.

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Today, the House Financial Services Committee is holding a hearing on the STOCK Act and the general issue of insider trading by Members of Congress. This comes on the heals of a Senate hearing last week. The question now isn’t whether or not Congress will act to stem these abuses, but HOW it acts. Will the law have real teeth and meaningful enforcement mechanisms or will it be window-dressing to “deal with” the issue while maintaining the status quo.

In the clip below Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, author of the book Throw Them All Out, which first raised this issue, lays out the necessary components of any legislation to prevent insider trading abuses by Congress.

While withering under the combined effects of cold weather, public disgust,  and the tiniest hint of  a backbone by some public authorities, the Occupy Wall Street Movement will not be allowed to die.

That is,  if one of the movement’s strongest pillars, the Communist Party USA, has its way

Communist Party contingent. Occupy Chicago

What will change though, if the Communist succeed in dominating the movement they have so thoroughly infiltrated, will be a new, more disciplined, less anarchic – even electorally focused “Occupy” movement.

In a  report to the National Committee of the Communist Party USA, which met in New York City, Nov. 12-13, 2011, Party National chairman Sam Webb,  laid out his analysis of  the current political climate , and the role of the “Occupy” movement and the Communist Party in moving the “progressive” movement forward.

Wrote comrade Webb;

This is a volatile period. Battle lines are being drawn. Not for a while have things been so unhinged.

A marked upswing, if not a qualitative turn in class and democratic struggles, is afoot.

Sustained mass actions, civil disobedience, new levels of solidarity and consciousness, innovative tactics and slogans, and a complex array of social forces and organizations are reshaping the political landscape in unexpected ways.

The most dramatic expression of this broadening, quickening, and to a degree spontaneous upsurge against the gaping inequality and injustice in our society is the Occupy movement.

This spirited movement – and the spirit is contagious – is capturing the imagination of tens of millions who are fed up with Wall Street’s greed and worried sick about their own diminishing economic prospects.

Its politics don’t fit neatly into any distinct political category and its methods of organization are unorthodox. No single “ism” prevails. Nevertheless, most of the participants are on the progressive and left side of the spectrum even if they don’t characterize themselves in those terms.

While the occupiers are disgusted with Wall Street and Washington’s deference to the “lords of finance,” they don’t embrace a specific set of demands. Some observers see this as a grave weakness, but we shouldn’t. They have shined a spotlight on Wall Street, changed the national conversation from anti-government to anti-Wall Street, and turned the struggle against finance capital into a mainstream, top versus bottom issue.

This movement has spread to other cities and around the world, proving that in a volatile climate, small initiatives can trigger massive social irruptions.

So far so good. This is all fine and dandy with comrade Webb.  But…..

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MINNEAPOLIS – Last week marked the beginning of contract talks between Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, the local teachers union.

But this time around there’s a third voice that wants input at the bargaining table.

A coalition of concerned citizens is hoping to pressure the school board and the teachers union into changing the way teachers are hired, fired, evaluated, and assigned to classrooms.

The coalition, known as Contract for Student Achievement, is comprised of parents, pastors, business leaders, elected officials and taxpayers who want MPS’ staffing decisions to reflect the best interests of students, instead of school employees.

They say past teachers contracts have created a system that ignores the academic needs of students, particularly minority children. They believe that has led to an unacceptable achievement gap that must be addressed in the new collective bargaining agreement.

In other words, the taxpayers are reasserting ownership of the under-performing Minneapolis school district, despite the objections of the self-serving teachers union and the reservations of the school board. It’s a story that could – and should – be playing out in school districts across the nation.

Minneapolis schools facing a ‘human crisis’

Contract for Student Achievement members correctly see contract negotiations as the ideal time to have their voices heard in how local schools are run.

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Americans are frustrated and tired with Washington, D.C.  The modern day Tea Party movement and its impact throughout the country is evidence of people’s frustration with inept and out-of-touch government.  The recent Occupy movement arose partly out of this same frustration.  The common thread throughout our country is that those in Washington just don’t get it and Americans want their country back.

We are tired of regulations that stifle job creation.  We’re tired of the Obama administration blocking domestic oil production even while oil spikes to over $100 a barrel and we are continually reliant on foreign countries for our energy needs.  We’re tired of the failure of the career politicians to cut $1.2 trillion over the next year 10 years and balance our federal budget – that’s only 2% of the entire budget over that time.  We don’t have a revenue problem but a spending problem so getting our country’s finances and debt under control is our generation’s greatest priority, and we must either have the courage to cut our government’s spending and lower taxes — or have the courage to put the leaders in Washington who will break this culture of business as usual.

The problem is that Washington is simply out of touch.  The Beltway Bubble culture of elected officials, bureaucrats, special interests and lobbyists that look after one another while ignoring the real world’s concerns.  Once we send them to DC, they tend to change and are usually there for life; moving from staff, to Member of Congress to lobbyist.  Often serving for stretch of a time in an Administration.  It isn’t so much a revolving door as musical chairs. And when the music stops we lose.

This cozy relationship is laid out in detail in a newly published book by Hoover Institute Fellow Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out.  Schweizer details the sweetheart deals special interests get from the taxpayers and the ways Members of Congress and staff can use their position to enrich themselves.

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One month ago Ohio voted with its heart against reforms portrayed as an attack on public workers. Ohio, DC, and New York union bosses spent more than $30 million drenching the airwaves in images of sad firefighters, sad police officers, and evil Republicans, convincing voters to overlook a broken status quo.

A month later, how are local governments celebrating the union victory on Issue 2?

Middletown is laying off 9 firefighters, despite the city’s police and fire budgets both increasing by nearly 1/3 in the past decade. In Hamilton, a $5.9 million death tax haul will delay the inevitable:

Inflation coupled with new technology costs and the significant rises in health care costs have contributed to the rise in safety services budgets [...]

The Hamilton fire union contract contains a minimum staffing clause, which means overtime if people are out sick or on vacation. When staffing dipped to 106 between 2008 and 2010, overtime was a significant factor in the fire budget increase, city officials have said.

Emphasis mine. Cleveland City School District is eliminating preschool, high school busing, and 75 security positions:

With labor costs making up the majority of school budgets, the district has sought to make up much of that ground through negotiations with unions representing Cleveland school employees. Negotiations with the teachers union have continued since March, with the district seeking significant pay concessions.

Westerville City School District is firing 62 support staff, cutting busing, and eliminating all sports:

Officials from the teachers union have said the plan also would cut about 175 teaching positions.

The proposed cuts follow a Nov. 8 levy defeat in which 61 percent of voters rejected a combined income-tax and property-tax request.

In Lancaster, where income- and property-tax issues also failed:

One of Lancaster’s three city firehouses was closed last month after the mayor laid off 13 firefighters to help balance the budget. The 68 firefighters remaining have predicted response times will increase in the city of about 37,000, but they could not say by how much.

In Trumbull County:

The state Controlling Board has approved an advance payment of more than $1.9 million to help the Liberty Township school district pay its bills.

The reforms in Issue 2 would’ve helped localities control health & pension costs, ended last-in-first-out layoffs, instituted merit pay, and equipped elected leaders with some flexibility at the expense of union bosses. Good thing we avoided that miserable fate!

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Operation Fast and Furious has marred Eric Holder’s stint as Attorney General. Between the selling of upwards of 2,500 weapons to straw purchasers (who were knowingly to pass the guns to criminals), the failure to trace those guns, the gun-walking, the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry with at least two of those guns, and the myriad cover-ups associated with the whole operation, Holder’s name is mud (or worse) among law abiding citizens. And the frequently made defense that this operation was meant to draw members of the Mexican cartel out into the light for capture is as tired as it is false.

Note to Holder: No one believes you were after cartel members. Everyone believes you were trying to cause enough crime on the border to justify the passage of more gun control.

But an interesting thing happened on the way to Holder’s prosecution—the DOJ added “cash-walking” to gun-walking and now, someone has to explain how the D.E.A. laundered hundreds of millions of dollars for the Mexican cartel.

That’s right, hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a Dec. 5th letter to Holder, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) juxtaposed this scenario with the one used to justify Fast and Furious:

Apparently, this same goal of dismantling Mexican drug cartels motivated the Drug Enforcement Administration in aiding and abetting [the] same cartels in laundering millions of dollars in cash. In fact, the New York Times reports that agents needed to seek Department approval to launder amounts great than $10 million in any single operation. Officials quoted in the story said this $10 million cap was more of a guideline than a rule, noting it has apparently been waived on many occasions to “attract the interest of high value targets.”

This was part of Issa’s announcement that he’s broadening his investigation into Fast and Furious so as to include an investigation into cash-walker.

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Today, the House Financial Services Committee holds a hearing on the STOCK Act, which would prohibit insider trading by Members of Congress and their staff. The Committee is chaired by Rep. Spencer Bachus. Yeah, that’s a bit interesting.

Yesterday we stumbled across a marketing team promoting GM vehicles at the University of Chicago. Students were being offered $10 to test drive Chevy’s inferior quality cars around campus, and promised an additional $10 to the Colleges Against Cancer fund at the school for each participant.

Passersby were also offered free pizza and soft drinks on GM’s dime.

$20 bucks and pizza, not bad….

While donating money to this presumably noble cause seems like a nice thing for Chevy to do, who decided now is a good time for them to do so? And a $10 giveaway to students? Who decided that was a good idea?

We spoke with one of the marketing team members who said this was a promo that Chevy was just kicking off around the Midwest. He estimated the economically brain-challenged auto company, who received a $49 billion TARP bailout from the taxpayers, would be giving away about $1,200-$1,500 that day.

Sadly, after the smoke-and-mirror reporting over the past year or so, GM has still not repaid its TARP loan, and 33 percent of the company is still owned by the taxpayers.

$1,200-$1,500 to students who hardly pay taxes at all, roaming around a university campus on a Saturday…. All the while, the likelihood that these kids are even in the market to buy a car is slim.

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