On Sunday, the Green Bay Press-Gazette posted a link on its Facebook page to an Associated Press story detailing state aid cuts to organizations that help victims of sexual abuse. After that story was posted, a reader left a comment expressing outrage that the state would cut such aid, and asserted that perhaps Governor Scott Walker’s wife or children should become victims of sexual assault so the governor could see the how devastating the state aid cuts really are.

The first comment reads:

Another thing Walker has destroyed . . . well just more people that will sign for recall walker now . . . is he really that ignorant to even attack victims at their lowest . . . what a real prize, maybe someone should rape and victimize his wife and daughter if he has any . . . or even sons, then he will wish he supported this service a lot more.

The women, Nancy Butzlaff, appears to have been the first to comment on this particular story on the Press-Gazette’s Facebook page. Not too long after her comment, another woman, Jenni Kone-Keeler, suggested that perhaps the governor himself should become the victim of a sexual assault or some assault-related crime. One conservative activist, Lauren Stephens, said that the comments were left up on the Press-Gazette’s Facebook page for close to nine hours before the paper removed them.

According to Butzlaff’s personal Facebook page, she is married to Robert A. Butzlaff. A search of a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel database found a Robert A. Butzlaff who works for the state of Wisconsin as a corrections officer and made over $63,000–including overtime pay–in 2010.

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As a repository of reader insight adding context to or exposing flaw or omissions of a paper’s news and editorial pages, the letters section of the Wall Street Journal is typically unmatched among other outlets.

I have spent some time on the phone and in correspondence with the Letters editor to conclude he is thoughtful and on the ball, though exceptions to the page’s excellence occur. While we do not expect perfection here on earth, sometimes these exceptions are so ridiculous as to demand ridicule. Saturday’s Letters page is a case in point.

Wind’s taxpayer lifeline is expiring, and you can feel it in the air. Responding to a piece touting shale gas, a windmill enthusiast wrote to defend the honor of his beloved pinwheels against gas, a proxy for abundant, reliable (they always work, so you can actually run an economy on them…wind, well, not so much) fossil fuels:

The energy to service a wind farm is free. For gas generation you need water, steel, energy, labor, chemicals and food stocks…

If there is a point here it must be to imply that wind energy is cheaper. It is a twist on the old line spouted by “renewables” pushers, “the wind and the sun are free!”, ignoring that wind and solar power are bloody expensive.

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Who said the Tea Party was dead?

The MacIver News Service reports today:

We the People of the Republic and The Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty, two of Wisconsin’s most prominent ‘Tea Party’ groups, are organizing an effort to check the validity of all signatures submitted in the ongoing gubernatorial recall.

The project is taking place, online, at VerifyTheRecall.com.

“Software has been developed that will help identify duplicate signatures and other signature irregularities (questionable addresses, etc.),” wrote Ross Brown of We the People of the Republic in an email to supporters. “Additionally, individuals will be able to look up their name and address on a website to see if they have been included as a petition signor.”

Last week, the MacIver News Service reported that despite requesting a supplemental budget appropriation in excess of $600,000, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board would not be checking the authenticity or validity of the more than 540,000 recall petitions.

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Freshman Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) was one of twelve members of the so-called Super Committee which failed to reach an agreement late last month to cut at least $1.5 trillion in savings. In an interview with The Heritage Foundation, Toomey explained that not every member was on board with reaching a deal.

Again, to be fair, I think several of the Democrats on the committee really wanted to find a way to reach an agreement. In the end, what they were not willing to do was to stand up to the most liberal wing of their caucus. And the pressure pushing them away from a deal was significant.

But despite the Super Committee’s failure, Toomey has been very vocal that we cannot now ignore our nation’s fiscal crisis and that a deal to tackle our mounting debt must still be reached.

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INDIANAPOLIS – The idea of a salary cap for Indiana school superintendents may have floundered this summer during a legislative study committee, but issues surrounding compensation for school leaders aren’t going away any time soon.

Recent studies are unveiling some interesting information about how superintendents are paid that has remained largely hush-hush for years. An unjustifiable $1 million severance package paid to former Wayne Township Superintendent Terry Thompson earlier this year sparked the issue, but a recent report by the Evansville Courier and Press shows there are other serious problems that need to be addressed.

The newspaper examined 275 Indiana superintendent contracts and found that districts are paying their top officials much more than people may realize. In an effort to keep published salaries low, school districts across the state are paying superintendents for their health insurance in cash – up to $20,000 in some cases – and are reporting the income as part of total compensation to boost their pensions through the Indiana State Teachers Retirement Fund, the paper reports.

Here are some examples: Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation Superintendent David Smith receives $160,000 per year, but also receives $20,000 per year, divided among his 26 paychecks. Adams Central Community Schools Superintendent Mike Pettibone is paid $94,320 in salary, and $15,012 to shop for his own health insurance. Linton-Stockton Superintendent Nick Karazsia is paid $97,460 in salary, plus cash in the amount equal to the cost of health, major medical, eye and dental insurance, the Courier and Press reports.

The newspaper couldn’t find out how much Karazsia is paid for his benefits.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Europe’s potential political merger, the ten year anniversary of Enron’s collapse, and evidence the American private sector has been dying since the 1960’s.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

“Merkozy” under pressure to agree to budget masterplan
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Enron’s fall foreshadowed 2008 crash
Why We Are In Political Gridlock: The Private Sector Is Dying
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About a week ago, I wrote that people in western nations need the freedom to own guns just in case there are riots, chaos, and social disarray when welfare states collapse.

Much to my surprise and pleasure, this resulted in an invitation to appear on the National Rifle Association’s webcast to discuss the issue.

As I noted in the interview, I’m just a fiscal policy wonk, but the right to keep and bear arms should be a priority for anyone who believes in freedom and responsibility. And even though I only have a couple of guns, you can see that I’m raising my kids to have a proper appreciation for the Second Amendment.

I don’t think we’ll ever get to the point where we suffer societal breakdown, but I won’t be too surprised if it happens in some European countries. We’ve already seen the challenges faced by disarmed Brits during recent riots in the United Kingdom.

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ACORN is dead. Isn’t that what we were told after ACORN workers were caught on tape helping undercover reporters evade prostitution laws? In fact, following the media outburst that resulted from the undercover videos, President Obama himself signed into law an ACORN funding ban that included any affiliate and/or subsidiary. And the organization filed bankruptcy.

But as Judicial Watch announced in September with the release of our groundbreaking report, “The Rebranding of ACORN,” rumors of ACORN’s demise were completely fabricated. Far from defunct, the former “community organization” has splintered into difficult-to-track organizations across the country. (Former ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis calls them “bullet-proof community-organizing Frankensteins.”) And, just like their predecessors, these new ACORN spin-offs are prepared to wreak havoc on the 2012 elections.

One of those ACORN offshoots is the Affordable Housing Centers of America (AHCOA), which was previously known as ACORN Housing.

In July 2011 Judicial Watch uncovered a $79,819 grant to AHCOA. The Obama administration claimed this grant did not violate the ban because the two organizations were separate and distinct. We said the two organizations were virtually indistinguishable and the grant was unlawful.

Well, according to The Daily Caller, at least one influential non-profit organization has conducted an audit of AHCOA indicating the Obama administration operated outside the law:

A newly released internal audit appears to indicate that the Government Accountability Office and President Barack Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development incorrectly argued that a specific organization wasn’t ACORN-affiliated.

HUD’s office of general counsel and the GAO have both claimed that Affordable Housing Centers of America, or AHCOA, is not affiliated with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. AHCOA formerly called itself ACORN Housing, but changed its name after the 2009 ACORN meltdown.

The Obama administration has awarded more than $700,000 in taxpayer funds to AHCOA despite a 2010 law stipulating that no taxpayer funds could be awarded to ACORN “or any of its affiliates, subsidiaries, or allied organizations.”

You can read the audit, which was uncovered by the group Cause of Action, for yourself, here.

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Cross-Posted: TobyToons.com (Conservative Political Cartoons)

Imagine watching Fox News one night and your high school child walks into the room and proceeds to tell you that “Fox News lies!”

That happened to Nick Benson, a Californian who had two students enrolled at Barstow High School in San Bernardino County.

“How do you know that,” Benson said he asked the boy.  “My teacher told me,” was his grandson’s response.

An editorial cartoon Barstow high school students read in "World History" class

Sure enough.  His grandson’s “World History” teacher, Jim Duarte, fed a steady dose of radical left wing propaganda to his students, disguised as classroom assignments.  It was like students were receiving their news from a slightly more sophisticated source than The Daily Show.

Last week Benson provided Education Action Group with several assignments that Duarte handed out last school year, when Benson’s grandson was in his class.

The articles and editorial cartoons students were expected to review were ridiculously slanted to the Big Labor/socialist point of view, as were the leading questions on classroom worksheets.

On one such worksheet, students read an article on how Fox News supposedly “pushed” a “falsehood” that government workers make more than their private sector counterparts. Says who? Media Matters, far-left reactionary outfit that based its public/private comparison on a “study” published by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C. think tank largely funded by Big Labor.

Duarte’s efforts to sell his personal political beliefs to students are all-too-familiar. Throughout the nation, we’ve been hearing teachers union leaders openly calling for instructors to preach pro-union and anti-American philosophy to their students, some as young as preschool age.

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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was rebuffed in parliamentary elections. Democracy is a messy thing, thankfully.

U.S. Park Police descended upon the Occupy DC Encampment at McPherson Square Sunday Morning after Occupy D.C. Protestors erected what the police labeled, “a non-permitted structure,” in the park around the corner from the White House, which lead to a day long stand off between the police and protestors.

A shot of the unfinished greenhouse

The protestors claimed that the structure, which was to be dubbed, “the greenhouse,” when completed was built to shelter more than 100 protestors from the elements over the coming winter months. The Protesters also claimed that structure in question had been erected overnight and could be broken down and removed within a 2 hour time frame when and if it had been completed.

The non-premitted structure erected by Occupy D.C.

U.S. Park Police dubbed the unfinished structure as a non permitted building erected in the park and demanded that protestors remove it from the public use park. This demand lead to a day long stand off between police and some elements within the Occupy D.C. Protest as more than a half dozen protesters were arrested after they climbed upon the unfinished structure to delay U.S. Park Police from removing it from McPherson Square. One protester even erected an American Flag on top of the structure as Police moved in.

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Before Politico broke the sexual harassment story they spent 10 days repeatedly trying to get the Cain campaign to respond directly about whether he ever faced allegations of sexual harassment when he was at the Restaurant Association. The campaign was  also asked about specific reports confirming there were financial settlements in two cases in which women leveled complaints.

Not only did the campaign refuse to answer the questions, but even more disastrous is they had a ten-day-lead to figure out a strategy to address the charges and did absolutely nothing. When the charges were made public, Cain bungled his answers and evaded the questions.

Cain said he has “had thousands of people working for me” at different businesses over the years and could not comment “until I see some facts or some concrete evidence.” His campaign staff was given the name of one woman who complained last week, and it was repeated to Cain on Sunday. He responded, “I am not going to comment on that.”

He was then asked, “Have you ever been accused, sir, in your life of harassment by a woman?”

He breathed audibly, glared at the reporter and stayed silent for several seconds. After the question was repeated three times, he responded by asking the reporter, “Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?”

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It looks as if the Obama Administration has a major “green” problem. The firm responsible for Solyndra, RockPort Capital, and several other major companies directly connected to the Obama Administration have received in excess of $4 billion in government assistance. This cronyism includes millions in tax breaks (one conveniently preceding a $10 million investment from WH Economic Adviser Jeffrey Immelt’s General Electric), stimulus grants, loan guarantees, and government endorsements that gave credibility to a firm’s untested product. With the release of more White House emails, it looks as if the Obama Administration’s problem is more than just a few bad loans.

In 2009, another RockPort investment, Satcon technologies, partnered with SunPower Corporation and Exelon Energy to build a 41-acre solar array in Chicago. SunPower, recently covered here, is the recipient of a controversial $1.2 billion DOE loan guarantee. SunPower also worked with Satcon on another government-funded solar project in Hawai’i.

Meanwhile, the DOE has doubled down on their loan program with a $646 million loan guarantee to Exelon Energy (who own the SunPower/Satcon project in Chicago). Exelon bought out the Antelope Valley Project from First Solar Energy after First Solar missed the DOE’s loan guarantee deadline and was denied an extension. In another interesting appearance, Jeffrey Immelt’s GE Energy Financial just bought out First Solar’s Desert Sunlight project after receiving a DOE guarantee for a portion of their $1.46 billion loan. It’s probably more than a matter of coincidence Exelon arose out of an $8.2 billion merger advised by Rahm Emanuel in 1999 and that White House political strategist David Axelrod is a former consultant for Exelon. Furthermore, Exelon executives were major contributors to Obama’s 2008 campaign, bundling several hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions.

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About a month ago, I posted in regard to what I called “the euthanasia of the saver.” This comment had to do with the fact that nominal interest rates in the United States for financial investments such as bank certificates of deposit and bank savings accounts—the kinds of investments traditionally employed by retired persons and small savers, who wish to gain income without exposing their funds to great risk of capital loss—now fall considerably below the rate of inflation, and hence the real (or inflation-adjusted) yield on such investments is negative. That is, the nominal payoff is insufficient to offset the loss of purchasing power of the money invested.

About a month before I wrote my commentary, my old friend Richard Rahn had, without my noticing, written on the same issue in a commentary article published in the Washington Times, but he had gone beyond the simple point I made. Rahn notes that besides suffering the loss of wealth occasioned by the negative real yield on such investments, the investor has to pay tax on the nominal yield—truly a case of the government’s adding insult to injury. He notes that given the currently prevailing rates of interest, rate of inflation, and tax rates, a small investor who earns a nominal yield of 1% and pays a 20% marginal tax rate, while the rate of inflation is 3.5 %, actually ends up paying a real tax rate of 370%. For example, an investor buys a $100,000 CD, earns $1,000 in annual interest, pays a tax of $200, and incurs a loss of $3,500 in purchasing power on the invested principal. Total (nominal) income is $1,000; total real tax (nominal tax plus inflation tax) is $3,700.

This expropriation of private wealth is not accidental.

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Ethics and principles are pesky things.  They never go away, and can rear up and bite you when you least expect it.

Such should be the case for Mike Bettiga, former President of the Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board who has been asked by Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights to testify at a hearing on Tuesday, December 6 on the Express Scripts/Medco Merger.

Mr. Bettiga, a pharmacist by trade, is now Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Shopko Stores, a retail chain headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Shopko has 135 stores in thirteen northern tier states and California, and a robust retail pharmacy division.

Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions are two of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers – companies that administer prescription drugs benefits for insurers, large employers, government agencies and unions.  The two recently proposed a merger which is currently under review by our government.  Proponents claim the merger would provide economies of scale, which, in turn, would lower consumer costs.

Opponents, which include some drug store chains, have used trendy Occupy Wall Street-lite catch phrases such as “windfall profits,” “corporate control,” and the dreaded “wasteful mail order spending problem” to bolster their anti-merger case.

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From the Hartford Courant:

Police said they had received an anonymous call from South Chapel and Main Street Thursday reporting a sex assault that took place at the Occupy Hartford camp at Broad Street and Farmington Avenue.

When the victim was located, she told police she had been inappropriately kissed and groped at the Occupy camp, police said. Police said the male suspect reportedly was named Carlos. He is about 130 pounds, and was wearing a black coat and jeans. He fled the scene after the assault, police said. It was not clear if the suspect was a part of the protest.

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Sherrod Brown (D-OH) isn’t merely the most extreme Progressive in the U.S. Senate, he’s also a religious scholar. Week in and week out, Sherrod preaches the Gospel of Progressivism: Greater love hath no man than he who gives generously from his neighbor’s purse.

Sherrod delivered a stirring speech on the Senate floor during the smear campaign against public union reform in Ohio:

In order to meet the week’s quota, Sherrod was obligated to say government union reform goes “against workers on behalf of the richest people in our country.” Too invested to stop at his usual class warfare, Sherrod had the audacity to attack Governor Kasich, Governor Walker, and Governor Christie for failing to meet what he claims as a Catholic standard.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Sherrod’s sermon about “fairness, and equality, and egalitarianism” has nothing to do with any of these things – and everything to do with union power.

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