From ABC News:

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly.

Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees.”

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With the GOP debates mercifully coming to an end, the nation is getting ready for the 2012 elections starting with the Iowa caucuses in January.  At this point, President Obama appears likely to face Mitt Romney (seemingly no one’s first choice within his own party), former Speaker Newt Gingrich who miraculously resurrected his once moribund campaign or Ron Paul whose libertarian views we highlighted in a prior essay.

Has either party been faithful to a consistent set of principles?  The Republican frontrunners have fallen all over themselves in internecine warfare accusing each other (not without good reason) of flip‑flopping.  Meanwhile, the President has escaped the spotlight on the issue of his own constancy of principle.  In point of fact, as the incumbent, he should be closely monitored on this subject, since his principles can translate quickly into active government policy.

The criteria used for making appointments to Administration jobs might be a pretty good measure of presidential principle.  Given that Congress is totally dysfunctional, and that the single-digit approval rating our federal legislature has earned from the American people is overly generous, we might have expected the President to be particularly judicious in his appointments to the various executive branch positions that wield such influence in both domestic and foreign affairs.

While it is not unusual for Presidents to reward campaign donors with prestigious federal appointments, many Obama supporters expected better of this President. They were confident that Obama would be as repulsed as they were by the approximately 200 federal appointments of donors and bundlers Bush had made during his eight years in office. Not so.

According to I-Watch, the on-line publication of the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity, President Obama had, at the mid point of his first term, matched Bush’s eight-year record of doling out Administration jobs to donors and bundlers. Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the 24 ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised $500,000.

The big bundlers had broad access to the White House.  In all, during Obama’s first two years in office, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. Half of them raised $200,000 or more.

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From Carolina Journal:

RALEIGH — Since as early as January 2011, and perhaps before then, Gov. Bev Perdue’s press office has received access to confidential employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics hours if not days before its scheduled release, quite likely in violation of federal law. The governor’s staff used its early access to massage the monthly employment press release that reported jobs data to the public.

Documents and correspondence obtained by Carolina Journal show that the Division of Employment Security, formerly known as the Employment Security Commission, sent a draft of the press release each month to Perdue’s press office. The governor’s spokesmen typically rewrote the text and added a positive spin, even if the data did not support Perdue’s talking points.

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One hopes that the dictator of North Korea suffered greatly before he died. After all, his totalitarian and communist (pardon the redundancy) policies caused untold death and misery.

But let’s try to learn an economics lesson. In a previous post, I compared  long-term growth in Hong Kong and Argentina to show the difference between capitalism and cronyism.

But for a much more dramatic comparison, look at the difference between North Korea and South Korea.

Hmmm…, I wonder if we can conclude that markets are better than statism? I bet even Harry Reid can guess the answer.

And if you like these types of comparisons, here’s a post showing how Singapore has caught up with the United States. And here’s another comparing what’s happened in the past 30 years in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela.

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On Friday, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) saved Americans from the extremely hard and dangerous task of having to manually reduce the volume on their TVs during commercial breaks. Thanks to the leadership of Democratic Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the government will now regulate the volumes of such advertisements, since apparently American citizens cannot even be trusted to adjust the sound on their television sets appropriately.

Representative Anna Eshoo (D-CA)

This regulation follows a series of other liberal proposals designed to reduce the individuality of the American citizen by outsourcing all personal responsibility to the federal government. Whether enforcing new smoking bans, using taxpayer money to campaign against obesity, or paying our bills through welfare checks, the government’s role has expanded well beyond its constitutional authority to protect the citizenry into micromanaging their lives. A federal government must provide services that individual citizens cannot, such as national security, trade agreements with foreign nations, and infrastructure construction.

However, the personal decisions of individual citizens, such as how to quit smoking, lose weight, or cover their expenses, are more efficiently handled when accomplished through individual motivation rather than government mandates. Even if the politicians feel that certain citizens are not making the right choices on some of these decisions, they have neither the right nor the ability to protect us from ourselves. The fact that federal politicians feel they have to intervene in our lives to so great an extent, especially on such a trivial matter as the volume of our television sets, demonstrates the lack of trust they have in the average American citizen. We all have remote controls. Why is it necessary for a government miles away to perform a function that we can all do in our own living rooms?

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May the city of New Orleans subject local tour guides to hundreds of dollars in fines and five months in jail for engaging in unauthorized talking?

This is the question the Institute for Justice (IJ) seeks to answer in a federal lawsuit filed on December 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.  Four New Orleans tour guides are joining forces with IJ to strike down New Orleans’ tour guide licensing scheme as a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights:

According to First Amendment expert Matt Miller of the Institute for Justice, seen the above video:

The government cannot be in the business of deciding who may speak and who may not.  The Constitution protects your right to communicate for a living, whether you are a journalist, a musician or a tour guide.

New Orleans requires every tour guide to pass a history exam, undergo a drug test and pass an FBI criminal background check every two years merely for speaking.  People who give tours without a license face fines up to $300 per occurrence and five months in jail.

City officials are currently breaking up tours led by guides that don’t have the government’s permission.

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Today, Roll Call reported that Rep. Nancy Pelosi has appeared with her and her husband’s investment partner and her son’s former boss, investment banker Bill Hambrecht, three times at Capitol Hill economic policy forums as an “economic expert” over the last four years without disclosing their financial relationship. None of this is illegal, and none of it would be prevented by the so-called STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act currently gathering steam in Congress.

But as Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer reports in his bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, the Pelosi-Hambrecht alliance runs far deeper and spans as far back as the early 1970s.

Paul and Nancy Pelosi have invested millions with Mr. Hambrecht, and Mr. Hambrecht has invested millions in Democratic Party campaigns and causes–over $2 million, to be exact, at least $38,000 of which went directly to Rep. Pelosi. Indeed, according to Mr. Hambrecht, Nancy Pelosi was the catalyst that ignited his passion for donating money to Democrats. According to a 2006 article published in the San Francisco Chronicle, Mr. Hambrecht “said he never contributed to politics until he was inspired by Pelosi after meeting her in the early 1970s.”

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Today, in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

The White House continues to tip its hand on Obama’s reelection strategy even before 2012 rolls around. High on the priority list for next year: make the Tea Party a toxic brand. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer singles out conservative Congressmen Allen West and Joe Walsh as the reason Obama’s payroll tax holiday may not be extended, failing to address concerns over the Senate’s version of the legislation which only extends the holiday for two months.

From MSNBC:

Speaker Boehner’s position on Sunday was not the position that he had on Saturday when the 89 Senators came together to pass a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut. Let’s think on that. 89 Senators, the Republican leadership. You can’t get 89 votes in this day and age for apple pie, yet they all supported this. The did it with the understanding that the House would approve this two-month extension and Speaker Boehner got on the phone with his caucus, tried to sell it. He had a Tea Party revolt. He reversed his position and he’s now putting danger, a tax increase of a $1000 on 160 million Americans in like 12 days now.

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Something fishy is going on over at the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ). And it very well could threaten the integrity of the 2012 elections.

As you may recall, Judicial Watch investigated a partnership between the DOJ and ACORN-connected Project Vote to use the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) to register more individuals on public assistance, widely considered a key voting demographic for the Obama 2012 campaign. (Remember, President Obama previously worked for Project Vote.)

Well, this week we obtained some new records courtesy of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed on August 19, 2011. The records detail communications between the DOJ and Estelle Rogers, a former ACORN attorney currently serving as Director of Advocacy for Project Vote. These documents leave no doubt that a suspiciously close relationship between Project Vote and the DOJ is developing behind closed doors. Our friend J. Christian Adams summed up the records in a recent column:

Judicial Watch has done it again. It has produced-following a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the United States Department of Justice​ (DOJ)-documents that suggest extensive coordination and communications between the DOJ Voting Section and former ACORN affiliate Project Vote.

Project Vote appears to be directing DOJ resources toward particular states; is having meetings with DOJ staff; and is even recommending lawyers to work in the Justice Department Voting Section that will oversee the 2012 presidential election.

Now, let’s review what we know about the activist Estelle Rogers before we get into the meat of these records.

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Remember back in August 2010 when Congress passed the $10 billion “Education Jobs Bill” to create or save some 300,000 teaching, police and firefighter jobs?

Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the legislation “has a direct relationship to the strength of our communities, the education of our children, the safety of our neighborhoods, the stability of the economy of our states, and really points directly to our prospects for the future.”

Turns out the “edujobs” bill also has a direct relationship to the bonuses teachers in Tennessee’s Marshall County school district may soon receive.

Several board members want to use leftover stimulus dollars to hand out one-time bonuses of $500 to teachers and $300 to full-time school staff. They reason that employees have gone without pay raises over the past few years, and the bonuses would help boost morale, reports the Marshall County Tribune.

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The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, released a surprising bulletin on Friday, announcing that states will have greater flexibility in implementing ObamaCare.

The announcement comes on the threshold of the presidential election year, when President Obama must defend his signature legislation both to the Supreme Court, which will take up the constitutionality of the law in the spring, and the American people, the majority of whom want the law repealed. The administration likely hopes that the new flexibility offered to states will help to minimize the perception that the federal government is “taking over” healthcare.

Regarding the announcement, Secretary Sebelius said:

Under the Affordable Care Act, consumers and small businesses can be confident that the insurance plans they choose and purchase will cover a comprehensive and affordable set of health services. Our approach will protect consumers and give states the flexibility to design coverage options that meet their unique needs.

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(Reuters) – Oral arguments on President Barack Obama’s sweeping U.S. healthcare overhaul will last 5-1/2 hours spread over three days from March 26-28, the Supreme Court said on Monday.

The Supreme Court last month agreed to hear the 5-1/2 hours of oral arguments, one of the lengthiest arguments in recent years. There have been similar marathon sessions in a handful of big cases dating back over the past 70 years.

The court said it would hear one hour of arguments on March 26 on whether the legal challenges to the requirement that all Americans buy insurance must wait until after that part of the law has taken effect in 2014.

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In an interview published over the weekend by the New York Times, Attorney General Eric Holder reminded us he will go to any length to conceal his culpability in Fast and Furious. His latest ploy is to declare as “racist” everyone who’s hounding him about the illegal guns sales, the gun smuggling, and the death, cover-ups, and other examples of lawlessness connected with the operation.

In the Times piece, Holder intimated that President Obama is disliked because of his race, and that people are piling on the bandwagon against Holder as a means to get Obama. Holder’s exact words: “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him…both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.”

And who are the people going after Holder and Obama because of their race? Those rascally “conservative commentators and bloggers” of course. They are those who are part of what Holder describes as a “more extreme segment” of news reporting. (I suppose it’s extreme because it’s not news that’s run through a White House sensor or an MSNBC producer before being disseminated to the public.)

Besides informing us that we’re racists for making a big deal out of hundreds of deaths among Mexican citizens, thousands of weapons sold illegally (and over 1,000 still on the street), as well as the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Holder also took a little time out to pat himself on the back during the Times interview. Said Holder: “I think that what I’m doing is right” and “I think the stands I have taken are totally consistent with a person who is looking at things realistically, factually.”

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The Occupy movement may have been kicked out of nearly every one of their makeshift encampments this fall, but don’t worry. They are counting on unions to keep them nice and warm this winter, and that includes the United Federation of Teachers union, which forces New York City to hemorrhage tax dollars at the expense of children’s education.

The Occupy movement had little concern about the effect they had on other people or the costs that they racked up. If you’re going to have a revolution, after all, you need to break a few eggs — other people’s eggs, apparently. But for gosh sakes, don’t ask the Occupiers to get chilly!  In a recent spate of email correspondence, John McGloin (who we featured on Big Government weeks ago) gives the weather report and makes lemonade from lemons.

This is from the email exchange between a few Occupy insiders…

We should not be fighting nature when it is unnecessary.  It is cold outside and everything slows down in the cold.  We don’t need to hibernate, but we don’t need to pretend its [sic] September.  It is important to remember that occupation is a tactic, not the goal. Although there were definite advantages to having a centralized place on the ground, our movement doesn’t depend on centralization, and in many ways Bloomberg did us a favor.

If you’re going to overthrow the entire capitalist system, you can’t fight nature and you obviously need a decent meeting space. One great idea – hold meetings in storage locker! Luckily, the United Federation of Teachers has provided just such spot for Occupy. (more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca our great recession, a voice of sensibility from the Dallas Fed, and too big to fail.

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Yes, I’ve seen the debates. And, yes, I’ve watched the “oops” moment probably a dozen times. While he has steadily improved, Rick Perry is not a skilled debater. Seeing him debate is like watching a high-wire act, where each moment is tense with the fear that the performer could slip and fall. I get it. But, when did debate performance become our sole criteria for picking a President? When did the RNC decide to team up with the legacy media and turn the nomination contest into an almost unwatchable reality TV spectacle? Is this really a sane way to pick a nominee?

Debates are worthwhile and performance in them tells us something about the candidates. But, it doesn’t tell us everything about the candidates. The rhetorical skills that make a great debater have almost zero intersection with the skills that make a great President. They are a poor filter for discovering the core convictions and principles which will guide a President’s decisions and indecisions. They provide sound-bites at a time we should be looking at essays.

In the end, one of these candidates is very likely to end up as President and will have to govern. With the exception of Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry is the only candidate with a successful record of governing. That and, more importantly, what he has accomplished in governing make him the clear choice for President.

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With a record 46 million Americans now receiving food stamps and rampant abuse resulting in what the Wall Street Journal calls a “food stamp crime wave,” Nation reporter Lizzie Ratner believes that “deep racism” is “at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques”:

The deep racism at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques offers at least one clue as to why the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to champion SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] as a valuable recession antidote: as the nation’s first African-American president, Obama is vulnerable to racist innuendo, which his opponents are only too happy to exploit.

Furthermore, Ms. Ratner contends that “the food stamp program has remained surprisingly sensitive to people’s needs” and “is, in many ways, a model entitlement program.”  Still, says Ms. Ratner, the food stamp program’s benefit levels are too “stingy,” and sensible anti-fraud efforts to reform the program, such as those proposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions, can only be the result of racism.

Equally troubling, Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican with a record of racebaiting, led a charge in the Senate this past fall to “reform” food stamps by restricting eligibility and undoing a planned $9 billion budget increase, supposedly to crack down on fraud and government excess.

Ms. Ratner’s baseless racial attack obscures an otherwise noble effort: Sen. Sessions’s amendment was an attempt to save taxpayers billions in mismanaged funds resulting from so-called “categorical eligibility”–a provision that makes recipients of other federal benefits automatically eligible for food stamps.

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From Roll Call:

May 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to a podium in the Capitol to introduce a half-dozen economic experts she had convened for a meeting on how to jump-start the economy. The group had met for several hours with top Democratic leaders, and Pelosi invited them to speak publicly on their perspectives on economic growth.

What Pelosi did not mention is that one of the men in the group was her son’s boss and a partner with her husband in more than a half-dozen investments, including one that generated more than $100,000 in income for the Speaker’s family last year.

It was the fourth time since 2007 that Pelosi had invited San Francisco investment banker William Hambrecht to be part of an economic policy forum on the Hill and the third time she appeared at a podium with him to speak to reporters. At none of those events did the then-Speaker reveal her financial ties to Hambrecht, and House rules did not require her to do so.

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