An interesting moment came at the end of Andrew Breitbart’s recent appearance on The Young Turks; host Cenk Uygur smeared Andrew Breitbart for telling the truth about Charles Sherrod, the husband of Shirley Sherrod.

Uygur, who had “selectively edited” Breitbart’s own words earlier in the interview, tried to press Breitbart about why he had not apologized to Shirley Sherrod for the controversy over her speech about race and politics to the NAACP last year.

Breitbart noted the attacks that she made against him, as well as her husband’s statements about removing white politicians and ‘Uncle Toms’ from office.

Uygur, who evidently hadn’t done a whit of independent research, tried to respond by calling Breitbart’s trustworthiness into question:

Breitbart: Her husband said we need to get rid of the white people and the–

Uygur: (interrupts) When did he say this? When?

Breitbart: A couple of years ago. We need to get rid of the white people–

Uygur: (interrupts)  You’re doing it again, Andrew…

Breitbart: –and the Uncle Toms that get them elected.

Uygur: You’re doing it again. And without seeing the whole context–

Breitbart: It’s all true.

Uygur: –it’s why we don’t trust you, Andrew.

Well, Cenk, here’s Charles Sherrod talking about getting rid of white politicians and Uncle Toms from office. As Andrew said, it’s all true.

(more…)

In his exchange with Countdown host Keith Olbermann on Al Gore’s Current TV, DailyKos founder Markos Moulitsas suggested that the ‘filthy’ (his word) behavior of the Occupy Wall Street movement doesn’t matter because their message of income inequality was so pure and vital that it trumps any behavior of the movement, including rape. Moulitsas tries to separate the crimes from the ideology in a sort of mind / body split that ignores the reality; the shallow ‘ideas’ of the Occupy movement are actually the cause of the chaos.

Both of the central tenants of the Occupy movement – the “99% versus 1%” and “income inequality” — commit exactly the same vicious, intentional, achievement hating fallacy. Both concepts urge focus on the result of having a certain income with no reference whatsoever to how that income was obtained. According to this crude thought process, a hard working entrepreneur has the same moral value as a insider trading politician – and both of them have LESS moral value than a poor white trash welfare mother huffing Marlboros and government cheese. In the ethical universe of Obama and Occupy,the  rich are bad unless they support higher taxes, the middle class is tolerable as long they vote correctly but the poor and dependent are ideal.

Markos is correct; the concept of “income equality” is one that “resonates” with certain people. It’s based on a primal, savage sort of pure greed that it’s taken thousands of years of civilization to suppress. The Occupy movement appeals to the sort of unadorned envy that is the psychological precursor of violence, rape and theft. It’s the uncivilized, thuggish idea that lives deep in humanity’s Lizard Brains — somebody else has something we want, it’s not fair, and let’s see them try to stop us from taking it.

(more…)

The union led “Occupy” assault on CPAC sported a the phalanx of paid Astroturf black, Hispanic and Latino bodies in order to deliberately paint a false picture of diversity, while accusing conservative attendees of CPAC of racism. These tired and overplayed accusations of racism are not based on reports of racism coming from inside CPAC or other conservative groups but are just part of Stuff Liberals Say reflexively.

At CPAC last Friday, I noticed that the protestors were chanting about CPAC ‘racism’ so I shot a little video of their chant then headed back up the hill towards the hotel. On my walk, I saw a small group of students – all CPAC attendees — watching the protest from a good distance away.  One of the students CPAC attendees happened to be black, so I asked him if I could videotape him about his experience with racism at CPAC. He agreed and as the video below shows, he had no experience of racism at CPAC. None.

In the comment section at YouTube, a commentor suggests that one person is not a fair sample. Fair enough, if we were trying to form a statistical average however two things must be pointed out here in response. First, the protesters didn’t ask even a single black person about their experience of racism but that didn’t keep them from chanting anyway. Their accusation is based on literally not one scintilla of evidence. Second, there’s not a single black conservative that I’ve spoken with that said they have experienced racism either at the Tea Party or CPAC.

(more…)

Occupy Wall Street was ‘absolutely’ racist and hypocritical, according to a black occupier and his girlfriend who first liked protesting at Zuccotti Park but now have moved to Occupy Newark. My interview with occupier Michael Morgan raised the same issues that came up in every discussion I had with black members of the Occupy Wall Street protest, who all felt that the movement was racist. These accusations are coming from men and women who support much of the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street but have seen the reality with their own eyes. So far, the cowardly elitist leaders of Occupy Wall Street have done nothing to answer these charges from within their own movement that they are racist against people of color.

Here’s my interview with Mr. Morgan:

Mr. Morgan was clearly bothered by the segregation at Zuccotti Park and that there was an area of Occupy known as ‘the ghetto.’ This segregation was brilliantly  exposed in one of the best pieces on mainstream media reporting on #Occupy from The Daily Show, which also shows the rift between the smug, privileged liberal elites who talk about the 99% but clearly wouldn’t want to be caught dead with them.

(more…)

People inside the Occupy movement — including one of the leaders of the Occupy Newark encampment — claim that Occupy Wall Street is racist against people of color. These new accusations of racism are based on people’s personal experiences with the increasingly secretive and “fascist” Occupy Wall Street leadership and the actions of OWS participants.

Imagine the amount of press the following story would get if it occurred at a Tea Party event; “If you ever want to see the biggest bunch of a**holes in the world, it’s Occupy Wall Street,” an unidentified man told me. We were in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, a location that Occupy Wall Street uses for meetings especially on evenings such as this past Friday when the weather outside was rainy and cold. The gentleman speaking to me was clearly upset, in his late 30s, neatly dressed and black. He eyed the tables of white Occupiers chowing down nearby. “I brought plates,” he said. “I brought plates free for everyone to eat on and what do they do? They asked me if I’d washed my hands. That’s how they treat us here.”

This man’s complaints about his own personal experience of antiblack racism at Occupy Wall Street were echoed by every black person I spoke to this past week in New York. Some people did not want to go on record, possibly fearing reprisals from people at Occupy Wall Street, but others freely admitted in video interviews that BigGovernment.com and Breitbart.TV will be releasing this week that they think the Occupy Wall Street movement is “clearly” and “absolutely” racist against people of color based on their own personal experience.

(more…)

President Obama has decided to make “income inequality” — one of Occupy Wall Street’s central themes — the focus of both his State of the Union address and 2012 presidential election campaign, according to CNN.

In his last State of the Union speech before the 2012 election, President Barack Obama will pitch a series of proposals and will address the topics of economic inequality and a government that should ensure “a fair shake for all.”

And…

Given the treacherous state of the economy, the president’s campaign aides are attempting to make the theme of the upcoming election a choice about the role of government and the future of the middle class — not a referendum on the president’s handling of the economy.

They say this speech and its underlying theme — income inequality — go a long way to shaping that message.

The Obama Campaign has posted a video this morning that hits on this theme of “Income Equality”, which means the President is piggybacking the central theme of his re-election campaign on the framing that Occupy Wall Street created. That is the major reason to keep a close, critical eye on the #Occupy movement.

(more…)

In San Francisco this past weekend, the Occupy movement bolstered by labor unions and the rebranded California ACORN group ACCE once again terrorized private businesses and got into direct clashes that included throwing furniture, bricks and Bibles at police officers. This was another “Day of Action” for Occupy San Francisco, in a move that was designed to show the world that #Occupy is still relevant despite being thrown out of their encampments. 23 protesters were arrested and two police officers were injured. As one activist said to the San Francisco Examiner, “I think things went well on Friday.”

The significant thing to note here is how blatantly unions and ACCE were involved in these riots and actions against police officers. Back in November, I videotaped how ACCE and the unions — including the SEIU and UAW –choreographed the takeover of Bank of America using Occupy as their front group. The Examiner article contains a quote from an Occupier that does the plain truth about the involvement of ACCE and the unions.

I really don’t understand the controversy there,” said Stardust, a member of Occupy’s communications team. “They have been involved with Occupy since the beginning. The 99 percent includes labor.”

This plan, organize lawlessness raises disturbing questions. Do businesses in San Francisco’s financial district have any recourse to stop these acts of periodic terroristic violence perpetrated on them with malice aforethought by labor and community organizing groups? Are the leaders of these groups engaging in a criminal conspiracy and if so, is anything being done about it? Is anyone in the mainstream press even addressing who is really behind these protests?

(more…)

Nan Terrie, the anti-rape activist at Occupy Wall Street who has also been active in calling for an audit of the group’s finances, has been officially excluded from future “spoke counsel” meetings for alleged violent behavior. This is ironic, since Ms. Terrie has been vocal about exposing violence and sexual assault in the #Occupy movement.

The minutes of the January 20, 2012 Spoke Council meeting details some of the back-and-forth about excluding Ms. Terrie, who has been a vocal whistle-blower about theft, violence, and sexual assault, allegations that have been proven to be true as verified by outside reporting and police arrest records. Terrie has also asked for an accounting of money spent by the #Occupy movement. Further, she has alleged an organized coverup of violence and financial malfeasance by de facto leadership of the supposedly leaderless movement.

Ms. Terrie, an 18-year-old activist originally from Florida, was treated at the hospital for a concussion just two nights ago, after being hit in the head with a chair at a meeting.

(more…)

If the Juan Williams race baiting debate attack on Newt Gingrich somehow leaves you with any doubt that there’s something about the South Carolina primaries that seems to bring out the worst in this sort of political behavior, you need look no further than the 2008 Democratic primary to see just how down and dirty things can get in the Palmetto State.

Four years ago, the Democratic primary was split with Sen. Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and Hillary Clinton pulling out a comeback victory in New Hampshire. The political tag team of Bill and Hillary Clinton felt secure about the South Carolina black vote because of President Clinton’s persistent high approval ratings among African-Americans, but they were about to get their first real taste of Sen. Obama’s Chicago-style political game. Sen. Obama and his team were able to take a couple of innocuous statements by the Clintons and twist them into a race related controversy.

It started when Hillary Clinton said to an interviewer on Fox News;

I would point to the fact that that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the President before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done.

That’s the complete quote but the New York Times ran no less than three separate stories that shortened it to;

“Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” Mrs. Clinton said in trying to make the case that her experience should mean more to voters than the uplifting words of Mr. Obama. “It took a president to get it done.”

(more…)

Attention, Juan Williams – don’t presume that you speak for Eddie Slaughter when you accuse Newt Gingrich of dog whistle racism for his statements on food stamps and America’s work ethic. Readers of BigGovernment will remember Eddie Slaughter as the South Georgia farmer was gone on record talking about Pigford fraud and how his Congressman, representative Sanford Bishop tried to cover up that fraud. Mr. Slaughter had personal and political dealings with Newt Gingrich years ago that run very counter to the narrative that Juan Williams was trying to push during the recent presidential debate on Fox, as revealed in an interview I did with  Mr. Slaughter this morning.

Mr. Slaughter originally told me about his positive dealings with Gingrich about a year ago, when he both spoke at a press conference at CPAC about the Pigford settlement. Before Pigford became a vast fraud scheme benefiting attorneys and the political class, it began as a legitimate effort by a small group of black farmers to fight discrimination at the hands of the federal government. The issue for the farmers was that the statute of limitations was very short and because the civil rights office of the USDA had been shut down, there had been no real way to report any discrimination for close to 15 years. In order for the bona fide black farmers like Mr. Slaughter to file suit, they would need an extension of the statute limitations.

The black farmers approachedNewt Gingrich to get support. Now, according to the Juan Williams school of thought, Speaker Gingrich was Republican and therefore a presumed racist. Mr. Slaughter told a very different story however. When asked directly about in my interview he said, “I feel that he was more sincere than most in Washington DC.” And “I think he was more fair than most people running for office, from what know about him personally.”

(more…)

An e-mail exchange detailing a conference call between members of the Occupy Wall Street media team exposes the level of coordination happening to attempt to save face over a recent New York Post story that exposed how Occupy had taken over a foreclosed home despite the owner’s wishes. Almost concurrently with Big Government’s report on the story yesterday, the #Occupy media team was having a confab in crisis management that would make any Fortune 500 company blush.

The media team takes a smart strategy and realizes that attacking the owner of the house directly is probably a bad move. However, behind the scenes they can’t help trashing him and calling him dishonest…

“Post story, owner made several claims, most of them false.  Says OWS won’t let him into his house.”

Despite this insult, the back-and-forth reveals that there are actually negotiations going on back-and-forth between Wide’s attorney and Occupy Wall Street.

1.  Premo: one question – meghan hasn’t been able to get in touch with Wise’s lawyer since the new year?  El: don’t think she’s been trying actively to get in touch with him.  Now that the article has come out that changes the negotiation.

2. [ed note: this line blank in original email]

3.  El: the last meeting did go well, Wise wasn’t there but his lawyer was.  Lawyer agreed to speak with Wise about working with us, agreed that the best solution would be to work with us to transition it to a community land trust, and fight the banks to reduce his debt so that he can become a home owner again.

Will the public and the lenders be made aware that there is a behind the scenes shakedown via media exposure being worked out here? The homeowner is trying to play on sympathy to get back his foreclosed property and Occupy Wall Street wants to gain positive media exposure, even though they were squatting in someone else’s private property.

(more…)

Earlier this week, BigGovernment revealed another chapter in the scandal ridden saga of Georgia Congressman Sanford Bishop. Representative Bishop has represented South Georgia’s second district for nearly 20 years. He’s an under the radar member of the Congressional Black Caucus, seemingly without the temperament or ambition to achieve the high visibility of a John Conyers or Maxine Waters. His relative anonymity has allowed him to avoid much close scrutiny but because of his active role in helping to cover up the Pigford scandal, we are keeping a close eye on him and his race for reelection in 2012. For those of you not familiar with Congressman Bishop, here’s a quick recap of some of his career low lights.

Despite the relative lack of progress and growth he’s delivered to his district, Congressman Bishop is an expert in delivering earmarks. In fiscal year 2010, he was ranked 42nd out of 435 Congressmen.  In 2008 he was ranked 28^th. He generally delivers a combination of military and agricultural pork that has given him the behind-the-scenes support of some in the political class beyond his African-American voter base.

He’s had a couple of scandals that have involved his wife Vivian Creighton-Bishop diverting money to friends and family. Vivian Bishop is the Municipal Court clerk in Columbus, Georgia. In March 2009, Frank Castiglione reported;

During an internal audit of the Junior Marshal Program at the Marshal’s Office in Columbus, it was discovered that two part-time employees had been paid over $7,000 each over a period of some months.

The employees lived in Lithonia, Georgia, well over 100 miles away from the Columbus office. In light of rumors regarding the part-timers, Marshal Greg Countryman called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) to launch an inquiry.

The GBI found that the part-time employees, Aayesha Reese and Stephen Reese, are the daughter and son-in-law of Municipal Court Clerk Vivian Creighton Bishop. With more digging, it was discovered that the paychecks, sent via direct deposit, had actually been diverted to Creighton-Bishop’s bank account.

This would seem to be the stuff that would end a political career, but Mr. and Mrs. Bishop appear to possess considerable skill at keeping much of the local press under their sway.

(more…)

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on how the Occupy Wall Street movement has begun to camp out in New York City churches confirms what we’ve been reporting here on BigGovernment.com; #Occupy organizers allowed an alleged rapist who’d already been arrested by the police to camp out with other Occupiers.

Alleged OWS Rapist Tonye Iketubosin

The Wall Street Journal buries the lede by putting this detail at the very bottom of the article. Most of the piece takes a neutral/positive tone about how nice these churches are by expanding their social justice mission by welcoming the occupiers and how respectful the occupiers are by contributing to the church’s electricity bills. No actual explanation is given as to why it even makes sense for the Occupiers to be sleeping in a church as opposed to an apartment or hotel. If you think that the camping out indoors is done for the benefit of the homeless, you’ll see in a moment that the Wall Street Journal article actually makes a distinction between “the homeless” and rank-and-file occupiers. Apparently, the whole “occupy” premise of group camping is beyond any rational examination at this point.

If diligent readers (who get past the paywall) make it to the end of the Wall Street Journal article, they will learn that all is not tranquil in the collectivist paradise.

There have been petty fights and disagreements about who can stay and who must go. The housing committee has set up a hot-line for protesters to register for one of about 150 spots at the churches, and the person must be on the list when they check in each evening.

But the homeless and criminals have managed to slip in.

(more…)

While the media and Democratic establishment continue to laud the #Occupy movement, they ignore the reality of what is going on on the ground — Occupy Wall Street is an extremely small, fractured and ineffective social experiment that is unable to even provide safety for the young, female protesters that it tries to attract. In a chaotic transcript from the January 7 New York General Assembly, it was revealed that one assailant was allegedly responsible for six rapes.

In the posted minutes, anti-rape activist Nan Terrie told the group…

The proposal that I brought was an incident that happened and certain groups did not properly address it or handle it. When we had the park, we had an 18-year-old who got raped. She was drug raped. That individual who raped the 18-year-old raped five other girls in this park. My group dealt with rape victims in the park and still does. We have a court date for the 18-year-old in February. She doesn’t live in this city but she comes here. She was occupying one of the churches. The person that raped her also got out of jail. He was in jail for 30 days, paid $50,000 and he went to the same church the victim was. Keep in mind that victim worked with us and we had a restraining order against that guy. The victim voiced her concern to let them know she didn’t feel safe in that place because of this gentleman. Rather than calling me or other women’s working groups, Housing took it upon themselves to have a jury of about 15 and more people between the victim and the gentleman. And they asked for both them to basically give details out.

Terrie appears to be referring to events that started in October. According to this November 3rd article in The New York Post,

Tonye Iketubosin, 26 — who has been working at the protesters’ makeshift kitchen at Zuccotti Park since last month — was charged yesterday in the sex abuse of an 18-year-old protester in the tent he helped her pitch on Oct. 24, the sources said.

(more…)

Thomas Burrell, head of the Black Farmers Agricultural Association, Inc., is not ready to leave the Pigford settlement business without a fight.

Despite recent court setbacks, he is still threatening legal action. The fact that Burrell is calling out President Barack Obama seems to signal that Burrell feels he has to play hardball and threaten the tacit agreement that was made between candidate Obama and a number of self-styled “black leaders” about the Pigford settlement and the African-American vote several years ago.

This recent news report from Tennessee shows Burrell and local clergymen taking public aim at the President. Burrell correctly points out that the Pigford 2 settlement for black farmers has a number of restrictions on it that new settlements for women and Latino farmers do not have. The disparity is actually somewhat bizarre, and will be the topic of further reporting in the future.

However, Burrell’s refusal to go down quietly on the issue signals a potential problem for Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign strategy that would be missed by many observers who don’t understand the connection between Obama and Pigford.

(more…)

Even though the #Occupy movement has been kicked out of parks across the nation, apparently the sexual assaults continue. An online petition and other discussions reveal accusations of people within the #Occupy movement allegedly ignoring and abusing rape victims and contains shocking details about how assailants continue to be let back into Occupy, a trend that Brandon Darby and I discovered during an interview at Zuccotti Park in early November.

The online petition posted at iPetitions.com was posted by Strong Women Rule, the group formed by Nan Terrie. Big Government recently revealed that Ma. Terrie has been attacked by other Occupy leaders as a “disruptor” for trying to expose assault, theft and alleged financial malfeasance at Occupy Wall Street. Apparently, Ms. Terrie is disrupting the Occupy illusion again.

Here’s the text of the online petition: (more…)

To understand the truly obscene nature of the fraud perpetrated by Obama’s Justice Department on the state of South Carolina, you need to see the statistical trap that they’ve laid out. The DOJ is well aware that the numbers upon which they are basing their decision about South Carolina’s voter ID laws are incorrect. By establishing the “Holder Math” standard that I described in part one of this series, when the correct numbers are acknowledged, the DOJ will be able to claim (dishonestly) that the situation is actually even worse than before.

AP Photo

The Obama DOJ Ignores South Carolina’s Correct Data

First, let’s look at the data that the DOJ knows is incorrect.

The figures that the DOJ using were based on an initial report from South Carolina that 239,000 people were a) registered voters and b) didn’t have DMV-issued ID. The breakdown is that 10% of black registered voters and 8.4% of white voters don’t have that type of ID. Even at a cursory glance, those numbers seem high. That’s the ID you use to open a bank account, buy a beer, board an airplane or 100 other things.

Apparently South Carolina thought that the numbers seemed off, too. According to this eye-opening interview with South Carolina’s Attorney General Wilson, the state did an audit and found that that group of 239,000 included 37,000 people who were deceased, 96,000 who had moved to other states, and other discrepancies. (more…)

Accusations of financial malfeasance–including that money donated to Occupy Wall Street is being given to people with the suggestion that they “buy drugs with it if they want–are just the latest sign of deep internal problems within the #Occupy movement, according to internal emails and online messages.

One such message comes from Jacki Di Salvo, PhD, an organizer for Occupy who is also a teacher at Baruch College and CUNY. Di Salvo seems to be locked in a struggle with 18-year-old Nan Terrie, who has a group called Strong Women Rule. In an email from New Year’s Eve, Ms. Di Salvo refers to Ms. Terrie as “the disrupter” for suggesting that the finances of Occupy be audited.

Ms. Terrie has actually been mentioned on Big Government before. She was one of the people calling for a safe house at Zuccotti Park after all the crime that was occurring at Occupy Wall Street. Terrie also was a victim of theft in the Occupy movement, something she also spoke out about publicly. Exposing what’s really going on at Occupy Wall Street in regards to sexual assaults and violence doesn’t seemed to have endeared her to Ms. Di Salvo, as it contradicts the picture painted by the mainstream media and Occupy boosters like Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama.

Here’s the email from Ms. Di Salvo:

Nan, the disrupter, tried to get a proposal passed tonight for auditing Accounting (Finances). She wanted the Audit to be done by her dubious group Strong Women Rule, which only has 4 members & which she uses to be a spoke at SpokesCouncil. This is very suspect. A Times reporter recently was told I knew something about OWS finances and wanted to talk to me. I declined because I am afraid the press is fishing around for something for which they can criticize OWS.  My sense is That Accounting has been hard working, transparent and characterized by integrity. The questions I raised about Finances was about GA approval of  so many budget requests that we could soon go broke, although I notice that in recent days people at the GA have become much more cautious and prudent.

There are reports that Ms. Terrie was ejected from a “SpokesCouncil” meeting and that Occupy organizers were attempting to find a private location, so as to exclude her and her disruptive questions. The next SpokesCouncil meeting was assigned a ‘To Be Determined’ location, as this post went to press.

There is clearly some dissent in the ranks of Occupy on management issues. Someone using the name They Use Fake Names posted this last night:

It doesn’t take a family of ten working 60 hours a week to provide for their family.
It doesn’t take 100 people working themselves to death to provide for a community.
We’re producing nothing. We get nothing. We’re getting a shitty quality of life for more work.

These complaints of a “shitty quality of life for more work” shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who’s studied the history of collectivist movements. Last week the same They Use Fake Names account posted the following:

This is what’s really going on:

The people with access to the office get the $100 daily allotment of money. They use it on whatever they want. I heard one member of finance state, ”Buy drugs if you want, just make a receipt for something…”

The OWS COMHUB Group recently ratified the NYCGA so that many groups will be pushed out. In this way the pool of money will have less hands to go for. And the people in the office with direct access to the finance working group will have money longer. Meanwhile, they encourage you to go out and get arrested and stand up for the cause and raise donations! Any and all donations must be taken by the Finance Working Group because your autonomous beautiful self is too stupid to handle the money! The finance group should handle it for you  We’re all brother’s and sister’s in one occupation though, so don’t worry! We will take care of you!

Ya, right! After the raid, the finance working group completely disappeared. And time and again they are no where to be found when shit hits the fan and people need resources. However, large sums of money have routinely gone missing! And there is no effort made to be transparent or show who the people controlling the money really are…

Reports of people getting $100 a day, for any purpose, being told to fake receipts; complaints about “shitty quality of life for more work”; and a vanishing finance committee–these don’t appear to be a concern for some Occupiers like Ms. Di Salvo, who apparently ducks interviews if she thinks the press may possibly report something negative.

She has “a sense” that everything is fine, though, so the people who gave money to #Occupy should be relieved.

The Obama Department of Justice has used a mathematical trick in order to make its legal and public-relations case against South Carolina’s voter ID provisions. Officials of the DOJ intentionally created a false perception of the disparity between black and white voters in order to strike down the law that would haveve required photo ID or other proof for voters. Meanwhile, the media helped Eric Holder’s Department of Justice spin their intentionally misleading numbers to the general public.

This entire scam – there’s no better word for it – is based an interesting but totally irrelevant math quirk; when numbers are small, the difference between them is larger.

An Easy Math Trick

To understand the math behind this, let’s start simply and look at two very small numbers – 1 and 2.

If you had one dollar and I had two dollars, I have one dollar more than you. However, if I wanted to try to impress someone, just telling them that I was a dollar wealthier probably wouldn’t work. In an effort to sound more impressive, I could find a way to pump myself up by claiming that I had twice as much money as you. It’s true, of course – 2 is twice as much as 1 — but just knowing that I had twice as much money as someone else doesn’t really paint the whole picture.

If I want to get extra-fancy, I could also say “I have 100% more money than that person.” This is saying the same (misleading) thing as “I have twice as much” in a slightly different way. There’s a simple equation for determining this percentage difference for any two numbers.

(more…)

The Political Class has honed a dangerous skill, building the perfect undetectable fraud machine. Americans need to learn to spot these scams for their own protection and realize that the perpetrators can come from either political party and often work in cahoots with attorneys or big business.

Think about three seemingly unconnected news stories, all examples of costly or dangerously indictable fraud machines…

• The economic collapse of 2008 was caused in part by relaxed mortgage rules that allowed borrowers to get a home loan without a down payment or even proof of income in some cases.
• In the Pigford settlement, claimants were able to get $50,000 checks by asserting without proof that they had “attempted to farm.”
• In a move strongly supported by the NAACP and other liberal advocacy groups, the Obama Department of Justice just stopped South Carolina’s plan to put in place some minimal ID requirements for voting. Currently voters in a number of states don’t need to show any photo ID or other identity checks in order to cast a ballot.

All three stories are examples of systems that have been intentionally set up with such low standards that they invite fraud. But ingeniously, they have also been set up in a such a way that makes them almost critic-proof because the lack of standards makes detection of fraud nearly impossible. When the system is questioned, the defenders, creators and beneficiaries then point to the lack of “proof” of fraud as a reason to keep the status. Thus, a self-perpetuating fraud scheme is kept alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake, these scams are costly….

(more…)