CPAC should have been a triumphal moment for Rick Santorum. His sweep of election contests this week put a gale-force wind in his campaign’s sails. At this week’s “Wednesday Meeting” of center-right organizations and activists, hosted by Grover Norquist, there was palpable excitement about the results and Santorum’s prospects. CPAC attendees are a natural base for Santorum, who overall the other nominees has the more consistent, traditional conservative record. Talking to attendees, it was clear they wanted to believe in Santorum. Their hearts were with him, even if their minds were nagged by questions of his electability. Today’s speech was a tailor-made opportunity to put these fears to rest. He whiffed.

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As the boss says, Nancy “1%-er” Pelosi has clearly read the internal polls on the #Occupy “movement.” On the same day that a few dozen #Occupiers descended and Capitol Hill, one of whom was arrested for assaulting a cop, Dame Pelosi tries her best to distance herself from the leftist temper tantrum:

Of course, when the #Occupy movement first arose, Pelosi and and other members of the Leftist Elite gushed with enthusiasm about the protests:

House Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she supports the growing nationwide Occupy Wall Street movement, which began on the streets of downtown New York City in mid-September.

“I support the message to the establishment, whether it’s Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” said Pelosi in an exclusive interview with ABC News “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour. “We cannot continue in a way this is not relevant to their lives.”

For good measure, President Obama added:

The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side.

So, what happened?

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I have a long history with ACORN, going back years before the O’Keefe/Giles video reports. While they were mostly on the periphery of my political life, starting in 2005 they became something I had to deal with regularly,  and for an extended period even daily. This post isn’t about any of that. I mention to put in context my long-standing fascination with Wade Rathke, co-founder of ACORN. The man is simply the best at what he does.

Don’t get me wrong; there is much to dislike about him. His method of ‘community organizing’ preys on people’s fears and anxieties. They exacerbate and prolong racial tensions. And, his ultimate aim is a utopian marxist state. All that said, he is very good at what he does and understands progressive movements and how to create and maintain them better than just about anyone.

So, I was curious to read his recent take on the Occupy Movement:

Nonetheless, listening closely to the whole meeting, it was hard to escape the conclusion that as committed as many were, they were groping for a plan for the future. There was no consensus on that question, and really very little debate or discussion. Several people raised the issue during the “soapbox” session, which allows open mic griping that everyone can easily ignore. In fact most people left the room during that section to visit elsewhere in the coffeehouse.

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I’ll assume there was a time when giving Iowa permanent “first in the nation” status in our Presidential primary contests made sense. But, I don’t know when that time was. Mind you, this isn’t some East Coast gripe about “flyover country”; I grew up in the Mid-West and went to college in Iowa. I love the state. Sure, its voters are fickle; BOTH uber-lefty Sen. Tom Harkin and mostly-conservative Sen. Chuck Grassley are hugely popular in the state. That’s not independent. That’s borderline incoherent. And, of course, Iowa’s permanent status has saddled our country with one of the more disastrous government policies in history; ethanol subsidies. My main beef with Iowa’s permanent status is simply that we don’t use caucuses to elect Presidents.

Caucuses are very different animals than primaries. Having participated in one years ago, I can say there is much to recommend about them. But the demands of the caucus mean that relatively few people will participate and those who do participate are very different than other voters. To participate, voters assemble at a set time–tonight’s is 7pm CST. They hear speeches from other voters arguing for each individual candidate and then voting begins. The entire process can take up to two hours. If you’re sick, working, don’t have child-care or simply look upon a two hour voting process with dread, you can’t take part–only around a quarter of the active, registered Republicans will likely vote tonight.

Only the most dedicated and motivated voters, whether for a candidate or an issue, will participate. Moreover, Democrat and Independent voters can show up and register as a Republican on the spot and cast a ballot. This can skew the results; just ask famous caucus losers John McCain, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Mike Dukakis or Ronald Reagan, among others.

The key to performing well in Iowa is to either become the chosen candidate of highly motivated issue voters or have a very strong field organization to turn out your supporters. Remember, only about 150,000 voters will take part tonight, so a strong ground game is critical.

The final Des Moines Register poll, released Saturday, provides the last, best snapshot of the state of the field: Romney 24%, Paul 22%, Santorum 15%, Newt Gingrich 12%, Perry 11% and Bachmann 7%. So, what to expect tonight?

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Big Government has obtained a photograph of House Minority Leader and Occupy Wall Street enthusiast Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) with her husband Paul at an exclusive, $10,000-per-night Hawaiian resort.

In her day job, Leader Pelosi spends a lot of time worrying about ‘income inequality.’ She was one of the first national Democrat leaders to embrace the increasingly embarrassing “Occupy” movement:

We have work to do. We think that important to that is enhanced by what’s happening in the Occupy [movement], which is the 99 and one. They really emblazoned that in the minds of the American people. That’s what we dedicated our lives to, but they gave it that clarity. People say they didn’t have a message. They may not have a message, but they have a statement. And the statement is the status quo is unacceptable — 99 and one.

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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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How else to explain this photo from the Machinists’ Union recent contract election?

Unions and other leftist partisans bleat ad nauseum photo ID requirements for voting would disenfranchise voters, especially the poor and minorities. Just this past weekend, the AFL-CIO co-sponsored a march for “voting rights” in New York City. In the coalition statement announcing the march, the unionists noted:

photo ID requirements will introduce the first financial and document barrier to voting since the poll tax

The pro-labor site Unions.org was breathless in it’s report on these proposals [emphasis added]:

The right-wing billionaire Koch brothers are big proponents of these new laws. The American Legislative Exchange Council, funded heavily by them, prepares model voter-suppression legislation.

Critics call the new laws a modern-day version of the Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests — which are no longer limited to the South or African Americans.

“There is once again a quiet but systematic movement that would deny many African Americans and other American citizens the ability to vote with 21st century versions of old exclusionary practices,” said Marian Wright Edelman, the president of the Children’s Defense Fund, in an article in the Huffington Post.

“The generations ahead of us had to face Jim Crow,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton at the Nov. 8 press conference to launch the “Stand for Freedom” campaign. “We face his son, James Crow Jr., Esq.”

Of course, when union bosses are pushing workers to approve a new contract, damn straight they’re going to make sure only those eligible to vote are able to do so.

Racists.

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Talk show host Michael Berry alerted us to the upcoming event of the Harris County Democrat Party. One doesn’t have to be a dedicated pro-life activist to find the idea of this event kind of sick. I think even the majority of those who believe abortion services and clinics should be available would agree that an abortion clinic is the wrong venue for a Christmas Party.  (Yes, I realize they say “Holiday Party,” in the invitation below but for the vast majority of Americans, the holiday they celebrate in December is Christmas. Heck, the invitation even used green and red lettering, the traditional colors of Christmas.)

demwomenholidayparty

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Yesterday, I wondered how Nancy Pelosi and her husband were able to participate in Visa’s IPO in March 2008. It is very difficult for an individual investor to participate in IPOs, especially those which are heavily ‘oversubscribed’ as Visa’s was. It was the hottest IPO of the year, drawing what one analyst described as “extreme demand.” So, this tidbit from Newsweek’s story on Visa’s campaign to curry favor with Pelosi caught my attention:

Separately, Pelosi’s husband, Paul, a major investor in California, got a lucrative phone call from his personal broker—a pre-screen invite in March 2008 to take part in Visa’s $17.9 billion public stock offering, at the time one of the hottest stock offerings in an otherwise soft market. The initial-public-offering price was $44 per share and was limited to institutional investors and a group of specially selected individuals. Almost $18 billion was made available in public stock to preselected investors. Paul Pelosi made the cut.

Wait, what? He was called and ‘invited’ to purchase shares in the IPO? Seriously? Let’s isolate one particular sentence from this graph:

The initial-public-offering price was $44 per share and was limited to institutional investors and a group of specially selected individuals.

Specially selected individuals? Selected by whom? And, for what reasons, specifically?

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UPDATE (11/16 8:42 am EST): Savannah police have now clarified this morning to Big Government via telephone that the shooting of Occupy Savannah activist Jonathan Brazell is being investigated as an ordinary robbery, due partly to the fact that it occurred at a significant distance from the protest site itself.

***

Social media has been the principal vehicle of communication for the #Occupy movement. Through Facebook and Twitter, the loosely-knit band of anarchists, communists and leftist agitators have coordinated their actions and disseminated news to supporters around the world. There has also been a very dark side, but we’ll leave that aside for now. This afternoon, #OccupySavannah, through its Facebook page, announced the murder of an activist at the #Occupy camp:

The posting raises many obvious questions.

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Last night, 60 Minutes aired its report on possible insider trading by Members of Congress. A principal focus of the report was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her participation in an IPO of Visa, one of the hottest IPOs in recent years. Reporter Steve Kroft questioned Leader Pelosi recently at a press conference about her investment and its possible impact on credit card legislation before the House during her term as Speaker.

I will have much more to say on this soon, as the legislative maneuvering around the recent credit card bill is a rich narrative and suggests there may be something to Kroft’s suspicions. For now, though, I have a more fundamental question: How did Nancy Pelosi get access to Visa’s IPO in the first place?

Participation in a stocks IPO, i.e. Initial Public Offering, is one of the more sought after trades on Wall Street. Often, an IPO investor is able to get into a stock at a relatively low price and realize an almost immediate gain once trading commences, especially if the IPO is “hot” or, rather oversubscribed, meaning more investors wanted shares than were available. Visa’s IPO was blockbuster-level “hot.” As reported by The New York Times:

Visa‘s blockbuster initial public offering is currently oversubscribed for its expected trading start on March 20, Scott Sweet of the research firm IPO Boutique told MarketWatch.

Mr. Sweet told the publication that the I.P.O. is drawing “extreme demand.”

It is very difficult for any individual investors to participate in an IPO, as most of the shares are reserved for major brokerage clients, institutional investors and pension funds. It is so difficult, in fact, the SEC has published an “FAQ” on why it is so difficult for individual investors to participate in IPOs:

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The Department of Energy bragged about giving a $1.2 billion loan guarantee to SunPower, a politically connected solar energy company, to create “10-15 permanent jobs,” raising critical questions as to if California SunPower is the next Solyndra in the ongoing Crony-Gate scandal.

Unlike Solyndra, which went bankrupt after receiving the loan from the government leaving taxpayer on the hook, SunPower’s deal is more complicated.  Many questions are being raised about how the company was able to obtain the loan and what they did after they got the money.  Questions include:

• How could the Department of Energy give a loan to a company that was under a shareholder suit alleging securities fraud and misrepresentations?
• The son of Rep. George Miller (D-CA) who was paid $178,000 to lobby on behalf of the company represented SunPower as a lobbyist.  Why did Rep. George Miller tour the SunPower facility – which is outside his congressional district – and what other official action did Rep. Miller take on behalf of the company that is represented by his lobbyist son?
• Did the company’s hefty political contributions to the Obama campaign and the DCCC play a role in the deal?
• Did U.S. taxpayers help pay for the company to open a facility in Mexico after the announcement of the loan?
• Was the U.S. government aware that company executives were in the process of selling a portion of the company to a French company – an action that was undertaken two weeks after the loan was awarded?  Did the loan allow insider’s to cash out leaving other investors holding on to the stock that has dropped by more than 60% since the loan was awarded?

Questionable Finances

In 2009, a year before the DOE awarded the loan, investors in SunPower filed a class action lawsuit against the company alleging SunPower and certain of the Company`s executive officers were in violation of federal securities laws.

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If you follow me on Twitter, you know I spent a chunk of the weekend reading through the minutes of meetings from the #OccupyWallSt protests. While the time spent shifting through the mind-numbingly inane discussions among these twits is time I’ll never get back, I did learn a few interesting things. Among these is the fact that the protesters are obsessed with process. Actually, obsessed doesn’t really capture it. They are singularly focused and consumed by discussions of “how” they are going to go about doing things. They are so concerned that any one person may feel ‘left out’ or that any other person may exercise too much “control”, that they spend countless time discussing and debating “how” they are going to conduct meetings; often during the meetings themselves.

Which goes a long way to understanding how the situation in the video above happened. Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of real protests to win real freedoms and rights, asked to be able to address the young, overwhelmingly white, protesters in Atlanta, during one of their “General Assemblies.” So far, so typical. Anytime a group of people gathers for a political event, politicians of all stripes will often want to speak to the crowd. And, invariably, accommodations are generally made to let this happen. After all, an elected officials adds a certain amount of ‘legitimacy’ to the meeting.

Instead, some of the protesters objected to Rep. Lewis speaking. Partly because it wasn’t yet “time” for speeches, but also because letting him speak at that time would suggest he was “above” or “more important” than anyone else there. (The second obsession of these protesters.) That the whole farce played out WHILE Rep. John Lewis was standing there is delicious. The awkwardness is palatable.

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While it is an open question whether Obama and BigLabor created the #Occupy anarchy spilling out around the country or are simply trying to co-opt it for the upcoming campaign, its clear that something is a foot. Past attempts to create a leftist alternative to the mainstream tea party movement included the Coffee Party (apparently decaffeinated) and the non-sensical “No Labels” party. Those efforts didn’t even make it past one news cycle.

So, rather than risk going into the next election without an energized base, ObamaBigLabor have gone back to the reliable well of extreme leftist radicals. Sure, they are few in number, and a bit crazy-even by leftist standards-but, if enough rank-and-file union members can be convinced to join them, the media will lend a hand and make it all seem very reasonable and mainstream.  With enough media support, the American public may not even appreciate the true radicalism of this new ‘movement’ until after Obama is reelected.

So, as part of our ongoing public service, BigGovernment thought we’d revisit some of the early days of the current ‘anarchy.’ You see, the current protests began to be planned around June. Coincidentally, this was around the same time that Richard Trumpka, big boss of the AFL-CIO said this to Salon:

What you’re about to see is, we’re going to do a full-time, around the calendar political program that’s going to be mobilizing and educating people 12 months a year, 24 months a cycle, as opposed to doing it till Election Day and dismantling it.

And,

We’re going to try to get back on every campus out there, start a debate about how we change the country, how we change the economy. We’re bringing young people in and not saying, here’s what we can do for you, but tell us what you need us to do for you?

And no, this is not your ordinary union organizing campaign.

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The fringe crazies at Westboro Church are going to protest Steve Jobs’ funeral for…well, for reasons I can’t possibly explain. As best I can tell, they believe this titan of capitalism should have done more to support their particular religious views. I don’t know. But, their tweet is delicious…

Well.

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Democrats and Progressives are always screaming that requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls is discriminatory to minorities and the poor. The argument was always laughable on its face. As far as I can tell, photo IDs have nearly universal adoption; you need one to do just about anything. Write or cash a check, drive a car or, funny now that you mentioned it, apply for government benefits specifically designed to help the poor.

Food Stamp relief

As the press has reported, thousands of poor and low-income residents in Philadelphia are lining up to get supplemental food stamps to compensate for damages from Hurricane Irene last month. Theoretically, water damage from the storm may have destroyed food already purchased with food stamps. So, the government will give folks some extra food stamps to make up for the loss.

But, to get the benefits, in addition to proving storm damage, recipients will have to show a photo ID and prove they are residents of Philadelphia. In fact, in the application for benefits posted above, it is the FIRST requirement. Neither of which they have to do to vote.

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Tonight, CNN and Tea Party Express co-host a debate of GOP candidates in Tampa, FL, site of the upcoming GOP convention. I’m not really sure how the ‘tea party’ is going to be represented in this debate, since the moderators are pulled from CNN, but there is no way it can be any worse than the MSNBC/Politico forum last week. In that fiasco, John Harris and Brian Williams drew deeply from lefty activists like ThinkProgress to launch attacks on the GOP candidates. It was as if the DNC had done a mind-meld with Harris and Williams (redundant, I know!), and got 90+ minutes to prospect for material for negative campaign ads.

Color me naive, but CNN is not MSNBC. Liberal, sure. But, it at least tries not to seem totally in the tank for the left, unlike Politico and MSNBC. So, I don’t think the DNC will own the same real estate in Wolf Blitzer’s brain as it had in Harris/Williams. Then again, according to news reports today, it won’t have to. Amazingly, two leading candidates for the GOP nomination, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann, look set to take a page from the DNC and ThinkProgress playbook and attack Gov. Rick Perry for daring to speak the truth about Social Security. Below is a flier the Romney campaign is distributing in Florida.

And, yesterday, Bachmann’s campaign had this to say to Byron York:

“Bernie Madoff deals with Ponzi schemes, not the grandparents of America,” says a Bachmann adviser. “Clearly she feels differently about the value of Social Security than Gov. Perry does. She believes Social Security needs to be saved, that it’s an important safety net for Americans who have paid into it all their lives.” … “She strongly disagrees with his position on that…”

So let me get this straight; we now have TWO GOP candidates against any kind of entitlement reform? Really? We can’t begin to get out from under our overwhelming debt burden unless we tackle these auto-pilot programs. You could close every government agency and slash defense spending in half and we’re still screwed if we don’t reform Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. How can Romney or Bachmann seek to be President if they don’t understand this basic fact? I mean, its not just a theory…its math.

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[Ed Note: This is the first post to run at BigGovernment. It was published two years ago today. It still seems relevant.]

In 1995, President Bill Clinton stood before the nation and proclaimed, “The era of big government is over.” The following year, the federal budget deficit stood at 1.4% of GDP. Thirteen years later, in 2008, the deficit had doubled, to just over 3% of GDP. This year, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal budget deficit will equal 11.4% of GDP.

As George Will would say, “Well.”

This is the real source of our “summer of discontent.” Yes, millions of Americans spent the month of August holding Tea Parties, attending town halls, organizing, marching and protesting against ObamaCare, i.e. Congressional and Administration proposals to reconstruct the entire health care sector. But to suggest that health care alone is at the root of this backlash is to miss the forest for the trees. To paraphrase Democrat strategist James Carville, “It’s the big government, stupid.”

Since last September when the financial markets stumbled, we’ve seen a Wall Street bailout, government takeovers of AIG, Citigroup, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Chrysler, and numerous banks. The Federal Reserve has opened its discount window to almost all-comers and has taken the unprecedented step of aggressively buying up the federal government’s own debt. Congress rushed through a “stimulus to nowhere,” moved closer to a “cap-and-trade” remake of the energy sector and openly talked about higher taxes and more regulation.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said that, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Ronald Reagan said, “Government isn’t the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” The administration has turned this observation upside down, proclaiming that Big Government will lead us to a better world. In August, we heard America singing, “Enough!”

The mainstream media and politicos from both parties were caught flat-footed by the push-back from average citizens. Each news-cycle brought a new theory for the protests: “astroturf,” angry “mobs,” distortions and misinformation, kooks and conspiracy nuts, and, inevitably (and perhaps most offensively) racism (MSNBC amazingly even cut the head off a black man holding a gun to make the point that white racist extremism was behind the entirety the protests).  The elites have convinced themselves that, once Congress is safely cocooned on Capitol Hill, and engaged in some Kennedy-esque legislating—a tweak here, a nip-and-tuck there—ObamaCare will be back on track and the Administration can continue its march to reshape America.

The elites are whistling past the graveyard. The ground has shifted. It could just be that deficits above 10% of GDP are the new $4 a gallon gas, i.e. the tipping point that awakens the silent majority and recalibrates political dynamics. Americans are setting aside parochial self-interest and reaching to reclaim the legacy of the Founders.

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I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when I do, it isn’t usually cable news. Living, as I do, in new media, I’m already generally up to speed on what they are talking about. CNBC has good financial news, even if they do conflate the health of the stock market with the state of overall economy. CNN will give you an accurate pulse of the median views of the mainstream media. Fox will give you a moderate to very slightly center-right take on the day’s events. I always had a vague sense that MSNBC was very left-of-center. Last night, that vague sense was confirmed. But, I also realized that MSNBC lives in an alternate universe.

Today, it was reported that jobless claims spiked higher…yet again. The CBO reported that, through the last 11 months, the federal government has spent almost $1.3 Trillion more than it took in. European banks are on the edge of collapse and the entire world economy balances precariously on the edge of a global depression. If the US economy hasn’t technically yet entered another recession, it is only a matter of time before it does.

The housing market is set for another downturn. The number of Americans in the labor force is at historic lows. There is no prospect for economic recovery at any point in the future. I could go on and on, but you get the point. The economy is teetering on the edge of another collapse and government debt has so suffocated us that we are flirting with a period of permanent decline.

And yet, at last night’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library (!), neither John Harris with Politico nor Brian Williams with NBCMSNBCCOMCASTGE, asked a SINGLE question about these issues. Nothing about government spending, debt or the economy. Instead, we were treated to almost 90 minutes of questions on HPV vaccines, immigration, FEMA, TSA, welfare, poverty programs (more in need after 2+ years of Obama than ever) and science. Science?!?

Seriously, do John Harris and Brian Williams need an up-to-date calendar? Are they stuck in the 90s, when the economy seemed fine and all we had to worry about were so-called ’social’ issues, ’smart growth’ and school uniforms. We thought we were fat and happy then and could afford the luxury of the ’small’ issues. We aren’t anymore, but that is all they fed us. If I closed my eyes, I don’t know that I could have told you whether this ‘debate’ was for President of the state legislature.

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Well, the ‘barbarians’ and ’sons of bitches’ are at it again. As wildfires spread across Texas, covering over 100,000 acres so far, tea partiers are once again organizing and mobilizing, this time to help their fellow citizens.

The group Citizen Patriot Response is coordinating efforts. From its website:

Citizen Patriot Response is preparing to begin delivering cold bottles of water to firefighters in the Bastrop area in an effort to do our part. Many other organizations and individuals in Texas are doing the same. We need support, we need more efforts initiated across the state, and we need communication and collaboration between group leaders to ensure that men and women fighting the Texas wildfires have full support.

The group will also provide a shelter for those families whose homes are threatened by the fires.

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