One of the Democratic Party’s top fundraisers and the co-chairman of the Democratic National Convention host-committee, Duke Energy Corp. CEO Jim Rogers, contributed more than $210,000 to Democrats since 2008 and saw his company receive $230.4 million in federal grants for so-called “green energy” projects.

From The Washington Free Beacon:

Just as Rogers has helped fund Democratic politicians, they, in turn, have helped steer massive amounts of federal funding to Duke Energy. The 2009 stimulus package, for instance, was a boon for the company: Duke received federal grants totaling $230.4 million for a number of “green” energy projects including “smart grid” development and wind energy storage.

According to Recovery.gov, Duke created 196.6 jobs as a result of the grants.

The company also received a $350,000 grant to assist General Motors in the development of the Chevrolet Volt, the poorly selling electric vehicle that the Obama administration has recently proposed subsidizing at a rate of $10,000 per car.

Rogers’ support for the president’s “green” agenda earned him a spot on the short list to become President Obama’s Energy Secretary.

As if that act of crony capitalism weren’t enough, in 2009, Mr. Rogers’s company paid the lobbying firm of the co-chairman of Obama-Biden transition team, John Podesta, and Mr. Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta, $860,000 to lobby to “support the passage of climate change and energy legislation” and “energy efficiency and clean energy solutions.”   John Podesta was also formerly the president of the left wing Center for American Progress.

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Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) wants answers from Energy Secretary Steven Chu about documents that appear to indicate that Mr. Chu personally intervened to help secure a $1.4 billion partial loan guarantee for a large-scale rooftop solar project known as Project Amp that was to be supplied equipment by the sinking ship that was Solyndra.

“It is astonishing that DOE actively negotiated a plan to risk even more taxpayer money to prop up Solyndra at all costs,” said Rep. Stearns.

In his role as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Rep. Stearns sent Sec. Chu a letter inquiring why the Energy Secretary would have helped put even more taxpayer money at risk when it was clear Solyndra was yet another failed green energy scheme, particularly since the Department of Energy itself seemed squeamish about approving the loan:

Project Amp is a large-scale rooftop energy generation project using solar panels on commercial facility rooftops to generate electricity for sale to utilities and power purchasers.  The panels for first phase of Project Amp were to be sole sourced from the failing Solyndra, Inc.   Documents obtained by the Committee indicate that DOE had some hesitation in approving the loan guarantee and that Secretary Chu intervened on behalf of Project Amp.  This brings up many questions, including if this was an attempt to support the faltering Solyndra since it occurred during discussions over the second restructuring of the Solyndra loan guarantee.

According to Rep. Stearns letter, a Solyndra employee email suggests that, indeed, Mr. Chu was part of a Herculean effort to craft a deal that “went to higher levels in the Obama Administration”:

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In a sweeping and stirring oration on the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) proudly recounted the Republican Party’s long history of fighting for black freedom against the Democratic Party’s history of racism and oppression.

Rep. West’s speech offered a timeline of Republican Party victories on behalf of African Americans’ long battle for equality.   From the elections of the first black members of Congress (Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS) and Rep. Joseph Rainey (R-SC)), to the adoption of the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, 1875 Civil Rights Act, 1957 Civil Rights Act, 1964 Civil Rights Act, and of course the Emancipation itself, Rep. West recounted how each victory was the result of the Republican Party’s commitment to freedom for all citizens, regardless of hue.

Rep. West’s oration marking Black History Month also placed his own election in the pantheon of Republican victories on behalf of African Americans:

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Six cows are helping millionaire Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) dodge $43,000 in property taxes on his 55 acres of land on the Indian River, reports the Tampa Bay Times.

While no one begrudges any American from striving to pay as few dollars in taxes as are legally feasible, the fact that Sen. Nelson, an ardent supporter of President Barack Obama’s big government agenda, performs agricultural gymnastics to avoid helping fund Mr. Obama’s deficit-exploding programs is, well, hypocritical.  So says Sen. Nelson’s 2012 Senate Republican challenger, conservative rising star Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL).

In a statement, Rep. Connie Mack said:

With his astonishing hypocrisy on taxes, Senator Bill Nelson has exemplified the term ‘limousine liberal’ — someone who says one thing and does another.  Not only has Senator Nelson cried out that local and county workers are being robbed by tax loopholes, we now know the identity of that robber is none other than Bill Nelson himself.  Senator Nelson’s six cows may have found him a legal way to avoid paying the taxes that help pay the county workers he claims to defend, but it is certainly the despicable and dishonorable way.

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Both the House and Senate have now passed their respective versions of a bill known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act to ban members of Congress from using private information to enrich their investments.

As the two chambers now hammer out the distinctions between the two bills, one major difference has emerged: whether to require so-called “political intelligence” firms, who scour Congress and leverage high-level contacts with Hill staffers to gather tidbits of valuable nonpublic information that can be sold to investment firms or others, to register as lobbyists.  The Senate version of the bill contains such a provision; the House version does not.

Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), the person responsible for adding the provision to the Senate version of the STOCK Act, says that requiring political intelligence operatives to register as lobbyists is simply a matter of common sense:

If you seek information from Congress in order to make money, the American people have a right to know your name and who you’re selling that information to.

There’s much at stake in whether or not the eventual STOCK Act will require political intelligence operatives to register as lobbyists. Experts say that the 300 political intelligence firms worldwide comprise a $100 million industry.  Furthermore, many of the 2,000 individuals who make up the political intelligence industry are themselves former Hill staffers or members of Congress.

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The Congressional Budget Office released a report Thursday that showed real unemployment in America at 15 percent for the month of January, a figure considerably higher than the White House’s oft-cited 8.3 percent figure that does not include part-time workers seeking full-time work or those who have given up hope of finding a job altogether.

From the CBO:

Many people would like to work but have not searched for a job in the past four weeks, or are working part-time but would prefer full-time work. If those people were counted among the unemployed, the unemployment rate in January 2012 would have been about 15 percent.

Furthermore, the CBO reported that the “United States is experiencing the longest stretch of high unemployment since the Great Depression” with no end in sight through 2014.

Worse, the CBO reports that the ravages of the Obama Economy have created an unprecedentedly high rate of long-term unemployment, which the CBO defines as a person who has been seeking work for over 26 months.

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On Monday, the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee Sen. Jeff Sessions blasted President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion 2012 budget plan as being a fiscal charade of breathtaking proportions and “one of the most spectacular fiscal cover-ups in American history.”

According to Sen. Sessions, President Obama’s claim that his plan will achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years is utter nonsense and that the actual figure, once stripped of accounting gimmicks, is actually a paltry $273 billion.

Under this plan, we will accumulate $11 trillion in new gross debt—the $4 trillion reduction in deficit is nowhere to be found.When the gimmicks are removed, spending even rises $1.5 trillion above current projections—$47 trillion in total. Annual spending will rise by 62 percent between 2011 and 2022. There are no real reforms and the new taxes are used to fund more wasteful Washington spending. So even with almost $2 trillion in job-crushing tax hikes, the president remains incapable of reducing the deficit—he just can’t resist the temptation to spend the money.

Sen. Session’s outrage at President Obama’s disingenuous budget, which would add $1.9 trillion in new taxes, comes on the heels of Obama Chief of Staff Jack Lew’s misleading assertion that the reason the Senate has failed to pass a budget resolution is because of Republican opposition.  The Washington Post Fact-Checker gave that claim four Pinocchios for dishonesty and said Mr. Lew’s statement was comprised of “highly misleading language that blamed Republicans for the failure of the Democratic leadership.”

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On Monday, White House National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling called for a “global minimum tax” to ensure that “nobody is escaping doing their fair share.”

In his comments, Mr. Sperling added: “we will say more, perhaps not in gory detail, but in more detail, before the end of the month. And in terms of the revenues, the president is looking for shared sacrifice.”

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For the first time in its 78-year history, the 100 percent taxpayer-backed Federal Housing Administration is projected to run out of its remaining $4.7 billion financial reserves and trigger an infusion of funds from the Treasury.

So says the Wall Street Journal:

The FHA has burned through its reserves over the past three years as defaults mount on loans it guaranteed as housing markets deteriorated. FHA-backed mortgages are an attractive option for borrowers because they can make down payments as low as 3.5%. But as home prices continue to fall, many of those borrowers have fallen underwater, where they owe more than their homes are worth and are at greater risk of default if they experience income shocks.

Given that the American Enterprise Institute’s “FHA Watch” estimates that the FHA has a current net worth of – $17 billion (that’s negative $17 billion) and an estimated capital shortfall of $35 billion to $53 billion, many are left to wonder how much longer the government can afford to meddle in the fledgling housing market.

“It’s no surprise that the fund is under some level of stress,” confessed the FHA’s Acting Commissioner Carol Galante.  Still, says Ms. Galante, “It’s highly unlikely that we’ll need any special assistance from the Treasury given the policy changes we’re making.”

But as Edward J. Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute reports, no amount of “policy changes” are likely to resurrect the New Deal-era agency:

The FHA continues to expand and crowd out the private sector. It is guaranteeing more high-risk loans than low-risk ones, has close to one million mortgages in its foreclosure pipeline, and is permitted to project its financial health using accounting rules based on rosy projections extending decades into the future, all the while ignoring that it is already insolvent and needs a bailout to the tune of tens of billions of dollars by any reasonable accounting standard.

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On the Sunday edition of ABC’s This Week, conservative commentator George Will weighed in on the controversy surrounding the Obama Administration’s policy to force Catholic institutions to provide contraception services that conflict with the Church’s beliefs.   Mr. Will laid a portion of the blame at the feet of the Catholic Bishops who backed the Obamacare health care bill from the start.

Mr. Will said:

The Catholic Bishops, it serves them right. They’re the ones who were really hot for Obamacare, with a few exceptions. But they were all in favor of this. And this is what it looks like when the government decides it’s going to make your healthcare choices for you.

Mr. Will said that the national controversy over the Obama Administration’s contraception edict was the logical extension of big government run amok:

This is what liberalism looks like.

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Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) support for a bill banning members of Congress from using insider information to enrich themselves is being overshadowed by a report by the Wall Street Journal that the congresswoman’s husband, Stephen Lowey, invested $350,000 in a fund co-founded by Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs board member facing criminal insider-trading charges.

Rep. Lowey’s husband says his decision to invest $350,000 since 2008 in a fund run by New Silk Route Growth Capital should not reflect negatively on his wife:

Neither Mrs. Lowey nor I know Mr. Gupta, have ever met him or have had any dealings with him at all. It’s not her [Rep. Nita Lowe's] investment. She had nothing to do with it.

Between 2006 and 2011, one of New Silk Route’s co-founders, Parag Saxena, contributed more than $8,000 to Rep. Lowey’s congressional campaign funds.  According to the Wall Street Journal’s report:

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In his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer revealed how members of Congress enrich themselves and their relatives using earmarks and insider information.  Now, the Washington Post, following in Schweizer’s footsteps, has conducted a study that found 16 members of Congress have used their power of the purse to benefit companies, colleges, and community groups tied to their relatives.

Image by Washington Post

According to the study, the bipartisan “dirty 16″ deny that their actions were meant to directly benefit themselves or their spouses, parents, or children.  Instead, they claim, they were merely helping organizations and institutions in their congressional districts that just so happen to be connected to their relatives.

But as the investigation reveals, hiring the relative of a member of Congress can bring big bucks for employers.  Among those cited in the Washington Post report were the following:

• Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): obtained $5.3 million and sought $16.5 million more for the University of Houston where her husband has been employed since 1978 and has seen his salary double since 1994 (a year before Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee was elected) to $210,491.  Rep. Lee’s staff ignored repeated requests for comment.

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At a Federal Bureau of Investigation conference on Monday, FBI agents said state and local law enforcement should be on alert for people who consider themselves “sovereign citizens,” individuals who believe they are not subject to any type of government authority.

According to Reuters, these anti-government extremists “may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.”

Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.

In May 2010, two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were shot and killed in an argument that developed after they pulled over a “sovereign citizen” in traffic.

Last year, an extremist in Texas opened fire on a police officer during a traffic stop. The officer was not hit.

The heightened concern against “sovereign citizens” is the result of the rise in legal convictions from 10 such cases in 2009 to 18 cases in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

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On Tuesday, February 7, House Republicans proposed adding a “Pelosi Provision” to the fast-moving insider trading ban known as the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act that would prevent members of Congress from landing coveted and lucrative initial public offerings (IPOs), similar to the Visa stock IPO Rep. Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi scored that made them a staggering 203% profit.

The Pelosi Visa IPO revelation made headlines when Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer published the evidence in his New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out.  CBS News’s 60 Minutes did a subsequent report based on Schweizer’s book that sparked a media firestorm.

In early 2008, Nancy Pelosi and her real estate developer husband, Paul, were given an opportunity to buy into a Visa IPO.  Despite Rep. Pelosi’s consistent railing against credit card companies, on March 18, 2008, the Pelosis bought between $1 million and $5 million (politicians do not have to report the exact amounts, only ranges) worth of Visa stock at the IPO price of $44 per share. Two days later, the stock price rocketed to $65 per share, yielding a 50% profit. The Pelosis then bought Visa twice more. By their third purchase on June 4, 2008, Visa was worth $85 per share.

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The Washington Post has completed an extensive study of earmarks–the process of slipping pet spending projects into bills–for all 535 members of Congress and has concluded that Rep. Nancy Pelosi added $50 million in earmarks for a light-rail project that runs near a four-story commercial building she and her husband own.

The Post says the revelation was uncovered by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestseller, Throw Them All Out:

Over the past decade, the House minority leader helped secure $50 million in earmarks toward a light-rail project that provides direct access to San Francisco’s Union Square and Chinatown for neighborhoods south of Market Street. Pelosi’s husband owns a four-story commercial building blocks from Union Square. These earmarks were reported in the book “Throw Them All Out.” A Pelosi spokesman said the project was requested by community leaders and that the new stations on the line will be farther away from the building than those on the existing line.

In response, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, had this to say:

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Borrowing a page from Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s investigation of how elected officials funnel taxpayer dollars to projects that increase the value of properties they own, the Washington Post has conducted a study revealing that 33 members of Congress earmarked more than $300 million for projects within two miles of land they own.

After analyzing the holdings of all 535 members of Congress and comparing them to their earmarks for pet projects since 2008, the Washington Post found numerous eye-opening instances of potential self-enrichment at taxpayers’ expense, including:

• Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS): obtained a $900,000 earmark to resurface roads where he and his daughter own two homes.  “I didn’t say, ‘Do the street that I live on,” Rep. Thompson protested when the Washington Post confronted him.  “The earmark went to the county.  It had no designation on it whatsoever, and that was it.”
• Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD): secured approximately $4.5 million for an interstate interchange that leads to Rep. Bartlett’s home, his 104-acre farm, and rental properties that earn him $150,000 annually.  “He was being an advocate for what was presented to him as the highest priority,” the congressman’s press secretary Lisa Wright said.  “Coincidentally, this was around two miles from his farm.”
• Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX): bagged $665,000 in taxpayer funds to expand a road 600 feet away from his family’s food processing plant, H&H Foods.  “It helps everybody,” Rep. Hinojosa told the Washington Post.  “The only way it made sense to handle this tremendous population growth and avoid problems for the school buses that go through that intersection was to widen it.”
• Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA): scored $750,000 for a new bridge three blocks away from a 7,000-square-foot building he and his wife own as well as Columbia Basin Paper & Supply, a janitorial supply company he previously owned that is now run by his brother.  “It never crossed my mind,” Rep. Hastings told the Washington Post.  “Every business in Pasco will benefit by that.”
• Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MA): landed a $187,000 earmark to replenish a shoreline 90 miles away from his home district near a beach that, coincidentally, he and his wife own two condominiums by that generate $15,000 in rental income.  Rep. Ruppersberger said questioning the proximity of his properties to the project was “ridiculous.”  “That’s a stretch to say that thing’s going to benefit me.”
• Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA): secured $6.3 million to replenish a beach 900 feet away from a $142,900 cottage he owns.  “It’s absurd to suggest that this benefits me,” Kingston protested to the reporters.  “The beach doesn’t improve the real estate of a house, unless it’s on the beach.  The only thing that changes in value is the beachfront property.”
• Rep. John W. Olver (D-MA): obtained $5.1 million in earmarks to restructure a road 209 feet from Rep. Olver’s 15-acre home and several adjoining properties he and his wife own.  “I had no monetary interest whatsoever in this project,” Rep. Olver said.  “I had nothing to with the design.  I was never notified of any of the hearings.  I had no involvement whatsoever.”
• Rep. Candice S. Miller (R-MI): obtained a $486,000 earmark that helped add a 14-foot bike lane within walking distance of her house.  “People earmark for all kinds of things,” Rep. Miller said when asked about the project.  “I’m pretty proud of this; I think I did what my people wanted.  Should I have told them, ‘We can never have this bike path complete because I happen to live by one section of it’?  They would have thrown me out of office.”
• Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY): secured $7 million in earmarks, a portion of which went to overhaul streets around the corner from a bank where he is director emeritus and owns a $1-$5 million stake in the bank’s holding company and also narrowed the street he lives on to slow traffic.  “Congressman Rogers sees no conflict of interest in helping local community leaders achieve their goals for growth,” the congressman’s chief of staff Michael R. Higdon told the Washington Post.

The Washington Post report also concluded that 16 members of Congress directed taxpayer dollars to “companies, colleges, or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.”

The practice of earmarks continues to be a source of angst for conservatives and citizens concerned with out-of-control federal spending.  In 2010, a record high 11,230 earmarks accounted for $32 billion in federal spending.

Amid the controversy over Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime In America” Super Bowl commercial, a glaring question remains: if Chrysler is back on top and so strong, then why hasn’t it repaid taxpayers the $1.3 billion it still owes them?

“I was, frankly, offended by it,” said Republican strategist Karl Rove. “I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.”

Already, Democrats have begun co-opting the “It’s Halftime In America” meme, and President Barack Obama’s campaign team has already signaled that “saving” Detroit and the American auto industry will be a central campaign theme in Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. Indeed, in June 2011, Mr. Obama proudly declared:

Chrysler has repaid every dime and more of what it owes American taxpayers for their support during my presidency–and it repaid that money six years ahead of schedule.  And this week, we reached a deal to sell our remaining stake.  That means Chrysler will be 100 percent in private hands.

The Washington Post fact checker, however, disagreed–strongly. (more…)

On Thursday, the Senate voted 96-3 to ensure that the same insider trading laws that apply to citizens also extend  to members of Congress.

But as the Associated Press points out, elected officials enjoy at least seven legal exemptions that the rest of us do not:

Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s battle to ban members of Congress from using private information to enrich themselves scored a stunning victory on Thursday when the U.S. Senate voted 96-3 to pass the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act.

While the bill was widely hailed as an essential first step to begin repairing Congress’s abysmal approval ratings, three senators voted against the measure outlawing congressional insider trading.

One of the dissenters was Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM).  According to Sen. Bingaman, an amendment by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) to the STOCK Act would subject 300,000 federal worker to the bill’s 30 day public disclosure reporting requirements for investments.  Sen. Richard Shelby’s (R-AL) aides dispute this figure and say the amendment would only apply to 28,000 workers.  Still, according to the New Mexico Democrat:

I can’t support a bill that places unreasonable and burdensome reporting requirements on over 300,000 federal workers.

Also voting against the STOCK Act was Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).  Sen. Coburn said his opposition to banning members of Congress from engaging in the kinds of insider trading revealed in Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s New York Times bestselling book, Throw Them All Out, and the much-discussed 60 Minutes investigation his book sparked, is that he is not convinced any such instances of insider trading even exist.

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The Senate’s 96-3 vote to ban members of Congress from using nonpublic information to inform their private investments brought with it important additional amendments that stand to shape the debate next week as the House takes up the STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act.

In addition to outlawing members of Congress and their staffs from engaging in insider trading and requiring a 30 day public disclosure rule for all investments, an amendment by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) successfully expanded the STOCK Act to also include the executive branch’s 28,000 workers.  Sen. Shelby said the reason for his amendment , which passed on a 58-41 vote, is simple:

It only seems fair that executive branch officials who are already required to file annual financial reports, also be directed to meet the same additional reporting requirements being imposed on the legislative branch.

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