This week, Los Angeles County okayed a new regulation banning the throwing of Frisbees or footballs on the beaches – which, of course, destroys the purpose of living in Southern California in the first place.  The first offense will earn you a hefty $100 fine; the second, $200; the third and beyond, $500.  You can, of course, apply for a permit.  For parents with industrious children, holes deeper than 18 inches are also banned – so get your kids the cheap plastic shovels or pay a fine.

What’s the point of this law?  Unless it’s to prevent horrific incidents like this, the only point is to raise cash for the state.  This has become the MO for California law enforcement: higher ticket costs, more tickets written.  California is now a police state – except when it comes to policing actual crime in hard-hit areas.  The state, counties, and cities task police officers with going after soccer moms going 45 in a 35 zone rather than monitoring drug-ridden precincts.

The trend is obvious, and California motorists know it: as McClatchy reported back in August 2011, “As the state and cities wrestled with shrinking revenue and growing budget gaps, the California Highway Patrol issued about 200,000 more traffic citations in 2009 than it did two years before.  Sacramento Superior Court, meanwhile, processed about 37,000 more traffic filings last year than in 2006 – a 16 percent increase.”  The size of the fines has escalated dramatically, too: “With the average fine costing as much as $250 and rising, the increase in CHP tickets produced as much as $50 million over two years. That money went to state and local courts, crime labs and other purposes.”

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The Washington Post, citing anonymous White House Sources, reports that President Barack Obama will announce a “compromise” today on the contraceptive rule for religious institutions that has outraged Americans across the political spectrum as a violation of religious freedom:

President Barack Obama will announce a plan to accommodate religious employers outraged by a rule that would require them to cover birth control for women free of charge, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Obama was expected to make the announcement at the White House Friday.

The shift is aimed at containing the political firestorm that erupted after Obama announced in January that religious-affiliated employers had to cover birth control as preventative care for women. Churches and houses of worship were exempt, but all other affiliated organizations were ordered to comply by Aug. 2013.

It is not clear with whom Obama has negotiated a “compromise”; it would appear he has simply compromised with himself, modifying his rule in a way he believes he can sell politically.

Mulligan?

The outrage is as much about the fact that the Obama administration tried to define what is, and is not, a religious institution as it is about the fact that it tried to impose its own dogmatic beliefs–in population control, among other things–on Catholics and other religious groups.

Earlier this week, administration officials had signaled that the president might “compromise,” a prospect that was greeted with skepticism by religious leaders, who struggled to imagine a halfway point between religious freedom and state dictates on religious faith. (more…)

We’ve all heard the axiom, “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation”. In fact, no Republican has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio. And for this year’s GOP presidential primary, Ohio is the top prize in what is turning out to be a critical Super Tuesday on March 6th.

In fact, just yesterday analyst Sean Trende of Real Clear Politics identified Ohio as the key state between a Romney runaway and the possibility of a brokered convention.

So the viability of a three-way split probably comes down to Ohio, which has a fair number of evangelicals, though not to the degree that Tennessee, Oklahoma and Georgia do. Santorum has some strengths he can draw on in the Buckeye State, as his blue-collar message could play well even among Republicans there. If he wins, it means that we probably do have a deeply divided GOP, with Gingrich taking the anti-Romney vote in the South, and Santorum taking the anti-Romney vote in the Midwest.

So with Ohio holding such incredible importance to Mitt Romney’s hopes of becoming President, why is he betraying the very Ohio conservatives he needs to assure victory?

Let me explain.

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When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty.

And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction.

This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly but surely coming around to the same point of view.

• The European Central Bank published a study showing “…a significant negative effect of the size of government on growth.”
• A study by two Harvard economists found that “large adjustments in fiscal policy, if based on well-targeted spending cuts, have often led to expansions.”
• The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development noted in recent research that welfare programs are economically destructive because they lure people into dependency because “net disposable income would increase despite putting in fewer hours.”
• A study from the International Monetary Fund concluded that “Cuts to pension and health entitlements had the most beneficial effect on economic growth.”

This is remarkable. It’s beginning to look like the entire world has figured out that there’s an inverse relationship between big government and economic performance. (more…)

Rep. Spencer Bachus is now under investigation for insider trading. Too bad the GOP didn’t get ahead of this scandal.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), whose financial transactions while ranking member of the House financial services committee were exposed by Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, is now the target of an insider trading inquiry by the Office of Congressional Ethics, according to the Washington Post:

The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee over possible violations of insider-trading laws, according to individuals familiar with the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the individuals said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe insider-trading violations have occurred.

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WINTER HAVEN, Fla. – Deric Feacher had a very worthwhile dream.

He wanted to establish a charter school in his hometown that specialized in helping disadvantaged and at-risk students earn their high school diplomas.

So he did what Florida law required. He took his proposal for the new charter school to the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee, two different times. And twice he came away without permission to open his school, according to the Sunshine State News.

What was the committee’s hang-up? Were members afraid that Feacher would establish a bad school? Do they have a problem with the idea of creating a special school for children who are struggling in traditional schools?

It was nothing like that. The board members were just worried about losing money.

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So let me get this straight. The Obama administration is fighting Judicial Watch tooth-and-nail to avoid releasing photographs of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, citing national security reasons. And at the same time, administration officials allegedly leaked information about the bin Laden raid to a Hollywood film director?

That’s what press reports seem to indicate. And we’re now trying to get to the bottom of this emerging scandal.

On January 13, 2012, JW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to obtain documents regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and Hollywood director Kathryn Bigelow. If the name sounds familiar, it is because Bigelow is the Academy Award-winning director of the military film “The Hurt Locker.” She is also the ex-wife of Hollywood director James Cameron of “Avatar” fame.

At issue in JW’s lawsuit is the possibility that the Obama administration leaked classified information to Bigelow and Annapurna Pictures as source material for the making of Bigelow’s not-yet-released film, tentatively titled “Killing bin Laden.”

Here’s what we’re after, pursuant to JW FOIA requests filed with the DOD and the CIA on August 9, 2011:

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This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the United Nation’s Brundtland Report, which defined Sustainable Development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” But aristocratic socialists have corrupted the sustainable development movement into a vehicle to achieve vast administrative power for themselves. Nations that adopt Sustainable Development are doomed to fail at meeting the needs of the present generation and through debt accumulation from deficit spending will consign future generations to a life as debt slaves.

Through the early 1980s, socialist Latin American economies powered growth by quadrupling their indebtedness from $75 billion to $315 billion. With aristocrats controlling government, while the poor had no voice in these loan matters, nor did they benefit from them as most of the loan proceeds were siphoned off to benefit the aristocrats and their crony amigos.

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, the U.S. economy had suffered a decade of stagflation, turning our Midwest manufacturing base into the Rust Belt. Reagan was determined to regain international economic dominance by reasserting our Founding Father’s demand for limited government and maximum personal liberty. Reagan viscerally believed what John Adams wrote:

“ the moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence”

Reagan’s relentless focus overcame the bi-partisan drumbeat to continue the socialist expansion of the money supply to promote growth. He then leveraged monetary restraint with the largest income tax cut in American history to power the American economy to sustained growth with low inflation.

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Obama's Alinsky-Style Power Analysis

New York Times columnist Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, tries very, very hard to paint a sympathetic picture of her eponymous subject matter–she gets her digs in against the supposedly racist tea party everywhere she can–but every once and a while the truth cracks through. Take this interview at the Texas Book Festival for example:

The Obamas often don’t mingle freely – they often just stand behind the rope and reach out to shake hands but he sees Jerry Kellman, his old community organizing boss, and he’s so happy to see him he reaches across and pulls him in. And Obama says, “I’m still organizing.” It was a stunning moment and when [Kellman] told me the story, it had echoes of what Valerie Jarrett had told me once – “The senator still thinks of himself as a community organizer.” How fully has this guy resolved himself to what he’s really doing? On the one hand, he’s passing these backroom deals to pass health care reform, but on the other he’s telling his old boss he’s still a community organizer. I think that plays into what will happen in the 2012 race.

Jerry Kellman was Barack Obama’s former boss, a student of Saul Alinsky’s in the 1970s, and a permanent fixture of the progressive left in Chicago.

While some have downplayed Obama’s connections to Saul Alinsky, Kellman’s link is pretty easy to discern.

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Both of my Senators have spoken out forcefully on the Obama administration’s new mandate requiring religious institutions to provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization and contraception in violation our First Amendment right to religious liberty. Their remarks present a stark contrast in their levels of sincerity, intellectual honesty and respect for their constituents.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) was the first female U.S. Senator to speak out against the administration’s rule from the floor of the Senate. “This mandate places religious institutions in this impossible position of violating their core beliefs in order to comply with the mandate or dropping employee insurance coverage altogether. We should not be putting these organizations that do great work throughout this country in this position,” Ayotte argued.

She has also soundly denounced the politics of gender identity by stating plainly, “this is not a women’s rights issue. This is a religious liberty issue.”

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Robert Creamer–Democrat strategist, Obama 2008 campaign aide, and political architect of ObamaCare–argues that the new contraceptive mandate for Catholic institutions isn’t really about equality for women, or religious liberty.

Rather, it is about population control.

Creamer–like his wife, the pro-abortion Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)–embraces the left-wing fallacy that children are a burden on the planet, which the state should encourage the church–and everyone else–to limit.

At 6:16-7:03 in the video below, by CNS News, Schakowsky describes abortion as “most often” a “responsible decision” to control the size of their families:

Writing in the Huffington Post yesterday, Creamer declared:

…[T]here is a worldwide consensus that the use of birth control is one of society’s most important moral priorities. Far from being something that should be discouraged, or is controversial, the use of birth control is critical to the survival and success of humanity….It is simply not possible for this small planet to sustain that kind of exponential human population growth. If we do, the result will be poverty, war, the depletion of our natural resources and famine. Fundamentally, the Reverend [Thomas] Malthus was right–except that the result is not inevitable….That’s why it is our moral imperative to act responsibly and encourage each other to use birth control.

Malthus’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century views, which still inspire much of today’s environmental movement, have been repeatedly disproved over the course of two centuries. Economic freedom, growth and innovation have made human society vastly more productive and efficient. (more…)

Members of the Obama administration do not care whether Catholics and those of other faiths are angry about the ObamaCare mandate regarding contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs. It’s quite possible that, like exhibitionists, the White House enjoys the shock value that accompanies all their edicts and executive orders to people of main-street America. Waiting for average Americans to recover from the shock gives them a window of time to amuse themselves at the reaction as they also develop their talking points and spin. But, this year, they have an election to win.

To appease those they view as rigid, conservative Catholics, the administration’s talking points are that they’ll “work it out” with them, give them a year to “adapt” their consciences to engaging in behavior that is against their values, and, perhaps, the favorite means of the White House to ensure a minimum of voter loss: hand out a waiver.

But, exactly what should be “worked out?” “Adapt” to what? A “waiver” from what? All of this talk of flexibility is helping the White House to muddy up the real issue.

The spin by the White House, in the midst of this constitutional crisis, is simply a variant on its age- old theme that healthcare is an unalienable right that the government must give to people. Remember that, in liberalism, unalienable rights come from the government, not from the Creator. With the contraception, etc. mandate, the administration just tweaked the message a bit- made it a bit “pinker,” dare we say: that all women deserve access to free contraception- including Catholic women. How could we leave Catholic women out? After all, that would be discriminatory, right? Wrong.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. – It seems that most states are looking to reform their K-12 public education system, either out of necessity – lack of money, low student achievement – or on the principle that families should have the right to choose their child’s education.

South Carolina is no different. During the current legislative session, state lawmakers are expected to consider a number of education reforms, including the possibility of increasing the number of charter schools in the state, linking teacher pay to student learning, and giving principals the power to fire ineffective teachers.

What distinguishes the Palmetto State’s K-12 reform debate from all the others is that it’s being led by an outspoken, retired Army brigadier general and former college president who is eager to take on the “liberal education establishment.”

State Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, a Republican, won election in 2010 by a huge margin of 108,000 votes. He has been in office for just over a year, but he has rankled lawmakers of both political parties by refusing to accept federal education dollars from President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative that gives states money in exchange for approved school reforms.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Robert Kagan to discuss his new book, The World America Made, the importance of America’s military muscle, and how the world may change if America is no longer the world’s superpower.

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

Related Links:

Buy The World America Made on Amazon
The importance of U.S. military might shouldn’t be underestimated
The Return of History and the End of Dreams
Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
Robert Kagan at Brookings

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Well, at least the kids weren’t singing – everybody now – “Mmm mmm mmm…Barack Hussein Obama.”  But the latest example of Big Education fawning over Barack Obama isn’t much better.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Cass Elementary School in Livonia, Michigan aired a video of still images of Obama, with a speech by King and – strangely – a Bob Marley song playing in the background.

The students looked about as interested as if they were watching paint dry.

It’s unclear how long the song actually was, as the citizen journalist video is 1:20 long and the song was clearly longer.

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(Reuters) – The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed on Thursday a bill to curb insider trading by lawmakers and other government officials, despite objections from both Democrats and Republicans that it was weaker than a version passed by the Senate last week.

The House voted 417-2 to pass the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, even though it did not include a provision to impose new regulations on Washington insiders who collect “political intelligence” from lawmakers and sell it to Wall Street. The Senate version included this proposal.

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I know money’s what makes the world go around – but is it the key to beating a constitutionally corrupt president?

If so, then this weekend’s three-day retreat in California, attended by some of the richest billionaires (is there really a poor billionaire?) is a step in the right direction.

The Huffington Post reports (read full story here) David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries pledged a combined $60M to defeat Barack Obama in the upcoming election. Some 250-300 other billionaires made the remainder of a pledge drive netting 100 million bucks to the overall effort (and what does it say, really that the majority of the pledges came from two men?).

To this I say, ‘Thank you billionaires for holding yourselves up in a plush hotel all weekend, buying out all the restaurants so you wouldn’t be discovered AND sitting around on overstuffed couches plotting how to take back the country … then deciding all you really had to do was throw a hundred million dollars into the fight and you’ve done your job.’

If it were really that easy (and if we all had that kind of dough to throw around at our problems) … then would we really be in this predicament right now?

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Are Wisconsin and Ohio still presidential swing states? Republicans swept to power in the Badger State and the Buckeye State in 2010. During the past year, Governor Walker and Governor Kasich have refused to settle for taxation & spending trends that drove away hundreds of thousands of jobs between 2000 and 2011.

If Midwestern voters see the benefits of free-market reforms at the state level, it’ll be bleak news for Barack Obama’s 2012 class warfare roadshow.

Early results for Walker and Kasich have been mixed, as they’ve both been demonized relentlessly by Big Labor. Wisconsin Democrats fled to protect their union financiers, but Walker and the Wisconsin GOP prevailed. How’s that working for taxpayers?

According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of September 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.” The institute calculates that these steps will save the districts $211.45 per student. If the state’s other 250 districts currently served by WEA Trust follow suit, the savings statewide could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

If Big Labor’s failure in Wisconsin Senate recall races is any sign, voters can do the math.

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