The current issue of The Economist contains a must read special report on the future of the news industry. While there is little in the way of groundbreaking news developments in the report, The Economist’s series of articles provides a condensed overview of the current and future states of the news media; an article of interest to everyone here at BigGovernment.com.

“Bulletins from the Future” celebrates the emergence of “’crowdsourced’ journalism,” which has “turned the news industry upside down, making it more participatory, social, diverse and partisan.” In “How Newspapers are Faring: A Little Local Difficulty,” the writers point out that the decline of print media is mostly an American and Western European phenomenon and in “Reinventing the Newspaper” they examine the new business models that “are proliferating as news organizations search for novel sources of revenue.”

“The People Formerly Known as the Audience” looks at the rise of social media and the impact they have on the news business. “The Foxification of News” partly bemoans and partly celebrates the ideological compartmentalization of the news business.”

A few thoughts. The series makes several references to Arianna Huffington but none of the proprietor and editor of this site. This is unfortunate not because she’s a liberal and Andrew Breitbart and Mike Flynn are conservative/libertarians. Rather, failing to explore what Andrew and his team have accomplished in terms of breaking real stories represents a missed opportunity. Taking nothing away from Ms. Huffington’s tremendous accomplishment, her website is really a highly SEO-ed liberal celebrity site with some reporting, most of it horribly biased, some of it good. Andrew and Mike have moved the needle on key stories and have forced “real reporters” to follow their lead.

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It seems Arianna Huffington has something in common with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: They’ve both incurred the wrath of the Left. You may remember barely a month ago when, following Arianna Huffington’s $315 million sale of her website to AOL, a group of unpaid artists demanded their “fair share” of the pie. Arianna refused to negotiate—wouldn’t budge, in fact—so, the artists went on strike. Shortly afterward, the Writers Guild (an affiliate of the Communications Workers of America) called on the (paid and unpaid) writers and bloggers at Huffington Post to honor the e-picket line by withholding their work.

Well, the e-strike Huffington Post has failed—miserably.  Progressive bloggers have refused to honor their union brethren’s picket line. Apparently, “solidarity(!)” only goes so far outside of Madison’s city limits, which Ms. Huffington clearly knew when she dared progs to follow the union’s lead and honor the e-picketline:

“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”

At first, it seemed as though Huffington and her fellow capitalists corporate heads had the union and the unpaid bloggers beat. However, on Tuesday, the unpaid bloggers did something that so many Americans do when they feel aggrieved…they filed a lawsuit. (more…)

Try to remember how you felt on the days after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. I remember our country experiencing something close to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. Except instead of “acceptance” being the final stage,  our nation swelled with an enormous sense of patriotism and resolve best represented by the bi-partisan members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, President George W. Bush’s rallying rescue workers on a pile of rubble, and flags being flown on almost every porch in America. Do you remember those days and those feelings? Now, ask yourself:  What kind of person would instead take the occasion of the day after the attack to lead a rally condemning America and holding the terrorist murderers up as martyred heroes?

Van Jones is that kind of person.

In a recently discovered video, the former White House appointee and current hero of the liberal elite and de-facto Huffington Post/AOL editorial director is seen telling the adoring crowd,  “It’s the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders.”  He said this after a whole host of speakers from the radical fringe fringe denounced our country and her policies and hijacked the tragedy to justify unloading a laundry list of cliched, left-wing reasons to blame America for the acts perpetrated by radical Islamist totalitarian terrorists.

Remember, this rally was taking place while the bodies of 3,000 Americans were still smoldering in the rubble of the World Trade Center and American heroes were putting their lives at risk at ground zero in a massive humanitarian effort.  What kind of monsters would use this occasion to turn Americans against one another?

It’s no wonder that this man is embraced and honored by groups like the once-relevant, now-radical NAACP and was given the high honor of holding a Presidential appointment in the first year of the Obama Presidency.  He speaks the revolutionary “blame America first” rhetoric of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Malik Zulu Shabazz.

What is curious and confounding is that a major corporation like AOL is allowing a person with this kind of record to influence the content of their influential website through the intimidation tactics of Color Of Change, the anti-free speech organization he founded.

In light of this latest video revelation, Mr. Jones needs to finally explain, fully, his position on 9/11. Was it American bombs that caused the World Trade Center to fall as he suggested at this rally? Was the American government behind the attack as he once signed a petition purporting? Does he agree with his co-speaker that evening that the terrorist murderers were “heroes” or does he condemn that hateful rhetoric?

And finally, what is the AOL/HuffPo’s position on Mr. Jones’ contribution to their site?  Does his hateful attack on America rise to their new editorial standard used against me?

Take a moment and sign our petition demanding that the Huffington Post not buckle under to the intimidation tactics of this man and the anti-free speech organization he founded. Make your voice heard. Speak truth to power.

Addendum:  The video discussed in this post was originally posted by BizzyBlog in September, 2009.  It was reported on at the time by PowerLine.

It’s taken a long time, but Huffington Post/AOL founder Arianna Huffington and Huffington Post/AOL editor Roy Sekoff have finally acknowledged that I am not a racist–despite the popular left wing website’s campaign to frame me as one.

From a letter crafted by Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff to the Daily Caller:

…I want to make it as clear as possible that neither I nor Arianna believe that Andrew Breitbart is a racist. If we did believe that, we never would have allowed him to blog on HuffPost — let alone featured him on our front page.

I am grateful for Huffington and Sekoff’s true courage to go against many of their partisan bloggers and ideological editors, many of whom threatened to quit if I wasn’t ousted from its “progressive” waters.

For the last six months the Huffington Post, recently purchased by AOL for $315 million, has been running a vengeful propaganda campaign led by a far left wing anti-free speech organization called “Color of Change,” created by former Obama White House “green czar” Van Jones – whose resignation was sealed, to a great degree, by facts revealed in reporting at one of my websites. (more…)

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Friday’s unemployment numbers, Super Bowl ads, and AOL’s purchase of the Huffington Post.

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:

U.S. jobless rate drops, but experts question how many actually found jobs
Money Matters: Deciphering Bureau of Labor unemployment statistics
AOL to Acquire Huffington Post
Who Will Profit From AOL’s Deal for Huffington Post?
LEAKED: AOL’s Master Plan
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It was only a matter of time before the nutroots at Huffington Post would resort to desperation and utter ridiculousness in their frenzied Bush-bashing; behold, the unintentionally comical headline atop Huffington Post:

Before we go into the nitty gritty, can I just note the delicious irony of a website of repeatedly accused plagiarist like Arianna Huffington – who settled out of court for, what else, plagiarism! – falsely accusing another of plagiarism? Remember this?

Seemingly plagiarizing Larry King transcripts so she could crow about having a Clooney byline. The result was an embarrassing smackdown from an A-list celebrity and loss of credibility.

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UPDATED***

The left is afraid of the election of Marco Rubio as Senator of Florida in the exact same way as they were afraid of Sarah Palin when she was chosen as the Vice Presidential nominee by John McCain. It has been clear from the beginning that both are ascendant as potential game-changing political stars and need to be destroyed. So it’s no surprise that Arianna Huffington tweeted the following:
The reason why so few Senators are chosen as Presidential nominees is that the job is not an executive position; Governors tend to be preferable because they have executive experience. Rubio was just elected to to vote “yes” or “no” on things, which is why Arianna’s analogy of “dictator” is incomprehensible and utterly unrelated to his leadership position. There is nothing dictator-like about a Senator. So what exactly was the Queen of social news media’s tweet really about? (more…)

Jon Stewart’s October 30th bout of rally envy—despite the comedian’s rickety attempts to disavow the patently invidious nature of the convocation—was hubristically (not to mention wishfully) titled “Restoring Sanity.” (Because of its obvious facetiousness, the Colbertian “Restoring Fear” portion of the event deserves no mention here.)

The danger of Stewart’s shedding his Daily Show mask of irony and becoming a full-fledged, Obama-style community-organizing activist is that in officially adopting the views of one political party over another, he devalues the only currency of the satirist—impartiality. Because human folly is an equal opportunity character flaw, the successful satirist must not take sides. He must be able to sling arrows in all directions, else the only thing he has to peddle—the precious honesty of his criticism—is called into question. A satirist who exposes the foibles of one political party and excuses those of the other is as useful as a bus that only goes in one direction. The bus company itself would soon also only go in one direction—out of business.

Those (I suspect Mr. Stewart is among them) who claim that the “Restoring Rally” was apolitical—just  a modern-day Woodstock with shorter hair and fewer hallucinogens, a Peace Train plea for reason and temperance—are either dupes or practitioners of a cunning form of political artifice.

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In response to the announcement that I would provide my analysis on ABC News from Arizona on election night, like-clockwork, from the George Soros-funded Media Matters to Keith Olbermann to Huffington Post to Daily Kos to Talking Points Memo to Twitter (#boycottABCNEWS), the institutional left began on Friday to inundate ABC News with a wave of partisan objections and unfounded allegations against me.

Make no mistake: this is a calculated “astroturf“ intimidation campaign by the well-funded and frightened-for-their-political-lives institutional left to quash dissenting voices. It’s what they do.

What was ABC News’ response?  Not standing up for free speech and the 1^st Amendment.  Not sticking by their original invitation.  Not standing up for diversity of opinion.

Instead, on Saturday, ABC News issued an official statement that was immediately heralded as a victory by the anti-free speech forces on the left:

Since conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart announced on his website that he was going to be a participant in ABC’s Town Hall meeting at Arizona State University, there has been considerable consternation and misinformation regarding my decision to ask him to participate in an election night Town Hall event for ABC News Digital. I want to explain what Mr. Breitbart’s role has always been as one of our guests at our digital town hall event:

Mr. Breitbart is not an ABC News analyst.

He is not an ABC News consultant.

He is not, in any way, affiliated with ABC News.

He is not being paid by ABC News.

He has not been asked to analyze the results of the election for ABC News.

Mr. Breitbart will not be a part of the ABC News broadcast coverage, anchored by Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos. For the broadcast coverage, David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg will contribute reaction and response gathered from the students and faculty of Arizona State University at an ABC News/Facebook town hall.

He has been invited as one of several guests, from a variety of different political persuasions, to engage with a live, studio audience that will be closely following the election results and participating in an online-only discussion and debate to be moderated by David Muir and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg on ABCNews.com and Facebook. We will have other guests, as well as a live studio audience and a large audience on ABCNews.com and Facebook, who can question the guests and the audience’s   opinions.

George Stephanoplous quickly tweeted, “Breitbart NOT on ABC network broadcast http://bit.ly/bgkseJ.” (more…)

A talk Before a Tea Party rally sponsored by the Cecil County (Md.) Patriots in Elkton, Md., 10/23/10

Twenty months ago, on February 19, 2009, business reporter Rick Santelli of CNBC took to the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to deliver his famous rant against government bail-outs, and call for “a Chicago tea party.”

Santelli may have sparked the Tea Party movement. But he only tapped into outrage that had been growing in many of us for decades.

For too long, you and I have watched helplessly as a clique of politicians, intellectuals, activists, and bureaucrats from both parties have tried to obliterate our Constitution, our capitalist system, and our personal liberty. This “bipartisan Ruling Class”—as scholar Angelo Codevilla describes it—sees itself as a moral, cultural, and intellectual elite. Codevilla says that “Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits.”

Oozing sanctimonious arrogance, viewing the rest of us as coarse, unsophisticated rubes who cling bitterly to guns and bibles, this class seeks to impose its own supposedly superior values and visions upon the rest of us, by force of law.

As we know too well, the ultimate goal of our Ruling Class is power. They exist—not to produce, not to invent, not to create—but to manipulate and master others. Ronald Reagan memorably summed up the Ruling Class’s governing outlook this way: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

By contrast, the rest of us Americans seek power over circumstances, but not over each other. We acquire our personal sense of identity and self-esteem through productive work—not through imposing our will, values, and visions on our neighbors. We accept a “live and let live” philosophy.

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Since the dawn of the financial crisis, author and investor Nassim Taleb has been a favorite of the Huff Post crowd. When Arianna Huffington guest-hosted CNBC’s Squawk Box last year, he was one of the few guests she brought on the show. Well, Taleb went up to Canada last week and gave a speech slamming Obama’s economic policies. Of course, he gave the speech in French. From Bloomberg:

U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration weakened the country’s economy by seeking to foster growth instead of paying down the federal debt, said Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan.”

“Obama did exactly the opposite of what should have been done,” Taleb said yesterday in Montreal in a speech as part of Canada’s Salon Speakers series. “He surrounded himself with people who exacerbated the problem. You have a person who has cancer and instead of removing the cancer, you give him tranquilizers. When you give tranquilizers to a cancer patient, they feel better but the cancer gets worse.”

Today, Taleb said, “total debt is higher than it was in 2008 and unemployment is worse.”

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Two of the most popular liberal news sites are calling for violence against Republicans for obstructing the radical agenda of President Barack Obama.

CNN and Huffington Post have each published op-eds this past week by regular contributors with headlines that explicitly call for Obama to use violent gangland tactics against his political opponents.

CNN published a column by Roland Martin on February 11 with the headline, Time for Obama to go ‘gangsta’ on GOP.

Martin concluded the article with a plea for Obama to emulate the violent tactics of the Prohibition-era Chicago mob boss Al Capone.

Obama’s critics keep blasting him for Chicago-style politics. So, fine. Channel your inner Al Capone and go gangsta against your foes. Let ‘em know that if they aren’t with you, they are against you, and will pay the price.

The Huffington Post followed-up with their own call for gangland violence against Republicans with the publication on February 14 of a column by David Bourgeois with the title, Obama Better Start Breaking Kneecaps.

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Arianna once again has her panties in a bunch, and I’m the libertarian brave enough to reach in and fix them.

Yes, it’ll drive Huffington into spastic frenzy.  But, this is not a reason to subsidize the minimum wage.  David Shuster will tunnel ever deeper into his rabbit hole of despair.  Sadly, neither is this a reason to subsidize the minimum wage.

Unemployment is somewhere between 6.3-17.3%, and that is why we need to allow small businesses to pay employees a couple bucks an hour and have unemployment make up the difference.

Don’t jump to conclusions here, please read my plan through.  This isn’t an off-the-wall proposal.  Republicans can reach across the aisle to Obama with an idea Paul Krugman himself supports.  Presenting this as a “no-cost jobs bill” and “free stimulus” is exactly the kind of reform judo conservatives need.

Overall, as Cato points out 6.3% – 17.3% of America is unemployed depending on your definition of unemployment.  In December 2009:

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From the Wall Street Journal:

The conservative Internet entrepreneur on bringing down Acorn, Hollywood liberals, and embarrassing the mainstream media.

By JAMES TARANTO

Hollywood

Dressing up as a pimp and prostitute in order to seek Acorn’s help in starting a child sex-slavery ring wasn’t Andrew Breitbart’s idea. But without the Internet entrepreneur’s flair for publicity, the hidden-camera sting might not have produced such impressive results. Within days of his publishing the video exposé, government agencies were cutting ties with the left-wing advocacy and community-organizing group, Congress was voting to end its federal funding, and news organizations were rushing to catch up with a sensational story they had initially resisted or ignored.

James O’Keefe, the 25-year-old aspiring filmmaker who played the pimp in the Acorn meetings, came to Mr. Breitbart in early August with his videos. They showed Mr. O’Keefe and his putative partner in crime, 20-year-old Hannah Giles, asking Acorn counselors for advice on how to evade the authorities while setting up a business offering the sexual services of underage girls smuggled into the U.S. from El Salvador. It was a shocking and outlandish tale, but employees in at least five Acorn offices fell for it and offered to help. (more…)

President Obama recently reiterated his plan to fix the regulation of Wall Street and said it was time to “put an end to the idea that some firms are too big to fail.”

Amen.

But the president doesn’t need a new law or a new oversight committee, like the one he proposes, to end the concept of too big to fail.  He could, and should, simply make a speech declaring that from this day forward, any company, no matter how big or small, will be allowed to fail. If Bank of America or AIG or Chrysler goes bankrupt, so be it. Obama should unequivocally proclaim, “There will be no more bailouts. Period.”

If given, that kind of speech would surely be the most popular thing Obama’s done since becoming president. Arianna Huffington and other liberals angry that ‘crony’ capitalists are getting corporate welfare would love it. Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, and fiscal conservatives who truly opposed President Bush’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program bailout would love it. Libertarians and independents would be ecstatic to see the end of a system that protects—and even rewards—businesses that make bad decisions. (Only Wall Street firms enjoying the taxpayer safety net would be upset.)

Unfortunately, while Obama hints at ending “too big to fail” policies, his financial reforms actually continue to encourage the reckless financial behavior that helped get us into this mess.

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We haven’t heard the last of Van Jones.

Arianna Huffington was kind enough to allow her good friend who happens to have been a former campaign manager from her California gubernatorial run to post his preliminary reflections on being unceremoniously booted from the Obama administration on the Huffington Post.

It’s the least she could do.

Jones is President Obama’s former green jobs czar.

He believes the Bush administration caused the 9/11 terrorist attacks to happen. He also denounced the United States on Sept. 12, 2001 blaming America for the atrocities the day before. He also mourned the deaths of the people killed in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center but only the ones who were working class.

In what will no doubt find its way into the memoirs he might be contemplating writing, Jones compares himself to Winston Churchill, which is odd for many reasons but especially because of the apparent contempt that President Obama holds for the late great British prime minister.

With all the modesty one has come to expect from a community organizer, Jones writes

Of course, some supporters actually think I will be more effective on the “outside.” Maybe so. But those ideas always remind me of that old canard about Winston Churchill. After he lost a hard-fought election, a friend told him: “Winston, this really is just a blessing in disguise.” Churchill quipped: “Damned good disguise.” I can certainly relate to that sentiment right now. [emoticon in original]

He likens himself to the wrong Churchill.

Van Jones is more like Ward Churchill.

From Mediaite.com:

Andrew Breitbart’s new political blog, Big Government, launched with a splash today, thanks to an investigative piece on ACORN. Could Breitbart, who worked as a researcher for Arianna Huffington back in the day, be following in her footsteps as an opinion blog rainmaker with a powerful one-stop shop?

Big Government got off to a big start today. Its main story was an undercover video taken by filmmaker James O’Keefe of what purported to be an ACORN worker advising a fake ‘pimp’ and his ‘prostitute’ how to avoid taxes and prosecution. ACORN, for its part, has condemned the video as “gotcha journalism” and demanded to see the full tape for proof that it wasn’t misleadingly edited. As of 1:50 pm, there have been 3 posts about ACORN, one introductory post, and one post about health care — a little slow, but the ACORN bit is probably enough to give the site a good first day.

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