What started as a conversation on Facebook between two St.Louisans, Craig Schneider and Tom Appelbaum, sparked into the first “Welcome Home” Parade for U.S. troops after leaving operations in Iraq. Veterans and those supporting them traveled from all over the country to show their thanks and welcome them home.

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

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

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

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

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The untold story of the Obama Administration’s widely reported, $335 million discrimination settlement with Countrywide Financial Corporation is that, under a secret Justice Department program, a chunk of the money won’t go to the “victims” but rather leftist groups not connected to the lawsuit.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) will determine which “qualified organizations” get leftover settlement cash and Democrat-tied groups like the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the open-borders National Council of La Raza (NCLR) stand to get large sums based on the hastily arranged deal which got court approval in just a few days.

Judicial Watch has investigated this controversial arrangement and in 2010 sued the DOJ to obtain information about the policy directing big portions of cash settlements from its civil rights lawsuits to organizations not officially connected to the cases. In response to JW’s lawsuit, the DOJ was forced to acknowledge that it has no official guidelines regarding “qualified organizations” that get leftover settlement funds and that it doesn’t monitor how the money is used.

In the Countrywide case, details of the unscrupulous arrangement are buried deep (page 10 of the 17-page settlement) in the court document where Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial Corporation agrees to pay to resolve allegations that it discriminated against qualified black and Hispanic borrowers. The lender denies all of the charges, but wanted to end the case and caved into the government’s terms.

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Congressional hucksters sold last year’s “Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act” as a pro-consumer effort to prevent future big bank bail-outs. The good news, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, is that Dodd-Frank expanded big government payrolls by nearly 3,000 new positions and seven new agencies. The bad news is the bill has destroyed 130,000 private sector jobs, will cost consumers $11 billion in fees, and is doing a fine job of creating a new American bank crisis.

The U.S. House and Senate took only 21 days to pass the Dodd-Frank Act. And it was signed into law by the President on July 21, 2010 as the largest overhaul of banking in our nation’s history. The massively complex Act is 2,300 pages long and a masterful piece of crony capitalism, which explains why Congress passed the bill before anyone could actually read it.

The public was deeply concerned by the rushed passage and has never been in favor of the legislation. A recent poll by FTI Consulting found that only 12 percent of the public were satisfied with bill, while 54% were dissatisfied. A large majority, 66%, believes the act is insufficient to protect against future bailouts. These opinion polls are about to go from concerned to downright angry as the public begins to learn how much pain they will suffer.

I estimate that the Dodd-Frank Act will cost banks in the United States $22 billion annually. Approximately one third of those losses will come from the “Durbin Amendment”, which was secretly inserted into the bill for the sole benefit of the merchandise retailing association. The language in the Act directs the Federal Reserve to set debit card swipe fees that “are reasonable and proportional to the cost incurred by the issuer.” Although this language looked innocent, it had the effect of cutting the $.44 per swipe fee banks receive to $.26 per swipe. When multiplied on the 180 million debit cards outstanding, the banks are required to transfer $7 billion of profit to the retailers. To survive crony meddling by Congress in their private industry affairs, the banks have no choice but to begin firing another 130,000 staff and directly charging consumers for their losses.

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Convicted bank fraudster Robert Creamer, who recently set up a nationwide political consultancy to boost Democrats’ 2012 campaigns, and who wrote the Democrats’ political strategy on health care from federal prison, is promoting efforts by Democrats and the #OccuptWallStreet protestors to single out Bank of America.

Bank of America has been a focus of the #Occupy demonstrations across the country. Last Thursday, in downtown Los Angeles, eleven #OccupyLA protestors were arrested after illegally occupying a Bank of America branch.

(The demonstration was filmed by Andrew Breitbart and myself; footage of the bank occupation appears at the beginning of the video below.)

Creamer, who is married to Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), went to prison in 2006 for bank fraud and tax evasion. That has not stopped him from demanding that Americans pay higher taxes and attacking Bank of America for introducing–as other banks have done–a monthy fee for debit card usage.

It is unknown how closely Creamer is involved in the #OccupyWallStreet movement, but he has visited lower Manhattan as the protests have unfolded, and has been promoting the demonstrations at his Huffington Post blog. (Schakowsky has described visiting the #OccupyWallStreet protest at the same time that Creamer was in Manhattan, and has claimed ignorance about “who’s organizing it or how.”)

Indeed, Creamer may be an important link between the fringe “community organizing” and anarchist groups behind the #Occupy protests, the unions that have joined the demonstrations, and the Democrats’ campaign to re-elect President Barack Obama. (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Benjamin Johnson:

Bad economic policies have consequences. Senator Dick Durbin thought the big, greedy banks were making too much money and regulated their profits.  Our President, eager to jump on the ‘Government Knows Best’ bandwagon offered his support and signature to the Dodd-Frank Bill. Accuracy in Media teamed up with Let Freedom Ring to find out what happens when banks are forced to comply with government price controls. Just as predicted, the customer gets a shake down.

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From Reuters:

Employers announced 115,730 planned job cuts last month, more than double August’s total of 51,114, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The figure was the highest since April 2009 when 132,590 layoffs were announced.

September’s job cuts were also much higher than the same time a year ago, tripling from the 37,151 job cuts announced in September 2010. For 2011 so far, employers have announced 479,064 cuts, up 16.5 percent from the first nine months of 2010.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss Hurricane Irene, Warren Buffett’s mysteriously timed investment in Bank of America, and the Fed meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

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:

Track Hurricane Irene on Stormpulse
Berkshire Hathaway Invests $5 Billion in Bank of America
Obama talks to corporate titans on economy
Buffett to Host Obama Fundraiser in New York
Economic Growth Slows to Crawl, GDP Increase at 1%
What Do Markets Expect From Jackson Hole? (more…)

Nobody ever said all the criminal street thugs at ACORN were bright.

The left-wing astroturfers of ACORN’s new front group in California, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), were behind a garbage-dumping stunt at a branch of Wells Fargo bank in San Jose, Calif.

News reports consistently depict the players as angry homeowners who spontaneously erupted in a spasm of righteous indignation.

As if.

These “homeowners” were reportedly unhappy about the upkeep at a foreclosed property they thought Wells Fargo was responsible for so they decided to dump uncollected garbage at the bank. The problem is that while Wells Fargo is listed as a trustee for the property, it is actually owned by Bank of America, a longtime ACORN ally. (In recent years Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc. has given $5 million to the mortgage bubble generators at ACORN Housing Corp.)

In a still from a TV news report on ACORN’s act of political theater (shown above) an angry protester can be seen holding a sign that reads: “MAKE THE BANKS PAY! ACCE.” (Full video is here.)

Whoops.

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Patent Reform legislation is being championed in Congress by liberal Pat Leahy (D-VT) in the Senate and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) in the House. Its disturbing that Smith seems to have gone native – going so far as to write editorials with Leahy – the man who savaged Clarence Thomas and dozens of conservative judicial nominees before his committee.

There is nothing conservative about Patent Reform and Leahy knows it. Too bad Smith doesn’t. In fact, Smith is pushing the House to vote on Leahy’s bill this week.

The legislation is a direct affront to American constitutional values and precedents, violates the Constitution and contains massive giveaways to big banks and the other Wall Street finance companies – each of them TARP recipients.

The House Leadership – flush with corporate cash – appears willing to turn their back on Tea Party principles in order to reward their K-Street benefactors.  The legislation has some stalwart conservative opponents but some Republican Study Committee members appear to be sitting on their hands – or worse.

HR 1239 Turns American Patent Law into European Patent Law

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From Reboot Congress:

MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) and other leftists held meetings in 2010 to plan their strategy for squatting on properties in the St. Louis area. The video above introduces some of their leaders. A future video will outline MORE’s longterm strategy to acquire residential property through extralegal means like squatting.

Who or what is MORE, you may be wondering. When ACORN was put out of business, the local chapters re-branded themselves. St. Louis’s ACORN chapter became MORE. Even after the re-branding MORE still has ties to communist organizations.

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It took two years, a lawsuit and a ruling from a federal judge, but Judicial Watch finally got hold of a batch of documents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) related to the Citigroup and Bank of America bailouts. (The FOIA lawsuit, you may recall, was filed on behalf of former Federal Reserve and FDIC employee Vern McKinley.)

Specifically, we received the unredacted minutes from FDIC Board meetings during which FDIC officials and staff discussed the rationale for the bailouts which centered on the “systemic risk” of allowing the two financial institutions to fail.

We also received never-before-seen documents regarding the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program, which guaranteed unsecured debt of private financial institutions and provided them “full coverage of non-interest bearing [sic] deposit transaction accounts, regardless of dollar amount.”

Here are the highlights:

• FDIC Board Meeting Minutes from approval of Citigroup bailout (November 23, 2008):According to the minutes from the meeting, government officials described in vague terms the consequences of allowing Citigroup to fail, including “the effects on money market liquidity could be expected on a global basis,” “term funding markets remain under considerable stress” and the fact that it would “significantly undermine business and household confidence.” One FDIC Board member who was in attendance, John Reich, cautioned Federal bank regulators and the Treasury Department to “avoid ‘selective creativity’ in determining what constitutes systemic risk and what does not and what is possible for the government to do and what is not.”
• FDIC Board Meeting Minutes from approval of Bank of America bailout (January 15, 2009):According to the meeting minutes, Sheila Bair, Chairman of the Board of the FDIC, admitted the agency “was relying on data analysis by the Federal Reserve” and for that reason the FDIC “very much needs to proceed with a systemic risk determination with respect to [Bank of America].” Chairman Bair characterized the decision to bail out Bank of America as demonstrating that the FDIC, an independent agency, was a “team player along with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to prove the systemic risk case.” (Translation: Treasury and the Fed really want this so we have no choice but to go along.)

Incidentally, these meeting minutes are consistent with a separate report by the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program released on January 13, 2011.

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On December 23, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia denied a motion by the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) to dismiss a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed on behalf of our client, former FDIC employee Vern McKinley.

Actually, U.S. District Court Judge Emmett G. Sullivan did more than deny the motion to dismiss.  He also granted, in part, Judicial Watch’s motion for summary judgment and criticized the FDIC by saying the agency “has not fulfilled its obligations under FOIA.”  Now the FDIC must conduct a new search for responsive records and demonstrate that the records have been provided or properly withheld under FOIA law.

This lawsuit, filed on March 15, 2010, is one of several we’ve filed on behalf of Mr. McKinley.  (You can find them all here.)  And all of these lawsuits have a similar purpose:  to determine under what legal authorities and lawful rationales the federal government initiated these massive financial bailouts.

In this case we’re seeking records related to the FDIC’s decision to guarantee $306 billion of loans and securities held by Citigroup, Inc., and $118 billion held by Bank of America.  The lawsuit also seeks information about the Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program (TLGP), the FDIC program that now guarantees $394 billion in bank deposits and debt.

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Organizing for America (formerly known as Obama for America) is the new organized group that President Obama is using to push his agenda on America. This group is so well organized it makes you wonder if President Obama should have hired the people who run it to take care of the BP oil spill.

This group has two functions:  First is to push and promote Obama’s political agendas and bills from DC by delivering talking points through various mediums (My Barack Obama, Fight The Smears, and twitter.com/barackobama).  The second is to create a pool of volunteers for the DNC to use to influence local and national elections in November.

The latest string of emails sent out by OFA have been talking points about renewable energy and the BP oils pill. The latest of these solicitations had a video address embedded in an email from the President specifically asking for OFA’s support to “rebuild our nation’s economy on a new foundation” of renewable energy.  He tells OFA members that we must “seize this moment,” to pass comprehensive energy reform or we will “miss our chance.”  It appears that President Obama would never say something like this in a Presidential address from the oval office but when it’s “just us,” he has no problem divulging his true agenda.

OFA started this election season with a 2010 online livestream strategy session.  It was a 40-minute webcast hosted by young adults in front of a live audience talking about what the President expected from activists this election cycle.  During the live webcast, users watching were put in a forum that was specific to their state and, in real time, were able to discuss strategies for local elections. (more…)

Unless you are brand new to the Blogosphere, you are very well aware of the thuggish protests organized by President Obama’s closest political and community-organizing allies, targeting Bank of America and its employees.

Potential motives for these actions have been examined, but there are a couple that we would like to add to the mix because they deserve some attention. Motives #1 and #2 have been covered on the Bigs, but motives #3 and #4 might be the most important.

Motive #1 – SEIU owes Bank of America $90 Million! – One of the organizers of this type of campaign owing nearly one hundred million dollars to the target of the action should offer deep context and insight as to motive.

Motive #2 – Shaking down the banking system for a Shorebank bailout – Known as the “community organizing bank,” this Chicago institution was facing total collapse, but around the same time as these bank protests, the very banks who were the targets of the hostile action made generous “contributions” to the dying leftist ATM known as Shorebank. You do the math.

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We hit the streets of Chicago to gauge people’s reaction to the recent street mob action style protests organized by long time Obama allies – National People’s Action (NPA), SEIU and Heather Tobis Booth.

Almost everyone we spoke with believes going to private home of a bank employee is deplorable.

Almost everyone we spoke with thinks politicians shouldn’t take money from or support groups that use mob tactics like this.

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If you haven’t read by now all the headlines on this story, you’ll want to start at the beginning and read the first post, SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec.  Because as each day passes, new facts are popping up.  The story seemed so outrageous at first.  After all, the thought of over 500 screaming and chanting protesters surrounding a Bank of America lawyer’s private residence while the man’s teenage son, home alone, hid frightened inside a bathroom – it’s just so extreme, even by SEIU’s standards.

I knew something was up when the following day, Fortune magazine editor Nina Easton, a neighbor of the targeted residence, published an account of the incident and was almost immediately attacked by what seemed like practically a coordinated dogpile of writers from several specific sources.

In almost mirror fashion to the Town Hall events last August, when both the Huffington Post and Media Matters seemingly tried to cover up and dismiss the violent acts that SEIU committed against Kenneth Gladney, the same players were again out in full force.  As our Larry O’Connor wrote, both outlets behaved less like journalists and more like arms of the SEIU press office, dismissing SEIU’s bad behavior and attacking an innocent party with fabricated conflicts of interest as a method of distraction and intimidation.

Bob Borosage, Erica Payne, and John Podesta

And now we learn this:  Erica Payne, the guest who was invited to appear Friday on Megyn Kelley’s Fox News show and proceeded to blame the Tea Parties for the behavior of SEIU?  She was co-founder of Democracy Alliance, the very organization that spawned and is a donor to Media Matters.  SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger is also the Vice-Chair of its Board.

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We’ve always known that there’s no equivocation a like leftist’s equivocation.  But this one has raised the bar (or do I mean lowered?).

Megyn Kelly interviewed Erica Payne on the thug-like tactics of SEIU this past Sunday as hundreds of them stormed the front door of Bank of America executive Greg Baer’s home.  Payne barely gets out a perfunctory condemnation of the mob tactics before she launched into a hilarious attempt at blaming the Tea Party activists as the root of the problem:

Yes, you saw right.  This is a laughable attempt at equating the organized and approved mob scene sponsored by the SEIU with one lone nut who posted a ridiculous and offensive suggestion on his blog in the wake of the health care vote.

And as she uses one side of her mouth to pretend to condemn this sort of behavior, she quickly uses the other side to throw more gasoline on the fire with class-warfare rhetorical talking points such as “300 billion dollars in bonuses”, “600 million dollars on lobbyists”, “They (the bankers) walk around in a bubble”.

Right up to the end she continues to dismiss the SEIU mob and tries to point back at the lone blogger who identifies himself with the Tea Party movement.  According to her she just wants to “make sure we realize we have problems on both sides of the political aisle”.

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The incredible reporting by my colleagues at Big Government and Big Journalism on the shameful demonstration of intimidation by SEIU President Mary Kay Henry and her purple-shirted thugs this past Sunday in Washington DC has brought to light so many revelations exposing the corrupt nature of this union and their bought and paid-for allies.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, protesting Bank of America, her union's biggest creditor

But one over-riding story has yet to be discussed.  And to me, it is the obvious one:  What have we come to when these kind of bullying tactics are allowed to occur in our society?

The plan to invade the neighborhood and storm the front door of the private residence of a bank executive to shame them or intimidate them into changing the bank’s policy must be denounced from all sides of the political spectrum.  What kind of America do these people want?

Do they really want to encourage this kind of disturbance of the peace and sanctity of an individual’s home merely as a means to a political end?  Is this a road we as a society are willing to go down?

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Alinsky Rule #12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Nina Easton just became the left’s latest target.  Why?  So that SEIU can hide from the truth about its financial liabilities to Bank of America (more on that after the jump).

Easton, a Washington Editor for Fortune Magazine, wrote a column early morning Wednesday, addressing the outrageous protest organized by SEIU and National People’s Action, where 700 protesters stormed the front lawn of the private residence of Greg Baer, deputy general counsel for corporate law at Bank of America.

As I wrote in my post yesterday, “SEIU Storms Private Residence, Terrorizes Teenage Son of Bank of America Exec,” Easton is actually a neighbor of Baer.  When she was startled by the loud, screaming, bullhorn-rattling protesters, she called Baer’s teenage son to check on him.  Home alone, the frightened teenager had locked himself in the bathroom.  After witnessing the entire incident as it unfolded on her neighbor’s private property, Easton criticized the SEIU and left wing groups in her article for crossing the line this time.

Alinsky’s Rule # 12 states,

“Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)”

In almost coordinated lock-step fashion, the 12^th Rule was promptly and firmly applied.  As Larry O’Connor posted on Big Journalism yesterday, a series of several posts soon followed the publication of Nina Easton’s article:

• Late Wednesday evening, John Vandeventer of SEIU posted “Nina Easton & the Bank Lobbyists: Too Close for Comfort” in response.  Conveniently, Vandeventer distracts readers by recounting the sob stories of foreclosure “victims”, then quickly focuses the attention on Easton and polarizes his target.  He proceeds to play a guilt by association game to tie her husband to Bank of America through Business Roundtable.  You can read my post from yesterday about that here.
• Then came Arthur Delaney’s piece from the Huffington Post, with the headline: “Nina Easton, Fortune Columnist, Compares Bank Protesters To ‘God Hates Fags’ Group.”  He ends his piece with a link to an open letter to Easton penned by Al Marshall, SEIU Local 1021 shop steward in Oakland, CA.  Marshall begins his letter by mentioning that he flew out to DC for the protest  from CA because “Wall Street caused” his wife to lose her job, and then him and his wife to lose their house.  (I’d like to know how he could possibly afford those plane tickets, in that case).  The whole tenor of the post is undoubtedly less jovial than his prior day’s, when he gleefully bragged about the whole event.
• And then, the much anticipated and expected Media Matters post: “Attacking SEIU, Nina Easton fails to disclose husband’s ties to Bank of America“.

Of all of the responses, not a single one of the posts actually addresses any of the issues. None will account for the fact that the protesters were on the private property of a private citizen, though Vandeventer tries to rationalize their actions as acceptable because the police supposedly followed the crowd to the location.  Then, he paints the picture that Baer is lurking in the crowd trying to blend in; rather, the man was trying to get to his front door without creating a scene so that he could get to his frightened son inside as quickly as possible.

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