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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson is joined by Josh Treviño to the violent struggle between the drug cartels and the Mexican government, how Mexico’s economy has reduce immigrants to the US, and how the GOP can appeal to Hispanic voters.

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.

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Attorney General Eric Holder Set to Take Hot Seat at Fast and Furious Hearing
Mexican drug cartel crackdown has cost 47,000 lives in 5 years
Guillermo Martinez: Jeb, Rubio seek to soften GOP stance on immigration
Democrats Face Decades in the Wilderness
Joshua Treviño at TPPF

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A well-connected company with close ties to a key Obama Administration official may be running afoul of the SEC by failing to report to its investors material events that significantly impact its bottom line. Just another day in Barack Obama’s Washington, DC “favor factory.”

Capital Confidential has in the past covered the saga of PharmAthene, a company that produces “medical countermeasures to biological and chemical weapons” and its great fortune to have been awarded the sole-source contract from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). We have also learned that the firm has very close ties to Tara O’Toole, the Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary for Science and Technology, who, as it happens, was once a lobbyist for an industry association that is essentially funded and run by PharmAthene.

All this has been covered and, to be cynically frank, is somewhat familiar behavior from Washington, DC. But what is not so familiar (though it is becoming more so every week) is for well-heeled companies who essentially exist due only to government contracts, connections, loans or bailouts to play fast and loose with laws and regulations designed to protect taxpayers and investors. And here is where PharmAthene reenters the picture.

PharmAthene is publicly traded (NYSE amex: PIP) and therefore has an obligation to publicly disclose material events that might reasonably be expected to affect the company’s stock price. Nevertheless, important pieces of information are missing from recent press releases issued by PharmAthene and posted to the Investor Relations section of its website; information that the company had included in previous releases.

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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)released a study telling Americans if they want a raise, they should go work for the federal government, because federal workers are compensated much better than those in the private sector. The CBO did an apples to apples comparison of federal and private sector employee salaries and benefits from 2005-2010. The compared workers who were similar in the following characteristics:

• Level of education
• Years of work experience a
• Occupation
• Employer’s size,
• Geographic location (region of the country and urban or rural location)
• Demographic characteristics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, immigration status, and citizenship).

…and what they found was staggering.

Salary:

• Federal civilian workers with no more than a high school education earned about 21 percent more, on average, than similar workers in the private sector.

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Democrats controlled all three branches of government for the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency and did nothing to advance congressional insider trading reform. Indeed, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have been cited as among Congress’s worst abusers of using nonpublic information to influence their private stock trades. And until his State of the Union speech last week, President Obama had said nothing publicly about the issue–ever.

But now, in the wake of Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer’s blockbuster bestselling insider trading expose, Throw Them All Out, and the 60 Minutes report the book sparked, Mr. Obama and his campaign team have begun co-opting the insider trading issue, first in Mr. Obama’s State of the Union speech and now in a new campaign email blasting House Republicans for inaction on the issue and praising the Democratic leadership of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in the Senate.

The Obama-Biden email, with a subject line titled “This isn’t already illegal? Email from O’camp,” reads:

Right now, members of Congress can make personal investment decisions based on confidential information they get in the course of regulating industries and doing their work.

It’s kind of unbelievable that this isn’t already illegal. President Obama wants to make it illegal once and for all — no one should profit from inside information about the very businesses they’re supposed to be regulating.

Today, the Democratic leadership in the Senate voted to move forward on a bill to extend to Congress the same strict rules that apply to anyone else whose job gives them access to sensitive information about businesses. This legislation is expected to pass the Senate with bipartisan support later this week.

But Republicans in the House have yet to move on it.

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Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has opened a double-digit lead in Florida as the perception grows among Republican primary voters that he is the strongest general election candidate against President Obama. The state’s GOP Primary is on Tuesday.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Florida Republican Primary Voters, conducted Saturday, shows Romney up by 16 points with 44% support. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is a distant second at 28%.

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Over the last three years, the number of Americans on food stamps has skyrocketed by two-thirds and stands at a record-high 46 million citizens, or one out of every seven people in the United States.  Despite the historic rise in food stamp use, however, the Obama Administration believes not enough people are receiving food stamps who should be and is offering $75,000 grants to groups who devise “effective strategies” to “increase program participation” among those who have yet to sign up.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website singles out Hispanics and elderly Americans as groups who often fail to enroll in the food stamp program (officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) and says  that one of the contributing factors that must be overcome to get more people to sign up for SNAP benefits is individual “pride”:

There are many reasons why eligible people, including seniors and Hispanics, do not participate in the SNAP. These include unawareness of eligibility, confusion about program rules and requirements, a complex application process, and a lack of transportation and pride.

To reduce these “barriers” to food stamp enrollment, the Department of Agriculture offers non-profit groups the chance to receive $75,000 grants for projects designed to boost food stamp participation among those who are eligible but have yet to sign up.  The Department of Agriculture believes that the SNAP program is “severely underutilized” and says that 33 percent more Americans who are eligible to receive food stamps have yet to apply, thus the need to offer federal grants to sign more citizens up.

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By now everyone has read news and commentary coverage of some of the most exciting debate moments in recent history: the exchange that took place between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney concerning Romneycare. And perhaps many of you, like me, watched the debate and saw the exchange as it happened. If you did, I’m guessing those among you who are conservative found yourselves cheering for Santorum as he took it to Romney on what is surely the most dangerous aspect of a possible Romney candidacy—Romneycare.

It’s dangerous for the reasons Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh have indicated  by predicting that Obama can’t wait to face Romney because Romney WILL NOT be able to go after Obamacare with any moral integrity. As soon as he brings it up Obama will just say: “All I know is that while you were Gov. in Massachusetts, you implemented the plan we followed in designing our Health Care reforms.” And that will end the debate on Obamacare.

Santorum proved this during the debate in Florida on Thursday night, by explaining that just as Obamacare requires everyone to buy health insurance or pay a fine to the government, so too Romneycare requires Massachusetts citizens to do the same or pay a fine to the state. In other words, both plans carry a personal mandate which forces citizens to buy healthcare (or pay a fine) whether they want to or not.  And when Romney responded to Santorum by saying he was proud of what they’d done in Massachusetts and the people of Massachusetts seemed happy with it too, Santorum offered a foretaste of the way Obama is going to take Romney apart on this issue. Said Santorum:

“What Gov. Romney just said is that government-run, top-down medicine is working pretty well in Massachusetts and he supports it. Now, think about what that means.”

Romney’s position here is simply indefensible, and although Santorum is the only one to call him out so clearly to this point, Santorum will certainly not be the last. And this is why Santorum kept saying, “We cannot give the issue of healthcare away in this election.” Dan Riehl made this point clear in his post on Big Government January 27, when he quoted Paul Begala as saying that on the issue of Romneycare v. Obamacare, “Mitt still doesn’t have a straight answer. Rick Santorum skillfully dissected Romney on the topic. If Romney is the GOP nominee, you can be sure Barack Obama will do the same.”

Which brings me to my central point: Namely, that for all the good Santorum did with his line of questions and his relentless regurgitation of the facts against Romney, he still passed on his chance to throw the knock-out punch.

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President Barack Obama has a problem, a problem much bigger than his plummeting poll numbers among black voters, the ever-worsening housing market, or the chronically high national unemployment numbers. Although these are all bad and must be weighing down on him—whether he admits it or not—they are minor compared to his deeper problem, which is his inability to handle criticism, his inability to handle the truth.

We first saw this when Obama was starting to run for president and he put reporters “on notice” regarding comments about the size of his ears. Since then we’ve seen it in the way he locks out reporters who ask hard questions and, most recently, in the way he appears to have lodged a complaint with Gov. Jan Brewer regarding her criticism of the way he has gone to war with Arizona to keep that state from defending its southern border.

If you’ll recall, in December 2006, after New York Times’ reporter Maureen Dowd had written about how Obama’s “ears stick out,” Obama tracked her down at a speaking engagement and said: “I just want to put you on notice. I’m very sensitive,” adding, “I was teased relentlessly when I was a kid about my big ears.” (Rush Limbaugh was then criticized for seizing on that comment and warning people that it demonstrated Obama’s skin was too thin for the rigors of the presidency. And in retrospect, Limbaugh was right.)

Perhaps you remember the April 2011 exchange that took place between Obama and Dallas news reporter Brad Watson, during an interview wherein Watson asked the president pointed, probing questions instead of the kind of light and fluffy stuff a CNN reporter asks when he or she gets the chance. For example, as the two sat face to face, Watson looked right at Obama and asked: “Why do you think you’re so unpopular in Texas?” And when Obama tried to make it look like he wasn’t that unpopular in Texas, saying he’d only lost in 2008 by a “few percentage points,” Watson countered: “Well, you lost by about 10%. 55 to 44.” And because Obama can’t handle criticism, he became noticeably bothered as the questions continued. When the short interview was over, an angry Obama whispered to Watson: “Let me finish my answers next time we do an interview.”

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President Obama’s plea to ban Congressional insider trading may poll well and have bipartisan support, but it’s already facing stiff resistance from lawmakers the morning after his State of the Union address.

On Tuesday night, the president spoke in no uncertain terms: “Send me a bill that bans insider trading by Members of Congress, and I will sign it tomorrow,” he said. “Let’s limit any elected official from owning stock in industries they impact.” The remarks were cause for celebration for Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer, who authored a 2011 book exposing Congressional insider trading, and 60 Minutes, which ran a widely-viewed segment based on his book (CBS quicklyuploaded the portion of the speech last night). But early reactions from Congress (Republicans and Democrats) shouldn’t encourage much optimism.

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When it was announced that Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniel’s would give the response to the State of the Union address, hopes were high that he might take it to Obama–that he might meet the rhetoric of class warfare with an exposition of free markets, personal responsibility, smaller government, etc. But instead, what we heard last night from Daniels was more class warfare aimed at the rich.

For example, after saying some good things, even some great things, about the debt President Obama’s reckless spending has put us in—“an unprecedented explosion of spending has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt”—Daniels went after the wealthy in this county in much the same way we’d expect Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid to do.

Consider the way he spoke of reviving Medicare and social security:

We must unite to save the safety net. Medicare and social security have served us well [and] we can preserve them unchanged and untouched for those in or near retirement, but we must fashion a new safety net so future Americans are protected too.

Decades ago we could afford to send millionaires pension checks and pay medical bills for even the wealthiest among us, now we can’t. So the dollars we have should be devoted to those who need them most.

Do you see that? According to Daniels, people who are wealthy shouldn’t receive social security “pension” checks or Medicare benefits. And what’s the difference between what Daniels is saying and what Obama says when he tells the wealthy to “pay their fair share”? It’s like Daniels took a page straight out of Class Warfare 101.

And what’s worse, Daniels is completely overlooking the fact that “the wealthy” receive social security checks because they paid into social security: it’s not like they’re receiving checks for something they didn’t earn. So in a real sense, Daniels is saying that the money the wealthy paid into social security should go to others instead. It’s like a whole new entitlement.

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Barack Obama is no Lincoln

“[Barack Obama] didn’t get it right,” says Harry V. Jaffa, professor emeritus of Claremont McKenna College, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and author of two influential books on Lincoln.

Jaffa was referring to this quotation from President Obama.

“I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

Professor Jaffa noted that this quotation leaves out a great deal. The 93-year-old Jaffa recited the full statement from Lincoln’s speech, “The Nature and Objects of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery” (July 1, 1854) by memory:

“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”

Notice the difference? The emphasis is on the need to have done, not on government doing the action. “That distinction was missing from his quotation,” Jaffa explains. Yet Obama has repeatedly invoked this misleading Lincoln quotation on both the campaign trail and during his presidency.

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When Obama was running for president in 2008, he promised to “fundamentally change America” – a phrase which lucid Americans took as meaning he was going to bring his leftist agenda to bear on us all. And if Obama has had any success as president, it’s certainly been his success in changing us fundamentally from a nation under law to a nation that often looks lawless. From a nation in which one feels secure into a nation in which more and more people are feeling that their security is in their own hands (literally). And this has led not only to record breaking gun sales since Obama’s election, but also to changes in state laws around the country to make it easier for law-abiding citizens to carry a handgun for their own protection.

As a result of this, Wisconsin, which was one of the few states to not have some form of concealed carry law within its borders, now has one thanks to their much maligned Republican legislature and Gov. Scott Walker. With the stroke of a pen in July of 2011, Walker made Wisconsin the 49th state in the union to allow the concealed carry of handguns. (Only Illinois, Obama’s old stomping ground, continues to deny its citizens this option right.)

And while I don’t want to take away from what Walker has accomplished in Wisconsin, during the last few years the momentum has shifted from seeking to allow licensed citizens to carry concealed handguns to allowing all citizens without a felony in their criminal record or mental health problems to carry concealed without a license or a permit. In other words, the growing push abroad is to recognize the 2nd Amendment as a sufficient permit for concealed carry and go from there.  After all, the 2nd Amendment does say we have the right not only to keep but also to bear arms.

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As Newt Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary upended all previously held notions surrounding the unfolding GOP primary race, a common and vocal narrative has become increasingly prevalent; namely, that while he excites the Republican base, Gingrich is an unelectable, personally unlikable candidate that will be trounced in the general election.

This notion is utterly false.

While it is certainly accurate that any of the four remaining candidates for the Republican nomination will provide a stark, and compelling, contrast to the failed policies of the Obama administration, it is Newt Gingrich who has of late tapped into a visceral chord of discontent that permeates throughout much of the nation.

And, contrary to the narrative promoting Gingrich’s un-electability, the anger and discontent felt throughout the nation is not relegated to the conservative base of the Republican party. Nearly every political demographic in the nation, left, right, and middle, is frustrated with the Obama administration’s failure to improve the economic health and overall condition of the country.

Right direction/wrong direction polls have consistently shown that more than three-quarters of the country feel as though the nation is on the wrong track. In a recent poll released by Rasmussen Reports, only 24% of American feel the country is headed in the right direction.

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After looking over GOP speeches from this primary cycle, especially those wherein Mitt Romney stated (and restated) his belief in man-made global warming, it occurred to me that many of his positions sound eerily familiar, if not strikingly similar, to those held by President Barack Obama. And after looking more closely, it was interesting to set statements from the two side by side and see how little difference there actually is between them on environmental issues.

First of all, as I alluded to above, they both believe in man-made global warming. For example, during the 2008 president debates Obama said, “I think that the climate change issue is the most serious environmental issue that we face.” And in between the time he was elected president in November 2008 and the time he was sworn into office in January 2009, he voiced his belief that man-made global warming was taking a serious toll on the earth:

Few challenges facing America – and the world – are more urgent than combating global climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coast lines are shrinking. We’ve seen record drought spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season.

When Romney gave a speech in New Hampshire this past summer, he made clear his belief in man-made global warming as well:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that.

While we know empirically that Obama’s belief in global warming translated into a pursuit of cap-and-trade policies, green jobs, electric cars (that catch on fire), and what is quickly becoming an energy disaster for our country, it’s important to note that Romney also wants to act on his global warming convictions. As he said in New Hampshire: “I think it’s important for us to reduce our emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.”

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the iPhone’s manufacturing process, why it can only be done in China, and the reasons technology manufacturing will never return to America.

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:

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
Apple’s results hinge on the iPhone question
Making It in America

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Labor union membership continues to be blind to the fact that the support of its “leadership” to President Obama and his political allies is coming at the cost of the members. Big Labor bosses and their political allies are happy to continue to throw the membership under the bus for their own personal gain. For President Obama, this is the prospect of re-election; for the labor bosses, this is the survival of their “way of life.” This can be seen through the President’s actions and comments over the past three years.

Early in his presidency, President Obama made disparaging remarks about business owners whose companies had corporate jets. This was done in a blatant attempt to incite class warfare, despite the fact that the country was in a deep recession. By his words, the President willingly sacrificed the jobs of the very people who supported him through union dues. He knew the liberal media would not expose the tragic result his words would have on the private jet and airplane manufacturing industry.

In Wichita, Kansas, the home of private aircraft manufacturing has suffered tremendously, as thousands of union employees employed by Cessna and Beechcraft have been laid off, not to mention the thousands of jobs affiliated with general aviation lost across the country including manufacturers, part suppliers, fuel, pilots, mechanics, FBO services and insurance providers. Additionally, due to the loss of significant sales, use, income environmental and aviation tax revenues, thousands of local, state and federal employee positions, many of which were union jobs, have disappeared.

Adding insult to injury now the White House Defends User Fees of $100/flight on general aviation and corporate aviation to raise revenues in Obama’s continued class warfare and redistribution of wealth scheme in his effort to bring down America. Ironically this will cost more jobs, many of them union, as revenues ultimately will be reduced as fewer aircraft are purchased and general aviation travel is curtailed due to the added expense. The vicious cycle will continue to perpetuate itself at the expense of American jobs!

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Less than a week after ABC released (and Drudge essentially spoiled) the story that we were told could “end [Newt Gingrich's] career,” the former Speaker came from behind to win the South Carolina primary by a startling 13%.  Not only did South Carolina voters ignore the latest unverifiable mainstream media report on the private life of a Republican candidate—a report that was specifically timed to inflict maximum damage—many of them likely voted for Gingrich to spite the MSM.  Exit polling suggests that Newt’s entire margin of victory was comprised of South Carolinians who decided on their candidate near or on primary day, i.e. after ABC’s story had leaked.  Those who decided after the CNN debate in which Gingrich embarrassed CNN’s John King for his liberal bias voted solidly for Newt.

Conventional wisdom is that debates don’t decide nominations, but that notion is as antiquated as the paper route. This is, after all, the media age.  It’s the era of YouTube, Twitter, and the 24-hour news network.  Fear the candidate who can beat the media at their own game, and right now, that candidate is Newt Gingrich.

Their imperfect track-records aside, the former speaker has been able to distinguish himself from Governor Romney in two crucial ways.  The first difference is in who, or what, they are campaigning against.  The foundation of Mitt Romney’s campaign is keeping a narrow focus on Barack Obama.  This isn’t a bad strategy, per se, but it doesn’t comprehensively address the problems we are facing as a society.  After all, Barack Obama is a product of the American left.  He was raised in academia, sold to us by Hollywood, and elected by the mainstream media.  The President is the tip of the iceberg, and the Republican candidate should understand that Obama is a symptom of what ails us, not the cause. (more…)

After three years of criticizing President Barack Obama’s anti-Israel policies, and a special election in New York last September during which he supported the Republican candidate, former Mayor Ed Koch has once again decided to be an advocate for Obama in the Jewish community–without any clear changes in Obama’s positions.

This is not Koch’s first such reversal. During the 2008 Democratic Party primary season, Koch had worried that a Barack Obama would not be a friend to Israel:

Hillary recently attempted to warn Iran that were it to launch nuclear weapons against Israel, the U.S. “would be able to totally obliterate them.” Hillary’s comments were totally in keeping with the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction which kept the Soviet Union at bay during the Cold War when it threatened its European neighbors and members of NATO.

Instead of joining Hillary in a similar warning to Iran, Senator Obama on “Meet The Press” criticized Hillary stating, “It’s language reflective of George Bush…This kind of language is not helpful.”

Koch concluded:

We now know just how far Senator Obama is prepared to go to defend our friends and allies. It is not far enough.

Just four months later, without any change in Obama’s positions, Koch endorsed Barack Obama.

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Nevadans are probably wondering why their own Attorney General, Catherine Cortez Masto is prosecuting corrupt lenders for the fraudulent act of robo-signing, but U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is not.

In fact, millions of Americans, particularly those who are being foreclosed upon are probably wondering the same thing since the Obama administration decided in October to forego criminal charges against Bank of America, JPMorgan, Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Ally Financial in exchange for a $25 billion civil settlement.

But new information reported by Reuters today implies that Holder and other top Justice Department officials may be restraining themselves because their former Washington, D.C. white-shoe employer, Covington & Burling, which represented many of the big banks getting a break.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Holder has resisted calls for a criminal investigation since October 2010, when evidence of widespread “robo-signing” first surfaced. That involved mortgage servicer employees falsely signing and swearing to massive numbers of affidavits and other foreclosure documents that they had never read or checked for accuracy.

Covington has maintained a suspicious reputation within the District of Columbia for several years because of its close relationship with former Mayor Adrian Fenty, and his controversial appointment of a top Covington lawyer to the position of D.C. Attorney General.

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