Is it possible these days to be a new, active conservative running for Congress for the first time and not know who Andrew Breitbart is? Me, I’d reckon that an in-the-know, new candidate who claims to be conservative and a spokesman for Tea Partiers could not possibly be so isolated that he is unaware of conservative media-crusader Andrew Breitbart. But there is a candidate in Ohio who displayed right on his own campaign website just such a display of ignorance on Breitbartania, Breitbartism, or Breitbartness… whatever you want to call it, it just appears that this guy is stone-cold out of touch with the current conservative movement not to know thing one about Andrew Breitbart.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of 90-year-old, Brahmin conservatives who get flummoxed at “the Facebookings.” I am sure there still exist out-of-touch, elder statesmen of the movement that just haven’t caught up with those newfangled Internet tubes that our friend Al Gore created. I am sure that there are more than a handful of aged establishment types shaking their fist at the Fox News and those darn websheets positive that they’ll never catch on, just as they were sure rock-n-roll was a passing fad. But can you be an up and comer in the conservative movement and be wholly unaware of one of the newest icons of conservatives everywhere?

I am here at CPAC this week and just ran into Joe “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher who was telling me about his run for Congress in the 9th Congressional District. Joe made me aware of a hilarious little example of the abject cluelessness of his opponent. So let me introduce to you one Mr. Steve Kruas. Professional auctioneer actually licensed with the Ohio State Ag Department with well over 300 “successful” auctions under his belt. I guess you don’t need the Internets, talk radio and TV news shows to sell used farm equipment.

Anyhoo, the “strong fiscal conservative” is running in the 9th Congressional District GOP Primary against Wurzelbacher both of whom are vying to face Marcy Kaptur (D, OH) in the general election this year. Steve is a bit miffed that Joe isn’t giving him much notice at this point in the campaign.

Certainly, Kraus is happy to link himself with the Tea Party and even helped put on an event in Sandusky, Ohio where he set himself up as a spokesman for those venerable homegrown activists.

But it’s Kraus’ website where all the action is. There Kraus attacks Joe as a scurrilous sort of scoundrel. Why? Well, because Joe claims to be a limited government guy but he and all his friends work for BIG Government, darn it!

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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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Steve understands that while we’re trying to work our way out of this economic crisis, we have to hold the financial industry accountable to prevent the next one. That’s why Steve wrote a bill that would have taken back the bonuses paid to top executives at Wall Street firms – like AIG – that received federal bailout funds. (Source: Steve Israel For Congress Website)

Did you ever wonder where a self-proclaimed corporate raider and Occupy Wall Street supporter such as Congressman Steve Israel gets his campaign donations from?

According to Open Secrets, Israel has raised $1,581,081 for this election cycle (2011-2012), of which $15,790 comes from small donors, the “average Joe” like you and me.

Another $965,850 was raised from his top 100 donors, an all-star team of big labor and big business; many of those businesses from industries, which based on his committee assignments, Israel is supposed to be overseeing (including those Wall Street firms he talks about on his campaign site). The following takes a look at the donations to his reelection campaign and political action committee (PAC).

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The GOP Establishment we keep hearing about is real, and it is also doomed.

That will not change whether the Establishment’s candidate Mitt Romney wins in November or not.  After the election, the battle really starts; what is happening now are just skirmishes in a fight for control of the Republican Party.  Not the soul of the party – if it had one, it auctioned it off long ago – but the mechanism of the party.  The Grand Old Party matters only as a vehicle to carry our banner forward.

To do that, we need to seize control, and we do that by destroying the Establishment starting next November 7th.

Superficially, it might seem that we – the outsiders, the Tea Party, the conservatives, whatever the label – are outgunned by opponents with their hands on the reins of power, money in amounts we can’t hope to match, and pals in the media backing them.  But if we understand our strengths, and our opponents’ weaknesses, we can not only compete but eventually prevail.

First, let’s understand our opponent.

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Wednesday night, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed H.R.3567; The Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act of 2011; which makes it illegal to use an EBT card in a strip club, liquor store or casino. The concern began, shortly after welfare recipients were issued funds electronically through ATMs, when Welfare Reform passed in 1996. Since then there has been a disturbing trend of welfare not being spent on the things people think welfare should be spent on.

And I don’t understand that concern. It is the theory of most Democrats that giving money to people stimulates the economy. It should be of no concern to anyone whether that money is used to stimulate patrons of a strip club, liquor store owners, or casino magnates (who BTW are often HUGE political contributors).

The bill is almost completely futile. It won’t insure that welfare money is not spent at a strip club; it only means that the ATM at the gas station across the street from the strip club is going to see a lot more traffic.

This is just the kind of government bias, that gives legitimate business a bad name. Certainly those girls are working as hard as any SEIU employee; whose pensions were paid out of stimulus funds, while they protested in Wisconsin. Money spent on bikini wax, cover stick, and glittery lingerie will trickle down through the economy just like any other stimulus package.

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Bob Lutz is a good man.  A Swiss-born immigrant American success story.

He’s held big gigs at BMW and Ford.  He also worked way up the food chain at (now $85 billion bailed-out) Chrysler and General Motors (GM) – retiring as GM’s Vice Chairman in 2010.

And he has recently written a piece:

Chevy Volt And The Wrong-Headed Right

…in vociferous defense of the Chevy Volt.

You know, the more-than-$200,000 in government-subsidies-per-unit-sold Volt.

The overproduced, unprofitable, unpopular, combustible Volt.  (And January 2011’s sales were no less disappointing.)

That Chevy Volt.

Are we on the Right wrong-headed?  Let’s take Mr. Lutz’s piece piecemeal and see.

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It’s official.  Former Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who resigned in disgrace over a bizarre sexting scandal this past June, was NOT hacked.

Today, eight months after the congressman first claimed he was the victim of a hacking or a prank, the NY Daily News has broken the story that Anthony Weiner spent more than $13,000 in campaign funds to hire private investigators to track down a hacker that never existed.

Weiner paid T&M, a Manhattan-based firm, $13,290 for “legal services” in the fourth quarter of 2011, financial statements filed Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission reveal.

Sources told the Daily News, however, that Weiner hired T&M — a firm loaded with former NYPD sleuths — when he was in full spin mode over the controversy that eventually led to his resignation from the House.

[...]

Two sources familiar with Weiner’s downfall said the Queens pol told investigators the same story. T&M investigated — and learned Weiner had sent them on a fool’s errand.

“They did their job, and then it was time to sit down with lawyers,” another source said. “Self-denial, it dies a slow death.”

Surprised? No, neither were we.

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As Washington, D.C.’s Democrat-dominated government attempts to evict Occupy protestors from their McPherson Square encampment, only a few blocks from the White House, the protestors have found an unlikely ally: the U.S. Park Police (USPP).

The federal-municipal confrontation has sparked speculation that President Barack Obama is protecting the Occupy protestors from city administrators.

The Occupy activists, however, seem to believe otherwise.

Big Government headed into the heart of the snow-bound encampment for an exclusive on-site interview with an Occupy DC demonstrator who does not believe the USPP is acting on orders from the Obama administration.

The Occupy DC Encampment under Washington, D.C.'s first snowfall

The activists are familiar with the details of the political fight that began when the D.C. Mayor and the District Council wanted the Occupy sites finally shut down for health reasons, but USPP refused to do so in the name of the First Amendment.

The theory that the White House was pressuring USPP not to enforce District of Columbia statutes emerged Tuesday, January 24, during a Congressional hearing, when National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis fielded questions from Republican lawmakers.

U.S. Representatives were mystified as to why the USPP has not responded to District requests to finally shut down the encampment, and why the overnight sleeping ban in federal parks had not been enforced.

“Each of our First Amendment demonstrations (is) a little bit unique. And this one is, let’s say, unprecedented. The core of their First Amendment activity is that they occupy the site,” Jarvis told lawmakers. “We felt that going in right away and enforcing the regulations against camping could potentially incite a reaction on their part that would result in possible injury or property damage.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Aware that most Americans would like to dump them all, members of Congress hope to regain some sense of trust by subjecting themselves to tougher penalties for insider trading and requiring they disclose stock transactions within 30 days.

A procedural vote Monday would allow the Senate later this week to pass a bill prohibiting members of Congress from using nonpublic information for their own personal benefit or “tipping” others to inside information that they could trade on.

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As Newt Gingrich’s challenge to the anointment of Mitt Romney heats up, the newest line of attack against the erratic former Speaker by the Romneyites is not so much that Newt is unelectable – that’s assumed, and not unreasonably.  It’s that in November the voters will recoil in horror at the Republican presidential ticket, and that Newt will take the GOP’s hopes for the Senate down with him, leaving Obama in total control of the Republic.

There are plenty of problems with a Newt Gingrich nomination – most of them a direct result of Newt’s own antics – but the developing conventional wisdom that he will be toxic to Republican Senate chances may just be totally off-base.  In fact, a Newt nomination could be the best possible thing for winning a GOP Senate majority – ironically because of people who don’t think he has a chance in hell in the general election.

The GOP has great expectations for the Senate in 2012 – winning just four seats (five if Senator Kirk fails to recover from his recent stroke and the Democratic governor of Illinois appoints another Roland Burris as the replacement before his traditional indictment) will capture the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body from the clutches of Harry Reid and the Democrats.

With the Democrat party playing defense on many more at-risk seats, the percentages are in the GOP’s favor.  Moreover, many of the senators up for elections are “conservative Democrats,” which mean flaming liberals who talk a good game about being “fiscally conservative” and “moderate” back home in their blood-red states.  With the Obama economy especially painful in the middle of the country – the administration’s stimulus money disproportionately rewarded the urban and academic communities whose support Obama is unshakeable – it should be a cakewalk not only to grab the majority but press on toward the magic number of 60.

Enter Newt.

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I attended Wednesday’s 8:00am (8am?!?) House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing entitled:

Volt Vehicle Fire: What Did NHTSA Know And When Did They Know It?

The witnesses were killer:

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), Barack Obama-appointee Administrator David Strickland.

And General Motors (GM), Barack Obama-appointee CEO Dan Akerson.

The scope of the hearing was a bit too narrow – leaving out some fairly important attending facts.  Like, say, the (at least) five other Chevy Volt fires that have occurred besides the one being discussed.

This hearing was all about a single June Volt blaze.  The battery burst into flames about three weeks after a test crash at and by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA).

A fire about which Obama’s NHTSA did tell the Obama White House.

But a fire about which neither Obama’s NHTSA, the Obama Administration nor Obama’s GM told the American people for nearly six months – and then did so only when forced by a looming Bloomberg news story.

But:

The White House had no role in the decision to delay disclosure of a fire that broke out in a crash-tested Chevrolet Volt, the Obama administration told Congress on Friday.

Of COURSE not.

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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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President Barack Obama is in full 2012 reelection mode.  Part of that process is preparing to possibly take on Mitt Romney – whom (it appears) he thinks has the strongest chance to be his Republican opponent.  Which he and many Democrats think is very good news.

Romney fits right into the Left’s absurd anti-capitalism, “robber baron,” Occupy Wall Street anti-1%-er, scorched earth storyline.

Romney is very wealthy, which for Obama and his Democrats is the height of eee-vill (except – these Donkeys are mostly rich…).  Never mind that Romney’s wealth is right in line with many past Presidents and candidates – including 2004 Democrat nominee John Kerry.  (The difference?  Romney earned it, Kerry married it.)

And as Romney recently told us, he these days pays the 15% capital gains tax rate – rather than the (absurdly) higher income tax rates those of us receiving salaries do.  Never mind that this is perfectly legal (and good fiscal policy, and “fair”) – it is culled right from the Leftist, Warren Buffett “I pay less in taxes than my secretary” fraudulent script.

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How did Romney make his coin?  Via the epitome of eeeee-villll free market entities – the venture capital firm.  His was, of course, Bain Capital.

Yes, Bain sometimes invests in failing companies.  Some of which they determine to be not worth saving, so down they go.  Welcome to Reality, Boys and Girls.

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Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) announced on her facebook page Sunday that she will resign from Congress this upcoming week.  On January 8, 2010, Giffords was shot in the head in a Tucson grocery store parking lot while meeting with constituents. Six people were killed and 13 others, including Giffords, were wounded. The man charged in the shooting, Jared Lee Loughner, has pleaded not guilty to 49 charges.

According to officials in Washington, her resignation is expected to take effect on Monday.

Giffords returned to Congress in August of last year to cheers from her colleagues.

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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (and its Senate alternative, the Protect Intellectual Property Act [PIPA]) have been taking a bipartisan beating.  Conservatives have joined with Leftists to savage the bill and thus its chances for passage.

I too am opposed to this iteration of SOPA – it remains too overly broad.

But something similar and more finely, sharply crafted – must become law.  And conservatives will need to reorient themselves when a better version of the bill comes along – and support it.

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We cannot look at the SOPA debate without putting it into the broader context of the immediately preceding Network Neutrality debate.

Conservatives rightly became highly tuned to Internet censorship as a result of the Left’s drive to impose the truly censorious Net Neutrality by any means necessary.

Following so closely on Net Neutrality’s heels, SOPA got swallowed up in this righteous protect-free-speech verve.

But there are some fundamental differences between SOPA and Net Neutrality that must be acknowledged.

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What’s an absurd Leftist policy without an agitprop song to accompany the inanity?

The attempted spoonful-of-sugar to help force down the bad Progressive medicine they are pushing.

Which brings us to General Motors (GM) and one of the Leftist ideological windmills at which they tilt – the Chevy Volt.

We the Taxpayers have spent billions subsidizing the Volt.  And continue subsidizing it still.

We bailed out GM ($50 billion) and Chrysler to the tune of $83 billion.  On which the Obama Administration now admits we’ll lose (at least) $23.6 billion.  (President Obama once upon a time promised us we’d actually make money on the deal.)

We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500 million shares of GM stock – on which we are poised to lose tens of billions of dollars more.

But you know what makes all of this terrible-ness so much less worse?  GM spent some of our money on – the Chevy Volt official song and music video:

Don’t you feel better?

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Alabama State Senator Scott Beason (R-AL) announced his candidacy for Alabama’s 6^th Congressional district late last week against 10-term incumbent, Spencer Bachus (R-AL).  This comes on the heels of multiple accounts of corruption exposed initially in Peter Schweizer’s best selling book, “Throw Them All Out.”

Since Schweizer’s book came out, CBS’ 60 Minutes did a feature on Congressman Bachus’ insider trading, and that of others.  Since then, his own constituents held a rally demanding Bachus’ resignation.  In response, he committed to hold hearings on the STOCK Act, an effort to reform insider trading.  Later, the Congressman reneged.

His constituents reacted angrily, committing to recruit a strong candidate against the Congressman, and many names were floated.  Just after Christmas, Judicial Watch named Bachus one of the top 10 most corrupt politicians in Washington.

“This (Spencer Bachus) is clearly not proper representation of the good people of Alabama” said Deanna Frankowski, of Rainy Day Patriots, a local Tea Party group.  “I told Scott Beason that we need his leadership against Bachus, and that I would help him if he ran.”

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Of wireless Internet bandwidth hogs, that is.

We have for months been odiferously awash in word of the Occupy Wall Street (#OWS) “movement.”

Intellectually and ideologically sloven, these gathered gaggles have been commandeering sporadic public spaces (and some private ones) all across the fruited plain.

When asked why they are so doing, you get an inanity cornucopia – think Jay (Leno) Walking or (Jesse) Watters’ World on ignorance steroids.

The only semi-comprehensible – but still factually vacuous – thing to emanate from the whole mess is the 1% – 99% nonsense.

That being the #OWS-ers saying that the upper 1% of Americans control most of the money and power and thusly must be…destroyed?  Certainly taxed and regulated into utter oblivion.

In an always-and-forever failed effort to “spread the wealth around” – misery being the only thing that ever ends up equally distributed.

Work, work ethic and talent never enter the #OWS equation – but then again, why should they?

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Newt Gingrich has had his ups and downs lately in the Republican Presidential primary. Though much of the setback has been due to his own miscues, he recently hit the nail on the proverbial head when he proclaimed that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) should be defunded. There is no doubt that Obama’s recent recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were motivated by his desire to bring Big Labor on board for the 2012 Election run as recounted in last week’s blog Will the NLRB Decide the 2012 Presidential Election. Newt was correct in stating that defunding the NLRB is the right response to an imperialistic President who intentionally circumvented the spirit of the law for personal gain and philosophical ideology.

Besides legal measures, the only current means to defeat The Cold War Within: The Fight for America’s Future is for the Republican dominated congress to utilize its budgetary power and defund the Rogue NLRB. Such action is even more imperative now, according to Phil Wilson in his latest issue of Union Bailout Update, where he expresses that the two new Democratic appointees, Sharon Block and Richard Griffin, are even more radical than Craig Becker, which is unimaginable. Additionally, Mr. Wilson expressed that Board Chairman Mark Pearce is the true engine behind achieving Card Check, and that the recent appointments provide Pierce the radical majority he needs to achieve Obama’s and Big Labor’s coveted goal of an Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) style regulatory scheme, aka “EFCA Through the Backdoor,” in time to support Obama’s 2012 Presidential run.

The goal is to implement new regulations such as the “Persuader Rule,” “quickie elections,” and the Posting Rule,  as described in Phil Wilson’s 2012 Predictions that will allow Big Labor to utilize the Persuasion of Power to prosecute brutal Corporate Campaigns against employees and employers in time to raise money, register voters and put union foot soldiers on the ground for the 2012 Election. The frightening political machines behind them are recounted in my new book The Devil at Our Doorstep.

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Another tale of OPM addiction. OPM. Other People’s Money.

The problems with ‘green job’ creation and the incompetence of the federal government are both evident when analyzing how a “stimulus” program failed to produce jobs in Wisconsin.

Other than a couple government administrators and about a dozen tech college instructors, the Recovery Act’s Green Jobs Program has not created any jobs in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin received a $6 million award for its version of the green jobs program called Sector Alliance for the Green Economy (SAGE). The stated goal is the “greening” of Wisconsin’s workforce. On paper, the US Labor Department expected the money to help place 2,120 Wisconsinites into permanent jobs.

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