I am pleased to announce the winner of the First Annual Breitbart “Ambiguous Entity of the Year” award.

Our choice was inspired by the most under-reported story of the year: the dark side of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which the media attempted to hide.

From its origins, the Occupy movement has been riddled by rapes, sexual assaults, and countless other serious crimes–many of which were not reported to police because Occupy organizers understood that public police reports and media dispatches about crimes would hurt the movement’s image.

And, as one Occupier noted, “This is a battle over images, not just over the park.”

Had the Tea Party been ravaged by rapes, rampant drug use, vandalism, or assaults, those crimes would not only have been over-reported, they would have stopped the Tea Party in its tracks.

The mainstream media did its best to invent Tea Party misdeeds–imaginary “N-words” and all–where none existed. Prominent celebrities, athletes—even conservative ones, who support the Tea Party’s aims—have kept a low profile in the Tea Party for fear of being judged by the mainstream media’s double standard.

Yet the media-savvy, media-embraced Occupy movement used shout-outs from President Obama, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, rap impresario Russell Simmons, Alec Baldwin, Kanye West, Susan Sarandon, Roseanne Barr, Sean Lennon, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Tim Robbins, and Anne Hathaway to hide what was really going on at the makeshift encampments. (more…)

Lee Stranahan is literally on the front lines of clashes between police and Occupy San Francisco activists.

Watch live:

Occupy San Francisco activists have been joined by recently-evicted Occupy Oakland activists.
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In the latest video from Lee Stranahan and Brandon Darby’s visit to Zuccotti Park, an activist who has been at Occupy Wall Street “since Day One” talks about why he did not participate in the “mace day” protest in which a group of activists were pepper-sprayed by police.

He says that he could tell activists wanted to “instigate fights with the cops,” and did not want to participate in a military “campaign” that would have felt like a “glory-seeking” expedition.

Searching for the words, he says: “You don’t have to be a fortune-teller to know… that if you leave food out, it goes bad.”

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Think it’s a worker’s paradise at Occupy Wall Street? Guess again –there’s strife, dissent and violence. Two people who have been at Zuccotti Park from day one discuss how the internal order hasn’t worked for them.

Sage: I’m leaving today, because this is no longer safe. Like, I had somebody–

Q: I’m still recording.

Sage: Sure. I had somebody in our sanitation team take a swing at me. And then I had like three really calm, friendly individuals telling me that they–that they didn’t just take a swing at me. It was, like, I was just…

Channing: Yeah. I had beef with sanitation ’cause they took my s*** down. They took my, like tent thing down that I made.

Sage: Oh, sure, sure, I was just saying that.

Q: But yeah, yeah, all I–

Channing: Yeah, no–they took my stuff. They–I had like a little tarp tent at the end of the park. Their whole thing was they were trying to clean out some of the people that were doing, like, drugs and stuff. But they started with–

Q: Drugs?

Channing: Yeah. Oh, my God. But they started with my tent. And, like, they threw away my toiletries, my food, and, like, a bunch of papers I had, that were really important from the hospital. And then, like, I tried to get them to help me, like, rebuild the tent or something, and they’re like, “We didn’t do it, it wasn’t us,” and I’m like, “I saw you doing it.” Like, I got called from direct action because they doing it.

Q: But I’ve got–

Sage: Yeah, so–

Q: –let me get you to just finish that, because–

Sage: I’m just gonna say the same thing. I don’t call it corruption anymore, ’cause corruption is when a good thing goes bad. And what I think this is–people go, “Oh, they’re so stupid.” No, they’re not. They’re smart, for their purposes, which are not for this camp to function as a community. (more…)

One of Occupy Wall Street’s early planners and activists has given public credit to Glenn Beck for correctly analyzing the ultimate goal of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement: a violent revolution in which the wealthy are dragged into the streets and killed.

Malcolm Harris, an editor and activist who “has been active in OWS since the first planning meetings,” confirmed Beck’s analysis in his comments at a panel discussion on October 14th in New York–the same panel discussion that featured New York Times freelancer Natasha Lennard.

Transcript (emphasis added):

Well, and I think that’s–that’s one side of what people want, right, ’cause that’s not the only thing people want, they also want to take the banker out of his, you know, fucking tower and string him up in the public square, right? [Applause] That’s not–that’s not, like, just the crazy left. That’s everyday folks talking about their experiences.

And, like, this is America, right? We want to talk about “we’re the 99%” as if we’re also not the 99% that loves Transformers 4, right? [Laughter] As if this is the 99% that doesn’t also, like, feel passionate anger. “All we want is, like, you know, our little appropriate piece of the pie and we just want to be friendly.“

And the capitalists know that’s not the case, right? If you want to read what the capitalists think about this you can go look at what Glenn Beck says, right? He’s got a better analysis than most people on the left about where this could go, how threatening this…—

(There’s a cut here in the original video. It seems to continue about Beck.)

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Below, you’ll find a compilation of 20 days worth of the death threats, vandalism, and intimidation practiced by pro-union thugs opposed to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s budget repair bill. Wisconsin is my home state. I lived there until I was 27 years-old in 1993 and most of my family, including my parents still live there. For that reason and because the issue of education and teachers unions has been a passion of mine for going on two decades, I’ve been following this story very, very closely. My original intent was to compile all of this earlier in the week, but after reading Lee Stranahan’s superb editorial I decided to wait and see if that might have some effect on the national and local Wisconsin media in moving them towards giving the ongoing violence, intimidation, vandalism, and overall thuggery occurring at the hands of union activists and their supporters, the coverage it needs and deserves.

Actual note slid under office door of a Wisconsin legislator

Not only should the local and national media be amplifying their coverage of this ongoing scandal because of the bar they themselves set with the Tea Party for what rises to the level of of racism, “predominantly white” protesters and troubling behavior — but in the wake of the tragic shootings in Tuscon you would think direct threats on elected officials would rate a little outrage. Well, obviously not when those threats come from the Left.

Politics aside, what’s happening in Wisconsin is downright frightening because, as you’ll see below, these incidents are growing in number and intensity. Furthermore, other than the Right, no one is calling for calm or civility. The local media is, at best, wrist-flicking these incidents, Democratic legislators have not called for calm, President Obama is AWOL, and worst of all, Public Union employees not involved in the thuggish behavior taking place in their name, have been complicit with their silence.

This is more than a disgrace, it’s dangerous. Conservative radio talk show hosts and Governor Walker can talk all they want, but I fear that until the media starts a campaign of shame by focusing on these incidents, and responsible pro-union types begin to police their own side, someone is eventually going to get hurt.

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Pigford documentarian Lee Stranahan had an exclusive interview with congressman Steve King at his Capitol Hill office Tuesday where King explains an area where he and Shirley Sherrod agree — that the Obama White House was responsible for Sherrod’s resignation and that USDA secretary acted as the fall guy.

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From David Weigel’s report for Slate:

On Saturday, [Shirley] Sherrod finally sued Breitbart. I talked to Breitbart about the suit today. “The National Black Farmers Association is holding a press conference tomorrow,” he argued, citing an event that the organization is holding at the National Press Club. “They’re trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”

According to Breitbart, the lawsuit is a massive and expected distraction.

“Those including Ms. Sherrod, who continue to uphold the grotesque premise that the Pigford settlement helped the black farmers, are fully aware that the Pigford house of cards is falling around them,” said Breitbart. “The NBFA is having a press conference three days after I was served. The timing is not a coincidence. Their press statement said that there’s an emerging crisis. We are the emerging crisis. Lee Stranahan is the emerging crisis. Internal investigations by the federal government are the emerging crisis. This lawsuit is a last-ditch attempt to shock me into silence, and it won’t work.” (more…)

Yesterday at CPAC, Lee Stranahan and Andrew Breitbart led a press conference detailing new developments in Big Government’s ongoing Pigford Investigation.  We will be highlighting key moments in the conference for you and posting them here at Big Government.

The first “highlight” is the full audio of a two-hour session conducted by Thomas Burrell, President of the Black Farmer Agricultural Association, Inc., where Mr. Burrell advises approximately 150 black non-farmers on how to fill out applications to receive Pigford settlement money.  Listen to the audio and follow along with the roadmap below.

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The mainstream media has treated accusations of large-scale fraud in the Pigford settlement with overt skepticism and a distinct lack of journalistic curiosity. The press has blindly repeated the Obama Administration’s claim that there are only a handful of fraud cases among the twenty thousand or so paid Pigford claims.  Worse, the media has helped promote the narrative that those raising concerns about fraud in Pigford are racist.

You’re about to watch a video clip where Othello Cross, an attorney for Pigford claimants with about fifteen years of experience on the case, admits that he is personally aware of hundreds of cases of fraud in the state of Arkansas alone. Furthermore, he explains how easy it was to commit that fraud and receive a $50,000 check from the government; it’s appropriate to deduce from Cross’s revealing statement that the actual number of fraudulent claims is likely much higher than the hundreds he knows about.

You’re about to watch this clip for the first time, but the USDA watched it over a week ago — I sent it to them for comment about 10 days ago.

After a number of phone calls to the USDA, I was given the response that Secretary Vilsack now acknowledges around ten cases of fraud, up from his original statement that there are only three known cases. If I were inclined to spin the government’s response, I’d praise the USDA for finding 300% more instances of fraud in just a few days, but the reality is that the USDA can watch a video where a pro-Pigford claimant lawyer says in no uncertain terms that he knows about hundreds of cases of fraud — over ten million dollars worth at bare minimum — and still will only acknowledge ten cases.

As Andrew Breitbart points out, the media simply doesn’t want to cover Pigford. I also sent this video to a few major media outlets that stated they wanted to “research” this. I haven’t heard back from any of them. (more…)