How much bailing out does one company need? After receiving some $50 billion in tax dollars from us courtesy of Obama’s “cash stash,” GM is claiming success with a “big profit” with last year’s third quarter report, and in his recent State of the Union Speech, President Obama claimed that GM was “back on top as the world’s number one automaker.” But true or not, if all is coming up roses for GM, why is the company now lobbying the individual states for mini bailouts?

That is exactly what is happening. The new “big success” automaker is spending millions hiring lobbyists to squeeze more millions out of state legislatures. As Justin Owen notes, GM has “turned to another, smaller government teat” by putting its hand out to the states. GM, Owen says, “has received another $1.7 billion in taxpayer-funded grants and tax abatements.”

This is no accident of timing, either. GM admitted to the Tennessee Watchdog that begging to the states for tax dollars is a concerted effort.

“We are increasing our activity with the states obviously, in the communities in which we operate. In doing this, we’ve invested more than $6 billion (throughout the states) during the last five years and brought 15,000 people back to work. So, the activity at the state level is important to us. Our lobbying is comparable to what our competitors are doing throughout the states,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin.

For the Watchdog, Christopher Butler found that GM has received more than $1.5 billion from Michigan, $7.5 million in tax incentives from Kentucky, over $10 million from Texas, and over $2 million from Indiana. Ohio and Maryland have given to the GM bailout fund, too, with tax incentives and other giveaways. (more…)

The illegal immigration debate could not be any hotter. While JW was protecting the rights of Maryland citizens to stop tuition breaks for illegal aliens in Maryland, on October 14, a federal court blocked provisions of Alabama’s new tough illegal immigration enforcement law from taking effect — at the urging of the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) — while allowing other provisions to be enforced. At the same time, Arizona’s illegal immigration enforcement law, SB 1070, is expected to go before the U.S. Supreme Court soon (Judicial Watch currently represents the Arizona State Legislature in court and recently filed an amicus curiae brief with the High Court, which began its current term on October 3).

In the midst of this firestorm, Judicial Watch took aggressive action, launching a national television advertising campaign to combat illegal immigration. The purpose of the campaign is to collect petitions from the American people to send to the governors of all 50 states, urging them to obey and enforce all laws against illegal immigration. This campaign to encourage our nation’s governors to stand strong on illegal immigration law enforcement has become more urgent now that the Obama DOJ has decided to sue states for merely trying to protect their citizens from the scourge of illegal immigration.

But it’s not just the federal government that is to blame. Some states have decided to side with the illegal aliens, rolling out the welcome mat for illegal aliens through costly and unlawful sanctuary policies. That’s why we’re going national with this petition campaign. The petition campaign is being driven by a series of television advertisements that began broadcasting this week in California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, as well as nationwide on Fox Business News (FBN) and the Military Channel.

In this new national campaign, Judicial Watch asks Americans take a stand on this illegal immigration crisis:

The cost of illegal immigration is a burden on every taxpaying citizen. That’s why Judicial Watch fights hard to hold politicians accountable when they violate and undermine immigration law. Take a stand. Sign this petition and tell your state governor to enforce our federal immigration laws.

The objective of our television campaign is to educate the public and encourage citizens to petition their government in support of the rule of law. Here’s what our petition states (If you’d like to sign off on these principles, then please click here and join our cause!):

(more…)

Earlier this month, news broke that a group calling itself the “Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative” is pushing a $1 per pack cigarette tax hike in the state. Via the AP:

A Maryland health group is planning to push for a $1 increase in the state’s tobacco tax.

The Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative says it will launch the campaign next week in an effort to build public support for increasing the tax to pay for public health needs.

[...]

Maryland last raised its tobacco tax from $1 a pack to $2 a pack during a special session in 2007.

Those who follow consumption tax policy will know that state cigarette tax increases have historically constituted a somewhat unreliable revenue stream.

(more…)

Here we are smack dab in the middle of a terrible economy and a massive budget crunch, and public officials still insist on wasting taxpayer dollars on perks for illegal aliens. This includes using taxpayer money to pay for discounted tuition for illegal aliens.  Judicial Watch has taken a leadership role in the effort to put a stop to this unlawful and wasteful practice.

That effort continued this week as we filed a “Motion to Intervene” on behalf of MDPetitions.com, the organization that sponsored the petition drive to place the Maryland DREAM Act on the ballot for the November 2012 elections. We filed the Motion in response to a lawsuit that seeks to deny voters an up-or-down vote on the Maryland DREAM Act. The chairman of MDPetitions.com is Maryland Assembly Delegate Neil Parrott of Washington County; Delegate Patrick McDonough of Baltimore and Harford Counties is its honorary chairman.

By way of review, the DREAM Act was enacted by the Maryland General Assembly and signed by Governor Martin O’Malley on May 10, 2011. The law creates a new taxpayer-subsidized public benefit – the ability to pay reduced tuition rates at Maryland community colleges and public higher education institutions – for certain eligible illegal aliens. The petition drive was perhaps the most successful in Maryland history. The drive collected nearly twice the amount of signatures required by law to put the new benefit to voters in a referendum.

As Judicial Watch lawyers stated in MDPetitions.com’s filing:

(more…)

Yesterday, as in states around the country, another union protest took place in Annapolis, Maryland—a state that has no chance of reforming the monopoly that public-sector unions have on its government. In attendance were up to 15,000 union activists, according to an AFSCME spokesman who helped organize the protest.

Among the speakers at the rally was AFL-CIO top boss Richard Trumka, who hit the highlights of his usual class-warfare stump speech:

“Madison is just the beginning, this right here is only the beginning, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Trumka before an energized and cheering crowd. “Scapegoating teachers and public workers is bad policy and it’s flat a** wrong.”

Trumka said the larger fight remains between the “haves” and the “have nots.”

“When the rights of workers in one state can be stolen, all of us should feel a little less secure,” said Trumka. “This is about the corporate CEO agenda that equals more, more, more for them and less, less, less for us.”

With labor battles sprouting up throughout the midwest, Trumka remained optimistic that the people will prevail.

“Together, we’re a movement,” said Trumka. “We stand for our children and grandchildren, and tonight, you have been heard.”

That Maryland is controlled by Democrats and that the budget cuts the protesters were protesting have been proposed were proposed by Democrats was apparently lost on the protesters, as well as Trumka. Especially as the keynote speaker of the evening was the very governor proposing the cuts: Democrat Governor Marty O’Malley. (more…)

Julie Murphy is only seven years old, but she embodies the classic American zeal for entrepreneurship.

She learned about lemonade stands after seeing one in a cartoon.  She got excited and wanted to open one of her own.  And so Julie’s mother worked with her to get everything together and set up shop at a fair in Northeast Portland, Oregon.

20 minutes after opening, a government official approached and asked for their $120 occupational license.  Of course, they had no license.

And so 7-year-old Julie, the budding entrepreneur, was told to shut down her lemonade stand or face $500 in fines.

Julie and her mother were encouraged by others to keep the stand open and ask for donations instead.  Business picked up, and the regulators returned.  This time they made Julie cry.  They also got their wish:  Julie’s mom shut down the lemonade stand.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case of licensing gone wild.  Rather it is a classic example of a national problem that affects countless people in America every day.  Institute for Justice President Chip Mellor wrote this week in the Washington Times:

Mired in a nationwide jobless recovery, state and local governments have the power to create jobs and transform communities if they do one simple thing: Get out of the way of aspiring entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately for small businesses, however, laws restricting economic liberty are becoming more commonplace in America. Consider that since the 1950s, the percentage of occupations in the United States that require people to obtain permission from the government in the form of a license before they can pursue their chosen occupation has grown from a mere 5 percent to more than 30 percent.

Consider a few recent IJ cases:

(more…)

Maryland’s intrepid state Delegate Pat McDonough has announced a plan to deal with illegal immigration in Maryland similar to the law recently passed in Arizona. He will introduce this bill in the next legislative session. Maryland’s Montgomery County Gazette issued a predictably critical assessment of the plan, saying McDonough, “never let political reality stand in the way of his crusades,” and declared his proposal dead on arrival before it has even been introduced.

The Gazette response, typical of leftist news media everywhere, displays in microcosm the arrogant myopia that is driving newsrags out of business across this nation. Who in God’s green earth do these people think they are? When and how can any problem be addressed if every controversial proposal is attacked and written off before it is even aired? This is precisely the kind of attitude that gave rise to the Tea Party movement and it is causing a seachange in national politics. The Gazette should take note. Trouble is, liberals are so smug and self-righteous, they can’t see reality even when it is dangled in front of their noses.

Unfortunately, it is the rest of us who pay for their self-serving, destructive polices, and we are frankly fed up. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer deserves credit for braving the denizens of political correctness to enact the Arizona bill. She has set off a chain reaction that has already seen similar legislation proposed in at least nine other states.

Before they start criticizing the Arizona law, which mirrors federal law – not that such irony would ever stop them –  Obama and the Democrats should read the sixteen page bill. Or maybe they should learn why it is the federal government’s failure that prompted passage of the law in the first place. The Montgomery County Gazette got exactly one sentence correct in their diatribe against McDonough when they said, “The federal government basically has abdicated its would-be, should-be role.”

(more…)

The current state of the economy has placed a large burden on private business, especially on small businesses and the self-employed. Subscribing to a Keynesian tenet of financing debt and increasing government spending to boost output, lawmakers are repeatedly giving themselves cover for splurging.  After the first bailouts came the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, an urgent remedy that Congress and the White House insisted was all about “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”

And as spending has increased, so has the size of the public employment sector. Meanwhile, the private sector will soon be close to earning a coveted placement on the endangered species list.

As the union leaders’ plundering of the private sector has continued, this doesn’t mean that they have abandoned unionizing private sector workers altogether.  In fact, while the number of private sector jobs overall is down, the number of unionized private sector jobs is trending upward, right alongside the public sector growth.

(more…)

ACORN and its affiliates are content to impose crippling big-government laws, regulations, and taxes on Americans, but when called upon to obey those same rules, ACORN’s network of scofflaws and deadbeats simply refuses to comply.

ACORN and its affiliates currently owe more than $2.3 million in long overdue back taxes to all levels of government.

It's deathly quiet at the former funeral home at 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue, New Orleans. (photo: Kevin Kane)

As of Nov. 11 the exact figure was $2,328,596.95.

ACORN owes money to the IRS, Arkansas, California, Delaware, District of Columbia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, and to the cities of New York and Philadelphia.

(more…)

It recently came to light that individuals employed by ACORN have been apparent accomplices with regard to the conduct of alleged criminal activities.  Surprisingly, it was the investigative ingenuity of ordinary citizens who brought this information to the attention of the public.  As a Member of Congress, these revelations are of interest to me in that ACORN is the beneficiary of substantial federal funding.  As the former Attorney General of my state of California, this story is of great concern to me for an entirely different reason.  Ironically, it is those who revealed the alleged illegal acts, rather than the perpetrators of those acts, who find themselves under threat of criminal prosecution.  To anyone with a modicum of common sense, this would seem to turn justice on its head.

How could this happen?  Certain states, such as Maryland, have statutes prohibiting the recording of conversations without the consent of the other party.  Unfortunately for the young investigative entrepreneurs, their disclosure of alleged illegal activities carried out by the ACORN employees took place in these so-called “two party consent states” which prohibit the recording of confidential communications without the permission of all parties.

There have been comments released by the State’s Attorneys Office for Baltimore that:

If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio.  The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.

(more…)

Money intended for soldiers fighting war is instead being spent on senators’ home-state pet projects

Defense spending bill contains an earmark that has nothing to do with national defense, $20 million for an institute honoring late Senator Ted Kennedy

Maryland Senator earmarks tens of millions of dollars in a defense spending bill for her top campaign donors

New Jersey receives $4.8 million earmark to increase the size of Long Beach Island beaches and dunes

National Science Foundation hands out taxpayer cash in experiment to determine if birth order affects willingness to make risky economic decisions

Federal grant pays to design and build an exhibit about the significance of lacrosse

Word on the street is that the Left, the “equal pay, pro-women” left is desperately searching for lewd photos of Hannah Giles.

Savor that bit of irony for a moment.

The Left is seeking to employ sexism as a way to take down yet another young woman. A rationale after Ike Turner’s own heart! Leftist ideology replaces “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” as the modern-day female prison; step out of line and you will be virtually and emotionally abused by the burdensome patriarchal undercurrent that powers this political rationale. They’re only for choice if that “choice” is the genocide of the female sex; they’re only for female empowerment if it doesn’t disrupt the fragile liberal status quo – and Giles is the most recent example.

As a young woman, I can say that sexist behavior so often perpetrated by the left is a major reason why I and many other women left the Democratic party. It’s gross to know that a bunch of crusty, old, pee-paw Democratic operatives are, at this second, scouring the web for nudie Giles shots as a way to discredit her and O’Keefe’s work.

(more…)