University of Wisconsin Professor Joel Rogers wants to build a lefty alternative to the ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. He recently hit up some of his students for help with the project, while they were waiting for their grades in his class.

This from our first article in an ongoing investigation conducted by the MacIver News Service. Future stories will focus on any official reaction we receive from the University and an indepth look at Rogers’ Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

Joel Rogers Says College Credits May Be Available to Those Who Help Build Liberal Alternative to ALEC

[Madison, Wisc…] One of the University of Wisconsin’s most renowned liberal professors attempted to recruit his students to work on an elaborate private political project while final grades in their class were pending, the MacIver News Service has learned.

At the conclusion of his end-of-the-year email to his UW Law School students, Professor Joel Rogers wrote: “I think I mentioned a little project I’m doing now — which thus far involves professors from such crummy law schools as Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Cornell, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Virgina [sic] and elsewhere, but thus far, beyond your lonesome, NOBODY from UW — to build a partial counter to ALEC. It’s going to involve a lot of law students. If you’re interested in helping out with that (no money, but possible credit), or know of somebody else who might be, please let me, or even better, “Nate Ela” <nela@cows.org>, a lawyer and now sociology grad student, know. Project description attached.“

Rogers is the Director of the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, educational, and charitable organization. COWS was founded in 1992 by Rogers, a professor of Law, Political Science, and Sociology at UW-Madison and a longtime commentator on economic development and democratic institutions. COWS is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the Social Science Building.

(more…)

On June 2, 2011, Judicial Watch released documents that show the Obama FCC’s collusion with a radical leftist organization to seize control over the Internet. This investigation caught the eye of congressional leaders, and now it appears a congressional probe of the matter is in the offing.

According to The Hill:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee pressed the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday for all documentation of the rulemaking process behind the agency’s net-neutrality regulations.

Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) cited reports that FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus attended White House meetings where net-neutrality rules were debated as evidence the FCC rules passed in December were politically motivated.

The representatives also pointed to an investigation from Judicial Watch that unearthed emails from the advocacy group Free Press to aides of FCC Commissioner Michael Copps advocating strongly for net neutrality, which Copps supported. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) termed the emails “collusion” last month.

“These allegations suggest the FCC’s network neutrality proceeding was designed to fulfill a presidential campaign slogan, when it should have been based on an analysis of statutory authority, an economic analysis of the Internet service market, and an examination of the record,” the lawmakers wrote.

“If true, it seems the FCC failed to develop an independent conclusion derived from a balanced fact-based record, which is incompatible with proper rule-making.”

Importantly, that FCC 3-2 vote seemed to be at with odds an April, 2010, federal appeals court ruling that the FCC had exceeded its authority in seeking to regulate the Internet and enforce “net neutrality” rules. (More evidence the lawless Obama administration has as much respect for court rulings as it does the U.S. Constitution — which is to say, very little.)

(more…)

Late last week, the U.S. House passed a Joint Resolution disapproving of the FCC’s Net Neutrality regulations, which were issued by the agency late last December.  Such a Resolution through the Congressional Review Act (CRA) works to nullify actions by agencies through a streamlined procedure, which keeps amendments off, and requires only simple majorities in each body of Congress, plus the President’s signature, to take effect.

The CRA Resolution has doubtless been a contentious process.  The new Congress, with its conservative majority in the House and a stronger conservative minority in the Senate, has enabled the legislative branch to become more assertive when it comes to agency activities.  The CRA tactic reflects that change in approach.

Not surprisingly, however, its progress has broken primarily across party lines, with Republicans supporting it because they generally feel the FCC lacks the congressional authority to issue its Net Neutrality regulations in the first place; and Democrats moving against it because by and large they believe in the FCC’s regulations, no matter how they’re arrived at.

The vote passed 240-to-179.  Beyond the House vote, its progress in the Senate, and at the President’s desk – if it gets that far – remains uncertain.  Regardless, this has not stopped detractors of the Resolution to use it as yet another public forum to voice support for the FCC’s likely illegal, new regulations.

Of late, two of the louder voices against the Resolution have been former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and Internet millionaire turned Colorado Congressman, Jared Polis.

(more…)

Though Free Press outwardly expressed condemnation at the approval of the Comcast-NBC Merger earlier this month, they really got a lot of what they bargained for.  After their extensive lobbying blitz – with approximately 35 different FCC communiqués, including over 20 individual meetings with FCC Commissioners and their staff – it’s clear they helped shape many of the agreement’s “voluntary” commitments.

Merger decrees represent a feeding trough of sorts for the public interest group (PIG) community.  Appendix G of the Order reveals the length at which these PIGs sup, stretching nearly 60 pages of the 279 –page Order.

Appendix G wasn’t just slopped together, though.  PIGs are an organized lot.  Witness one such effort – a Free Press-attended, “funding community” event last summer, with participants there brainstorming on what they could demand from Comcast in order for the merger to go through.

Taken from published notes at that meeting, the participants wondered aloud:

…NBC/Universal is going to merge with Comcast. Can we require rules around this merger? When Comcast and Universal come together, it will diminish the incentives for the owner of that infrastructure to do local news. *What should we be asking for? A $300 million fund to incentivize public media? Trade groups to protect jobs in journalism?* We have to fight now and not look back and wonder what we should have done.

Boy, PIGs get fat, but hogs become bacon.  Yet that doesn’t stop these gluttons.  I love also the hubris of non-government officials saying, “Can we require rules around this merger…” Er, “We require”?  It shows just how corruptible and voluntary-as-a-mugging the whole process is.  Simply amazing stuff, more akin to Egyptian thuggery than American Democracy.

(more…)

Glen Templeton \”God Bless Good Old Boys\”

Harvard Professor V.O. Key, Jr stated in his seminal work, “The Responsible Electorate”: “The most effective weapon of popular control in a democratic system is the capacity to throw a party from power.”    That weapon is aimed at San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts who hijacked the peoples’ House.

There has been much said about the Tea Party blaming its views on right wing talk show hosts and political pundits.  Many believe the Tea Party was formed by a Democratic Party and Administrations false conclusion that their success in the 2008 election was a vindication of their beliefs, the swing of the electorate response to the campaign positions taken, an indication of the intuitive mood of the people and, finally, as the respect it represents by an intelligent electorate.

Key concluded:  “This narcissistic approach assumes it’s most repulsive form among election winners who have championed intolerance, who have stirred the passions and hatreds of people, or who have advocated causes known by decent men to be outrageous or dangerous in their long run circumstances.”  The great Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt called it the pivotal nature of character to Presidential performance and James Barber of Duke University enhanced it with his classic book “Presidential Character”.  They both concluded that it was character more than policy that determines Presidential performance.

(more…)

A stinging report was issued yesterday by Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  The report, titled “Analysis of the First Year of the Obama Administration: Public Relations and Propaganda Initiatives,” outlines a host of propaganda activities conducted by the Obama administration at the direct expense of the American taxpayers.  It notes in part,

“The Obama Administration frequently used federal resources to promote the President’s agenda. In many cases, the Administration relied on the reach and resources of federal agencies and their personnel to promote certain of the President’s favorite programs. The White House also leveraged ties to the arts and entertainment community to embed propaganda in the content of television programming and artwork. These propaganda efforts violated appropriations riders and federal law prohibiting the use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes.”

“The White House also used its inherent visibility advantages to multiply the effectiveness of websites containing misleading and controversial information. The White House used its resources to push visitors to websites that urge grassroots activism based on false and misleading information. The President’s right to sell his policy recommendations to Congress and the public is not disputed; however, using the resources of the federal government to activate a sophisticated propaganda and lobbying campaign is an abuse of office and a betrayal of the President’s pledge to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

(more…)

At the end of 2007, hedge fund billionaire John Paulson invested $15 million in the leftist non-profit, Center for Responsible Lending, their largest single donation ever. Around the same time, Paulson and his employees contributed over $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed, at the time, by Sen. Chuck Schumer. Roughly six months later, CRL and Sen. Schumer both launched a highly public attack on the California-based mortgage lender, Indymac. The lender failed, wiping out the investment of thousands of people. Roughly six months after that, John Paulson, in partnership with George Soros, bought up the remnants of Indymac for pennies on the dollar.

It is a drama that no longer surprises us, unfortunately. Wealthy investors use their access to elected officials and their checkbook to advocacy groups for private profit. But this story has a twist; a top executive of CRL when this deal went down, Eric Stein, is now working at the Treasury Department,  heading up the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Mr. Stein will be the chief federal official designing regulations to protect consumers. Right.

This is that story.

Financial crises create opportunities. Prudent and discerning entrepreneurs who save their capital for a rainy day are able to acquire assets at firesale prices and put these assets to higher and better uses. Market forces cleanse wasteful malinvestments, innovative business models make existing ones obsolete and the economy roars forward all the stronger for it.

But while market entrepreneurs generally prosper during times of great dislocation, ultimately to the benefit of all participants in the economy, today political entrepreneurs have hijacked the economic system. The politically connected elites have used this downturn to carry out a massive wealth transfer from the people to the public and private sectors, fleecing the middle class for their own enrichment.  In their hypocrisy, the long ago small businesses that grew large because of free markets have helped chain these markets through lobbying for regulations and subsidies to shield themselves from competition and their own errors.

This has occurred most egregiously in the financial sector, where there has been a veritable free-for-all in legalized political plunder.  Those who understand the illusory nature of our monetary and symbiotically related political and financial systems have clamored to profit as much as possible before the house of cards falls, with the sanction of our supposed representatives.

(more…)

The activity surrounding the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) in the financial reform legislation is really picking up these days.  But many Americans would never know it.  It seems Democrats may have learned something from the experience of the health care bill after all.  In their efforts to avert a repeat disaster of losing control of the message, they appear to be taking every step necessary to ensure that the public engages as little as possible in this debate.

But I assure you, this is a debate that the American public should engage in, pronto.

Because behind the scenes, certain lobbyists are quietly but aggressively scurrying about, pushing hard for the passage of the CFPA in a power grab by the Executive Branch that would dwarf the Health Care Reform bill and the Patriot Act.  And with the passage of the proposed CFPA, one man in particular with a history tied to some of the deepest tentacles in the financial crisis – and to the Community Reinvestment Act changes of 1995 – would gain the power to selectively manipulate the entire landscape of the financial, small business and housing markets.

Last week, we reintroduced you to an early trigger in the financial crisis, with good reason. In “Death by Senator: As Financial Reform Looms, We Revisit IndyMac,” we revisited the role that Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) very public letter played in the fall of one financial institution.  As I ended that piece, I teased that there was more to the story that would soon follow.

So, let’s pick up from June 30, 2008.

Merely days after the now infamous Schumer letter triggered a run on the bank that would total over $1.3 billion, this lengthy and scathing report was released to the public:

(more…)

Pete Yost of the Associated Press asked for my comment regarding the findings of the ACORN “internal investigation.”  Here is what I emailed him:

ACORN is a corrupt and criminal organization, and anyone with open eyes can see this. Yet SEIU’s Andy Stern and left wing puppetmaster John Podesta, of the Soros-funded radical leftist think-tank, the Center for American Progress, chose to architect a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts, and have put immense efforts into launching a two-pronged propaganda  campaign and legal assault against the filmmakers of the ‘pimp and  prostitute’ exposé and the story’s publisher. BigGovernment.com  continues to expose ACORN’s illegal activity and has helped to  illuminate how corrupt organizations like ACORN, SEIU and HCAN are coordinating the efforts to shove radical health care reform down an unwilling  majority of Americans throats.

Here is the sole excerpt from the above statement chosen for the article:

The report is “a whitewashed ‘internal investigation’ by a Democrat Party hack from Massachusetts,” said conservative columnist Andrew Breitbart, who is being sued by ACORN along with James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, who played the prostitute and her boyfriend in the videos. Breitbart posted the videos on his Web site.

I wanted the BigGovernment.com readers to see that’s it’s not just the internal investigators who are whitewashing the magnitude of the ACORN scandal, it’s the mainstream media writ large.

(more…)