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.

Naturally, as these lobbying efforts grow, GM has paid lobbying firms millions for their work, millions that are coming right out of the pockets of American taxpayers both federal and state.

Apparently, making cars is not a top priority for GM anymore. Owen says that, “turning taxpayers on their heads and shaking every penny from their pockets is a profitable corporate strategy for a quasi-public car company. As of last summer, GM sat on roughly $40 billion in reserves. Yet the ribbon-cutting ceremonies with state officials across the country continue like clockwork, with taxpayers footing a lofty bill.”

The main question here is, once all the facilities are open and humming, once all the tax dollars are safely in GM’s pocket, will there be demand for the products that all these new plants are turning out? Is it a good idea in this bad economy to massively expand using the false benefit of government handouts? What will happen if, after all this government aide runs out, GM finds that its sales still don’t justify all these new plants?

Are we taxpayers going to be expected to hand GM billions more because they are “too big to fail”?

It isn’t over yet. After all, Governor Rick Perry likes to run. He tweeted a picture of himself running, wearing his Texas A&M running shorts and giving a thumbs-up, with the caption “the next leg of the marathon is the Palmetto State. … Here we come South Carolina!!!”

Perry likes running so much that, on one occasion in 2010, with his laser-sighted pistol in hand, he killed a coyote while running, sending it “to where coyotes go.”  He believes that jogging can help him get his mojo back and win the Iowa caucus after suffering spinal surgery this summer.

Now he’s running in his eleventh straight election–the first out of Texas–for the presidency. So how’s Perry doing in his first national bid?

Not well. Indeed, if you believe the conventional political narrative, his campaign ended when he said “oops” during a November debate. Political commentary was unforgiving. Larry J. Sabato spoke for many when he said, ”To my memory, Perry’s forgetfulness is the most devastating moment of any modern primary debate.”

But as so often is the case, the conventional narrative is wrong–or, at least, exaggerated. Governor Perry is actually doing quite well. Does this sound like a moribund campaign?

The Perry campaign had signed up between 1,300 to 1,500 precinct leaders across Iowa, and more than 500 volunteers from 32 states traveled to the Hawkeye State in the days before the caucuses. Bob Haus, Perry’s Iowa state chairman, said the volunteers had made 50,000 phone calls, including 10,000 on Monday alone, and knocked on more than 1,000 doors. (Via ABC News)

That compared favorably to the other candidates on the ground. Ron Paul, for example, has 1,480 precinct leaders, and there are 1,774 precincts in Iowa. Perry will assuredly lose both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary, but strong, respectable showings in both races could set him up for South Carolina and Florida, where he can make a stand. He has but to work, and wait.

If he does do well south of the Mason-Dixon Line, he may well have to thank Mitt Romney, whose relentless ads against Newt Gingrich have all but taken the former Speaker of the House out of the race. Gingrich, still the frontrunner in South Carolina and Florida, has been caught flatfooted fighting Romney. Gingrich has wasted valuable time to rebut the charges rather than make the case for himself. Gingrich lacks both the money and the organization necessary to respond to these ads, so his start will likely fall in the South.

Rick Perry has both those resources in abundance. He has one more that is often lacking among his opponents for the nomination: charm. I personally witnessed Perry’s charm offensive when I served as a fellow at the Wall Street Journal this past summer. In person, Perry is funny, self-deprecating, and yet still the alpha dog. He didn’t win that many elections by being unlikeable. Perry understands that there is a long march to the nomination. Iowa is, as he has put it, “mile one” in a “marathon” run to the nomination.

Perhaps he can take heart that, as a sign of the strength of his campaign, Politico has targeted his campaign by relying on anonymous sources as is their bailiwick. That led to a memorable exchange between Perry and Politico’s Mike Allen:

Perry was right not to respond to these accusations, even if they were true. As anyone who has worked on a campaign knows, there are all manner of reasons that insiders on a campaign would go to the media anonymously. These anonymous sources might be hoping to neutralize foes within the campaign, or to promote their own career.

Assuming Perry can do well in the Southern primaries, the challenge for him will be to broaden his support outside of the South. His Texan accent will be a liability. Perry can neutralize this attack by pointing to the fact that unlike his predecessor, George W. Bush, he is not a son of privilege–he grew up on a farm that had lacked indoor plumbing. He did not attend Bush’s high school alma mater, Phillips Andover (tuition in 2012: $42,350) or Obama’s Punahou (tuition in 2012: $18,450). He attended Paint Creek High School with a handful of fellow Texans, graduating–as he jokes–in the top ten… of thirteen.

Above all, Perry is at home in the white working class, the very electorate that even David Brooks of the New York Times notes will be crucial in this election

, and which Rick Santorum tapped to great effect in his Iowa campaign.

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday that he would head home “to determine whether there is a path forward” for his White House bid after he finished a distant fifth in the Iowa caucuses.

At times pausing to collect his emotions, Perry told supporters that he appreciated their work but that he needed to consider whether there was a viable strategy for him to restart his campaign in South Carolina.

“With the voters’ decision tonight in Iowa, I decided to return to Texas, assess the results of tonight’s caucus, determine whether there is a path forward for myself in this race,” Perry said, his family standing behind him.

Before Perry spoke, his advisers tried to paint the first contest in the South as the real start to his strategy and braced for a lackluster performance in the Iowa caucuses, which typically winnows the field of presidential hopefuls.

Perry entered the race in August to great fanfare only to nosedive. He had planned to make South Carolina his final stand, but the events he scheduled there for Wednesday were put on hold while he headed to Austin.

Read more here.

The revelation may well affect congressional redistricting, because of the key role Voting Section staff play in approving state legislative plans, including the staffer in question.

For example, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott might use these allegations of perjury involving Texas redistricting to fight the ongoing redistricting litigation. Impeachment of a different sort–that of a testifying witness–is his for the taking.

The wide ranging DOJ Inspector General investigation is examining the harassment of conservative leaning DOJ employees who were willing to enforce civil rights laws equally against all wrongdoers, such as the New Black Panther party.  You read that right–the harassment of employees who were willing to enforce the law against the New Black Panther Party.

The particulars of the DOJ perjury, as reported by Has von Spakovsky at PJ Media, are even more troubling. They involve the leaking of internal memos about Congressional redistricting to the Washington Post by leftist DOJ staff who hoped to hurt the Bush administration. The current Texas redistricting plans are being litigated in both San Antonio and Washington D.C. courtrooms.

Von Spakovsky reports:

The genesis of Ms. Gyamfi’s perjury is apparently rooted in political attacks on the Bush Justice Department.  Throughout 2005-2007, numerous attorney-client privileged documents, confidential personnel information, and other sensitive legal materials were leaked from inside the Voting Section to the Washington Post and various left-wing blogs.  One of the most prominent leaks involved the Voting Section’s privileged, internal analysis of the 2003 Texas congressional redistricting plan, which had been submitted to the Civil Rights Division in October 2003 by the State of Texas for review under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  As many readers may recall, the contents of the Voting Section’s internal memorandum appeared on the front page of the Washington Post on December 2, 2005, to great fanfare from Democrats on Capitol Hill and their surrogates in the liberal blogosphere.

The story from deep inside DOJ reported by von Spakovsky grows even more tragic:

According to numerous sources, Ms. Gyamfi had been asked in two separate interviews whether she was involved in the leaking of confidential and privileged information out of the Voting Section.  Each time, she flatly denied any knowledge as to who was responsible for the leaks.  In a third interview, she was once again questioned about her role in the leaks.  At first, she adamantly denied involvement.  Then, however, she was confronted with e-mail documents rebutting her testimony.

At that point, she immediately broke down and confessed that she had lied to the investigators three separate times.  Since IG interviewees are all required to take an oath to tell the truth upon penalty of perjury, and investigators record all interviews, an audio recording of these admissions must exist in the IG files.  Mind you, Ms. Gyamfi did not say she misunderstood the questions.  She did not claim to have forgotten something and later remembered it.  Instead, she plainly admitted her deceit and ascribed her motive to attempting to protect the “other people” involved, i.e., the other career staff (mostly attorneys) who also violated their oaths of office and their professional obligations by publicizing confidential legal opinions and analyses.

No matter your political stripes, this story is a tragedy, both for the people involved as well as the institutions most Americans once assumed they could trust. And what of the people managing the Voting Section, such as Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez?  What of Deputy Assistant Attorney General Matthew Colangelo, formerly of the NAACP? He oversees these employees. What has he done in response?

We can speculate: probably nothing, if they are following Holder’s lead.

The manipulations of Holder’s DOJ range from the mundane to the sinister. On the mundane side, I watched Holder tell Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) in a hearing that the DOJ had not provided preferential treatment in Freedom of Information Act requests to favored left wing groups, or failed to respond to FOIA requests from conservatives and Republicans. Holder explained the delay in responding to requests by conservatives as the result of those requests being contained in more complicated files, which I knew to be false.

On the sinister side, there is the Fast and Furious program. Sinister is the only way rational people, who are not in the tank for this administration, can describe a program to flood Mexico illegally with thousands of firearms just to see what happens. As one person after another after another was gunned down, the DOJ-managed gun flood kept pace–even after American blood was spilled.

And where is Holder’s outrage?  Who has he fired for this bloodbath?

Nowhere and nobody, because his closest aides–his buddies, like Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and Chief of Staff Gary Grindler–are knee deep in Fast and Furious. And Holder has the audacity to criticize his critics!

When Holder is run out of office by suddenly courageous Congressional Republicans–or, more likely, by a White House that understands the damage that would follow if they tried–it will be interesting to see where he lands. Will Big Law welcome him back with open arms at his old firm, Covington and Burling? Or will Holder be treated as he deserves to be treated? I’ll bet on the former.

Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich also contributes to the problem at DOJ. He authored a letter to Congress about Fast and Furious which was false.  Weich previously submitted another false letter to Congress on July 13, 2009, regarding the dismissal of the New Black Panther case. In it, he told Congress that the voter intimidation case against one Panther had been dismissed because the defendant “was a resident of the apartment building where the polling place was located.” That was blatantly false.  The Panther in question did not live in the building. As in Fast and Furious, the Weich letter had to be retracted because Weich didn’t tell Congress the truth.

Memo to Congress:  Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution applies to Weich. Use it. He would likely be gone in a fortnight.

The problem extends to other presidential appointees at DOJ, including Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez. As I write in my book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery, 2011), Perez denied under oath that he never heard that some employees in the DOJ were unwilling to enforce civil rights laws against black wrongdoers like the New Black Panthers, even though I sat in a room when he had been told that, 48 hours previously.

These latest revelations about perjury inside the Voting Section at DOJ shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention.  Sir Richard Steele wrote two centuries ago: “Though the weight of a falsehood would be too much for one to bear, it grows light in their imaginations when it is shared among many.”

Many imaginations are nicely lightened in Obama’s and Holder’s Department of Justice.

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Ted Cruz to discuss his race for the US Senate, his ideas for entitlement reform, and how he would fix the economy.

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Holder claimed that the Department of Justice would be “fair” in reviewing such laws, but also quoted a misleading charge made by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), who claimed there was a “systematic attempt” to prevent minority voters from exercising their rights. Holder specifically singled out “new photo identification requirements” in Texas and South Carolina, and applauded Maine’s voters for preserving same-day registration.

The fact is that requiring voters to provide photo identification is standard practice in much of the democratic world–even, and especially, in poor countries with a history of struggle against racism and colonialism.

In South Africa, for example, where black people were denied the vote until 1994, the new democratic government requires every registered voter–black or white, rich or poor–to bring official photo ID to the polls.

Indians show photo ID to vote (Photo credit: AP/Biswaranjan Rout)

India’s election commission issues a special photo identification card to voters when they register, which they must present at the polls:

The Election Commission of India has made voter identification mandatory at the time of poll. The electors have to identify themselves with either Electors Photo Identity Card (EPIC) issued by the Commission or any other documentary proof as prescribed by the Commission.

In Europe, the official EU Handbook for Election Observation acknowledges that voters are required to show identification in many countries, and suggests that observers verify that all voters are subject to the same ID check (166). Even the Carter Center for Human Rights, which monitors democratic elections all over the world, identifies “a requirement for identification” as a “reasonable limitation” on universal suffrage.

(Update: That’s not to say international practice should govern American practice at the federal, state, or local level, but it certainly undermines the notion that photo identification is somehow motivated by a desire to keep people from exercising their rights. The opposite is true: voter ID laws are intended to protect voters’ rights against fraud and manipulation by those who would subvert their will.)

The idea that requiring American voters to show photo identification when they vote is racist is simply absurd. It’s a requirement enforced regularly by Holder’s labor union allies. It’s also a requirement demanded by federal agencies that provide welfare and other benefits. If there’s no destitute South African too poor to obtain photo ID, there is surely no American who deserves pity for failing to obtain the same in order to vote.

Holder’s attack on photo identification is crude partisanship, a fact made clear by his attack on Texas’s new congressional map. The federal government, he proudly notes, is challenging Republican-controlled Texas for failing to provide adequate representation for Hispanic voters. Yet Holder has ignored Illinois, where his fellow Democrats have cut Hispanics out of redistricting, and Republicans have tried to challenge the map in court.

Holder cited a Republican in Maryland who was convicted of trying to trick black voters into staying home. Yet there is also ample evidence of voter fraud by Democrats–such as in the 2008 primary in Indiana, or in the ongoing effort to recall Republican governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Holder’s attack on sincere attempts to stop voter fraud is itself a fraud that abuses the civil rights legacy to disenfranchise the public at large.

demwomenholidayparty

Considering that, for many Americans, Christmas is a celebration of  the birth of a child, a party at an abortion clinic is a particularly sick irony.

Anyway, looks like they’re having a pot-luck and are providing wine, so that’s nice. They note folks can BYOB for a “stronger celebration”! Again…at an abortion clinic.

Of course, one of the sponsoring organizations is “BAAD Women” (Bay Area Association of Democratic Women), so maybe the choice venue was absolutely intentional.

Stay classy, Houston Democrats.

(Note: I initially thought that perhaps this was strictly an administrative building for Planned Parenthood where, perhaps, no abortions were performed. Nope. They do abortions there. And Christmas Parties!)