On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Josh Kraushaar to talk about the new electoral math Obama faces in 2012. Then Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about PJ Crowley’s dismissal at the State Department.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

For Obama, Virginia Is the Next Ohio
Gallup Daily: Obama Job Approval
Josh Kraushaar at National Journal’s Hotline
Pej: Hope and Change?

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We have no other details, but a tipster from fly-over country forwarded us this text they received this afternoon:

DNC Chair Tim Kaine is making a major announcement on the future of the Democratic Party tomorrow. Attend the announcement at 12:30 p.m. at GWU [George Washington University], 805 21st St NW.

Again, we have no other details and have no idea what Chairman Kaine is announcing. We doubt he is going to say, “Okay, we get it. Big Government policies don’t work and are unpopular with the American people. We are going back to being JFK Democrats.” But, the words “major” and “future” pique our interest.

Any ideas? Have at it in the comments.

For those who hunger to hold their elected officials accountable for perpetuating a culture of reckless runaway spending in Washington, meet YouCut.

This first-of-its-kind interactive initiative empowers taxpayers with direct democracy at a time when their faith in Congress’ fiscal prudence has reached its lowest. YouCut allows the public to vote each week on one of five wasteful spending items that they would like to strip from the federal budget. Once the votes are tallied, Republicans force a vote on whether or not to take up and debate the cut on the House floor.

During the first week, a plurality of voters – over 81,000! – chose to axe a recently created $2.5 billion annual welfare program that undercuts cost-saving welfare reforms made in the mid 1990’s.  Within 5 days of the experiment, 280,000 Americans have cast a vote either online or by text message.  At several points, more than 5,000 votes were being cast per hour, with less than one percent of votes originating from inside the beltway.

The overwhelming response speaks to the extreme levels of frustration that you feel toward a Congress that refuses to listen to you.  Over the last decade, taxpayers have grown weary of the incessant federal spending binges – no matter which party has been in power. They now look across the Atlantic with horror as Europe collapses under the weight of its own debt. Fear that America will go down the same road has only amplified calls for spending restraint.

Through YouCut, concerned citizens are cracking through the wall of resistance put up by big spenders in Washington to create a new culture of savings. This poses a threat to several in Congress who are invested heavily in preserving the status quo – hence the Democratic National Committee’s vigorous effort to discredit the program.  Worse, rather than listening to the hundreds of thousands of Americans, Tim Kaine (Chairman of the DNC) and Chris Van Hollen (Chairman of the DCCC) chose to mock the opinions of those who voted.  Not listening – a common theme for Democrats.

Driven by a new generation of young and energetic leaders, today’s GOP understands that we were fired from the majority because we abandoned the fiscal principles we had been sent to Washington to uphold. After two terms in the minority, we are eager to restore our reputation as responsible custodians of taxpayer money. It is this commitment to eliminate the prevailing wink-and-a-nod approach to unnecessary spending that spawned YouCut.

This week citizens can choose among the following items:

1. Byrd Honors Scholarships ($42 million in savings in the first year -$420 million over ten years) Even the Obama Administration proposed terminating this program in their annual budget.  Surely Congress can too.
2. Eliminate the Proposed Federal Employee Pay Raise (saves approximately $2 billion in the first year, $30 billion over ten years).  President Obama proposed providing federal civilian employees with a 1.4% pay raise next year. This year Federal employees received a 2% raise and since the year 2000 have received raises averaging 3.6% a year. USA Today recently reported that the typical federal worker is paid 20% more than a private-sector worker in the same occupation. This proposal would expand upon the just enacted legislation to prevent Members of Congress from receiving a pay raise and would not impact the scheduled pay raise for those serving in the military.
3. Suspend Federal Land Purchases ($266 million in savings in the first year, $2.66 billion over ten years).  Last year Congress spent $266 million acquiring additional federal lands at the Departments of Interior and Agriculture, a 138% increase over the comparable amount of funding just four years ago. Given that the federal government already owns 29% of the land in America and has a multi-billion dollar maintenance backlog to maintain current land holdings, suspending new federal land would permit the government to focus on maintaining existing property while also saving taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
4. Terminate Funding for UNESCO ($81 million in savings in the first year, $810 million over ten years).  Last year the administration proposed deleting the Department of Education’s attaché to UNESCO saving approximately $632,000 a year. Terminating U.S. support for UNESCO entirely would save taxpayers $81 million annually. The U.S. had not supported UNESCO for 19 years prior to the decision by the Bush Administration to rejoin in 2003. UNESCO routinely undertakes activities that are properly the responsibility of individual countries and their governments, including reviewing and making recommendations in areas related to education, arts, culture, ethics, science and technology, and historic preservation. UNESCO recently came under fire for their proposed International Guidelines for Sexuality Education.  Membership provides little benefit to American taxpayers in light of the overall cost.
5. Eliminate Mohair Subsidies (approximately $1 million in savings in the first year, $10 million over ten years).  Federal price support for mohair was first enacted in 1947, and the National Wool Act of 1954 established direct payments for wool and mohair producers. The purpose was to encourage production of wool because it was considered an essential and strategic commodity.  According to the Congressional Research Service, no similar purpose was stated for the mohair program. While this program was phased out in 1995, ad hoc payments were provided in 1999 and 2000 and the program was reinstituted in 2002. Eliminating this program once again would save taxpayers approximately $1 million a year. (Also proposed as part of the RSC Sunset Caucus.)

Again, cutting any one these programs is not going to erase our debt or deficit in one shot.  But, it will begin to change the focus in Washington from spending to saving, from growing to cutting.  That’s why we need your help.

Please take just a few seconds to us in this effort. YouCut offers all Americans the ability to change the wasteful ways of Washington.  To be sure, 280,000 votes is a great number.  But to bring real change, rather than mere lip service, we need many more people to stand up and participate. The louder our voice, the harder it becomes for Speaker Pelosi to ignore.  Visit www.republicanwhip.house.gov/youcut to cast your vote now.

In his recent speech criticizing the GOP’s so-called southern strategy, RNC Chairman Michael Steele scored big points… for the other team.  Instead of criticizing his own party, he would do well to focus the public’s attention on the appalling heritage of the Democratic Party – the party of slavery and big government, socialism and the Ku Klux Klan.

“The Republican Party, on the contrary [to the Democrats], holds that this government was instituted to secure the blessings of freedom, and that slavery is an unqualified evil.  [Republicans] will oppose in all its length and breadth the modern Democratic idea that slavery is as good as freedom.”

In this classic speech, Abraham Lincoln condemned the pro-slavery policies of the Democratic Party.  The founders of our Grand Old Party knew to call Democrats ‘slave-ocrats.’  And another Republican, Robert Ingersoll, observed: “Every man that loved slavery more than liberty was a Democrat.”  One of Lincoln’s friends, Rep. Owen Lovejoy (R-IL), had this to say:

“The principle of enslaving human beings because they are inferior, is this: If a man is a cripple, trip him up; if he is old and weak, and bowed with the weight of years, strike him, for he cannot strike back; if idiotic, take advantage of him; and if a child, deceive him.  This, sir, this is the doctrine of Democrats and the doctrine of devils as well, and there is no place in the universe outside the five points of hell and the Democratic Party where the practice and prevalence of such doctrines would not be a disgrace.”

Very definitely, slavery was a southern strategy of the Democratic Party.

Operating as the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party, the KKK eradicated the GOP in much of the South after the Civil War, lynching and assassinating thousands of southern Republicans, both African-American and white.  Klansmen murdered an Arkansas Republican congressman as he campaigned for re-election.

Indeed, murder was a southern strategy of the Democratic Party.

Senator Oliver Morton, whose statue stands in the U.S. Capitol, had this to say about the Democrats’ southern strategy: “Everyone who shoots down negroes in the streets, burns negro school-houses and meeting-houses, and murders women and children by the light of their own flaming dwellings, calls himself a Democrat.  In short, the Democratic Party may be described as a common sewer and loathsome receptacle into which is emptied every element of treason, North and South, every element of inhumanity and barbarism which has dishonored the age.”

So influential was the Klan’s grip on the Democratic Party in the 20^th century that the 1924 Democratic National Convention was known as “the Klanbake.”  Gov. George Wallace, who stood in the schoolhouse door to keep out African-Americans, was a Democrat.  Gov. Orval Faubus, who tried to prevent court-ordered desegregation of Little Rock public schools, was a Democrat.  Bull Connor, whose police attacked African-Americans schoolchildren with dogs and high-pressure hoses, was the Democratic Party’s National Committeeman for Alabama.

In 1956, nineteen Democrat U.S. Senators and seventy-five Democrat U.S. Representatives (and, alas, two Republicans) signed the Southern Manifesto, criticizing the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision that struck down racial segregation in public schools.

Absolutely, segregation was a southern strategy of the Democratic Party.

When will DNC Chairman Tim Kaine apologize for his party’s southern strategy?  A true apology includes accepting culpability, not just expressing sorrow or regret.  To be meaningful, this apology should be from Democrats only, as it wasn’t Republicans who owned slaves and lynched African-Americans and assassinated a congressman and imposed segregation.  Those crimes were all committed by Democrats.  Even now, thanks to Senate Democrats, third in the presidential order of succession, after Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, is a former recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Byrd.

Offense!  Republicans should go on offense and force the Democrats to defend their decades of depravity.  See www.grandoldpartisan.com for more information.

On Saturday, April 3, the terrorist-linked Islamic Center Dar Al Hijrah in the Washington DC suburbs will hold their annual fundraising banquet.  The original flyer headlined  that seven elected officials were “invited”: former Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, now Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Sen. James Webb (D-VA), Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Sharon Bulova, Fairfax Supervisor Penny Gross, and Virginia State Delegate Kaye Kory.   We thought that those elected officials would not want their names associated Dar Al-Hijrah, long-known as an al-Qaeda linked Islamic center, on which we had posted at Biggovernment.com on February 14.  So on February 17, we mailed and faxed a letter to each of the seven elected officials, alerting them to the invitation using their names, and asking them if they would remove their names as invitees.

Within a few days, Senator James Webb and State Delegate Kaye Kory’s names were removed from the invitation.

Their offices declined to comment, but the removal of the names did follow receipt of our faxes, letters, and phone calls.

The reasons the others should not legitimate the Dar Al-Hijrah fundraiser, we had written them, included the Islamic Center’s continued support for the Dar al-Hijrah imam in 2001, Anwar Al-Awlaki, the senior al-Qaeda recruiter for three 9/11 hijackers, imam and mentor to the accused 2009 Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan who killed 13 people, and online mentor to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the suspect in the Christmas Day 2009 attempt to blow up  Northwest Airlines Flight 253.   We described several other Dar Al-Hijrah leaders linked to terrorism and supporting violent jihad against America, including the current imam who will host the April 3 event.

Yet –  after multiple letters, faxes, emails and phone calls alerting their offices to the invitation listing their names – as of Sunday, March 28, 2010, Congressmen Connolly and Moran, former Governor and current DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, Fairfax Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Bulova and Supervisor Penny Gross have all chosen to keep their names on the invitation. Governor Tim Kaine’s spokesman did comment that they had not received an invitation and would not attend, but declined to comment on whether they had asked for Kaine’s name to be removed from the invitation.

So, if these five officials DO attend the dinner they have helped publicize now for over a month, here’s some background on their jihadist host, the current Imam at Dar Al-Hijrah, Shaker Elsayed.  Taken word for word from the letters  they were mailed – and faxed – and then faxed again.

On February 17, we mailed this information on Imam Elsayed  to Rep. Gerry Connolly and the others:

“Mr. Elsayed, the current Imam and a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S., openly supports the terrorist organization Hamas, including their doctrine advocating the destruction of Israel.  In 2005, shortly after becoming Dar Al-Hijrah’s Imam, he preached that ‘Islam forbids you to give allegiance to those who kick you off your homeland, and to those who support those who kick you off your homeland…We do have license to respond with all force necessary to answer our attackers.’ ”

And on February 17, Congressman Jim Moran’s letter, like all the others, told him this info on Imam Elsayed

“According to video available online at the Investigative Project on Terrorism,  in 2002 at a conference sponsored by the Muslim American Society, Mr. Elsayed stated (translated from Arabic): ‘And about the subject unfairly named suicide bombers, homicide bombers, or murderers, or killers. Our answer to this issue is simple. To decide that this man is a martyr or not a martyr, it is a pure religious matter. Nobody who is not Muslim has any right to decide for us, we the Muslims, whose is a martyr or another. We as Muslims will decide that. It is in-house business.[...]‘ “

And the letter we sent – same day – to Former Governor Tim Kaine, now Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told him as well as the others about this quote from Imam Elsayed:

“The Islamic scholars said whenever there is an attack on an Islamic state or occupation, or the honor of the Muslims has been violated, the Jihad is a must for everyone, a child, a lady and a man. They have to make Jihad with every tool that they can get in their hand. Anything that they can get in their hand and if they don’t have anything in their hand then they can fight with their hand without weapons.”

These five elected officials’ names are still on the flyer. Only five days remain for them to tell the American public whether they support Imam Shaker Elsayed and his jihadist doctrines.

Welcome to The c, or “Virginia PDL Public Option”.  It’s as bad an idea as has ever come into the credit space, short of the credit default swap.  Naturally, it is the invention of Government.

I’ll jump over all the usual falsehoods that Mr. Kaine presents and cut to the chase.

What’s so bad about this program?  Let’s take the unfair competition part first.   I don’t have any problem with the government entering the consumer credit business, just as I have no problem with a fair public option for health care, as long as the playing field is level. Therein lies the rub.

The PDL Public Option provides loans up to $500, at a 24.99% APR, with a six-month term, and a limit of  2 loans annually.  It requires membership in the Virginia Credit Union (VACU), which administers the program.   The VACU also requires direct deposit of the borrower’s paycheck.

So we have traditional PDL businesses with their associated overhead of $9000/month and average default rate of 7% (which requires them to charge $15 – $20 per hundred borrowed just to make a profit) and have no guarantee whatsoever of repayment on one side.  On the other, we have a public option in which the lender receives free advertising from the state government; is not required to make a profit (because credit unions are non-profit), and can therefore charge borrowers 95% less than traditional PDLs; allows borrowers to repay loans over a period 13 times longer than traditional PDLs; all the while enjoying a negligible default rate (because of paycheck direct deposit).

Sound fair?  Not to me.   Why should the government be permitted to act as a source of free advertising for a credit union, especially when the competition is unfair?

The PDL industry repeatedly reminds the media and policymakers that they welcome fair competition in the marketplace.  Many products already exist.  If the flesh-eating consumer activists and grandstanding politicians are so hot to get rid of payday loans, why not just create an alternative product to compete fairly in the marketplace?  The reason is obvious.  [No, it’s not because they’d make money and feel so guilty about it that they have to start an organization to fight themselves].

There are no other viable alternative products. If there were, they’d be available because of the efficiency of the free market.

No, instead, they choose to spend enormous time and effort to kill the product using unfair competition via a government-sponsored public option, while trying to get the traditional version banned by legislators.

When we dig deeper, though, the problems with the public option become even grander.  The most significant concern I have is that this is nothing more than an attempt to shanghai unwitting state employees into a credit union they know nothing about.  Normally when shopping for banking services, a consumer wants to compare a list of all the fees associated with their account.  By enticing them with the PDL public option, they get sucked into VACU’s clutches without ever being offered a comprehensive list of fees.

And make no mistake – it’s the fees that VACU is salivating over. The biggest fees, of course, are for NSF checks and overdraft protection.  These are the cash cows for CU’s and banks, although a host of other fees exist, as well.

Thus, over time, the fees paid to VACU will significantly dwarf those paid to PDLs over the same period.

The most insidious part of this whole operation is that the vaunted Mr. Kaine is offering it to state employees!  While he decries payday lenders with the usual assortment of pejorative terms, he frames the PDL Public Option as a better alternative.  Oh sure, it’s fine for those first two loans.  But the average consumer needs several loans each year just to make ends meet, and they won’t get them from VACU!  Instead, they’ll be paying VACU for the privilege of having an account and still have to use their local payday lender, while being required to take a financial education quiz and wait days (instead of minutes) to get their loan approved. It’s nothing more than a state-sponsored marketing ploy, and yet the media calls payday lenders the bad guys in the credit world.

Where is the criticism from the media about this plan?  The attacks on DNC Chairman Tim Kaine for this move?  Silence, as per usual from the “objective” media.

Make no mistake, government always makes things worse for consumers.  We’ve already seen 58 million people have their credit card accounts closed or credit lines chopped because of the CARD Act.  We saw consumers in North Carolina, Georgia, and Oregon fair much worse after government banned payday loans in those states.  Now we have government directly endorsing and advertising on behalf of a competitor that will do exactly the opposite of what the program intends.

When will government learn this lesson?  And when can we, as consumers, be trusted by government to handle our own affairs without their interference?v

An obscure provision of federal law makes it possible for local and state officials to be trained as federal immigration agents. Section 287 (g)  of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorizes the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to form partnerships that can be shaped to suit local priorities. Although this option has been available since 1996, most partnerships have been formed in just the past few years, according to ICE.

In an interview, McDonnell said he favors state-wide application of the 287 (g) program  because in his view it would compensate for the lack of resources available to ICE. While serving as attorney general, McDonnell worked with local governments in Prince William, Herndon and Rockingham counties to establish 287 (g) agreements. Tim Kaine, the state’s Democratic incumbent governor, has resisted using the program on a state-wide basis.

 “With the lack of resources and staff both Republican and Democratic congresses have given to ICE, I think the only way we were going to have reasonable enforcement in Virginia is for Virginia officials to do it on their own,” he said. “287 (g) allowed a legitimate and prudent way to address that and so I was concerned about having each county and each city out there by itself, which was why I asked the governor to, in at least the most serious crimes, allow Virginia state police officers to be trained as ICE agents and he repeatedly refused.”

Gov. Kaine has said previously that he is opposed to having state officials assume what should be federal burdens because this would subtract away from their primary responsibilities.

McDonnell is unmoved by this rationale because state and local officials already encounter illegal aliens in their daily routine. He expects this dynamic to continue, so long as the federal government fails to step up and meet its enforcement responsibilities.

“Regardless of where people stand on immigration policy and the idea of comprehensive reform, there is broad agreement concerning the detention and removal of the most dangerous offenders who have committed crimes beyond their immigration violations,” McDonnell said.

There is a precedent for cooperation between Virginia officials and federal agents that could give a boost to McDonnell’s 287g, should he prevail on Tuesday. ICE agents placed 171 convicted sex offenders into deportation proceedings after exchanging information with the Virginia state police as part of “Operation Cold Play” back in 2008.

As a result of working in close concert with local governments that took up the 287g program, McDonnell said he would be well positioned to help craft the right program as governor.

“We actually had a template for how those agreements must be drawn up so they would meet with the approval of ICE and I think that’s a tool that a governor has to have at his or her disposal that I would use,” he said.

The idea of allowing for states to have greater autonomy and dexterity in the implementation of public policy could have larger ramifications, if a Gov. McDonnell can invoke the 287g program, as a successful example of federalism in action.

“There is a lot of discussion now about federalism and the forgotten 10^th amendment and what the founders intended,” he said. “If the federal government would restrain itself and adhere to constitutional limits, we’d have a whole lot less national debt and we’d have more effective state governments that are closer to the people and listen better.”