Why Capitalism Has A Bad Reputation

One of our readers forwarded me an article the other day which I think is worth discussing because it raises some very interesting questions. The article was written by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute and it discusses why capitalism has such a dirty reputation at the moment. He makes some excellent points, but I think he’s missing something crucial.

Click Here To Read Article/Comments at CommentaramaPolitics

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When Is An ATF Agent Not An ATF Agent?

When he's a J. P. Morgan six-figure employee. Or at least that's what the Obama administration claims. In fact, Bill McMahon is drawing his full salary from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF, ATF) while working as a top security official at J. P. Morgan. Bill McMahon was the assistant director in the Phoenix office of ATF, and he was up to his neck in Operation Fast and Furious.

But now he's “on leave, drawing his full salary while awaiting complete vesting of his federal pension, medical and retirement benefits. Is this illegal? Maybe. Is it unethical? You bet your bippie it is, and at the same time it's another example of the favoritism and coverups being perpetrated by Barack Obama and Eric Holder.

One whistleblower in the Justice Department disputes the Department of Justice's conclusions about the dismissal of charges against the New Black Panthers in Philadelphia, and he's sent to the DOJ equivalent of Siberia. ATF Special Agent John Dodson gives testimony before Congress that points the finger at McMahon's involvement in Fast and Furious, and he is told that he must wait until the Inspector General's report is complete before the DOJ can consider retracting the false statements made about him by McMahon et al during testimony and in memos from DOJ to Congress. McMahon, on the other hand, gets sent to the Fountain of Wealth.

I should note that the Inspector General's report is now complete, but we can't see it, nor can Congress, because it is currently “under review” by Attorney General Holder and his political lawyers. These are the same people who time and again stonewalled Congress and/or simply refused to provide information requested by committees in both the House and the Senate. There is little doubt that McMahon was fully-involved and active in Fast and Furious, but it's unlikely to look that way when DOJ gets done tampering with the Inspector General's report

Billy Boy is doing just fine, making big bucks at J. P. Morgan while hiding from Congress and enjoying his “leave” from ATF. Committee head Darrell Issa in the House, and ranking committee minority member Chuck Grassley in the Senate are both demanding answers as to why McMahon is being allowed to double-dip and at the same time use his private employment as a shield from Congressional investigators. If for no other reason, shouldn't the Obama administration be miffed with McMahon for taking a job with one of those evil Wall Street corporations (sarcasm off)?

Hard evidence, including e-mails to and from McMahon were presented to Congress which proved conclusively that McMahon knew about Fast and Furious, and was actively involved in its planning and subsequent coverup. Yet McMahon continued to claim he was just a low-level agent who knew nothing about any of the details of Fast and Furious. In doing so, he also maligned the character and veracity of agent John Dodson and other ATF agents who testified clearly about McMahon's involvement. Right up until the heat was getting too great and he took his “leave.”

McMahon and his shysters at DOJ now claim that the “leave” means that McMahon is no longer technically a federal employee, and has every right to assert “no comment” to any questions posed to him as a private employee of J. P. Morgan. The final Congressional Report nevertheless found that McMahon's fingerprints were all over Fast and Furious. He was a high-level supervisor in Phoenix where the Fast and Furious operation was launched during his tenure.

His records and e-mails clearly show that he knew that straw purchasers had bought over nine hundred sophisticated weapons which ended up in the murderous hands of Mexican cartel members. At the hearings, McMahon even admitted that he rubber-stamped Fast and Furious documents without reading them, but that his actions were negligent rather than intentional. As if that matters. Either way, he is at least partially-responsible for a serious breach of national security and the duty to protect American citizens. He was a vital link between the Phoenix field office and ATF headquarters in Washington DC.

McMahon claimed that it was not his duty to as a mere supervisor to ask questions about operations in the field. Sounds a lot like “I was only following orders.” He did admit that it was his duty at least to review the documents in front of him, but that failure to do so was a minor failure, not even a dereliction of duty. If carefully monitoring agent activities was not his major duty as a supervisor, what was?

In the long run, McMahon's actions and inactions, followed by his lies and coverups, have left hundreds of innocent victims dead in Mexico and perhaps dozens on our side of the border. Poetic justice would require that McMahon and Holder be required to submit to a face-to-face confrontation with the loved ones and relatives of the dead, specifically including the family of murdered Border Agent Brian Terry. But that won't happen, because McMahon is busy performing his duties at J. P. Morgan and Holder is busy re-writing the Inspector General's report.

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Americans: No More Business As Usual

There’s been an interesting shift in the political scene in this country. Some would argue that it’s a shift toward populism, but I’m not so sure. I think this is more likely a shift away from the abusive system of the past where taxpayers get turned into piggybanks for the well-connected. Let’s discuss.

The difference between populism and where the public seems to be headed is actually quite dramatic. Populism tends to focus on destroying the current system of privilege, taking from the rich, and implementing policies aimed at remaking society in the name of the public. Because of the extreme nature of populism, it is often borderline violent and it tends to flirt with either anarchy or socialism. I don’t see any of that in the current political environment.

To the contrary, groups like the Tea Party want neither anarchy nor socialism. They don’t envy those who have, nor do they seek to crush the rich. What they want instead is to reshape the government to stop it from being able to do the bidding of the connected. Specifically, they want the government to stop guaranteeing the risks of big business, and they want the government to stop issuing two sets of laws, one which helps the connected and one which simultaneously hinders the unconnected.

This seems to be confirmed by a new poll conducted by Rasmussen. Indeed, this poll showed broad bipartisan opposition to cronyism and strong support for free market policies. Consider these results:

● Only 27% think it is “ever ok for the government to make investments in private companies.”
● 71% believe the private sector is “better than government officials at determining the long-term benefits and potential of new technologies.” Only 11% think the reverse.
● 64% think government money will be wasted if the government backs projects the private sector won’t.
● 66% believe crony connections drive most government contracts.
● Then there’s this: “By a 3-1 margin, voters believe elected politicians routinely provide help to favored companies.”
● And this: “Seven out of ten Americans believe government and big business work together against the rest of us.”

It’s the last couple that tell you what is going on. People saw trillions of dollars poured into the big banks to save them after they made horribly stupid bets on things that the banks themselves created after getting the Clinton Administration to change the law to allow them to take these kinds of risk. They saw how the entire financial system almost collapsed because 3-4 big banks fell apart and they saw how these same banks have returned to record profitability (and record size) while the rest of us get to pick up the tab. They saw how billions were funneled directly to unions through the stimulus bill. They saw how billions more were given to Obama donors under the guise of running “clean energy companies,” which went bankrupt within months of getting the billions. They saw GE lobbying to get nonsensical environmental laws passed and then turned right around and get waivers from those same laws. They saw how hundreds of billions in government contracts have been awarded on no-bid, sole-source contracts to companies that handed over tens of millions in lobbying money. They saw how loopholes were put into the tax code which protected only a handful of companies, or in the case of Charlie Rangel’s friends only one company. They saw bribes and sweetheart deals given for regulatory consideration. . . Chris Dodd and Countywide anyone? They saw average bondholders crushed in GM while the unions made out like thieves. They saw nonunion pension rights terminated. They saw a shakedown of Boeing. They saw attempts to tax and control the internet to protect contributors. And they saw no difference between Bush or Obama on any of this.

It is frankly surprising that people haven’t been more populist in their opinions. Outside of the leftist desire to steal from the rich and their rhetoric about getting even with the banks, the public has been remarkably calm. . . determined to change the game, but calm. And I think it is a real testament to the American public that their response to this pillaging and abuse has not been vindictive, but has been instead to demand the system be fixed so everyone can move on.

I think the Republicans better pay attention to this. I think Romney and Ryan will be great for this country, but they need to realize that the times have changed and the public now pays attention to who is sliding through the backdoor with their hand out. Business as usual must end.

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Why You Should Vote Against The Donks

I did this before the 2010 election and it’s worth doing again. Below you will find a list of reasons to vote against Obama and the Democrats. Share this with your friends. Post the link on other websites you visit. Don’t let people forget!

Here are some of the things the Democrats did over the past two years that you may not have liked:

Obama Economic Record

• You didn’t build that.
• 8-9% unemployment for four solid years, 17% real unemployment.
• 5 straight years of trillion dollar deficits.
• Adding more to the national debt than all presidents combined.
• Hyper Inflation.
• Billions wasted on money to “clean energy companies” (read: donors to Obama) who went bankrupt right after getting money, e.g. Solyndra.
• Vetoing the Keystone Pipeline.
• The trillion dollar union/Democratic-interest-group giveaway known as the Stimulus bill and its dozen sequels.
• The trillion dollar Big Bank giveaway know as the TARP, the TALP and so on.
• Approving and then lying about $1.2 billion in bonuses to AIG.
• Authorizing massive salaries to the officers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which escaped regulation.
• The consumer and small bank screw job known as Financial Reform, a sop to huge banks and other Democratic donors.
• Effectively handing the Treasury to Goldman Sachs.
• “Saved or created” fake jobs.
• The attempt to tax “carbon,” i.e. everything on the planet.
• Not going a week without a taxpayer funded vacation or round of golf.
• 269 bank failures so far, with 829 more on the worry list.
• Record foreclosures.
• Trying to tax e-commerce to help California.
• Bad faith in budget negotiations.

ObamaCare

• Which destroys Medicare for financing.
• Which forces people to buy insurance and will cause everyone to lose their current plan, despite Democratic lies to the contrary.
• Which will bankrupt the country.
• Which is a huge sop to insurers.
• Which does nothing to contain costs.
• Which does nothing to improve the quality of care.
• Which will lead to rationing.
• Excluding union plans and raising the limits on the Cadillac tax in union-friendly states.
• The abortion distortion in ObamaCare, which exposed “pro-life” Democrats as anything but. . . and suing to stop their opponents from advertising this fact.
• Giving exemptions from ObamaCare to large, well-connected companies like McDonalds and 27 others.

Insidious Acts

• Allowing states to waive work requirement for welfare.
• Trying to turn Trayvon Martin shooting into race riot.
• Trying to hook Americans on government benefits.
• Trying to get Mexicans to sign up for American food stamps.
• Obama’s War on the Catholic Church.
• Attacking Boeing on union issues.

Eric Holder

• Fast and Furious.
• Eric Holder’s racist policies, including testimony that Holder sees civil rights laws as protecting blacks only and not whites and dropping Black Panther case.
• Holder refusing to defend DOMA.
• Holder investigating non-violent pro-life protesters while ignoring union thugs who attacked people at town hall meetings.
• Holder refusing top investigate death threats against conservatives in Wisconsin.
• Holder inventing Iran-Mexico link to distract from Fast and Furious.
• Holder in contempt for lying to Congress on Fast and Furious documents.

Democratic Hate

• Democrats supporting OWS rapists and thugs.
• Demonizing the Tea Party as racists and Nazis, and lying to manufacture “evidence.”
• Demonizing a cop as racist for arresting a Grade A jackass who happened to be black.
• Demonizing insurance companies to pass ObamaCare.
• Demonizing drug companies to pass ObamaCare.
• Demonizing employers to pass ObamaCare.
• Demonizing doctors to pass ObamaCare.
• Demonizing Arizona on the immigration issue. Then suing Arizona.
• Demonizing banks to pass Financial Reform.
• Demonizing oil companies to pass cap and trade.
• Demonizing Republicans because. . . well, because.
• Demonizing all Christians when a whacko shot an abortion doctor.
• Demonizing Mormons when California voted against gay marriage.
• Demonizing Israel to appease their anti-Semitism wing.
• Demonizing “right wingers” and Christians when a whacko shot up the Holocaust museum.
• Demonizing Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, George Bush, etc. etc.
• Demonizing John Boehner because they ran out of other people to hate.
• Accusing Republicans of a War on Women.
• Accusing Republicans of a War on Blacks.
• Calling any criticism of Obama “racist.”
• Reporting Obama’s own words attacked as “racist.”
• Exploiting the shooting of Gabby Giffords to slander Sarah Palin and conservatives, to demand restrictions on Free Speech, and to demand gun control.
• Death threats in Wisconsin.
• Attacking Voter ID laws as “racist.”
• Ignoring anti-Semitism at Media Matters and OWS.
• Inviting racist blacks to White House who attack interracial marriage.
• Never standing up to the racial demonization of Clarence Thomas.
• Ignoring Easter, but celebrating all other holidays.
• Using the words “hostage taking” to describe Republican acts.

Democratic Corruption

• Turning the Super Committee into a cash machine for lobbyists.
• Anything related to GE including granting them waivers on rules they lobbied for and appointing Jeffry Immelt to the President's Jobs Council even as he outsourced jobs to China.
• MF Global, where $700 million in investor money went missing as money was donated to Democrats before bankruptcy.
• Attacks on Republican donors by Treasury, including Gibson Guitar.
• It seems that every member of the Congressional Black Caucus is up on ethics charges, from taking dirty money (Charlie Goodtime Rangel) to sending stimulus money to relative’s banks (Maxine Waters) to awarding scholarships to ineligible family members (Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson and Rep. Sanford Bishop).
• Chris Dodd’s sweetheart deal with Countrywide.
• Stimulus money paid in non-existent districts for fake jobs.
• Stimulus money used to pay Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt.
• Stimulus money that went to dead people.
• Stimulus money that went to people in jail.
• No one in the Obama administration paying their taxes.
• Pelosi’s private plane.
• Pelosi’s drinks bill.
• Michelle Obama’s high class vacation-a-rama.
• The Louisiana Purchase.
• The Cornhusker Kickback.
• Medicare money for certain districts in Florida.
• A hospital for Chris Dodd’s vote on ObamaCare.
• Special treatment for Kaiser Permanente, the biggest provider in Pelosi’s district.
• Sestak Jobgate and a whiff of Clinton.
• Romanoff Jobgate.
• Climategate, and Obama’s affirmation of the falsified data.
• Algore Rapegate.
• Weinergate.
• Democrats Jim Moran (Va), Peter Visclosky (Ind.), and John Murtha (Hell) directing $137 million in defense contracts to clients of a lobbyist who funneled more than $380,000 in illegal campaign contributions to them.
• Suggesting we should suspend the Constitution to allow Obama to fix the economy.

Electoral Manipulation

• ACORN voter fraud.
• Manipulating Massachusetts electoral laws to keep Ted Kennedy’s seat Democratic and help pass ObamaCare.
• Running fake Tea Party candidates to hurt Republican chances in November. . . now proven in Michigan, New Jersey and Nevada.
• Trying to manipulate the electoral systems in several states to tilt the playing field toward Democrats.

Twisted Nominees

• Marxist and racist Van Jones.
• Maoist White House Communications Director Anita Dunn.
• Pedophile Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings.
• Unqualified Supreme Court nominee "wise Latina" Red Sonia Sotomayor.
• Unqualified Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

Weak on Terror

• Abandoning Israel repeatedly, including at the UN.
• Doing nothing to stop Iran getting the bomb.
• “Man made disasters.”
• Refusal to recognize the "Islam" in Islamic terrorism.
• Losing the war in Afghanistan and sending troops for a fruitless last push before surrendering.
• Putting Navy SEALS on a show trial.
• Falsely claiming credit for Osama bin Laden's death.
• Allowing pirates to increase number of ships taken by 625% per year and profits increasing by 22,527%.
• Trying to move terrorism trials to New York City. . . so terrorists can be near their new mosque.

Anti-Americanism

• Apologizing to Arabs and blaming the United States for their hatred of us.
• Feigning ignorance of what could have motivated a Muslim to attack US soldiers at Fort Hood, and warning Americans not to hold this against Muslims. Yet jumping to conclusions in all other cases.
• NASA’s new role as center for Muslim outreach.
• Democratic support of the triumphal mosque at Ground Zero.

Pro-Illegal Immigration

• Suing Arizona to stop it from enforcing a law the Federal Government is obligated to enforce.
• Trying to boycott Arizona.
• Reporting Arizona’s law to the United Nations as a human rights violation.
• Refusing to protect the border and instead putting up signs warning Americans to avoid nearby national parks.

Assaults on Freedom of Speech and the Internet

• SOPA
• Attempting to regulate the internet through Net Neutrality regulations.
• Pelosi’s McCarthy-esque calls for investigations of Democratic opponents.
• Attempting to take away free speech of corporations.
• Attempting to regulate talk radio through the Fairness Doctrine, dressed up as local content laws.
• Remaining silent when South Park creators were threatened by Muslims.
• Telling Molly Norris she should go into hiding rather than going after the people threatening her.
• Joining Muslim countries to work toward a UN resolution proclaiming blasphemous speech a human rights crime.

Faux “Environmentalism” Exposed

• Defending “scientists” involved in Climategate and other environmental reports created with false data.
• Ridiculous Copenhagen non-agreement.
• Wiping out central California’s farmland.
• The total mishandling of the BP disaster.
• Suppressing BP data to hide what really happened.
• Proving that leftist groups care about electing Democrats, not the causes they are using as Trojan horses.

Embarrassing Us

• Regifting in Britain.
• Abandoning our foreign allies.
• Bowing to foreign leaders.
• Sending Geithner to beg the Chinese to keep buying our bonds.
• Teleprompter in Chief.
• Scaring the hell out of New Yorkers with Air Force One joy ride.
• The arrogance of accepting the Nobel Prize for anticipatory good deeds.
• TSA Gropegate.
• Joe Biden

And just in case you like to pretend to be a liberal at the office and you want to discourage your kooky liberal friends from voting, here are some of the most popular (albeit stupid) complaints about the Democrats from the left:

• The Democrats were too interested in bipartisanship for the sake of bipartisanship than in passing the best possible legislation.
• ObamaCare didn’t go far enough because the Democrats sold out to the health insurance lobby and the Republicans.
• The Democrats didn’t do anything to help the environment. They didn’t pass cap and trade, and Copenhagen was a disaster because the U.S. refused to push for a world treaty against polluters like India, China and Brazil.
• Harry Reid used the threat of filibuster (a false threat when he had 60 votes) to stop or slow everything the Democrats should have done.
• Obama never gave benefits to gays in the Federal government, which he could have done by Executive Order, he failed to stand up for gay marriage, and the Democrats didn’t even try to end "don't ask, don't tell."
• The Democrats did nothing to reform the immigration system.
• The Democrats got into bed with Wall Street, taking their money and selling out consumers to banks.
• The Democrats did nothing to stop the mortgage crisis.
• The Democrats didn’t bail out states like Michigan and California with federal money.
• Obama’s reliance on teleprompters chafes at their delusions about his brilliance.
• He’s not cool, he’s an elitist.
• He didn’t save the economy.
• He did nothing to punish BP, all he did was go on vacation.
• He didn’t get us out of Afghanistan.

There you have it. Pass it along to your friends, and make sure everyone votes!!!

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A Whiff of Scandal

One of the surest signs of an administration in freefall is when the whiff of scandal begins to take hold, especially when it’s a Democratic administration because the MSM tries to shield them until the MSM decides they are sure to lose. So it’s interesting that so many scandals are suddenly appearing.

● GSAgate: The GSA scandal just keeps getting worse. First, you had a video of several GSA employees playing around rather than working. Then you had reports of $800k used to party in Vegas, and $900k used on expensive gifts for employees. Then more videos came out of GSA employees playing around. Over the weekend, we heard that criminal charges have been recommended by the Inspector General for many of these same party-goers, along with allegations of bribery and kickbacks. The head of the department has resigned, as have several other senior individuals. Some have pled the Fifth before Congress! Now we hear of a senior GSA employee who took his wife to Hawaii, Guam and the Mariana Islands on the taxpayer’s dime as a birthday gift. . . even after the Vegas scandal hit the news. And we’ve learned that GSA employees routinely invented fake awards so they could get the government to pay for food at meetings. Those are criminal acts.

This is the death of a thousand small scandals. Moreover, these are the types of scandals which catch people’s attention because it’s easy to understand -- unlike something like Fast and Furious. What’s worse, the Democrats are responding poorly by trying to allege this IG investigation is nothing more than a GOP smear or a "war on Vegas." That’s never worked. And Obama stepped in it by trying to claim this was Bush’s fault. That laid this firmly on Obama doorstep because his responding confirmed that this is something which sits at the presidential level of accountability.

● Air Farce One: Anyone remember Pelosi’s plane? Well, Leon Panetta is now answering questions about why the taxpayers had to pay to fly him home on weekends to California at a cost of $860,000 so far. He’s apologizing to anyone who will listen, which means he knows this too is the sort of thing taxpayers remember, especially in an administration known for taxpayer-funded vacations and golf.

● Boogie Down Secret Agent Man: The Secret Service is in the middle of a growing scandal as we learn that between 11-20 of their agents decided to party with a group of hookers in Cartagena, Columbia. I doubt the public wouldn’t attribute this to Obama, except for two things. First, when scandal is in the air, all scandals touching an administration get sucked in and become a pattern of misbehavior or mismanagement. Secondly, Obama put his foot in his mouth saying he would be “angry” if this proved to be true. This makes Obama sound like a chump because this goes back to his not knowing “whose ass to kick” in the Gulf of Mexico. It also makes it sound like these men were directly under his authority. He should have said he trusted the Secret Service to determine the facts and sort this out.

● Crony Industrial Policy: As we discussed yesterday and several times in the past, Obama’s fascist-inspired industrial policy has fallen apart in record time, and many of these are finally hitting the airwaves. This is why even the MSM is beginning to question why companies like Solyndra, Enerl, Beacon Power, Solar Trust for America, and others could possibly have gone bankrupt so quickly, sucking down so much government money. . . after making sizeable donations to Team Donkey.

● Bad Touch: Finally, there is a state-level sexual harassment scandal unfolding in North Carolina, where the NC Democratic Party executive director resigned Sunday after it was revealed he had paid a former staffer to keep quiet about sexual harassment allegations. Normally, this would be no big deal nationally, except for a couple facts: (1) this blew up in the middle of the whiff of scandal moment (and a slow news cycle), (2) it happened right after Hilary Rosen’s broadside against motherhood, which happened right as the Democrats charged the GOP with waging a war against women, and (3) the governor made it so much worse. Indeed, Governor Bev Perdue told reporters to “get over it” when she was asked about the scandal, despite the fact she had just declared April to be “Sexual Assault Awareness Month.” She finally joined calls for the resignation, but the damage was done. Between this and Rosen, the Democratic propaganda about a war on women has exploded in a huge ball of hypocritical fire.

This is all bad news for Obama and the Democrats. It’s not that any one of these scandals is truly bad by itself, it’s that they are getting noticed by the MSM. This suggests the MSM knows Obama is doomed and they’ve decided to gain some credibility on his back by taking down all kinds of peripheral players. This will allow them to pretend they are unbiased when they start hunting for (and manufacturing) scandals under the Romney administration. I’ve seen this every time a Democrat is in trouble.

The one thing that may save them, however, is this fact: according to data compiled by the IRS, only 85 million people actually paid Federal tax last year. That’s only 27% of the population. Yes, you read that correctly. Only 1 in 4 Americans paid federal tax. That means 3 in 4 Americans are getting a free ride on the Federal government. By comparison, 49% of Americans, 147 million people, live in a household where someone received benefits from the government. This means a tremendous class of people is being created who will keep voting for more government, and that means Democrats.

That makes this election extremely important. The Republicans must cut these people off. They must break this cycle of dependence before it takes hold and they need to make more people pay taxes. This is vital the future. They should also mercilessly mock these scandals.

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Crony Socialist Blind-Sided By Obama

I must admit to a certain amount of Schadenfreude in reporting to you that one of Barack Obama’s pet crony projects has been suddenly and abruptly cut off at the knees by the FCC. Executives at LightSquared were caught entirely unawares by the FCC announcement that there is no practical way to fix LightSquared’s basic problem of high-powered terrestrial broadcasts on a spectrum slice intended for low-power satellite communications.

LightSquared had proposed a 4G high-speed wireless telephone network. Its founders and early shareholders had already invested “billions of dollars” in the plan. The FCC, under orders from the White House, had granted waivers allowing LightSquared to experiment with the system. Those waivers would normally be granted on a very short-term basis, but after pressure from the White House were extended for a nearly unheard-of period of one year AFTER the initial problems with interference with GPS were discovered.

This project was supposed to be a boon to the Obama administration since he had expressed his firm approval of a project that would be entirely privately-financed. But crony socialism has more facets than the obvious government loans. In the case of private investments, supervising federal agencies can be told to look the other way, grant special privileges (such as the waivers), and even act as lobbyists for the investors at Congressional hearings.

The big investors are Philip Falcone and his investment firm Harbinger Capital. They also make other major investments, such as contributions to Obama presidential campaigns. The FCC seemed to be in the barrel for LightSquared right up until this past Tuesday. Suddenly, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Lawrence Strickling at the Commerce Department announced that “government testing showed LightSquared’s network would cause widespread problems with GPS devices, including those used by pilots to prevent their airplanes from crashing.”

FCC Chairman Julius Genacowski almost immediately chimed in with a memorandum agreeing with Strickling’s statement that “we conclude at this time that there are no mitigating strategies that both solve the interference issues and provide LightSquared with an adequate commercial network deployment.” Thus, the waivers were canceled immediately, and LightSquared must, with all deliberate speed, dismantle the towers they are already using for testing and cease all related operations.

LightSquared’s network was an Obama dream. It was supposed to highlight his devotion to private industry and its role in expanding broadband for “the people” by creating serious wholesale competition for AT&T and Verizon. Even The Washington Post, which normally carries water for the Obama administration, said “LightSquared was supposed to be a poster child for the Obama administration’s broadband expansion, and turned into a potential exhibit for their crony capitalism instead.” The Post favors crony capitalism to my use of crony socialism, but that’s just a quibble.

While LightSquared was touting its brilliant system and claiming to be the White Knight in its dealings with the government, here are some sample headlines in both the MSM and not-so MSM over the past year: “Sen. Grassley says LightSquared offered me a political ‘win’ in exchange for backing down on FCC probe.” “LightSquared to FCC: Quit screwing around and give us the approval.” “General accuses White House of pressuring him to change testimony for Democratic donor.” "SEC warns LightSquared figure [Falcone] of potential fraud probe.”

“White House offered ‘guidance’ to second witness in LightSquared inquiry.” “LightSquared disrupts 75% of GPS receivers in government testing.” “LightSquared running out of cash.” “Sprint [a potential investor] to LightSquared: You’ve got thirty days to get FCC approval or we walk.” "LightSquared accuses NASA and GPS firm Trimble of collusion and bias against LightSquared."

Falcone and Harbinger Capital have learned a very expensive lesson. Barack Obama is not to be trusted. No matter how much you may enrich him with campaign donations, if the political costs go too high, he will drop you like a hot potato. The lesson they didn’t learn and now won’t have to learn is that even if yours is an entirely private firm, administrations like Obama’s will still find a way to insinuate themselves into your business. Loans and taxpayers investment may bail you out at some future time, but you will always live with federal bureaucracies telling you how to run your business. Then, they can pull the rug right out from under you if you cross them.

I do not particularly ever want to see a private enterprise fail. But I also don’t like seeing a private enterprise profiting from backroom deals with the White House which work against the interests of the American people. All indications are that back nearly at the start, this project was simply not going to work. It shouldn’t have taken the FCC over a year to discover the obvious. I have to wonder if its original intention was to simply wait until the first jumbo jet crashed because of GPS interference then blame the crash on unregulated private industry.

Final note: One of LightSquared’s first investors was one Barack Obama. I will not draw any conclusions, but he pulled his investment out about the time the FCC started producing negative reports. And he still allowed the waivers to continue for another year
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Solyndra Strikes Again

The Solyndra scandal just refuses to go away. By now, everyone knows about the money thrown at a pie-in-the-sky solar panel scheme by the unwilling taxpayers on the orders of the Obama administration. The company was shaky at best, but it was run by big contributors to the Obama campaign, so a few (dozen) federal rules and plain common sense were tossed aside to fund another green disaster.

The company failed shortly after receiving the loans, and the taxpayers are now on the hook for the losses. As part of a sweetheart deal between Solyndra’s chief investors, Obama contributors all, and the Department of Energy, Solyndra not only received approximately $535 million in federal guaranteed loans, but in violation of federal law the major shareholders were granted priority in bankruptcy over the taxpayers who coughed up the money for the loan. The Department of Energy has claimed all along that it had no idea whatsoever that Solyndra was about to fall off a financial cliff.

And now we have a new wrinkle to consider. A mere two days before the Solyndra board of directors decided to file for bankruptcy protection, there was a mysterious sell-off of inventory. Allegedly, the sale was to stave off the collapse of the company. It is not an unusual procedure for going concerns which are experiencing short term cash flow problems. But in the real world of healthy, but troubled corporations, these things are carefully-planned and take place weeks or months before a company is facing bankruptcy.

The sell-off has a number of very strange-smelling details. First, there is the question of why the inventory was sold off so cheaply. The inventory was fairly evaluated at $58.1 million. It was sold for cash--$17.5 million in cash. Even very distressed corporations in need of cash can usually find a buyer that will pay the real value of the inventory, or something close to it. Even under the worst possible circumstances, getting only 30% of the actual value is nearly unheard-of.

To any trained accountant (in the Department of Energy, for instance?) this means that the company is not only in trouble—it’s in big trouble. The bankruptcy court must look at the time of the sale, as well as the buyers, and determine if the sale was for reasonably equivalent cash-to-value as well as whether there was any reasonable belief that the infusion of cash would increase liquidity to the point that the corporation might remain viable. Given the bankruptcy filing two days later, that seems unlikely. That leaves the question of who paid the cash.

Even the name of the buyer is suspicious—Solyndra Solar II. That name was picked for the affiliates of Solyndra’s debtor-in-possession lender. And who might that be? Argonaut Private Equity and Madrone Capital Partners. Argonaut is the investment wing of a foundation headed by billionaire George Kaiser. Full circle, ladies and gentlemen. Kaiser is one of those Obama contributors and Solyndra board members who got precedence over the taxpayers in case of bankruptcy. Madrone Partners also has connections to the Waltons of Wal-Mart fame.

An official spokesman for Argonaut, who also served on the Solyndra board, told reporters that the investors (which investors?) did not profit from overall sales of the inventory or the accounts receivable. A separate corporation had been formed to purchase the Solyndra accounts receivable by the same cast of characters, and is named Solyndra Solar LLC. The spokesman, Steve Mitchell, added that the plan was to give the company more time to turn around. Two days? That would be one helluva turnaround.

Solyndra Solar LLC and Solyndra Solar II were both properly listed in the initial bankruptcy filing. But it was not until a much later addendum that the full list of officers and investors of the buyers was added. And it was only at the late filing that the amount of the money, inventory, and accounts receivable became known.

All of this is unusual, but not entirely unheard of in the wonderful world of failing corporations. The purchasers have sometimes managed to make a good deal by which the original company survives and the investors in the special corporations provide the money and own the inventory which they supervise while the original entity changes form, but still remains in business. That most assuredly did not happen in the case of Solyndra.

George Mason University Professor and bankruptcy expert Todd Zywicki gingerly explains it this way: “There’s nothing inherently problematic about that as it is common to want to stockpile cash on the eve of a bankruptcy in order to have a sort of war chest going into the case. It could be a problem, however, if there were particular creditors who were benefited by converting the accounts receivable and inventory to cash for some reason or if those assets were converted for less than reasonably equivalent value."

And therein lies the rub. We await an explanation from George Kaiser, Friend of Obama..
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60 Minutes Outs Pelosi

The Democrats are masters of corruption. They talk about hating evil corporations and helping the poor, but it’s all for show: the Democrats use government to enrich themselves. The reason they’ve gotten away with this for so long is the media covers up for them. So why did 60 Minutes just “out” Pelosi?

Here’s the story. In 2008, Nancy Pelosi “somehow” got the chance to buy into (subscribe to) the Visa initial public offering (IPO). For those who don’t know, this is something only insiders get to do. IPOs are almost always limited to company employees, their families, and large companies connected to making the public offering happen, i.e. the investment bank, a few institutional clients, company creditors and lawyers. Pelosi was none of these, yet she got in.

Indeed, Pelosi bought between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock. She paid $44 per share to buy in. Two days later, the IPO was issued to the public and the stock price soared to $65 per share. Two month later, it was $85 per share. She had almost doubled her money in two months.

So how did Pelosi get into this IPO? Well, it turns out that companies looking to build good will in Congress will sometimes let selected members of Congress in on their IPOs. And why would Visa care about Nancy Pelosi? Because two weeks after Pelosi bought into this IPO, the Credit Card Fair Fee Act was introduced in the House. This bill would have prevented credit card companies like Visa from charging certain fees. How much in fees? The credit card companies took in $48 billion in these fees in 2008 alone.

This bill passed the Judiciary Committee and apparently had broad public support as high as 77% in one poll. Yet, for some strange reason, Pelosi never let this bill get to the House floor for a vote. Imagine that.

And Pelosi wasn’t done there. Another bill, called the Credit Card Interchange Fee Act of 2008, which would have required credit card companies to disclose rates, met the same fate: Pelosi killed it. Instead, she brought to the floor a vote on a similarly named bill which only provided for further study. That's not a bad return on investment for Visa since it cost Visa nothing to let Pelosi ride along on their IPO.

Other IPOs in which Pelosi made money include Gupta (88% profit in two days), Netscape and UUNet (100% profit in one day), Remedy Corp., Opal, Legato Systems, Act Networks, etc. In 2007, Pelosi put $100,000 in an IPO with natural gas company Clean Energy Fuels and $500,000 in an IPO for natural gas company Quest Energy Partners. Then she started pushing natural gas bills in Congress. Tom Brokaw actually asked her if she had made significant personal investments in natural gas companies and if this represented a conflict of interest and she dodged the question.

But this is nothing new for Democrats. In just the last couple years:

● Pelosi got special treatment for donor Kaiser Permanente under ObamaCare.

● Democrat Max Baucus, who made his girlfriend the US Attorney for Montana, apparently made the same kinds of insider trades Pelosi did.

● Democrats Jim Moran, Peter Visclosky, and John Murtha directed $137 million in defense contracts to clients of a lobbyist who funneled more than $380,000 in illegal campaign contributions to them.

● Democrat Chris Dodd, who wrote banking regulation legislation, got sweetheart loans from the banks that would have been effected.

● Pelosi budget supercommittee appointee Xavier Becerra, sent out a fundraising letter to the companies whose programs he could now cut.

● The Congress Black Caucus has been particular good at illegally giving federal money to their friends and family, see e.g. Democrats Sanford Bishop and Eddie Bernice Johnson (scholarships to relatives), Charlie Rangel (tax breaks to donors) and Maxine Waters (money to relatives’ banks).

● As a Senator, Democrat Joe Biden, who was basically owned by MBNA worked to make credit card debt harder to discharge in bankruptcy.

● Democrat Obama gave the Treasury to Goldman Sachs and GM to his union friends. His donors at GE had record profits yet paid no taxes. GE also gets waivers from Obama for laws they’ve lobbied for. Of course, Obama also gave thousands of Obamacare waivers to donors.

● It’s getting increasingly obvious Obama steered $535 million in taxpayer dollars to big-time Obama donor ($100k) and “green-jobs” showpiece Solyndra as it was failing.

● Democrat Jon Corzine managed to “lose” $700 million in client money when his new company, MF Global went belly up. . . after donating $500,000 to Obama’s reelection.

Of course, the MSM has long ignored all of this. So why report the Pelosi story now? Could the MSM be about to become honest about exposing Democratic corruption? Or did Pelosi just cross some secret line?

How about this: this information was first uncovered by the Heritage Foundation. They were, in fact, writing a book about it. I suspect 60 Minutes realized this information would reach the public, no matter how hard the MSM tried to ignore it because Pelosi has such a high profile. Rather than let this blow up during the election and hurt all Democrats, 60 Minutes chose to cover this now, during the silly season where little is happening in Washington and the public is preparing for the coming holidays, i.e. 60 Minutes wants to defuse this now.

If I’m wrong, then 60 Minutes will follow up on this and attempt to get Pelosi to disgorge the profits and/or resign from Congress. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

What do you think is going on?

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More Leftist Stupidity And Scandals

This has been an interesting week full to the brim with leftist/Democratic stupidity. Of course, the MSM hasn’t noticed because. . . well, they refuse to notice. Plus, they found something else to entertain themselves, lynching Herman Cain. Let’s discuss!

● Item One: Cain Non-Fallout. Despite the MSM’s best efforts, this whole Cain scandal doesn’t appear to be hurting him. To the contrary, it seems to be making his support more entrenched and it brought out the support of people like Ann Coulter and Rush. Also, the day after the scandal, Cain had his biggest fundraising day ever online. That means average people are voting with their dollars and they want to show their support. That’s what happens when you slander someone. . . you make them more popular.

● Item Two: StupidStudent Loans. Obama suddenly wants to rescue college kids. Now let me say up front, there is a huge problem in this country with the cost of education. It is ridiculous what college students are being charged and it is hurting our economy by making people less mobile. Something needs to be done.

What I am not in favor of doing, however, is increasing the amount of student loan money available. That is exactly the wrong thing to do. Colleges have been able to jack up their costs precisely because Uncle Sam handed out student loans to cover the costs. That was a subsidy to fat, rich schools paid on the backs of young professionals.

So what does Obama want to do to fix this problem? Increase the availability of student loans. Jerk.

To trick students into thinking they aren’t getting the shaft, Obama is promising to reduce the minimum monthly payment from 15% to 10%. . . so you pay longer. He also promises to let you consolidate your loans. . . so you pay longer. And as anyone who has ever taken out a loan knows, this will dramatically increase the amount the students repay. I guess being a community organizer didn’t include lessons on credit management.

But never fear, Obama wants to reduce the time before loan forgiveness kicks in from 25 years to 20. So if you graduate from college at the age of 25, your college loan slavery will now end at 45 instead of 50, and you can then start saving for your retirement. . . 20 years behind the curve. Bravo President AAAhole, bravo.

● Item Three: Where’s Waldo’s Money. With Solyndra waiting in the wings, a new scandal has emerged. This time the company is called MF Global. MF Global is a commodities trading company that just went belly up. The man who ran MF Global is none other than Jon Corzine, former New Jersey Senator/Governor (lost to Christie), former chief of Goldman Sachs and MAJOR Barack Obama fundraiser. Since April 2011, for example, Corzine has raised more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election.

But it’s not the fact the company went bankrupt that is the problem. What’s interesting is that $700 million of client money is “missing.” Right now, it’s believe that as the firm began suffering losses, it used its customers’ money to cover its own trades, which of course violates trading regulations which require brokers to keep their own funds separate from their customers’ funds. If any of this proves true, look for jail time to come out of this one. I wonder how much of the $500,000 Corzine raised for Obama came from MF Global customers?

● Item: Celebrity Weirdoes. Hollywood is stumbling back into Obama’s arms as we knew they would. Scarlett Johansson, who is famous primarily for keeping naked pictures of herself on her cell phone, plans to support Obama: “My heart belongs to Barack.” Yeah, and your brain belongs to Low-Grade Brain Rental. Others are lining up as well to offer their best Lewinskies.

Meanwhile, unfunny adult-bed-wetter (yes, that’s true) Sarah Silverman is attacking Rick Perry. She’s upset the “N*ggerhead Scandal” had no effect, so she’s determined to try to keep it alive until someone cares. Personally, I think like many liberals she just likes using the N-word while pretending she’s actually outraged. . . ditto with her prior use of “chink.”

And from the land of the absurd, Michael Moore is trying to fit in with the OWS Movement. Sadly for Michael, who has net worth of $50 million (but value of only $1.25), he’s more of a 0.99%er than a 99%er. On the plus side, he’s got the right level of stupid and hypocrite to fit right in!

● Item: OWS Irony of the Week. Finally, there is a rumor making the rounds that OWS is now trying to copyright their name. Capitalist pigs.

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Obama Vacation Abuse (re-re-re-re-redux)

As we've noted before, the Obamas have been vacation abusers, draining the Treasury dry with their desire to live like royalty. Now we have an interesting report that tells us exactly what Madame Obama’s expensive tastes have cost us simple taxpayers, and it ain’t pretty: $10 million of public money has been spent to let Madame O indulge her privileged tastes.

How in the world does one rack up this kind of bill, you ask? Well, let’s start with this. In the past year alone, Michelle has taken 42 days of vacation. That’s six full weeks of vacation for those of you playing along at home, who probably get two weeks a year if that.

And when she goes, she goes in style. For example, she loves celebrity-laden areas like Vail, Colorado and hobnobbing with elitists at Martha’s Vineyard while the Kennedys rape-rape the locals. And when she wants to get away from it all, she takes the kids to see Spanish royalty or the Queen of England, or an African safari, or she goes on a shopping binge in Paris or London.

The trip to Spain cost us taxpayers $375,000 just to house her security contingent -- her total entourage consisted of 40 friends and 68 security personnel. Louis XIV didn't have that many people in his whole court! Air Force Two cost us $149,000 round trip. The property in Martha’s Vineyard costs $50,000 per week to rent, and that doesn’t count the Coast Guard patrolling the waters or the helicopter they keep on standby. The hotel in Vail was $2,000 per night per room. . . clearly not the Motel 6. The rent on the Kailua property in Hawaii was $38,000, but that was a pittance compared to the total $1.5 million the Obamas' Christmas trip to Hawaii cost the taxpayers.

And this doesn’t even count all the days her lazy husband spends golfing or the nights they spend wining and dining Hollywood and Wall Street royalty at the White House.

Moreover, it’s not just the luxury suites and the MC Hammer-like entourages that are the problem. There is a real lack of judgment and a serious disdain for the taxpayers going on here. When they decided to go to Martha’s Vineyard to get away from the riff-raff for a few days, they ended up taking separate jets because they wanted to leave two hours apart!!! That cost the taxpayers $50,000 because Madame O couldn't wait two hours for Lord O to finish napping.

This is all despicable.

Using the median wage, her vacation expenses are the equivalent of taxing 100% of the salaries of 250 people!! At a 20% tax rate, that means she squandered all the taxes collected from 1250 people. . . a small city. Don't you think that money could have been better used by the taxpayers or even the rest of the government?

And yet liberals see no problem with this. In fact, liberals believe the Obamas, the rapey Kennedys, and the mega-rich Pelosis when they pretend to speak for the little guy. Is that the little guy whose benefits are being cut because the government is short of money or the little guy who is being crushed to pay taxes so the Obamas can party like it’s 1699 France?

How stupid do you need to be, to be a liberal and not see the rip off here? These are the same people who complain about the ultra-rich spending their money on lavish houses, yachts, private planes and vacations. But at least they are using their own money. How can you possibly justify the Obamas doing the same thing with taxpayer money?

Then you add in things like the two new tour buses we paid for. At one million dollars each, we got ripped off. What’s more, they were made in Canada -- not even the US of A. And get this. They don’t actually drive the dang things to events. What they are doing is flying the things to the airport nearest the event and then driving Obama to the event in them. When the event is over, they return to the airport and fly the bus to the next stop. Why even have the bus in the first place? What’s wrong with the limo?

I’m going to stop now before this raises my blood pressure too much. But any way you slice it, the Obamas are an obscenity. And the liberals who voted for them are suckers.

Maybe that’s why the unions are talking about abandoning the Democrats?

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Atlanta Public Schools: Cheaters Do Prosper

Cheaters aren’t supposed to prosper, but for over a decade they did in Atlanta Public Schools. Indeed, for a decade, school children at 44 of 56 Atlanta elementary and middle schools cheated like mad. But here’s the catch, the teachers were the ones doing the cheating. This story is just unbelievably shameful. Let’s discuss.

When the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, standardized testing became much more important. Schools where students failed these tests were flagged as failing schools. If these schools did not show yearly improvement, students would be allowed to leave them to find better schools and the failing schools would eventually be closed.

In a too-good-to-be-true moment, Atlanta Public Schools suddenly started making dramatic progress after the passage of this law. A decade later, we know why. According to a report by state investigators, extensive cheating took place at 44 of 56 elementary and middle schools. Specifically, teachers helped students cheat or cheated for them to improve their scores. So far, 178 teachers (including 38 principals) have been implicated by name. Far more were involved, but the allegations against them "could not be established sufficiently to identify [them] by name.”

This cheating was discovered by an analysis of the actual tests taken by the children of these schools. The investigators looked at how often these children would erase wrong answers and change those to correct answers. Apparently, this happened at 20-50 times the state norm. Upon further investigation it was discovered that students were given test answers by teachers, some teachers filled in the answers for the students, some teachers let slower kids sit next to smarter kids and encouraged them to cheat, and some teachers even had “test changing parties” over weekends.

At this point, only 7 of the teachers have resigned. The rest were asked to resign by haven’t. The current superintendent says they won’t be allowed to teach again, but it’s unlikely they will be fired. Instead, they will go on administrative leave. The prior superintendent in charge during this whole period, Beverly L. Hall (pictured), has left the job for a position in Texas. She claims she knew nothing about this, though it seems unlikely that such a vast scandal could have taken place without her knowledge.

So let me ask some questions.

First, how in the world can a collection of people supposedly dedicated to the education of children act so callously to these children’s futures? These kids needed help and rather than educate them, these teachers simply covered up the students’ inadequacies. What’s more, by lying to protect the schools (and their jobs), they deprived these kids of a chance to find better schools and real teachers who might actually care about these kids. That’s criminal.

Secondly, why did this take ten years to be discovered? Why didn’t someone blow the whistle? Surely some students must have told their parents, some teachers must have objected to this, and some administrators must have known. Yet no one said anything? Letting this go on for ten years is so utterly shameful that I am literally disgusted at these people.

Third, where are the teachers unions? It is inconceivable to me that no one from the teachers unions learned of this. Did they turn a blind eye for political reasons or have they too set up a culture where individuals are afraid to come forward? At how many other schools is this happening across the country with the unions remaining silent? This needs to be investigated. Further, if the teachers unions want to protect the reputations of legitimate teachers, then they better get in there and expose these faux-teachers.

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The Death Of Fox News??

Never let a crisis go to waste, especially somebody else’s crisis. That seems to be the motto of this administration. The latest example involves the implosion of News Corp.’s News of the World. Indeed, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops to use this to remove Rupert Murdoch from the helm of News Corp. and thereby, they hope, get FOX News under liberal control. Here’s what you need to know.

The scandal began when it was revealed that reporters at the 168 year old British tabloid News of the World had been hacking into phone accounts of famous celebrities and politicians to find dirt. This violates multiple British laws.

Things recently hit fever pitch when it was learned that the News of the World had bribed police for information AND had hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims and into the phone of a murdered British teenager (Milly Dowler). The outrage that followed forced the paper to close and led to the resignation of the latest editor, Rebekah Brooks, and of Les Hinton, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who was an editor of the News of the World during part of the period in question -- there is no evidence of wrongdoing at the Journal. This weekend, Brooks was arrested and London's police chief resigned.

The scandal reaches Rupert Murdoch because Murdoch acquired the News of the World in 1969 and made it part of his News Corp. empire. That empire includes the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News, among others. These are largely conservative organizations and, thus, the Democrats hate them with the passion of a 1,000 low-carbon suns. And with this scandal, the Democrats see a chance to attack their favorite bogeymen. Indeed, they are hoping to parlay the News of the World scandal into an attack on Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and Murdoch himself, who they hope to dislodge from the ownership of these organizations.

To that end, Eric Holder has announced that the Obama-controlled Department of Justice intends to investigate whether the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post were engaged in similar hacking. Can you say... fishing expedition? He also claims he will investigate whether 9/11 victims’ phones were hacked. Keep in mind, by the way, this is the same Justice Department that routinely turns a blind eye to any and all crimes committed by leftist groups or this administration.

Other Democrats are jumping in as well. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has launched an online petition to demand that “Murdoch come clear.” A group of leftist “journalists” has launched a similar effort. John Podesta, the president of the Centre for American Progress, a leftist crackhouse, claims: “This is not one rogue editor. This is an empire that was built on a set of journalistic ethics that’s beginning to explode and unravel. They were routinely bribing public officials.” Of course, he has no evidence. But then, if anyone should know about bribery and a lack of ethics it would be Podesta, who helped Obama transition to the White House.

This is standard liberal crappola, and mainly it’s just liberals playing with themselves. But there is reason for concern.

The SEC (also under Obama’s control) could attack News Corp. for its subsidiary engaging in bribery of the British police, which would violate foreign bribery laws, specifically the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A violation of the FCPA might require Murdoch to resign or even give up his ownership.

Also, under federal law, holders of television and radio licenses have to undergo character tests to show that they are fit to be media owners. If the SEC (or the Justice Department) finds a violation of the FCPA, the FCC (also under Obama’s control) could deny Murdoch his television and radio licenses, which would again result in him surrendering control.

At this point there is no evidence that Murdoch did anything wrong and he is doing all the right things. They closed the paper that had clearly spun out of control. The editors directly responsible, whether they had knowledge or not, have resigned. And his papers have issued a public apology. The committee that monitors The Wall Street Journal has already said they have no evidence of wrongdoing at the Journal or at Dow Jones, the Journal’s parent company (which is owned by News Corp.). And it’s unlikely Fox was involved because, frankly, they’ve never reported anything that didn’t come over the wire.

But doing the right thing does not insulate you from an aggressively partisan government. So expect Team Obama to pull out all the stops to use the power of government to shut down the one part of the MSM that isn’t in the tank for them.

This could get interesting.

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The Agenda Behind The Gun Scandal

Project Gunrunner, Operation Fast and Furious, “Gunwalker.” Take your pick for the name of the federal project which has become a major Obama administration scandal. We previously discussed the scandal itself here and here. The operation was almost Kafkaesque in its planning, implementation, and results.

But now we are beginning to see hints that it may have been equally Machiavellian. Purported to be a sting operation to trace guns to the Mexican cartel bosses, it may have been a stealth gun-control initiative flowing from the White House and its allies in Congress.

The operation was so insane and so deadly that many people began to question why the federal government would involve itself in law-breaking and gun-trafficking at all. We may have gotten the answer yesterday. On Friday, July 15, a group of Congressmen and a Fish and Game official held a press conference to announce a new initiative: “Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act.” So far, we know that Operation Fast and Furious involved agents from ATF, DOJ, FBI, DEA and even the IRS putting serious weaponry into the hands of cartel-members. If the proposed act were to pass, those are the same agencies which would be charged with enforcing the act.

At least one wag has suggested that the proposed act be retitled “the Eddie Espinoza Act” in honor of the Democratic mayor of Columbus, New Mexico, who has been convicted of trafficking guns to the Mexican drug cartels. The act is sponsored by Rep Carolyn B. Mahoney (D-New York), Elijah E. Cummings (D-Maryland) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York). The mission statement reads: “This act establishes a dedicated firearms trafficking statute to empower law enforcement to keep high-powered firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals, including Mexican drug cartels.” I’ll leave the irony of that statement to our readers.

The act has very little chance of passing. So why bring it up in the first place? The most obvious reason is to draw attention away from the ever-growing scandal. How can a party that is so obviously concerned with protecting the public and empowering law enforcement possibly be charged with gun-running of its own? It’s a ploy, and a rather weak one at that. But that may not be the only reason.

Another reason, more subtle and more dangerous to the Second Amendment and recent Supreme Court decisions confirming the right of individuals to own firearms is to deflect attention away from President Obama’s recent executive order requiring that multiple gun sales be reported to federal agencies (particularly ATF). The President seems untroubled by the fact that he has no constitutional authority to issue such an order, which is nothing more than another end-run around Congress.

The idea that this administration and its allies in Congress would push a program that endangers the stability of the Mexican government and puts American lives in danger has been routinely pooh-poohed by the left and the mainstream media. But there is emerging evidence that in its zeal to revivify the dying gun-control movement this administration has done exactly that. On top of the big Fast and Furious operation, it now appears that the Tampa office of the ATF allowed nearly 1,000 firearms to be smuggled to the murderous MS-13 gang headquartered in Honduras. Other similar operations are being investigated in Texas and Oklahoma.

Most recently, an e-mail from Mark R. Chait, assistant director for ATF field operations to William Newell has been made public. Newell is the special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division of the ATF. The e-mail reads: “Bill—can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same source and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a letter on long gun [rifles] multiple sales (emphasis added).” Additional e-mails seem to confirm that ATF and DOJ officials were using Fast and Furious to set the stage for the President’s executive order.

If the Issa/Grassley hearings on Operation Fast and Furious produce more hard proof of this collusion, there should be multiple criminal prosecutions. Barack Obama seems to want desperately to establish government by Presidential decree to speed up his leftist agenda and anti-gun initiatives. It is conceivable that in this case, government by fiat has already cost the lives of too many Americans. It’s time to return legislative power to Congress and true power to the people whom Obama is failing to protect. An unarmed citizenry is a vulnerable citizenry. Selling guns to murderous criminals in order to disarm American citizens is a travesty of unimaginable proportions.

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Holder To Cartels: "Kill Faster"

Pictured, left to right, are the father, son and holy ghost of the unholy trinity of the Obama administration. The father (Obama) sees no reason to defend our borders by adding sufficient manpower to cover them, and the holy ghost (Clinton) ignores gross negligence and criminality south of the border while undermining legitimate constitutional governments in the same arena.

The son (Attorney General Eric Holder) is in charge of blocking any negative information about the trinity by any means necessary. Currently, the trio are facing serious charges and angry questions about Operation Fast and Furious. The operation was intended to be an ATF "sting" that facilitated the purchase of 2,000 high-powered semi-automatic weapons in the United States and allowed them to flow freely to criminal cartels in Mexico. The Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau, ATF[E?] for short, appear to have been actively involved in the transactions, usually through surrogates or in such a way as to make it easier for an unfriendly to get the weapons, transport them across the border, and get them into the hands of the vicious gangs.

The operation was so amateurish, and yet so deadly, that the ATF Director was "allowed" to resign. And now it also appears that the FBI and DEA also knew about the operation from the beginning. Among the charges are that some or all of those agencies were working directly with the purchasers/smugglers and were fully aware that the weapons would end up in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

Most of the new information comes directly from the mouth of the Acting Director of ATF, Kenneth Melson. This week, Melson voluntarily produced the information to Congressional investigators, wisely taking his own personal attorney with him rather than rely on Justice Department lawyers to protect him. For an in-depth discussion of the operation as it existed just prior to Melson's promotion and revelations, Andrew did a thorough report in June: The Next Obama Scandal. As Andrew speculated, the DOJ may very well try to make Melson the goat in this mess, but I don't think that even the slippery and devious Eric Holder can spin this one to his advantage.

Melson also told the investigators that he would have provided this information much earlier and much more fully had not the Justice Department limited and interfered with earlier requests to him from Congressional watchdogs. If true, and there is little reason to disbelieve him, then the Holder Justice Department is even more lawless than we suspected after the dismissal of the Black Panther voter intimidation cases. On July 5, based directly on Melson's provided information so far, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) and Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Holder informing him that they now consider Melson to be a key witness in the upcoming formal investigations and hearings.

Melson told the investigators that prior to his temporary appointment as Director, each response given by him, his counterparts, and his subordinates to Congressional inquiries first had to be submitted to the Justice Department lawyers for "editing." He made it clear that the DOJ would then submit the answers which bore little or no resemblance to the information originally provided by the agents. He described the DOJ's answers as "false denials of fact" and added that the DOJ "buried its head in the sand" over questions about how the operation went so terribly wrong.

The idea behind the operation looks good on its face. Allow and/or facilitate dangerous weapons sales so that the weapons could be traced across the border into Mexico and help identify the names and determine the locations of cartel bigwigs destined to receive the final delivery of those weapons. But it looks a lot better on paper than in reality and it sounds better in theory than it turned out in practice. It grossly overestimated the ability of the ATF to continue tracking the weapons after leaving the hands of the American sellers. It existed in a fantasy world of honest Mexican cooperation after the weapons crossed the border. It assumed that the buyers were simply low-level smugglers without considering that they might also be "players" in the cartels' murderous games.

In some cases, the smugglers were also questionable informants for various agencies, frequently funded in their purchases by taxpayer money diverted from other agencies. Many deaths and many hundreds of "missing" weapons have resulted from the ATF's overconfidence. However, with DOJ's active assistance, the previous Director had hidden most of this information from his subordinates, including Melson. If he is to be believed, Melson knew very, very little about any of these activities until one of those weapons made its way back across the border into Arizona, where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was cut down with it. Indictments of those involved in the Terry murder and those involved in the "loss" of the weapons have been delayed by the United States Attorney's Office and political attorneys in the Justice Department.

If the operation was in fact an ill-conceived and poorly-implemented "sting" that resulted in lost weapons, armed cartel members, and deaths on both sides of the border, that is bad enough and heads should roll. But when those deaths go unanswered legally, and when cartel members are now better-armed than ever, it would be a disgrace of immense proportions if the Congressional investigation proves that Holder and his department interfered in the investigation to avoid political embarrassment. Equally repulsive would be the idea that the Obama administration might try to turn the whole murderous mess into an argument for draconian regulations on gun sales.

Still, Melson's deep suspicions and logical assumptions prior to his ascension to the role of Director are not new and are well-documented. Issa and Grassley stated in the letter to Holder that "Melson provided documents months ago (most recently in April) supporting his concerns." Melson also claimed that he sent both the documents and the accompanying inquiries from Congress to the Office of then-Deputy Attorney General, James Cole. Issa and Grassley stated that the answers to their inquiries have not to this date been provided to them by anyone in the Justice Department.

The Congressional hearings are scheduled for July 13, and attorneys from both the DOJ and ATF have been invited to attend. So far, that invitation has not been accepted. But in the interim, DOJ officials have continued to attempt to limit or edit Melson's ongoing communications with Congress. The operation was a miserable failure, but the coverup is equally bad. There has been a hint from some ATF agents and Issa and Grassley that if the DOJ had provided the information requested, when requested, fully and honestly, much of the mayhem might have been avoided. That can't be proven at this point, but it's a logical assumption. The information obtained so far seems to indicate that the "higher-ups" that the sting was supposed to flush out were already known to both the ATF and the FBI.

Given an opportunity to respond to ongoing requests from Congress for a public statement, Holder continues to remain silent. But there's always the mouthpiece's mouthpiece, Press Secretary Jay Carney. When asked about the operation, Holder's silence, and Congress's questions, Carney went off on the usual DOJ-approved tangent: "Well, I think there's an investigation going on precisely to get to the bottom of this. And I can't comment further on it, because there is an investigation going on." How facile, and how convenient.

Pressed further by ABC's Jake Tapper about whether "you guys are worried about and incensed about the details which have been revealed so far," Carney interrupted to say: "Well, Jake, I think it's being investigated for a reason. And obviously it's a matter of concern and that's why there's an investigation. But it would be a mistake for me to comment further on, or to characterize further what happened or how to rate our unhappiness about it from here. So I think that I have to refer you the the Justice Department for that [emphasis added]." Good luck with that. Congress already tried, and ran into a stone wall.
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The Next Obama Scandal: “Gun Walking”

Operation Fast and Furious was an idiotic attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get proof that Mexican drug cartels are buying guns from American gun shops. This reckless operation had no chance of success and it got people killed, including American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. What's more, it has all the hallmarks of being politically motivated and is likely to reach into the White House.

Starting in 2009, the ATF, part of Eric Holder’s Justice Department, got cooperative Phoenix-area gun shops to sell guns illegally to Mexicans. Rather than arrest these buyers, as they would have done in the past, the ATF instructed its agents to turn a blind eye to the sales. This has been called “gun walking” because they let these guns walk out the door. The ATF hoped the guns would be recovered from Mexican crime scenes, which they believed would let them build conspiracy cases against Mexican drug cartels. It didn’t. In fact, it couldn't because the entire concept is flawed. Consider this:

1. By telling the gun shops to knowingly sell the guns illegally, the agency itself made it possible for the guns to reach Mexico. Thus, this operation cannot stand as proof that American gun shops are selling to Mexicans because it was the ATF itself that made this possible and there is no evidence that any non-cooperating gun shops made similar sales.

2. Secondly, there’s no way to connect the drug cartels to the gun sales because the ATF didn’t keep track of the guns. In other words, even if cartel members used these guns in Mexico, there’s no way to trace the gun from the purchase to the cartel. And if the ATF's plan was just to assume the connection (something that is not permissible in a court of law) then why even bother releasing the guns?

Thus, even if the operation worked perfectly, it still could not have achieved the ATF's goals.

But more importantly, what was the cost of this stupidity? Republicans Rep. Daryl Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley just issued a 51 page report damning Operation Fast and Furious. From the start, this operation was criticized by experienced ATF agents as “reckless.” Said Grassley: “Both line agents and gun dealers who co-operated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns [about the operation]. . . but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above.” And when ATF bosses were told this could result in people getting killed, they responded: “if you are going to make an omelet, you need to scramble some eggs.” In other words, they didn’t care. Apparently, they even threatened to fire or punish agents who complained.

It is unknown how many crimes these guns were used to commit because the ATF had no way to monitor what happened to the guns. But before the operation was stopped, 1,730 guns were allowed to disappear onto the black market, including hundreds of AK-47s and sniper rifles. One of those AK-47s was later used to kill Board Patrol Agent Brian Terry. And when he was killed, the ATF embarked on a cover up. William Newell, the special agent in charge of the operation, ordered the arrest of 20 of the minor gun buyers and then declared the operation a success even though nothing was ever linked to a single senior cartel member. When he was asked if the guns the ATF had let disappear were deliberately allowed to end up in the hands of criminals, he lied: “Hell no!”

So what you have here is a government agency that embarked on a policy that could not achieve the goals for which it was planned, which endangered thousands of American and Mexican lives, and which covered up the mess it created. If that’s not an argument for reining in the government, then nothing is.

Naturally, Obama has denied any knowledge of the operation and I’m sure Eric Holder will too. There is speculation that acting ATF director Kenneth Melson will be made the scapegoat here. But this is not the kind of operation that happens without higher up approval. In fact, one ATF agent has stated that this operation was cleared by the State Department, i.e. Hillary Clinton (who "coincidentally" came to the border to decry American guns right before this operation started).

To dodge this scandal, the Democrats are spinning this as the fault of the gun lobby for blocking the appointment of Obama’s choice to run the ATF -- that's the same Democrats who had a 60 seat majority but didn't confirm the guy. They also are trying to claim this started in 2006, which is true of the overall operation but not of the gun walking -- which only started in 2009 apparently after the approval of State. The ATF is trying to spin this as the result of the ATF not having enough personnel to monitor the guns, but that begs the question why they even started the operation.

In fact, why would they do this at all? The ATF says they wanted to get a better grasp on how cartels work, but that kind of knowledge is already available and this wouldn’t have helped them in any event. The real goal, in my opinion, was to create data to prove what Obama/Hillary/Holder were all arguing: that gun control is needed because American gun shops are arming Mexican drug cartels. That argument wasn’t working because everyone knows better. As I pointed out at the time, it’s silly to think Mexican cartels were buying guns from American gun shops when they have co-opted whole departments of the Mexican police and whole military units -- they could easily get better hardware out of Mexican armories. BUT. . . if American guns with serial numbers known to the ATF could suddenly be traced to a significant portion of murders in Mexico, then Obama/Clinton/Holder would have a new argument to aid them in their gun control attempts.

It strikes me this is a prime example of politicians abusing law enforcement to generate a controversy to help them score political points. People died so Team Obama could score those points. This is shameful and needs to be investigated.

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Why Unions Are Bad

With all the union vitriol lately, I thought I would explain exactly what I despise about unions. Philosophically, I have no qualms with unions. America guarantees the freedom to associated (First Amendment) and we enforce contract rights. So if a group of employees bind together and demand a group contract and employers are willing to accept that, then so be it. The problem with unions is what they've become.

First, I have a serious problem with union protections being put into law. If employees want to bind together, I support that. But only if the employer also has the right to not contract with them. I cannot support federal law giving one side or the other the right to force their will upon the other. I do not believe in freedom for only one side.

Secondly, modern unions have long ago stopped being organizations that seek to protect “workers.” Instead, they’ve become corrupt bureaucracies whose sole purpose has become self-perpetuation. What’s more, these unions are intensely short-sighted. They really would rather see a company or industry fail and see jobs sent overseas than they would compromise in any meaningful way. That’s why clothing is no longer made in America and why American cars can’t compete.

Nor do they care about consumers or the products they make. That’s why union companies fail to innovate and their products are shoddy. As proof that unions don’t care about consumers, no matter who they are, let me present this quote from Albert Shanker, the former President of the United Federation of Teachers: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I'll start representing the interests of school children.” That’s why our schools not only are falling behind, but cannot change.

Third, unions have become organizations of thugs. Witness the number of death threats their membership sent to Republican legislators in Wisconsin. This is unacceptable in America and the unions that encouraged these members need to be charged as racketeering organizations. Or consider that former SEIU executive Stephen Lerner was caught on tape discussing a plan to destroy banks and the stock market by trying to coordinate a “strike” on mortgage, student loans and local government debt repayment. His idea is to destabilize banks to “create the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.” Or consider the recent civil RICO lawsuit by Sodexo against the SEIU. The complaint alleges harassment of employees, threats of making false claims of wrongdoing, putting roaches into food served by Sodexo, and lying to hospital patients about Sodexo food containing bugs, rat droppings, mold and flies. These are not people who care about workers. They have become criminal enterprises that dabble in politics.

Finally, even when the unions aren’t misbehaving, their priorities are disgusting. Rather than protecting workers from abusive employers, they are protecting abusive perverts and criminals from justice. Consider what the New York Times just discovered. The Times conducted an investigation into state-run nursing homes in New York State. After examining 13,000 allegations of abuse by staff in 2009, including sexual abuse and violence against people with conditions like Down syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy, the Times found that only 5% were reported to law enforcement even though state law requires that each instance be reported.

Moreover, the Times reviewed 399 disciplinary actions take in 2008 against employees accused of serious neglect, physical abuse and sexual abuse. It found that in each case, the allegations were proven true and in each case the worker had previously been disciplined at least once. And what happened to these people? In 25% of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the agency just transferred the worker to another home. The agency tried to terminate 129 of these employees, but only succeeded in firing 30 of them. The rest skated through to abuse again.

Why can’t these people be fired and their crimes reported? You guessed it: their union. The Civil Service Employees Association (their union) challenged EVERY attempt at discipline. Said union executive Ross D. Hanna:

“If they’re brought up on charges, we have an absolute duty to represent them. That’s our job. When we know the person is guilty, we try to convince the person to get out of it by resigning. But if the person decides to go forward, we have to do our best job.”

That's bull! Nowhere is there an obligation to protect someone the union knows to be guilty. And if there is, then the union is not legitimate.

This is why people have come to hate unions. They don’t care about workers and they don’t care about companies. They don’t care if companies die or jobs vanish. They don’t care about consumers or taxpayers. All they care about is redistribution of wealth in the country, bulking up their political power, and protecting the vilest creatures from getting what they deserve. How does that help anyone?

This is what’s wrong with unions. They served a purpose in the age of robber barons when workers were treated like expendable machines. But now they’ve become the robber barons themselves. It’s time for them to reform or die.

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