The Justice department initiated the operation as a political ploy to justify instituting gun bans to please its leftist anti-gun base. With incredible arrogance Holder and the anti-gun crowd continue to cite gun violence in Mexico partly fueled by this operation as a reason to issue gun restrictions without congress. Some of the witnesses testifying before the committee have taken Fifth Amendment protection to prevent their testimony from incriminating themselves.

IBD Editorials

EXCERPTS:

Exasperated by more than a year of stonewalling Congress, Rep. Darrell Issa, co-chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Holder he had 10 days to release key Justice Department documents and memos about how much the Obama administration knew about the “Fast and Furious” illegal gunrunning operation. If not, he’d be held in contempt of Congress.

Issa’s response was the right one, because that bungled operation amounted to U.S. lawmen aiding and abetting sales of deadly weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

As a result, some 2,000 U.S. weapons slipped across the border to wreak mayhem in Mexico without its government’s knowledge. The operation left at least one U.S. lawman, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, dead — killed in a shootout near Nogales, Ariz., with Mexican gunmen using two U.S.-provided illegal weapons.

FULL ARTICLE

By Adam Jablonowski – The Daily Caller

EXCERPTS:

Fast and Furious left more than 2,000 weapons in the hands of Mexican drug gangs, and resulted in the death of 300 Mexican nationals — and one U.S. Border Patrol agent.

“[T]he Department [of Justice] has been irresponsible in failing to take congressional oversight of Fast and Furious seriously,” Issa wrote.

The DOJ released a handful of documents to Issa’s committee on Friday, including an email that Issa believes should have been provided months ago. In it, Anthony P. Garcia, the DOJ Criminal Division’s attaché in Mexico, wrotes that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer “suggested allowed straw purchasers [of weapons] to cross into Mexico so SSP [Mexico's Secretariat of Public Security] can arrest and PGR [Mexicos Office of the General Prosecutor] can prosecute and convict.”

FULL ARTICLE

By M. Catharine Evans at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

It’s been one year and two months since agent Terry died.  Within weeks of his demise, his shocking murder would illuminate a bizarre and murderous government plot to run guns, lots of guns — over 2,000 guns — into the hands of the Sinaloa drug cartel.

Within 24 hours of Terry’s death, officials had traced two AK-47s to an ATF Phoenix-based operation dubbed Fast and Furious.

An amoral herd of left-wing journalists acting like “bootlicking propagandists,” as Orwell once called members of his own British press in 1944, might find it difficult in the long run to get away with suppressing a scandal involving mass murder.

Various  big media outlets that ran 120 stories of Herman Cain’s alleged sexual dalliances from November 2 to November 15 didn’t see a need to enlighten the masses about Fast and Furious.  The number of times “F and F” was mentioned in the same time span?  One.

Are informed journalists who remain silent in the face of evil culpable for sins of omission?  Are journalists who intentionally subvert truth and invert facts, allowing corrupt government officials to ride roughshod over the rule of law, complicit in the very crimes they’re covering up?

FULL ARTICLE

This chart shows how most unions are in the taxpayer pocket and continue to fuel the vicious cycle of funding politicians who then raise their pay and benefits at the expense of the taxpayer.

Twelve of the top twenty heavy hitters in campaign contributions are unions. All twelve give over 90% to Democrats.

LEGEND: Republican   Democrat   On the fence
	= Between 40% and 59% to both parties = Leans Dem/Repub (60%-69%) = Strongly Dem/Repub (70%-89%) = Solidly Dem/Repub (over 90%)

Rank	Organization	Total ‘89-’10	Dem %	Repub %	Tilt
1	ActBlue	$50,010,524	99%	0%
2	AT&T Inc	$46,077,005	44%	55%
3	American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees	$43,337,561	98%	1%
4	National Assn of Realtors	$38,628,441	49%	50%
5	Goldman Sachs	$33,360,252	61%	37%
6	American Assn for Justice	$33,047,779	90%	8%
7	Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers	$32,930,966	97%	2%
8	National Education Assn	$32,021,910	93%	6%
9	Laborers Union	$30,106,550	92%	7%
10	Carpenters & Joiners Union	$29,154,808	89%	10%
11	Service Employees International Union	$29,139,982	95%	3%
12	Teamsters Union	$29,126,809	93%	6%
13	American Federation of Teachers	$28,731,591	98%	0%
14	Communications Workers of America	$28,273,156	98%	0%
15	Citigroup Inc	$27,974,371	50%	49%
16	American Medical Assn	$27,442,570	40%	59%
17	United Auto Workers	$26,949,252	98%	0%
18	Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union	$26,170,977	98%	0%
19	National Auto Dealers Assn	$26,156,258	32%	67%
20	United Food & Commercial Workers Union	$25,226,733	98%	1%

(Source Center for Responsive Politics OpenSecrets.org)

Not surprisingly the top twenty recipients of labor cash in the 2010 election cycle were all Democrats:

(top twenty in 2009 was also all Democrats)

Big labor also spends millions lobbying congress for union welfare bills like the prevailing wage requirement and big federal projects like Obama’s high speed rail vision. Most of Obama’s proposed ‘investment’ in infrastructure spending is really an investment of taxpayer funds into the campaign coffers of Democrats after filtering through the unions.

Big labor lobbying for 2010 alone is over $46 million!And it happens at all levels of government. The NEA is the largest labor union and is the eighth largest contributor of campaign money to congress. 91% of the donations go to Democrats.

According to RiShawn Biddle in a Capital Research Center report:

‘The NEA took in an estimated $569 million that it spent on local, state and national political campaigns during the 2007-2008 election cycle, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. This made the NEA the nation’s single-biggest campaign contributor for the 2009-2010 election period…”

‘This fundraising prowess is why Harvard University education scholar Paul Peterson declares that the NEA is “in a position to tell state legislatures what to do.”’

A Wall Street Journal article makes the point:

” …. unlike in the private economy, a public union has a natural monopoly over government services. An industrial union will fight for a greater share of corporate profits, but it also knows that a business must make profits or it will move or shut down. The union chief for teachers, transit workers or firemen knows that the city is not going to close the schools, buses or firehouses.

This monopoly power, in turn, gives public unions inordinate sway over elected officials. The money they collect from member dues helps to elect politicians who are then supposed to represent the taxpayers during the next round of collective bargaining. In effect union representatives sit on both sides of the bargaining table, with no one sitting in for taxpayers. In 2006 in New Jersey, this led to the preposterous episode in which Governor Jon Corzine addressed a Trenton rally of thousands of public workers and shouted, “We will fight for a fair contract.” He was promising to fight himself.

Thus the collision course with taxpayers. Public unions depend entirely on tax revenues to fund their pay and benefits. They thus have every incentive to elect politicians who favor higher taxes and more government spending. The great expansion of state and local spending followed the rise of public unions.” [emphasis added]

Take a look at the growth in public sector unions:

There has been a long time shakedown of the American taxpayer with unions conspiring with Democrats to fleece the taxpayer. But something funny happened on the way to the bank. The taxpayer has run out of money.

This doesn’t seem to matter to the unions or the Democrats. Obama is possibly the worst of the bunch. Unions spent millions to help Obama get elected and he is paying them back in spades.

Recent paybacks to unions by Obama include overturning a 76 year old rule to make it easier to unionize airlines and more importantly a new executive order requiring all government contracts be to union companies. Both of these union payoffs were done without needing or even asking for congressional approval.

That is why Obama took the unprecedented and illegal step of appointing his union cronies to the National Labor Relations Board without congressional approval.

Close to half of Obama’s first $820 billion stimulus bill went ‘to entities that sponsor or employ or both members of the Service Employees International Union, federal, state, and municipal employee unions, or other Democrat-controlled unions‘ according to Ben Stein in an article last year in The American Spectator about the stimulus. More recently, congress passed the $30 billion ‘teacher bailout’ bill which funneled approximately $16 billion to union teacher and other public employee union jobs.

Obama usurped a long history of banking and creditor laws when he bailed out GM and Chrysler. In return for campaign support Obama gave partial ownership of both auto companies to the UAW and shafted the bond holders who had legal legitimate claims on the assets of the companies.

An earlier IBD Editorial pointed out the sweetheart deal Obama gave the UAW:

“Given that the wasteful work rules that UAW bosses — wielding government-granted monopoly-bargaining power over employees — insisted on for decades were largely what drove GM into bankruptcy, they certainly didn’t deserve kid-gloves treatment. Yet that’s what they got.

A UAW-controlled auto retiree health care fund was owed $20 billion by GM before the bailout.

Under the White House-dictated terms, UAW-appointed fund managers got back half of what they were owed in cash, whereas taxpayers who were owed $19.4 billion didn’t get a dime back in cash.

Instead, the Obama administration “forgave” this entire loan on taxpayers’ behalf and earmarked an additional $23.5 billion for the company’s trip through bankruptcy. In exchange for the nearly $43 billion funneled to GM, taxpayers acquired a “60.8% equity stake” in GM.”

It should be noted that the UAW is one of the most politically active of all unions. The union gave $2,119.937 to the 2008 campaigns 99% of which went to Obama and the Democrats. They gave another $1,106,500 in this past 2010 election cycle 100% of which went to Democrats. That is a total of $3,226,437 in just the last two election cycles. That does not include the phone banks, neighborhood canvassing and get out the vote efforts. Since 1990 the UAW has donated $26,510,252 of which 99% went to Democrats.

Not a bad return on investment when you consider they received billions back in ownership and benefit funding.

So in reality taxpayer money was used to pay off unions so that they could then campaign for Democrats and lobby for special favors from those same Democrats. This is change alright. An increase in arrogant corruption that is off the Richter scale.

And the cycle continues as long as citizens allow public employees to be union.

By Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

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by Daniel Ikenson at Cato @ Liberty

Grandiosity, denial, and revisionism are all noted indulgences of the political breed.  That’s why we should always be skeptical of their words and pity the partisan lemmings who mindlessly parrot their rhetoric.

In his SOTU speech last night, the president claimed credit for rescuing the auto industry:

On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S.than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S.plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.

We bet on American workers. We bet on American ingenuity. And tonight, the American auto industry is back.

This is a claim that is likely to be repeated as the president campaigns across the country this year, so it may be worthwhile to examine its merits.  (Who knows, maybe an effective debate moderator or Sunday news show host might find his way to asking the right questions of the president or members of his administration.)

Closer analysis reveals that President Obama (enabled by President Bush’s complicity) bailed out specific stakeholders at two auto companies at great cost to U.S.taxpayers and at great expense to important U.S. institutions.

The assertion – or implication – that he saved the auto industry is bogus. The auto industry was never on the verge of collapse.  GM and Chrysler were in deep trouble, but Ford, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Kia, Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes Benz (to name some U.S. producers) were fine.  Yes, in 2008-2009 the economy was in recession and automobile demand had tanked.  The companies that had been the most profligate, the most reckless, and the least disciplined were exposed, but talk of industry collapse was the product of a Detroit public relations campaign that featured the claim that 2 to 3 million jobs could be lost if the government didn’t funnel huge sums of cash to the Big Three. (Details here.)

I have shouted from the rooftops about this issue for over three years.  So rather than present all the facts and reconstruct all the arguments, let me economize with reference to this congressional testimony, given seven month ago. It pretty well sums up everything that’s wrong or misleading about the president’s narrative.

As I wrote last year:

The objection to the auto bailout was not that the federal government wouldn’t be able to marshal adequate resources to help GM. The most serious concerns were about the consequences of that intervention — the undermining of the rule of law, the property confiscations, the politically driven decisions and the distortion of market signals.

Any verdict on the auto bailouts must take into account, among other things, the illegal diversion of TARP funds, the forced transfer of assets from shareholders and debt-holders to pensioners and their union; the higher-risk premiums consequently built into U.S. corporate debt; the costs of denying Ford and the other more worthy automakers the spoils of competition; the costs of insulating irresponsible actors, such as the autoworkers’ union, from the outcomes of an apolitical bankruptcy proceeding; the diminution of U.S. moral authority to counsel foreign governments against market interventions; and the lingering uncertainty about policy that pervades the business environment to this day.

GM’s recent profits speak only to the fact that politicians committed more than $50 billion to the task of rescuing those companies and the United Auto Workers. With debts expunged, cash infused, inefficiencies severed, ownership reconstituted, sales rebates underwritten and political obstacles steamrolled — all in the midst of a recovery in U.S.auto demand — only the most incompetent operations could fail to make profits.

But taxpayers are still short at least $10 billion to $20 billion (depending on the price that the government’s 500 million shares of GM will fetch), and there is still significant overcapacity in the auto industry.

The administration should divest as soon as possible, without regard to the stock price. Keeping the government’s tentacles around a large firm in an important industry will keep the door open wider to industrial policy and will deter market-driven decision-making throughout the industry, possibly keeping the brakes on the recovery. Yes, there will be a significant loss to taxpayers. But the right lesson to learn from this chapter in history is that government interventions carry real economic costs — only some of which are readily measurable.

 

Dan Ikenson is director of Cato’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, focusing on WTO disputes, regional trade agreements, U.S.-China trade issues, steel and textile trade policies, and antidumping reform. Ikenson has been involved in international trade since 1990.

________________

And this previously in June 2011 from Editor usACTIONnews.com:

Obama’s union payback to cost taxpayers $14 billion

Obama illegally gave ownership shares to the auto workers union who spent millions to elect Democrats leaving US taxpayers holding the empty bag.

Obama’s agenda is the union agenda. He said it, I believe it, the GM and Chrysler deals prove it.

Few are mentioning the theft of assets from the original creditors, the union pension bailout at taxpayer expense or the billions in funds Treasury Secretary Geithner now admits will never get repaid. Obama unconstitutionality took over a private company, overturned decades of surety laws, and paid campaign supporters with confiscated stock.

The Wall Street Journal points out that this is not near as good as was anticipated;

“So, today, amid the bally and the hoo, many have lost track of that fact. The offering valued GM at $50 billion, the low end of the hoped-for range. You would never know it, based on everything you read and hear. Once underwriters saw where demand was (not as great as desired), they shifted from talking about implied valuation to emphasizing shares issued, the per-share price and total money raised. The different storyline painted a picture of boffo box office even though the facts, as laid out just a few weeks ago, indicate that this deal really didn’t meet the hopes and expectations of GM or its biggest shareholder, the U.S. Government.”

So even though all the media hype is pushing Obama’s mantra of what a great thing it was to destroy the constitution in taking over the auto industry, the US is still short $14 billion. Obama says “it helped save jobs, rescue an industry at the heart of America’s manufacturing sector and position it to be more competitive in the future.” according to the Washington Post. Geithner said “”We cannot guarantee their success, and at some point they may stumble. But we’ve given them a better shot,”.

An earlier IBD Editorial pointed out the sweetheart deal Obama gave the UAW:

“Given that the wasteful work rules that UAW bosses — wielding government-granted monopoly-bargaining power over employees — insisted on for decades were largely what drove GM into bankruptcy, they certainly didn’t deserve kid-gloves treatment. Yet that’s what they got.

A UAW-controlled auto retiree health care fund was owed $20 billion by GM before the bailout.

Under the White House-dictated terms, UAW-appointed fund managers got back half of what they were owed in cash, whereas taxpayers who were owed $19.4 billion didn’t get a dime back in cash.

Instead, the Obama administration “forgave” this entire loan on taxpayers’ behalf and earmarked an additional $23.5 billion for the company’s trip through bankruptcy. In exchange for the nearly $43 billion funneled to GM, taxpayers acquired a “60.8% equity stake” in GM.”

It should be noted that the UAW is one of the most politically active of all unions. The union gave $2,119.937 to the 2008 campaigns 99% of which went to Obama and the Democrats. They gave another $1,106,500 in this past 2010 election cycle 100% of which went to Democrats. That is a total of $3,226,437 in just the last two election cycles. That does not include the phone banks, neighborhood canvassing and get out the vote efforts. Since 1990 the UAW has donated $26,510,252 of which 99% went to Democrats.

Not a bad return on investment when you consider they received billions back in ownership and benefit funding.

The government is subsidizing purchases of the GM Volt to the tune of $7,500 each. By the way that $7,500 is being supplied by you the taxpayer and is not being considered in the overall loss figures on the GM union payoff scam.

The UAW also spends about a million and a half a year lobbying for important issues like card check, pension bailouts and the Buy America Act. So in reality taxpayer money was used to pay off unions so that they could then campaign for Democrats and lobby for special favors from those same Democrats. This is change alright. An increase in arrogant corruption that is off the Richter scale.

The Obama campaign is claiming the union bailout saved the auto industry but neglects to mention that Ford took no money and has recovered even better than GM or Chrysler and that US plants owned by Toyota, Nissan and others continued to employ Americans without taxpayer assistance even competing against government subsidized GM and Chrysler.

The real bailout was the union money laundering scheme that keeps union dollars flowing into Democrat campaign coffers. That is the Chicago way of redistributing the wealth. Taking from the unsuspecting taxpayer to give to the union campaign supporters.

Follow Michael Whipple on Twitter

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By Kevin Mooney at The Daily Caller

EXCERPTS:

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler told The Daily Caller that the federal Motor Voter law was set up to “ensure controversy” and that the Obama administration is using it “to advance a political agenda.”

“I think it’s time for someone in the states to stand up against this foolishness coming out of Washington D.C.,” he said.

The Obama DOJ filed suit against Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration in July 2011, claiming that the state failed to provide eligible voters with sufficient opportunities to register.

FULL ARTICLE

By MEP Daniel Hannan at The Telegraph

EXCERPTS:

In an open market based on property rights and free contract, you become wealthy by offering an honest service to others.  I am typing these words on a machine developed by the late Steve Jobs. He gained from the exchange (adding fractionally to his net wealth) and so did I (adding to my convenience).

Capitalism harnesses greed to socially productive ends. The way to become rich in a free economy is to give others what they want, not to suck up to those in power.

That’s not to say, of course, that malpractice is unknown in capitalism. Man is fallen and, under any system, some will give in to temptation. It’s just that in a state-run economy, corruption is systemic and semi-legal. Indeed, the most egregious forms of wrongdoing in our existing Western economies tend to be the ones that involve governments: lobbying for improper favours, securing taxpayer bailouts and the like.

FULL ARTICLE

by Tad DeHaven at Cato @ Liberty

Contrary to what various news outlets are reporting, President Obama is NOT proposing to cut government. The administration is proposing to take four independent federal agencies that specialize in corporate welfare – along with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative – and combine them with corporate welfare programs at the Department of Commerce to form what would I would argue should be called the Department of Corporate Welfare.

According to reports, this rearranging of the deck chairs would save $300 million a year. That’s peanuts. Worse, those alleged savings will be of no consequence to taxpayers as there is nothing to suggest that the president intends to cut overall spending for the agencies comprising the new bureaucracy. That portends bigger government, not smaller. The president is trying to sell the American taxpayer a false bill of goods.

The president’s proposal is also an attempt to counter the perception – an accurate one – that the administration’s policies are detrimental to commerce. But corporate welfare is detrimental to commerce because the market distortions it creates hinder economic output. Making it easier for select businesses to help themselves to taxpayer-financed subsidies would only perpetrate the same sort of crony capitalist schemes that gave us Solyndra and the Chevy Volt.

Of course, no transparent attempt to appear “business friendly” would be complete without a bone toss to the Small Business Administration. The “bone” this time is the president’s intention to elevate the head of the SBA to the Cabinet. As I discuss in a Cato essay on the SBA, rather than helping small businesses compete against big businesses, the SBA’s loan guarantees mainly help a tiny share of small businesses compete against other small businesses. In reality, the biggest beneficiary of the SBA is the banks, which reap the profits from the loans guaranteed by the agency.

Finally, Republican policymakers talk a good game about cutting government, but they often hide behind calls for making the federal government “more efficient.” Now that the president has seized a political opportunity to sing from the GOP’s hymnal, it’ll be interesting – if not entertaining – to see how Republican policymakers respond. To avoid embarrassment, I recommend offering specific spending cuts.

Tad DeHaven • January 13, 2012 @ 3:44 pm