Troy Senik at City Journal

EXCERPTS:

… CTA—now the single most powerful special interest in California—organized a “State of Emergency” week to agitate for higher taxes in one of the most overtaxed states in the nation. A CTA document suggested dozens of ways for teachers to protest, including following state legislators incessantly, attempting to close major transportation arteries, and boycotting companies, such as Microsoft, that backed education reform.

Seen as a national leader in the classroom during the 1950s and 1960s, the country’s largest state is today a laggard, competing with the likes of Mississippi and Washington, D.C., at the bottom of national rankings.

CTA began its transformation in September 1975, when Governor Jerry Brown signed the Rodda Act, which allowed California teachers to bargain collectively.

In 2009, the union’s income was more than $186 million, all of it tax-exempt.

CTA had spent more than $210 million over the previous decade on political campaigning—…. outspent the pharmaceutical industry, the oil industry, and the tobacco industry combined.

CTA also funds a wide array of liberal causes unrelated to education, with the goal of spreading around enough cash to prevent dissent from the Left.

FULL ARTICLE

by Walter Olson at Cato@Liberty

We at the Cato Institute have warned time and time again of the dangers of civil forfeiture laws, which empower law enforcement authorities to seize cars, money, houses and office equipment alleged (often on a flimsy basis) to have been used to advance unlawful conduct. Even if no related criminal charges are brought — or even if the defendant manages convincingly to beat those charges — the law enforcement agencies often assert a right to keep the property, giving it back, if at all, only after costly litigation. In the mean time, finding a lawyer to fight the process can be difficult because the government has seized the assets that would ordinarily be used to pay that lawyer.

In recent days a crop of especially outrageous forfeiture stories has been making headlines:

• Nashville’s WTVF exposed a pattern in which some rural Tennessee police agencies stop out-of-state motorists and then seize any large amounts of cash found on the grounds that the motorists could not prove they were not involved in drug trafficking or some other unlawful activity. Read the story and decide whether you would feel more secure driving in Monterey, Tenn. or Monterrey, Mexico
• It’s hard to top the Tennessee story, but Cato Media Fellow Radley Balko has just published a Huffington Post expose of how Wisconsin police seize cash intended for bail money, on the grounds that police dogs sniffed drug residue on it — even though a victim family was able to establish in one instance that the cash had just come from bank ATMs.
• George Will, the syndicated columnist and 2010 Friedman Prize keynoter, has a blistering new column (“When government is the looter”) on the combined effort by “piratical” federal officials and police in Tewksbury, Mass. to confiscate the Caswell Motel, whose elderly owner has been charged with no crime but whose inexpensive lodgings have sometimes been used by drug dealers. More in this strongly worded Washington Post editorial.

Imagine a system under which an individual arresting officer stood to become personally wealthy by collaring an asset-rich defendant and railroading him on suspicion of something-or-other. Now imagine instead that it’s the police department as a whole that faces the same corrupting temptation. Why do the courts stand for it?

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL),  released new information that confirms the White House secret pact.

In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama repeatedly made promises to usher in an era of transparency, “put an end to the game playing,” and broadcast health care negotiations on C-SPAN. However, in 2009, a series of conflicting media accounts documented efforts by the authors of the health care law to make an agreement or series of agreements with health care industry stakeholders to squelch opposition and generate support for the legislation. These meetings and negotiations with various outside interest groups were never made public, and many members of Congress – from both parties – were not a part of those negotiations. Since those reports lacked consistency and concrete details, the committee launched an investigation on February 18, 2011, to determine whether “deals” were made, who made them, and what specifically was negotiated.

Today, a staff memo distributed to Republican members of the committee provided further information regarding the development of the “deal,” and the parties involved in negotiating specific policy outcomes to secure support for the legislation. Based on email exchanges and other primary source material, it appears the deal was reached not solely between PhRMA and the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, but that top personnel in the White House were involved in negotiating and approving this deal. The committee’s investigation determined that the White House, specifically Office of Health Reform Director Nancy Ann DeParle, Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, and Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel, actively engaged in these negotiations while the role of Congress was limited. Their involvement in these previously undisclosed negotiations is particularly noteworthy since it contradicts the president’s promises of transparency.

While news reports speculated on the details of the “deal,” the White House has been vague and contradictory about the specifics beyond the $80 billion threshold. In the coming weeks, the committee will show what the White House agreed to do as part of its deal with the pharmaceutical industry, and how the full details of this agreement were kept from both the public and the House of Representatives.

And as the memo highlights, the important question to be answered is what the White House got in return. Was it just Obamacare? Could this be the basis for another lawsuit? Does anyone have the guts to bring impeachment over destroying our healthcare with secret back room deals?

Mark J. Perry at Carpe Diem has the story:

 
On behalf of American consumers, a slightly edited version of this afternoon’s NY Times article “U.S. Slaps High Tariffs on Chinese Solar Panels” Americans Who Purchase Solar Panels Made in China”:”The United States Commerce Department said Thursday that it has decided to impose tariffs (taxes) of more than 31 percent on Americans who purchase solar panels imported from China, after concluding that Chinese producers had generously “dumped” lowered the prices of solar panels on the American market for to less than it costs to manufacture and ship them, saving Americans millions of dollars. 
 
The tariffs, which are retroactive to 90 days before the decision, are in addition to anti-subsidy tariffs (taxes) of 2.9 percent to 4.73 percent that the department imposed on American consumers in March. Since Chinese panels make up a large portion of the American market, the combined anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs are likely to mean a substantial increase in the price of solar panels here for American consumers.
 
SolarWorld Industries America, which led the coalition special interest cartel of domestic solar manufacturers that filed the solar dumping case, welcomed the department’s ruling. The anti-consumer decision “is a very positive step in the process. It’s also in line with what we expected as a special interest group of domestic producers seeking protection from global competition,” said Ben Santarris, a company spokesman. “We consider this a bellwether case of the government protecting the self-interest of domestic producers seeking protection against foreign competitors. It underscores the importance of manufacturing special interest groups to the U.S. economy Congress seeking to increase political power, votes and support by catering to concentrated special interests.”
 
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.  He blogs at Carpe Diem.
 
 

And consider this:

Brightsource DOE Funding Exposes Obama Cronyism

By Romina Boccia at The Foundry

A congressional hearing on May 16 exposed further details on just the kind of political maneuvering that was going on between the Obama Administration and beneficiaries of Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantees. Emails revealed during the hearing are the tip of the iceberg in a corrupt federal funding process that first came under congressional scrutiny with the failure of Solyndra.

Solar company BrightSource Energy received an even bigger loan guarantee from DOE than Solyndra did. In April 2011, the company received $1.6 billion for its Ivanpah project in California—more than triple the size of Solyndra’s loan guarantee of $535 million! BrightSource’s CEO, John Woolard, claims that at its peak, the project would create 1,400 jobs. That would amount to $1.43 million for every job created.

John McArdle reports that in an email sent 15 months before the BrightSource loan was finalized, Woolard wrote an email to Matt Rogers, then DOE’s top adviser on the administration of stimulus funds. Woolard wrote, according to Greenwire:

…that Peter Darbee, head of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., “talked directly to Obama about the program’s challenges and the bad situation it puts him in. DOE credibility is thin and I am currently trying to put off [communication] with the Hill until we talk.” Rogers replied that he appreciated the heads-up and was “working it on this end.”

Merely a month before the BrightSource loan came through, another email exchange occurred between then-BrightSource Chairman John Bryson (who was nominated by President Obama to serve as Commerce Secretary in May 2011 and was confirmed to the post last October) and Jonathan Silver, who was in charge of the DOE loan program. The email was addressed to then-White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley but was never sent to him, over concerns that it might not be appropriate.

“The White House needs to focus on finalizing the loan guarantee for what would be the largest solar thermal project in the world,” Bryson wrote in the draft.

“We need a commitment from the [White House] to quarterback loan closure between [the Office of Management and Budget] and DOE by March 18 to avoid having our project jeopardized by larger budget politics.”

Even before these emails appeared, BrightSource became known as heavily politically connected. In his new book, Throw Them All Out, Peter Schweizer reported that Sanjay Wagle, a major player in BrightSource’s largest shareholder, Vantage Point, and an Obama fundraiser, “was installed at the Department of Energy (DOE), advising on energy grants.”

These revelations demonstrate that federal processes to supply loan guarantees and other subsidies are steeped in political favoritism. The only solution to get this cronyism out of government is to get government out of the business of picking market winners among its political friends. This can be done by ending all energy subsidies and freeing up energy markets for companies to compete to create the most value for consumers.

And this:

Emails show the White House adamantly kept the GSA away from Solyndra right before it illegally restructured the failed loan to protect a big Obama campaign donor leaving taxpayers on the hook for over $500 million.

And this from AFP:

The nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill that President Obama pushed after taking office was supposed to revive the economy, but it was really all about installing the Left’s vision to transform America. A major part of the transformation is an attempt to defy the laws of economics and have politically-connected campaign donors and Washington central planners decide what kind of energy the country should use. The stimulus was packed with giveaways that allowed dozens of so-called “green” energy projects to sap taxpayer funds to advance Obama’s vision. However,they could only ignore market economics for so long and now the projects are starting to collapse. Who’s left holding the bill? Taxpayers.

SOLYNDRA - $535 Million, Bankrupt

The California solar panel manufacturer received the very first stimulus green energy loan guarantee on September 4, 2009. Despite repeated warnings by Obama administration career and political staff that the company was not sound, the loan guarantee was rushed out the door.Two years later the company closed its doors, laid off 1,100 employees, and filed for bankruptcy.Two days after that, agents from the FBI raided the company’s headquarters. Solyndra CEO George Kaiser and other executives bundled more than $100,000 in Obama campaign donations;they also visited the White House over 20 times while the loan was being reviewed.

BEACON POWER – $43 million, bankrupt

The Massachusetts-based company received a $43 million loan guarantee to build a 20-megawattflywheel energy storage plant in Stephen town, New York. Beacon was one of the first three recipients of federal backing. Despite the steep price-tag Obama administration officials estimated that it would “create or save” just 14 permanent jobs and create 20 temporary construction jobs. Citing the “current economic and political climate,” the onerous terms of the federal loan guarantee, and the company’s inability to obtain equity financing due to its recent delisting from the NASDAQ stock exchange, the company filed for bankruptcy on October 30.The company also got $29 billion in federal and Pennsylvania state grants for a 20-megawattplant in the Keystone State.

FISKER – $529 million stimulus for Finland

Collapsing companies aren’t the only green stimulus scandal. The Obama administration has also approved a plan by electric car company Fisker to use part of its $529 million federal stimulus loan guarantee to build its manufacturing facility, and the 500 jobs it supports, in Finland. The company is more than a year behind schedule to roll out its $97,000 luxury electric car, Karma. There have also been questions about the energy savings that Fisker says its electric car would bring. In a free market, companies should seek out the best place to produce their products. However, once politicians start handing out taxpayer dollars to support projects they prefer, sending our money to Finland to support manufacturing jobs is highly suspect.

SEVERSTAL – $730 million, under investigation

In an October 20thletter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa questioned why Severstal North America, a subsidiary of a leading Russian steel and mining company owned by wealthy business tycoon Alexei Mordashov, received a $730 million loan guarantee from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program. The loan supports improvements to the company’s advanced high strength steel plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Issa questioned the necessity of the loan given the company’s ample ability to self-finance. He also questioned whether it was appropriate to support the project under a program designed to advance clean-energy vehicles, especially given the strong supply of high quality steel already available in the U.S

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By Patrick Poole at PJ Tatler

EXCERPTS:

Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain.

… the zeal with which the establishment media trumpeted the supposed CIA coup won’t likely be surpassed by the more important story of how the Obama administration attempted to score political points at the expense of one of the most important intelligence operations since 9/11.

FULL ARTICLE

By Cliff Kincaid

Tamara Holder, a Fox News contributor, is accused of having an affair with Jesse Jackson, Sr. in a lawsuit that alleges the illegal use of a gay Jackson employee to facilitate the relationship.

The accuser, Tommy R. Bennett, was Jackson’s personal travel assistant and ran the legal clinic at Jackson’s organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. He says he was eventually fired for protesting his treatment by Jackson and other PUSH employees and is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages.

Holder has not responded to repeated requests for comment from Accuracy in Media, but Jackson’s press representative, Lauren Love, says the allegations are false and will be proven so.

Bennett attorney Thomas V. Leverso says that Jackson and PUSH have been stonewalling a legal response for many months but that investigations and the case are moving forward. Leverso tells Accuracy in Media that witnesses have come forward to verify the allegations against Jackson.

Jackson, a minister and Democratic politician who served as an aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., suffered a major embarrassment in 2010 when he admitted to an extramarital affair that produced an illegitimate child.

Bennett worked for Jackson for more than two years and was known as “Aruba Tommy” on local Chicago radio station WVON. The lawsuit alleges that Bennett was subjected to “humiliating tasks” because he was a homosexual, such as “escorting women to his [Jackson’s] hotel room” and then being ordered to clean up after Jackson had sexual intercourse with them.

One of those women, the suit claims, was Tamara Holder, a pundit and criminal defense attorney who claims she “single-handedly” founded what she calls “a pro bono legal clinic at Rev. Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition.” A self-described Democrat, she appears regularly on Fox News to defend the Obama Administration and other prominent Democrats. “Because of the Democratic Party’s deep Chicago roots, Tamara has worked closely with some of the City’s most prominent leaders,” her website says.

Another Holder website says that, in addition to being “a legal and political contributor for Fox News Channel,” she “previously wrote for The Huffington Post and now writes for The Daily Caller.” The latter identifies her as “one of the nation’s rising attorneys and legal analytical stars.”

On one occasion, “Mr. Bennett was instructed by Rev. Jackson to escort Ms. Holder to Rev. Jackson’s hotel room at the Hilton at Chicago O’Hare airport,” the suit says.

The lawsuit, filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, says Bennett was director of the clinic but that when he objected to Holder taking a majority of the cases and charging too much to poor clients, he was replaced. He says Jackson then gave control of the clinic to Holder.

The allegations are the subject of several legal actions and complaints, including one by Bennett to the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, which is still under investigation, and another to the Illinois Department of Human Rights, which was not acted upon, prompting the lawsuit.

Bennett’s original complaint consisted of seven charges, including that Jackson exhibited a “bigoted attitude” toward homosexuals and ordered him to perform “improper job duties.” This was followed by a “supplemental statement of facts” from his attorney that runs eight pages in length.

This document declares, “It was well known that Ms. Holder was a mistress of Rev. Jackson,” and states that the Jackson family was informed of this because of a letter from another Jackson mistress.

It refers to Jackson visiting Holder’s apartment, while Bennett waited in a car outside, and “several occasions” during which Bennett “was instructed by Rev. Jackson to escort Ms. Holder to Rev. Jackson’s hotel room at the Hilton at Chicago O’Hare airport.”

Lauren Love, who runs the Rainbow PUSH Coalition press department, provided a statement to AIM that said:

“The Rainbow PUSH Coalition unequivocally denies Tommy Bennett’s false claims of harassment, retaliation and discrimination. The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. unequivocally denies Tommy Bennett’s false claims of harassment, retaliation and discrimination. We are fully cooperating with the Chicago Commission on Human Relations and expect to be fully exonerated.

“The organization does not condone or tolerate discrimination in any form. Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition stands on their record of advocating for equality and human rights for all people—from standing up to affirm the humanity of persons with HIV-AIDS and advocating for HIV-AIDS education and research, to supporting marriage equality and the abolition of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy of the U.S. Military.

“His inflammatory allegations are an attempt to malign Rev. Jackson and the organization, and are hurtful and harmful to the progressive community.

“Rainbow PUSH and Rev. Jackson will have no further comment while the matter is pending before the Commission.”

The Bennett allegations have been covered by some gay media and one of the supermarket tabloids. The National Enquirer, which broke the story of the Jackson mistress that produced the illegitimate child, wrote about the Bennett charges in a story headlined, “Jesse Jackson Gay Sex Shocker Legal War.”

The Courthouse News Service has run a lengthy account of the “lurid” allegations, while the Chicago Sun-Times published a small story which made no mention of Tamara Holder being named in it. Holder says the Chicago Sun-Times once recognized her as one of “50 People Who Make Chicago a Better Place.”

In addition to the alleged relationship with Holder, Jackson is accused of demanding sexual favors from Bennett, such as being told to apply a cream on Jackson’s inner thigh to treat a rash. Bennett says he refused, Jackson became angry, and called Bennett a “little mother——.”

“My termination was discriminatory and retaliatory,” says Bennett’s complaint. He was told he was fired because of a “drastic economic downturn” when in fact another individual was hired to replace him.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. 

Obama’s media sympathizers continue their silence on the administration’s refusal to cooperate with the House committee investigating the administration’s politically motivated gun smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious. The administration through the ATF and with the knowledge of DHS coerced gun store owners into allowing known gun smugglers to make bulk buys of semiautomatic weapons which would end up in the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels. The plan was working even over the objections of some gun store owners as over 2,000 weapons were transferred to the drug cartels. The administration hoped to then use the increased numbers of American guns found at drug cartel gun battles to claim that more extensive American gun control was so needed that Obama would be justified in using executive orders and bypassing congress to restrict gun sales.

Problems for the administration arose when guns from the operation turned up in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. The House committee chaired by Rep. Daryl Issa has been trying for a year to get documents from AG Holder. The committee has received only 10% of the documents available to the DOJ. The administration has also refused to allow testimony from a key witness with knowledge that connects the disastrous operation to the White House.

See our Fast and Furious You Tube playlist for more videos.

By Robert Stacy McCain at American Spectator

EXCERPTS:

Soros’s Open Society Institute has given $75,000 to the Center for Social Inclusion, which has also received more than $850,000 from the Soros-connected Tides Foundation/Tides Center since 2005, according to documents obtained by The American Spectator.

In a training session for House Democrats and their congressional staffers last week, Center for Social Inclusion founder and president Maya Wiley described “conservative messages” as being “racially coded,” and suggested that Democrats “raise racial disparities” in public policy discussions, Joel Gerhke of the Washington Examiner reported.

FULL ARTICLE

By Bruce Thompson at American Thinker

EXCERPTS:

… the administration has even refused to provide documents to senior investigator Richard Larabee, in a Department of the Interior (DoI)  investigation, even though he is an employee of the executive branch.  They are stonewalling investigations by all three branches of government.  What are they trying to hide?

All this leads us to the question: “What does Mr. Mix know that the administration does not want to get out into the light of day?”

So the question before us is, did the administration deliberately sabotage BP’s top kill efforts for political reasons?  They were in the midst of trying to pass “Cap and Trade” legislation in the Senate so as to take control of the energy business through taxation and regulation and thereby promote their political crony capitalist allies in the “green energy” sector.  If they have nothing to hide, they need to fully comply with the legal requests for documents from the various investigations in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government.  Let the public know the whole truth.  That’s the least we should expect from the “most transparent administration in history.”

FULL ARTICLE