The Cowards and the Courageous

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The behavior of the western media can only be described as cowardly. That news is not going to surprise any honest, fair-minded person. Anyone can see the glaring spinelessness in their reporting (or lack thereof) on the beleaguered freedom-loving souls in Egypt today.

When thousands of people demonstrated against President Mubarak in January 2011, all major western media outlets sent reporters to Egypt, where they reported day and night. It was mostly inaccurate and biased, but at least they were reporting.

Now that an Islamist government—which was falsely installed by the military council—is in power, there is deafening silence. As even more young, educated democracy seekers are wounded and killed than in the Revolution of 2011, the media still cannot be lured from its hiding places.

Even after the Islamist President Morsi declared his dictatorship, western media said nothing. Well, nothing except for the occasional comment to support him and his push for total control—all the poor guy needs is the power to cleanse Egypt of the vestiges of the Mubarak regime. The media ignores the fact that government employees make up a majority of the country and can be categorized as vestiges of the Mubarak regime.

I get it: the western media is scared. Most, if not all, are intimidated and fearful of Islamists. But no one buys their claim that they only fear being accused of Islamophobia. They really fear for their lives, and for their profits. And that fear is the root of their cowardice.

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Liberals Suggest that Obama Mint Two Trillion Dollar Coins to End Fiscal Crisis

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If President Obama wants to avoid an economic calamity next year, he could always show up at a press conference bearing two shiny platinum coins, worth… $1 trillion apiece.

Okay, that sounds utterly insane. But ever since last year, some economists and legal scholars have suggested that the “platinum coin option” is one way to defuse a crisis if Congress can’t or won’t lift the debt ceiling soon. At least in theory.

The U.S. government is, after all, facing a real problem. The Treasury Department will hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit by next February at the latest. Unless Congress reaches an agreement to raise that borrowing limit, the government will no longer be able to borrow enough money to pay all its bills.

Last year, Republicans in Congress resisted lifting the debt ceiling until the last minute — and then only in exchange for spending cuts. Panic ensued. So what happens if there’s another showdown this year?

Enter the platinum coins. Thanks to an odd loophole in current law, the U.S. Treasury is technically allowed to mint as many coins made of platinum as it wants and can assign them whatever value it pleases.

Under this scenario, the U.S. Mint would produce (say) a pair of trillion-dollar platinum coins. The president orders the coins to be deposited at the Federal Reserve. The Fed then moves this money into Treasury’s accounts. And just like that, Treasury suddenly has an extra $2 trillion to pay off its obligations for the next two years — without needing to issue new debt. The ceiling is no longer an issue.

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Despite Tax Increase, California State Revenues in Freefall

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California State Controller John Chiang has announced that total state revenue for the month of November 2012 fell $806.8 million, or 10.8%, below budget.

Democrats thought they could hammer “the rich” by convincing voters to pass Proposition 30 to create the highest state income tax in the nation. But it now appears that high income earners have already “voted with their feet” by moving themselves and their businesses out of state, resulting in over $1 billion shortfall in corporate and income taxes last month and the beginning of a new financial crisis.

Passage of Proposition 30 set off euphoria and expectations of higher spending for public employees. The California Teachers’ Association (CTA) trumpeted: “California students and working families won a clear victory today as voters clearly demonstrated their willingness to invest in our public schools and colleges and also rejected a deceptive ballot measure aimed at silencing educators, other workers and their unions.”

State bureaucrats immediately ramped up deficit spending far beyond the state’s $6 billion annual tax increase, with the Departments of Health Services and Developmental Services increasing this month’s spending by over $1 billion versus last year. The lower tax collection and higher spending drove the State’s deficit after the tax increase to $2.7 billion for the first 5 months of this fiscal year.

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GAO Report Confirms Pigford Designed for Undetectable Fraud

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An official government report released Friday admits that the Pigford “Black Farmers” Settlement was designed with no mechanism for objectively determining fraud but hid that shocking conclusion under pages of bureaucratic doublespeak.

“Burying the lede” is a journalistic term used to describe the act of hiding essential information by putting non-essentials in front of it. On December 7, 2012, the United States Government Accountability Office released report number GAO-13-69R, also known as “Civil Rights: Additional Actions in Pigford II Claims Process Could Reduce Risk of Improper Determinations.”

Just based on the title, you can already tell the report is needlessly wordy. This helps bury what should be the bigger story—that the Pigford settlement isn’t the mere victim of a few fraudsters but was, in fact, set up to make fraud not just rampant but also totally undetectable.

Breitbart News has been reporting for years now that the Pigford settlement allowed people to collect $50,000 just for claiming that they “attempted to farm” and that no other proof was needed. As a result, many claim that billions of dollars in fraudulent “attempted to farm” claims were paid out by the federal government. The new GAO report actually confirms what the late Andrew Breitbart pointed out time and again: the Pigford settlement is a massive swindle on the U.S. taxpayer, and it was designed that way from the start.

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Murkowski Adds New Energy Committee Staff

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is adding old and new faces to the panel’s GOP staff as she gears up for the new Congress.

Brian Hughes is returning to the committee after leaving in June to work as a speechwriter for the Romney-Ryan presidential campaign.

“Brian is one of those rare staffers who has both a great grasp of public policy and is also a gifted writer,” Murkowski said. Hughes, who is from Alaska, will work on alternative fuels, biofuels and vehicles policy.

Kate Williams will join the committee staff to handle oil-and-gas policy. She previously worked in the Senate as legislative director and chief counsel for the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Williams, also an Alaskan, worked at the Anchorage law firm Birch, Horton, Bittner, Cherot after leaving the Senate in 2008 and most recently was with the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, an industry group.

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United Nations Green Climate Fund May Require Carbon Tax As Loan Contingency For Developing Countries

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The Green Climate Fund, designed to channel as much as $100 billion a year in pledges to emerging nations, may try to wean recipients off fossil fuel and encourage them to put a price on carbon, according to an overseer.

The fund may guarantee bank loans in developing nations for projects ranging from wind farms to building insulation and less-polluting agricultural equipment, Naoko Ishii, chief executive officer of the Global Environment Facility in Washington, said yesterday in an interview in Doha. She heads one of two secretariats governing the fund.

Climate projects may be able to get private-sector finance augmented by guarantees from the fund, alongside discounted loans from government or development banks, Ishii said. The 24- member board of the Green Climate Fund, which is still waiting to recieve money from developed nations, may make loans or guarantees conditional on the recipient having the right environmental policies in place, she said.

“I know that conditionality is a very sensitive word, but from the donor point of view, if the money is to be impactful, there must be some policy environment put in place,” Ishii said.

United Nations envoys from about 200 nations meeting in the Qatari capital this week are seeking to extend the Kyoto Protocol and lay the groundwork for a global climate agreement for 2020. Financing from richer nations to the developing world for the next seven years will help cut emissions before the new deal comes into force, Ishii said.

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Egyptian Opposition Leader Ahmed Said: US Ignored Warnings on Brotherhood (+video)

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Washington has failed to heed warnings from inside Egypt about the true intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian opposition leader Ahmed Said tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

“Unfortunately the United States was not listening,” Said told Newsmax. Said, a former member of the Egyptian parliament, heads the Free Egyptians Party, a staunchly pro-Western, pro-democratic political party.

“I was a member of parliament for the past five months before the parliament was dissolved, and I have met with several congressional delegations and met with Sens. John McCain and John Kerry — and I don’t think they’re really listening, to be very honest

Said, whose group is among the many opposing Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, the first elected head of state in the country’s history, tells Newsmax.TV that Egyptians hoped that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would be elected to the White House last month because of his tough foreign policy positions.

“The United States has a reputation of only respecting those in power who think they are strong — and people were hopeful, to a certain extent, that if Romney took over, he would be more aggressive with respect to dealing with human rights in Egypt and things like that,” he said.

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CBO: Feds Borrowing $4.8 billion Per Day in FY 2013, So Far

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The federal government ran a deficit of $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013 – October and November 2012 – amounting to $4.8 billion of borrowed money each day.

“The federal budget deficit was $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013, $57 billion more than the shortfall recorded in October and November of last year,” CBO said in its Monthly Budget Review Friday.

This means that the government borrowed $4.8 billion for each calendar day so far in 2013. If the Treasury Department restricted its borrowing to only weekdays, its per day average would jump to $6.5 billion per day thus far in fiscal year 2013.

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