The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee over possible violations of insider-trading laws, according to individuals familiar with the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), who holds one of the most influential positions in the House, has been a frequent trader on Capitol Hill, buying stock options while overseeing the nation’s banking and financial services industries.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent investigative agency, opened its probe late last year after focusing on numerous suspicious trades on Bachus’s annual financial disclosure forms, the individuals said. OCE investigators have notified Bachus that he is under investigation and that they have found probable cause to believe insider-trading violations have occurred.

Last month, Big Government reported that Bachus will be replaced as financial services committee chair in 2012.

The unprecedented investigation, and the progress of insider trading legislation through Congress, is the direct result of Schweizer’s work on crony capitalism among legislators and within the Obama administration.

He wanted to establish a charter school in his hometown that specialized in helping disadvantaged and at-risk students earn their high school diplomas.

So he did what Florida law required. He took his proposal for the new charter school to the Polk County School Board’s Charter Review Committee, two different times. And twice he came away without permission to open his school, according to the Sunshine State News.

What was the committee’s hang-up? Were members afraid that Feacher would establish a bad school? Do they have a problem with the idea of creating a special school for children who are struggling in traditional schools?

It was nothing like that. The board members were just worried about losing money.

Every student that transfers from a traditional public school to a charter school takes with them thousands of dollars of per-pupil state aid. And many school boards and teachers unions are very hesitant to give up any state money, even if changing schools is in some students’ best interest.

Luckily, Feacher appealed to the full Polk County school board and received permission to open New Beginnings High School last fall. But the hoops he had to jump through left a lot of reasonable people shaking their heads.

“To say that only school districts may issue charters is as anti-competitive as saying Publix can’t open a new store in a particular county unless the local Winn Dixie or Wal Mart gives its permission,” commented Bob Sanchez, director of public policy for the James Madison Institute.

School boards, unions hate competition

From one angle, it appears as though charter schools are thriving across the nation. They are legal in 41 states and the District of Columbia. There are roughly 5,600 charter schools serving two million students.
But many more charters are waiting to open, and that’s frequently a difficult process, even in areas where the public demands more school choice.

The problem is that many states require proposed charter schools to gain the permission of the school board in the district where they want to locate. Not surprisingly, many school boards, urged on by teachers unions, often do everything possible to squash competition.

Ninety percent of all charter school authorizers in the U.S. are public schools, yet they only approve and oversee about 48 percent of charter schools, according to a report from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The other 10 percent of authorizers – universities, special state governing boards, etc. – approve and oversee the other 52 percent.

That suggests a definite hesitation on the part of school board members to approve charter applications.

In short, school boards don’t want to share their resources with charter schools, even if families in the community demand more options. Teachers unions tend to oppose charter schools because they generally hire non-union staffs who do not pay union dues.

For many in the educational establishment, happiness means no competition and no accountability.

This dilemma goes back years. Here are just a few examples, courtesy of a 2007 article published by Joe Williams, president of Democrats for Education Reform:

The organizers of a proposed charter school in Albany, New York hoped to obtain a zoning variance to occupy a particular building. Local school and union officials protested, and the city council and zoning board of appeals denied the request, claiming the building was on a site inappropriate for a school.

Here’s the zinger – the same building had been home to Albany’s Public School #3 for 70 years. The New York Supreme Court eventually stepped in and allowed the school to open.

The problem has not gone away in more recent years.

In Brooklyn, the Success Academy charter network has been fighting for permission to use space in a building that has room for 700 student desks. Success Academy already operates nine charter schools in various locations that have made great strides with traditionally underprivileged students, according to the New York Post.

But the United Federation of Teachers has been putting up a fight, claiming the new charter school would disrupt existing school programs in the building. A recent informational session for parents who might be interested in the charter school had to be cancelled due to insults and catcalls shouted at Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz.

“There are some (charter applications) that never get off the ground,” said Todd Ziebarth, vice president of state advocacy and support for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. “And some applications should get bounced. But there are some jurisdictions where local school districts take more of an ideological view. They are not looking at applications, but their own personal dislike for charter schools.”

A handful of states have no appellate procedure when a charter school is turned down by a local school board, Ziebarth said. One good example is Virginia, which has only four charter schools in the state, he said.

“If you just leave it up to local school boards, you’re not going to end up with many charter schools,” Ziebarth said.

Appeal mechanisms on the rise

Not all the news regarding charter school authorization is bad.

A majority of states now have some form of meaningful appeal process for charter schools that are shot down by local school boards, according to Ziebarth. Some states allow colleges or universities to approve and oversee charter schools, while others are creating statewide agencies that have the power to approve a charter application in any school district.

One good example is Illinois. While there are 109 charter schools in and around Chicago, there are only 14 in downstate areas, according to a report from WBEZ radio. That’s because Chicago Public Schools officials want to give students an escape route from failing neighborhood schools, while many downstate school boards are hostile to the idea of sharing resources, the radio report said.

Under the old system, if a local school board rejects a charter application, the only appeal was to the state board of education, which displayed little inclination to overturn school board decisions, Ziebarth said. While there have been dozens of appeals, the state board only reversed school board decisions and authorized charter schools three times.

But now a new entity, the Illinois State Charter Commission, has the power to approve the establishment of charter schools that have been rejected by local school boards. The commission will also have oversight powers over those schools.

But the new board has its critics, including Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery, who was quoted as saying “I don’t think the people of Illinois would stand for the gaming industry, say, to have the right to reverse a community’s decision not to allow a race track in its town. I don’t know why we wouldn’t give at least the same protections to the children of Illinois.”

As if children need protection from charter schools. On the contrary, charter schools were created because many children desperately need protection from failing neighborhood union schools.

A similar new law in Florida allows “high performing charter school systems” to replicate their programs in various communities without the interference of local schools boards. Florida now has more than 500 charter schools, Ziebarth said.

But the war is clearly not over. In California, where there are 900 charters serving about 2 million children, the powerful California Teachers Association is sponsoring a bill that would give local school districts and other authorizers more power to deny charter applications based on finances.

The bill says “a chartering authority may deny a charter petition if it makes a written factual finding that the charter school would have a negative fiscal impact on the school district,” according to the Orange County Register.

As Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network put it, “This law seems like an attempt to make it more difficult for charters to come into existence. Some oversight is good, of course, but this seems to be excessive.”

That’s what press reports seem to indicate. And we’re now trying to get to the bottom of this emerging scandal.

On January 13, 2012, JW filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to obtain documents regarding meetings and communications between government agencies and Hollywood director Kathryn Bigelow. If the name sounds familiar, it is because Bigelow is the Academy Award-winning director of the military film “The Hurt Locker.” She is also the ex-wife of Hollywood director James Cameron of “Avatar” fame.

At issue in JW’s lawsuit is the possibility that the Obama administration leaked classified information to Bigelow and Annapurna Pictures as source material for the making of Bigelow’s not-yet-released film, tentatively titled “Killing bin Laden.”

Here’s what we’re after, pursuant to JW FOIA requests filed with the DOD and the CIA on August 9, 2011:

All records of communications between any officer, official, or employee of the DoD and Ms. Bigelow, as well as with Mr. Mark Boal, Ms. Megan Ellison, or employees of Annapurna Pictures.

(The same request was made of the CIA with regard to Bigelow, Boal, Ellison, and employees of Annapurna Pictures.)

The DOD admitted receiving the FOIA request on August 22, 2011, but advised Judicial Watch that “at this time, we are unable to make a release determination on your request within twenty (20) working days” of August 9, which would have been by September 6, 2011. The CIA acknowledged receiving the FOIA request on August 16, 2011, indicating that “the large number of FOIA requests CIA received has created unavoidable delays, making it unlikely that we can respond with the 20 working days the FOIA requires.”

Well, this stonewalling has dragged on for months and we still have no documents. We haven’t even been told by the Obama administration if documents would be produced – hence our lawsuit.

Bigelow’s film, in production since 2008, originally intended to document the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. The top secret Navy SEAL team mission that led to the capture and killing of bin Laden is reportedly the source for the film’s new content and conclusion.

As reported by Reuter’s, “It has been alleged that Bigelow…in preparation for the script to their Annapurna Pictures movie about the killing of Osama Bin Laden – received classified information regarding his death.”

Now, why would the Obama administration do such a thing?

First off, this is an administration that has shown a proclivity to selectively releasing information that helps the “Obama brand” while withholding information that may be harmful or embarrassing. (See the selective release of classified documents disparaging the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”)

Second, this is also an administration that aggressively uses federal agencies to assist the Obama campaign. (See the recently dismissed lawsuit against Boeing in support of Big Labor and the flow of Obamacare waivers to unions.)

The conclusion seems obvious: The alleged leaking of this information was an effort to boost the Obama 2012 presidential election campaign.

Thank you to liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd for alerting us to this abuse:

The White House is also counting on the Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal big-screen version of the killing of Bin Laden to counter Obama’s growing reputation as ineffectual. The Sony film by the Oscar-winning pair who made “The Hurt Locker” will no doubt reflect the president’s cool, gutsy decision against shaky odds. Just as Obamaland was hoping, the movie is scheduled to open on Oct. 12, 2012 – perfectly timed to give a home-stretch boost to a campaign that has grown tougher.

The moviemakers are getting top-level access to the most classified mission in history from an administration that has tried to throw more people in jail for leaking classified information than the Bush administration.

It was clear that the White House had outsourced the job of manning up the president’s image to Hollywood when Boal got welcomed to the upper echelons of the White House and the Pentagon and showed up recently – to the surprise of some military officers – at a C.I.A. ceremony celebrating the hero Seals [sic].

In short, if press reports from the liberal media are to be believed, the Obama administration released classified national security information to help Hollywood make a two-hour Obama campaign commercial to be released just weeks before the 2012 elections.

Judicial Watch is in hot pursuit of these “Killing bin Laden” records in order to get to the truth in the matter. And at the same time, we continue to fight in court for the release of the post-mortem photographs and video recordings of bin Laden. At this point, given the alleged Bigelow leaks, it’s hard to put any stock in the claim made by Obama administration officials that their stonewalling of the bin Laden death photos has anything to do with national security.

Through the early 1980s, socialist Latin American economies powered growth by quadrupling their indebtedness from $75 billion to $315 billion. With aristocrats controlling government, while the poor had no voice in these loan matters, nor did they benefit from them as most of the loan proceeds were siphoned off to benefit the aristocrats and their crony amigos.

When Ronald Reagan was elected President in 1980, the U.S. economy had suffered a decade of stagflation, turning our Midwest manufacturing base into the Rust Belt. Reagan was determined to regain international economic dominance by reasserting our Founding Father’s demand for limited government and maximum personal liberty. Reagan viscerally believed what John Adams wrote:

“ the moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence”

Reagan’s relentless focus overcame the bi-partisan drumbeat to continue the socialist expansion of the money supply to promote growth. He then leveraged monetary restraint with the largest income tax cut in American history to power the American economy to sustained growth with low inflation.

The inflated prices of raw material exports that Latin American socialists relied upon to pay their inflated debts, plunged by 40%. Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina became insolvent as per capita GDP fell by 9% between 1980 and 1985 and 50% of their people fell into poverty. Popular uprisings drove Brazil’s military junta and Argentine’s authoritarian regime, from power. In desperation, Latin nations turned to the U.S. dominated International Monetary Fund as lender-of- last-resort. But IMF support came with mandatory demands for austerity budget cuts, public industry privatizations, and elimination of trade barriers to shrink socialist power. By 1987, the capitalist U.S. economy was the world’s growth engine and a tidal wave of foreign investment was pouring into capitalist friendly Latin economies. World socialism was in shambles as the Soviet Union disintegrated and China embraced the market economy. The release of the Brundtland Report was seen as recognition of the burgeoning capitalist globalized economy.

By 1992 memories of the pain of the Latin American Debt Crisis were fading. Aristocrats repackaged socialist plans to again usurp economic power into Agenda 21 and introduced this socialist manifesto at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Agenda 21 envisioned bestowing the UN, government bureaucracies, and major interest groups the power to suspend the rights of property under law regarding all global, national and local human economic and social interaction that might affect the environment.

Agenda 21’s four main pillars of action are (1) combating poverty, promoting health, making consumption sustainable (2) assuring atmospheric protection, protecting fragile environments, conserving biodiversity, preventing pollution and regulating biotechnology (3) strengthening the roles of children, youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, workers and indigenous peoples (4) through science, technology transfer, education, international financial mechanisms.”

European aristocrats also quietly embedded Agenda 21 powers into the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which united 17 sovereign nations under the three pillar structure of the European Union (1) prevent sovereign debt from exceed 60% of GDP (2) delegate authority to supranational decision makers authority to regulate all human economic and social interaction that might affect the environment (3) embrace the euro as their supranational currency.

With aristocratic socialists in control of supranational economic decision making, deficit spending became the preferred stimulus for European economic growth. From 1999 to 2008, the average debt to GDP for Eurozone nations grew from 50% to 70%. But as the Reinhart and Rogoff’s book: “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” famously warned in early 2009; “once a nation’s debt rises above the threshold of 90%, then growth rates fall.”

When Greece hit over 100% of debt to GDP later that year, rumors swirled the nation would default. Greek GDP shriveled and panicked depositors across Europe pulled their cash out of banks and the European Debt Crisis exploded. Total Eurozone debt now stands at a dangerous 87% of GDP and Greek short term interest rates are at 1400%. Supranational committees are enforcing austerity spending cuts, but the unemployment rate is at a depression level of 20% in Greece and 23% in Spain.

There is no Reaganesque figure today in Europe willing to battle entrenched aristocratic socialists in support of limited government and maximum personal liberty. Instead, the “present” generation of Europeans will continue to be impoverished until a future generation becomes unwilling to endure life of a debt slaves and violently over-throws their aristocratic masters.

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Obama's Alinsky-Style Power Analysis

New York Times columnist Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, tries very, very hard to paint a sympathetic picture of her eponymous subject matter–she gets her digs in against the supposedly racist tea party everywhere she can–but every once and a while the truth cracks through. Take this interview at the Texas Book Festival for example:

The Obamas often don’t mingle freely – they often just stand behind the rope and reach out to shake hands but he sees Jerry Kellman, his old community organizing boss, and he’s so happy to see him he reaches across and pulls him in. And Obama says, “I’m still organizing.” It was a stunning moment and when [Kellman] told me the story, it had echoes of what Valerie Jarrett had told me once – “The senator still thinks of himself as a community organizer.” How fully has this guy resolved himself to what he’s really doing? On the one hand, he’s passing these backroom deals to pass health care reform, but on the other he’s telling his old boss he’s still a community organizer. I think that plays into what will happen in the 2012 race.

Jerry Kellman was Barack Obama’s former boss, a student of Saul Alinsky’s in the 1970s, and a permanent fixture of the progressive left in Chicago.

While some have downplayed Obama’s connections to Saul Alinsky, Kellman’s link is pretty easy to discern.

Here he is talking about his relationship with left-wing activism, Alinksy and Obama in Illinois Issues, a student magazine, for example:

Kellman arrived in Chicago again in 1970, this time to stay for the long haul. He began an education in community organizing at a school run by Saul Alinsky, the late Chicagoan considered by many as the modern practice’s father.

Alinsky was a radical, but his method of reaching the core of people’s needs and concerns through one-on-one interviews influenced many organizers, perhaps most notably Obama.

In 1988, Obama wrote an article for Illinois Issues, “Problems and promise in the inner city,” about his experiences as an organizer in and around Chicago. In it, he describes how nowhere was the promise of organizing more apparent than in the traditional black churches. The piece later became part of the book After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.

…

Kellman drew a lot from Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, including methods to analyze how power is obtained, and used this knowledge while taking on the mortgage banking industry on Chicago’s west side, in addition to other endeavors.

Not surprisingly, Kellman has a signed copy of Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father on his desk, with the message, “To Jerry, a friend and a mentor.”

Some of us wish Obama had different friends and mentors.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) was the first female U.S. Senator to speak out against the administration’s rule from the floor of the Senate. “This mandate places religious institutions in this impossible position of violating their core beliefs in order to comply with the mandate or dropping employee insurance coverage altogether. We should not be putting these organizations that do great work throughout this country in this position,” Ayotte argued.

She has also soundly denounced the politics of gender identity by stating plainly, “this is not a women’s rights issue. This is a religious liberty issue.”

Ayotte’s public comments on this matter have been honest, forthright and respectful of her constituents concerns.

Her colleague Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) presents an entirely different example. Shaheen took to the Op-Ed pages of the Wall Street Journal Wednesday along with Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.) and Patty Murray (D-Wa.) to argue “why the birth control mandate makes sense.” Shaheen’s article is a textbook case of agitprop using selective data, straw men (literally, men) and identity politics.

Shaheen starts her argument off by deceptively conflating conscience issues with laudable and necessary medical procedures like breast exams. “It was a historic victory for women’s health when the Obama administration changed the law to require private health plans to provide preventive services including breast exams, HIV screening and contraception for free,” she writes.

We’re not stupid and we know why Shaheen is tossing non-controversial medical procedures into the mix – straw men make the best enemies. But her argument is intellectually insulting. No one opposes health coverage for breast exams. She’s just making that up. But the Senator should watch that “free” talk – someone is paying for it.

Shaheen wastes no time trying to change the playing field in the very next paragraph. This a not matter of religious liberty, but rather, she argues, “the real forces behind it are the same ones that sought to shut down the federal government last year over funding for women’s health care.” Yes, I remember all this Catholic Bishops hooting and hollering about shutting the government down like it was yesterday! It’s rare that I have a conversation with my priest in which he isn’t mashing his fist into his palm bemoaning the fact that the federal government is still open for business. I’m being sarcastic, of course. Shaheen’s argument is simply absurd.

(Oh, this just in: The secret-shut-down-the-government-and-kill-women cabal has recruited a new member – Shaheen’s Democrat colleague Sen. Bob Casey.)

The senator then dedicates a few paragraphs to the obligatory rigged statistics from various leftwing “institutes” and a Democrat pollster. Here’s just one example of her bogus presentation of “facts.” “A recent survey by Hart Research shows 71% of American voters, including 77% of Catholic women voters, supported this provision broadening access to birth control,” she writes. But Shaheen fails to mention the poll is almost two years old– it came out before all those ObamaCare-voting Democrats were thrown out of office in November 2010 – and was conducted on behalf of … wait for it … Planned Parenthood.

Considering how much taxpayer money Planned Parenthood receives every year, I suppose we should consider that poll “free,” too, eh? What’s more, from what I can determine, the survey in question represents a classic example of a polling company attempting to “push” respondents toward a pre-determined response. It appears to contain no mention at all of the potential violation of conscience within the provision in question.

What’s more, a brand new survey by Rasmussen reveals a very different result. According to Rasmussen, “Fifty-six percent (56%) of male voters are against the government requiring contraceptive coverage in a case like this. Female voters are almost evenly divided on the question. Sixty-five percent (65%) of Catholic voters oppose this requirement, as do 62% of Evangelical Christians, and 50% of other Protestants. Most non-Christians (56%) support the Obama Administration ruling.”

It may be convenient for Shaheen’s argument to regurgitate dusty, skewed data, but it’s also dishonest.

Shaheen wraps up by arguing the whole controversy is just a big mix up anyway. After all, this is “good health policy and good economic policy” and is “consistent with federal policy.” Oh, well! It’s policy … it must be serious and thoughtful.

But of course it isn’t, which is why there is such an outcry. And if I may deviate from my main point for a moment, government mandates requiring businesses to offer anything for “free” is, by nature, not “good economic policy.”

A quick summation of the two women Senators’ careers might explain why one has presented a rational, thoughtful argument and the other serves up so much partisan and ideological tripe. Ayotte is a former Attorney General – the first woman to hold that office in New Hampshire, I believe, though I don’t recall any self-congratulatory commemoration of that fact from her office – who has argued before the Supreme Court of the United States and prosecuted cop killers to the fullest extent of the law.

And Jeanne Shaheen? Well, she was a run-of-the-mill, liberal political operative with deep ties to pro-abortion and feminist groups. He rode a wave of gender identity politics into the governorship and she wastes no time reminding people she was the state’s first governess. She lost in her first bid for the U.S. Senate and waited around for another opportunity to run. She used the unpopularity of the Iraq War – a war she supported – to defeat Republican Sen. John Sununu.

In other words, Kelly Ayotte is a public servant. Jeanne Shaheen is a one-trick-pony party hack. Her dishonest, gender-baiting Op-Ed is of a piece with her entire dishonest career.

Rather, it is about population control.

Creamer–like his wife, the pro-abortion Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)–embraces the left-wing fallacy that children are a burden on the planet, which the state should encourage the church–and everyone else–to limit.

At 6:16-7:03 in the video below, by CNS News, Schakowsky describes abortion as “most often” a “responsible decision” to control the size of their families:

Writing in the Huffington Post yesterday, Creamer declared:

…[T]here is a worldwide consensus that the use of birth control is one of society’s most important moral priorities. Far from being something that should be discouraged, or is controversial, the use of birth control is critical to the survival and success of humanity….It is simply not possible for this small planet to sustain that kind of exponential human population growth. If we do, the result will be poverty, war, the depletion of our natural resources and famine. Fundamentally, the Reverend [Thomas] Malthus was right–except that the result is not inevitable….That’s why it is our moral imperative to act responsibly and encourage each other to use birth control.

Malthus’s late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century views, which still inspire much of today’s environmental movement, have been repeatedly disproved over the course of two centuries. Economic freedom, growth and innovation have made human society vastly more productive and efficient.

It is precisely because radical socialists like Creamer, Schakowsky and Obama detest the free economy that they continue to rely on old Malthusian and Marxist ideas.

Regardless, the indication by Creamer that the contraception mandate is not about “equality,” but population growth, suggests that the Obama administration’s challenge to the beliefs of the Catholic church may be more direct–and deliberate–than was previously suspected.