Stopping the Runaway Congress

by Peter Ferrara 

The recall of New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez took a step forward yesterday with a promising oral argument in New Jersey state court.  The New Jersey Constitution expressly provides for the recall of members of Congress representing the state in a provision adopted by a 75% favorable vote of the people in 1995.  The New Jersey state legislature then expressly provided by statute for the procedures for such a recall.

The Committee to Recall Robert Menendez filed papers for the circulation of their petitions to begin last September.  But the Secretary of State, who has no authority to issue rulings on constitutional questions, nevertheless refused to approve them on the grounds that her own New Jersey state constitution must be unconstitutional under the federal constitution, which she said did not allow such recalls.

The three judge appellate panel considering yesterday whether the recall should proceed expressed reluctance to declare a provision of their own state’s constitution duly adopted by the people null and void.  They also seemed receptive to the argument by the recall committee that they were only asking the court for an order for the circulation of petitions to proceed, and there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits that.  To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution protects the political expression involved in signing a petition calling for the recall of an elected official, and the petitioning of government for the redress of grievances.
If the recall committee gets the required signatures from over a million citizens calling for the recall of Senator Menendez, and the majority of citizens vote to recall him in a recall election, and the Senator decides to thumb his nose at the will of the people anyway, then the issue of whether state recalls of members of Congress are constitutional under the U.S. Constitution would be presented to the courts.  But until then all that the New Jersey recall committee is asking for is the freedom of political expression involved in gathering recall petition signatures, and the U.S. Constitution protects rather than prohibits that.

Based on the oral argument yesterday, the recall effort in New Jersey stands a good chance of getting the go ahead for now.  That could have a powerful political effect in Washington right away.  The law in 9 states provides for the recall of members of Congress, and those states include 12 incumbent Democrat Senators who are not otherwise up for reelection this year. So if the New Jersey courts allow the recall there to proceed, that means all 12 of these Democrat incumbents could be added to the ballot this year, putting majority control of the Senate even more in play.
That could cause Congressional Democrats to be more reluctant to follow Barack Obama off a political cliff.  The 12 Democrat Senators potentially on the hook for a recall election will be more likely to decide they better spend more time listening to their voters than to Barack Obama’s ideological entreaties.  That could be the final straw that stops Obamacare, in accordance with the will of the people.

Big Government

The Bob Corker Bailout Sellout

by Capitol Confidential  


While the media and most of the public are consumed by the health care death march, the Senate is deep in negotiations to pass a sweeping re-regulation of the financial sector. As the public knows, ObamaCare is an attempt to regulate 1/6th of the US economy. The financial ‘reform’ proposal, though, will impact the other 5/6ths of the economy. In many respects, the financial services ‘reform’ is much more damaging to the economy and our future competitiveness. Worse, its passage is being aided by Bob Corker.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with his complete capitulation and total surrender on the Financial Services bill.  The bill, passed by the House with a $4 trillion bailout provision, making bailouts the permanent policy of the United States government, was on it’s last legs until Corker came to the rescue.  Now the Washington Post and other are reporting that Corker and ethically-challenged, retiring Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) are on the verge of a deal to breathe life back into the regulatory and bailout scheme.
Let’s be clear – the President and the hard left want this bill. David Reilly of Bloomberg described the measure as Barney Frank’s $4 trillion gift to the banks. Reilly wrote:

Here are some of the nuggets I gleaned from days spent reading Frank’s handiwork:
– For all its heft, the bill doesn’t once mention the words “too-big-to-fail,” the main issue confronting the financial system. Admitting you have a problem, as any 12- stepper knows, is the crucial first step toward recovery.
– Instead, it supports the biggest banks. It authorizes Federal Reserve banks to provide as much as $4 trillion in emergency funding the next time Wall Street crashes. So much for “no-more-bailouts” talk. That is more than twice what the Fed pumped into markets this time around. The size of the fund makes the bribes in the Senate’s health-care bill look minuscule.

– Oh, hold on, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary can’t authorize these funds unless “there is at least a 99 percent likelihood that all funds and interest will be paid back.” Too bad the same models used to foresee the housing meltdown probably will be used to predict this likelihood as well.
– The bill also allows the government, in a crisis, to back financial firms’ debts. Bondholders can sleep easy — there are more bailouts to come.
– The legislation does create a council of regulators to spot risks to the financial system and big financial firms. Unfortunately this group is made up of folks who missed the problems that led to the current crisis.
– Don’t worry, this time regulators will have better tools. Six months after being created, the council will report to Congress on “whether setting up an electronic database” would be a help. Maybe they’ll even get to use that Internet thingy.

Sources in the Senate have made conservatives aware of a sleight of hand that Sen. Corker and Dodd may use to try to get this bill through the Senate. The discussion draft contained the infamous bailout provisions. But we have been warned that the “compromise” may take the bailouts out so they can be inserted back into the bill through the House Senate conference committee.
Does this sound like a bill a senior Republican Senator should be trying to revive? Since when do Republicans believe in more government, more bureaucrats and more Washington red tape?
Bob Corker’s Senate office number is 202-224-3344.

Big Government

Unions: Forever War

by Bret Jacobson

You’re hoping for another 1994, eh? Well, you’re not going to get it if D.C.’s biggest union bosses have their say — and they don’t just have a say, they have a checkbook to put where their mouths are. And both words and munitions are taking on an overtly combative tone.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ebarney/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

The AFL-CIO plans to roll out its biggest political campaign ever, surpassing the $53 million spent in 2008 to help elect President Barack Obama, to try to avert a repeat of the 1994 midterm election when Democrats lost a majority in Congress.

If that sounds a bit aggressive, that’s nothing compared to the powerful head of the AFSCME public employee union, who is saying “The time has come to draw a line in the sand…Regardless of your party affiliation, if you’re not with us, you are against us.”
(We’re pretty sure we’ve seen other people get hammered for using the same language, but we digress…)

It’s certainly interesting that unions are doubling down on their failed bet. But anything can happen when you wish upon a star…

Big Government

New York Times plumps GM, trashes Toyota, Never Mentions Elephant in Room

Posted by Clyde Middleton Mar 3rd 2010 at 7:15 am in New York Times, media bias

 In spite of shrinking resources, market share, and credibility, the venerable Gray Lady has poured resources into trashing Toyota, the chief competitor of the paper’s drinking buddies — the White House and the UAW.
Look at the depth of their investigations, which, by  the way, far exceed the number of documents or years the New York Times reviewed while “vetting” candidate Obama:

Of the 12,700 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration consumer complaints analyzed by The Times, the Ford Motor Company had the most, about 3,500.
Toyota ranked second, with about 3,000 complaints, but those were linked to far more accidents — 1,000 — compared to 450 crashes for Ford.

Odd.  Taking the time to trash Ford while they’re at it?  How comprehensive of them. More:

A separate examination by The Times of transport ministry records in Japan revealed a similar finding. In reports since 2001, Toyota vehicles have been cited with a greater frequency in complaints of sudden acceleration than those of other major carmakers.

Missing from this article is any mention of the ownership interests of the federal government. They somehow missed mentioning it as well in this other above-the-website-fold article.
The bloom on the GM rose gets a better perspective in Business Week:

Sales to businesses and government buyers drove GM’s growth. While Chevrolet posted a 32 percent increase, deliveries to dealerships were up only 1 percent, GM said. Chevrolet makes up 70 percent of the company’s U.S. volume.
Ford Motor Co., based in Dearborn, Michigan, may say sales rose 33 percent, while Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler Group LLC probably will post an 18 percent decline, according to the average estimates.

If not for the federal baby-daddy, GM would not have faired so well – 1% growth in dealership deliveries is insignificant. Further, it seems that Ford is doing better – but that didn’t fit the Times’s narrative.

Big Journalism

What Is "Reconciliation" And Why Is It A Threat?

March 3, 2010 · Vol. 5, No. 9

During last week's health summit, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid uttered a remarkably dishonest and, in retrospect, ironic statement, claiming that "nobody is talking about reconciliation" to pass the health bill.

It was a dishonest statement because Democrats have been openly floating the specter of passing the health bill using reconciliation since it first became obvious it would have difficulty passing the Senate, including just days before the summit by Sen. Reid himself.

It was ironic because it seems that all the cable news shows, talk radio, blogs and pundits have been talking about since the summit is whether President Obama, Harry Reid, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will use the Senate budget reconciliation process to pass their big government, big bureaucracy health bill.

But what exactly is the reconciliation process? And why, exactly, is it so controversial a move to pass the health bill?

A Tool for Congress to Meet Spending Goals

The budget reconciliation process was created in 1974 as part of the law that created much of the modern rules and organizational structures used by Congress to pass the annual budget.

This new law required Congress to pass a budget resolution every year that would set the parameters by which the various congressional committees would write their specific parts of the total budget bill.

Within these budget resolutions, instructions can be given to specific congressional committees to create legislation that would alter current laws affecting spending and/or taxation in order to conform to the targets set out in the budget resolution.

To enhance Congress’ ability to meet budget resolution targets, these pieces of legislation are not passed under the normal rules of the Senate. Instead, they fall under the “budget reconciliation process” rules which prohibit unrelated amendments to the bills and set a maximum of 20 hours of debate on the floor. As a practical matter, this means only 51 votes are needed to pass a reconciliation bill because the limit on debate overrides the threat of a filibuster.

The Byrd Rule to Prevent Abuse of Reconciliation

While the budget reconciliation process was a success in its principal goal of giving Congress more power to meet the spending and revenue goals of the budget resolution, it quickly became prone to abuse.

Provisions that had nothing to do with meeting budget resolution requirements, even some that directly contradicted them, were passed using the reconciliation process.

To prevent this, the so-called “Byrd Rule,” named after Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, who introduced the legislation, was passed in 1985 and made permanent in 1990.

The Byrd Rule allows any senator to raise a point of order objection to provisions in a reconciliation bill that they consider extraneous to meeting budget resolutions requirements. Then, it is up to the chair – either the Vice President (as President of the Senate) or, more often, the presiding officer of the Senate if the Vice President is not present -- whether that provision stays or is stricken.

However, the chair almost always relies on the advice of the Senate Parliamentarian to determine if that objection is legitimate. (Learn more about the parliamentarian here.)

This determination is made based on six tests created as part of the Byrd Rule used to weed out provisions that have nothing to do with raising or reducing taxes or spending. It takes a 3/5 majority vote to override the decision of the presiding officer if he or she finds that a provision violates one or more of these tests. (This Congressional Research Service report is a good primer on the Byrd rule if you want to learn more.)


Reconciliation in Action

Reconciliation has been used for 22 bills, of which, 14 were passed by Republican majorities. Nineteen of those bills were signed into law by the President. Three were vetoed. You can view a chart of these bills here.

Notice the similarity between them? All of these bills were obviously directly related to taxation and spending, and since 1985, have successfully met the Byrd rule tests.

Health Reform Is About More than Federal Spending

This is why passing the left's big government, big bureaucracy health bill using the budget reconciliation process is so fundamentally dishonest and dangerous to Senate precedent.

Leaving aside the bill's merits (which, to be clear, are abysmal), both its defenders and detractors would acknowledge that it is, for better or worse, a fundamental overhaul of the nation's health system, both public and private. It sets new rules and regulations that span the entire healthcare sector. It is much larger in scope and more all encompassing in purpose than simply affecting federal spending and revenues.

This is not to say that the bill would not have some effect on the federal budget. Almost any piece of legislation could meet that meager standard.

The reconciliation process was only intended to be used for legislation directly related to meeting budget resolution spending and revenue goals.

The minor affect the left's health bill would have on the deficit over 10 years (beyond that there is every reason to think it would increase the deficit substantially), even by charitable estimates, cannot be used to justify passing this sort of sweeping legislation using reconciliation.

This is one reason why a number of Democrats, including Sen. Robert Byrd, author of the Byrd Rule and who also helped create the budget reconciliation process in 1974, called the idea of using it to pass the health bill (and cap and trade) "an outrage that must be resisted."

It's also why Robert Byrd objected to President Clinton's efforts to pass Hillarycare in 1993 using reconciliation.

Why should the left's latest big government healthcare grab be held to any different standard?

Welfare Reform vs. the Left's Big Government Health Bill

This week, the left is out in force, pointing to other significant pieces of legislation passed by Republicans using the budget reconciliation process as justification for passing their health care bill. One of the examples they are using is welfare reform.

Since welfare reform was passed while I was Speaker of the House, I am happy to compare the two cases.

First, welfare reform was an integral part of the Republican Congress' efforts to balance the budget, producing immediate savings of over $50 billion dollars between 1997 and 2002. It was originally combined with the balanced budget act that President Clinton vetoed in 1995.

By contrast, for most of the debate over the health bill, the left has constantly boasted about how their bill was "deficit neutral". President Obama repeatedly sought to assure the American people that he would not sign a bill that "added one dime" to the deficit. Medicare cuts were combined with new taxes to pay for the cost of new programs and bureaucracies.

So while real effective health reform would certainly have a positive effect on the deficit, it is clear that the left never intended for their health bill to be primarily a budget bill. Its focus was and still is on getting more people covered. It was only after Democratic leaders began setting the stage for passing the bill using reconciliation that they began emphasizing it as a way to reduce the deficit. (Paul Ryan explains here how their bill uses smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of savings).

Second, when we decided to roll welfare reform into the balanced budget bill in 1995, we never stopped the conference committee efforts to resolve the differences between the versions of the welfare reform legislation that passed in the House and Senate earlier in the year. This continuation of work, along with the active participation of the governors, allowed us to quickly produce the final bill in conference the next year, once it became clear that President Clinton was now finally ready to sign welfare reform.

In contrast, the Democrats have done an end run around the conference committee process that would resolve the differences between the House and Senate bills, instead trying to negotiate their final bill in secret at the White House. This process continues today, with President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid exploring different tricks they can use to ram a bill through their respective chambers without first producing a conference bill.

Third, welfare reform was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, with more Democrats voting for it in the House and Senate than opposing it. It was signed by a Democratic President. Bipartisanship was integral to the success of the bill.

Today, Democrats are turning to passing the bill using the reconciliation process precisely because they are rejecting bipartisanship. Republican Scott Brown's stunning election in Massachusetts, thanks largely to opposition to the left's health bill, has meant that the Democrats would need at least one Republican vote to break a filibuster in the Senate. And their bill is so bad they can't get one.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, welfare reform was overwhelmingly popular with the American people. One poll showed that over 90 percent of Americans favored reform, including 88 percent of those on welfare.

As for the left's health bill, after a year of debate and discussion, the American people have overwhelmingly rejected it. A poll we released at the Center for Health Transformation showed that it is opposed by a 2-1 margin. It is a fact that the more Americans learn about the left's plan, both its substance and the corrupt manner in which it has been passed, the more they oppose it.

Three Corrupt Options for the Left

The left's big government, big bureaucracy health bill is overwhelmingly unpopular with the American people. It is incapable of obtaining any bipartisan support in the Senate.

Faced with this reality, President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should do the responsible thing and scrap the unpopular bill and start over, focusing instead on smaller pieces of legislation that could obtain bipartisan support.

However, they've made it clear they aren't willing to do this. The Democrats are determined to pass a comprehensive health bill no matter how unpopular it is. This means they have to use reconciliation to avoid needing 60 votes to end debate in the Senate.

There are several corrupt options available to the Democrats using reconciliation.

One option would be for the House to pass the exact same health bill the Senate passed in December (thus avoiding the need for the Senate to marshal 60 votes again for a final bill now that Scott Brown is in office) with an understanding that a separate bill with a series of fixes would be passed immediately afterward using the budget reconciliation process in the Senate.

The left argues that technically, this would keep the use of reconciliation fairly narrow. However, the plain truth of the matter is that the Democrats would be using the budget reconciliation process to pass a bill they could not otherwise pass using the normal legislative process. It is a dirty trick that ignores congressional tradition and the overwhelming opposition to the bill from America.

Another option is for the Democrats to try and pass the full health bill in the Senate with 51 votes using reconciliation and then for the House to pass the same bill that emerges from the Senate.

For all the reasons outlined above, this would be an enormously inappropriate use of the budget reconciliation process. But it also means that the left's endlessly complicated bill that creates hundreds of new regulations, new programs, and new bureaucracies would have to survive the Byrd Rule tests, creating the possibility that by the time all the extraneous provisions are removed, the final "swiss cheesed" legislation would be unrecognizable.

For President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to promise to pass a bill when they, in reality, don't know what the final bill will look like, is the height of irresponsibility. (Of course, they passed the stimulus without reading it so it would certainly fit with their precedent.)

How Far Are The Democrats Willing To Go?

Which brings us to a third, more drastic option for the Democrats to get their high tax, big government, big bureaucracy health bill passed.

As explained above, under the Byrd Rule, the vice president of the United States is ultimately responsible for deciding whether a provision in a reconciliation bill is extraneous. It is merely tradition that dictates he follow the advice of the parliamentarian, not a Senate rule.

To avoid their legislation being subjected to Byrd Rule tests, the vice president could choose simply to ignore the advice of the parliamentarian on points of order and rule to keep the extraneous provisions in the final bill. Any senator can appeal these rulings, but the appeal may be defeated with a simple majority vote.

To be clear, no vice president has ever acted in this fashion in the history of the reconciliation process. But no one has ever tried to push this kind of bill through reconciliation before either.

With the American people overwhelmingly opposed to the health bill, not to mention every other part of the left's agenda, and the political environment turning increasingly toxic for the Democrats, President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi could decide to make a cynical, calculated political decision.

Faced with the high likelihood of political defeat in November, they could decide it is preferable to pass the bill they want and be defeated rather than to fail to get a health bill (or only a partial bill), and be defeated anyway.

In fact, this seems to be the message Speaker Pelosi was pushing this past weekend , dismissing her caucus' concerns of defeat.

Republicans Must Vow To Replace the Left's Health Bill

If the Democrats are bound and determined to exert all their power and manipulate every rule they can to pass their big government health bill, Republicans may not be able to stop its passage.

We'll find out today as President Obama is set to announce his recommendation on the way forward.

But no matter what President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid decide, the bottom line for Republicans is that they must stand with the American people in opposing this bill.

This doesn't just mean voting against it and using every parliamentary maneuver available to delay its passage.

It also means running on a platform of replacing whatever left-wing health bill the Democrats manage to pass with real health reform that empowers patients and doctors, not bureaucrats, to bring down health costs. And delivering on that promise in 2011 if Republicans gain control of Congress.

And if President Obama is still determined to ignore the will of the people by vetoing the Republican bill after such a clear message from America, it means that the Republican candidate for President in 2012 must run on a platform that includes signing the replacement of the left's big government health bill. After all, no matter what dirty tricks the politician may try to get his way, in America, the people have the final say.

Your friend,



Newt Gingrich

‘The Acceleration of Disbelief,’ Starring ‘Floor Mat’ Al Gore

Posted by Phelim McAleer Mar 2nd 2010 at 7:25 am in Climate Change, Climategate, New York Times

It has been fascinating to observe how a multinational corporation that is so popular and trusted can be so flatfooted and incapable of responding to a crisis.

Like many of these crises it started small. The corporation seemed invincible and underwent major growth. Some worried the growth was too fast and retained doubts about the science and the technology. However, these warnings were on the fringe and were easily ignored…

… until three months ago, when the corporation suddenly found itself at the center of crisis after crisis, its science and technology revealed to be hopelessly flawed, shoddy even.
Inside the corporation denial took over, but eventually it became clear the problem was structural.  In a rush for profits and market dominance, executives had ignored procedures, falsified data, and then covered up or tried to minimize their falsifications.
Compounding the problem — the head of the corporation remained silent until he was forced to respond to the concerns of the American people:

And so, this past Sunday, Al Gore finally emerged from hiding to do damage control of the deluge of scientific scandals, which had shattered public confidence in the Global Warming industry.
But unlike the President of Toyota, Mr. Gore offered no apologies or explanations.
Instead in a lengthy op/ed for the New York Times the former vice president either completely misrepresented or downplayed the unethical and illegal behavior of some of the most prominent climate scientists.
At the start Toyota tried a similar approach. They blamed a rogue floor mat for crashes that may have killed dozens, but eventually admitted the problems are deeper than a dodgy floor covering.
Last week, Toyota’s president apologized, took personal responsibility, and announced an overhaul of their entire way of working. Everything is being changed, he said.
The Global Warming industry has suffered a similar crisis. A series of scandals now means the public no longer trusts its product.
But it seems that Al Gore and his Global Warming executives are still at the “blaming the floor mat” stage.
And just like Toyota — they have a lot at stake. Carbon Trading is now a $300 billion industry. On a personal level Mr. Gore, as even the New York Times has noted, is “a businessman [who] is an investor in alternative energy companies.”

The public, and Mr. Gore’s investors, probably started to get really nervous when climate science faced its first scandal this past November when e-mails were leaked from UK’s Climate Research Unit’s (CRU).  The scandal became known as Climategate.
The e-mails leaked from the CRU showed Professor Phil Jones, one of the world’s most quoted Global Warming scientists, boasting about using a “trick to hide the decline” in temperatures whilst scientists publicly claimed no such Global Cooling existed.
Professor Jones even encouraged colleagues to delete data to stop skeptical scientists from undermining their very profitable Global Warming theory. The UK Information commissioner has since announced he broke the law by doing so.
Not satisfied they’d protected all their assets, climate scientists tried to rig the peer review process so that skeptical scientists would not be published.
But in a classic “floor mat defense”  Mr. Gore says the crisis has arisen because scientists “may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British Freedom of Information law.”
Mr. Gore again uses a floor mat defense when downplaying the errors of the 2007 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Until recently the IPCC’s reports were seen as flawless, heavily peer reviewed, scientific distillations of the world’s top climate scientists.
Now, it has emerged the 2007 report is littered with significant errors while using dubious sources to make alarmist claims.
The IPCC admits the Himalayan Glaciers are not melting away any time soon, most of Holland will not flood and the Amazon rainforest is not in danger from Global Warming.
It is not surprising the IPCC got so much so wrong due to basing many of their “findings” on claims by environmental activist groups, casual conversations by scientists with journalists, and even anecdotes from mountaineering magazines.
But Floor Mat Al tries to pretend these IPCC retractions have never happened, ignoring some errors and labeling others as “overestimates” or “partially flawed”.
Similarly, according to Mr. Gore, the recent snowstorms are not proof of the flaws in the Global Warming theory, but are in fact proof that Global Warming exists.
It’s as if Toyota executives tried to claim that a sticking accelerator is not a sign of technology gone wrong, but actually a deliberate design initiative, and a sign that they are ahead of their time.
And so it is for Mr Gore — “the Floor Mat did it” and it is climate alarmism as usual.
Or as he put it in the New York Times op/ed, “[We] face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.”

There is an unimaginable calamity facing millions. If Floor Mat Al gets his way millions, particularly those who can least afford it, will face increased energy costs. These man-made price increases will drive jobs out of America during one of the worst recessions in living memory, and be a death sentence for hundreds of millions in the developing world.
Toyota will likely emerge from their scandal a better company because they have, eventually, admitted their problems and dealt with them in an open and transparent way. They say they will put safeguards in place to make sure these problems will not occur again.
Climate alarmists, such as Al Gore, have shown no such awareness or humility. For him it is business as usual.
But it remains to be seen if the business of Climate Alarmism will survive.

Big Journalism

When Liberal ‘Journalists’ Attack, Real Americans Suffer

Posted by Brad Thor Mar 2nd 2010 at 10:13 am in Featured Story, Military, media bias

Andrew Breitbart’s recent smackdown of Max Blumenthal at CPAC (for his vicious smears against James O’Keefe) serves as a reminder to us all that when Liberal “journalists” attack, they have one goal – and it isn’t reporting the truth.  It is to win at any cost no matter what the damage is to the victim.  It is called the politics of personal destruction and it reflects the utter nihilism of Liberalism.
The tactic has been used repeatedly by the left (see Sarah Palin), but is particularly disturbing when used as a cudgel to destroy decent, hard-working Americans.  One such decent, hardworking (and extremely patriotic) American is Barrett Moore, founder of Triple Canopy.

I met Barrett a couple of years ago in Chicago at a luncheon for Navy SEAL, Marcus Luttrell author of the bestselling novel, Lone Survivor and boy do the Liberals hate him.
As I mentioned, Moore was the founder of Triple Canopy, one of America’s first private military companies (or PMC) and under his stewardship, he assembled one of this nation’s most impressive fighting forces – most of whom were retired members of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D) (Delta Force) – and sent them overseas to help carry our burden in Iraq.  What’s more, he did it at a fraction of the cost and much more efficiently than the American government ever could.  That’s private enterprise for you, but because his private enterprise involved guns, the Liberals focused on him like a laser beam.
Their attacks would come not only while he was at Triple Canopy, but even more devastatingly once he had been forced out.
While at Triple Canopy, detractors from the left weren’t the only problem Barrett had to deal with.  He also had a handful of business partners eager to carve out bigger and juicier government contracts.  For that to happen, Triple Canopy would have to move from their fifty-yard-line seats up into a skybox.  In the world of Department of Defense contracts, the big players are those who did $1 billion or more with DOD annually.  At the time, Triple Canopy was in the hundreds of millions of dollars range.  This was a very respectable number to be sure, but it wouldn’t put them in the Defense Department’s inner circle.  To get to the $1 billion level, they needed to find a way to bring in even more contracts.   It was at this moment that Triple Canopy was made an offer that only Barrett Moore could have refused.
The Central Intelligence Agency introduced Barrett and Triple Canopy to a wealthy organization that provides the CIA with much of its innovative technology and technical services.  It was a match made in heaven, or so everyone thought; everyone that is, except for Barrett.

After retiring from careers of distinguished service, the nation’s best soldiers, sailors, and Marines were beating a path to Triple Canopy’s door.  This couldn’t have made the CIA very happy; after all they draw from this talent pool as well. But given the choice between working at a private sector corporation with a reputation like Triple Canopy’s or going to work for a bureaucratic monstrosity like the CIA, the choice wasn’t hard for our country’s elite operators.  Time and again they chose Triple Canopy.
Ironically, when Triple Canopy had first arrived on the scene in Iraq, it had taken up residence in one of Saddam’s former palaces with the CIA literally in the palace to the left of it and the Army’s elite Delta Force Squadrons in a palace to the right.  It was an uncanny metaphor for what Barrett believed was driving the CIA’s suggested merger/buyout of his company.
His reluctance to go along with the plan stemmed from several concerns, not the least of which being his devotion to the operators that formed the backbone of his company.  In short, he had no interest in becoming the paramilitary arm of a technology organization that took its marching orders from the Central Intelligence Agency.  You see, Barrett had created Triple Canopy to be a place where operators could still honorably serve their country alongside the same caliber of soldiers they had worked with in the Special Operations community.  He’d be damned before he would sell those men out.
Barrett’s partners, though, saw things differently.  They didn’t mind if the CIA wanted access to Triple Canopy’s talent, as long as the merger would result in big payouts.  This put the partners and Barrett at loggerheads and their eventual uncoupling was an unpleasant and ugly affair.
After a protracted legal battle, Barrett was forced out as the founding CEO and largest shareholder, but with a sizable settlement from Triple Canopy (whose remaining partners ironically never did succeed in selling the company despite repeated attempts).
With Barrett Moore retired from the PMC world, the Liberals no longer had him to demonize anymore – at least not until he came roaring back with a new concept and a brand new company.  His idea was so offensive and so horrific to Liberals that the George Soros/SEIU funded Center for Independent Media (now re-branded as The American Independent News Network) not only went after the concept, but after Barrett as well.  After all, if you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger.

So what was this Liberal bête noir?  Its bite hardly seems worth the Leftists’ bark.  You see, Barrett actually had the temerity to suggest that people be self-reliant.  He had the unmitigated gall to intimate that in times of disaster (natural or “man-made”) that the big government nanny state might not be there for you.
This audacious man wanted people to move beyond their ingrained experiences that stores are always open and their shelves are always full – what Barrett calls the “7-Eleven” effect. There is a genuine need to change this mentality and have people consider what they would do if our just-in-time delivery system was disrupted and grocery stores and pharmacies were unable to restock.
He wanted people to learn to become self-sufficient and not rely upon the government for help in an emergency.  He had even invested $20 million of his own money to master the private disaster response arena and become an expert in all aspects of preparedness.  How dare he! How dare this rapscallion throw up speed bumps along the road to Socialism!  Obviously, this man didn’t know how evil his message of self-empowerment was.  Something needed to be done.  Somehow, Moore needed to be taught a lesson once and for all.  Enter the progressive advocacy communication web site Michigan Messenger and their related radical blogs.
In a series of hit pieces, the Michigan Messenger went after Barrett Moore in every way it could.  It started by attacking the overall purpose of his business – helping people prepare for the unexpected.

Moore’s company, appropriately named Sovereign Deed, offers a wide range of products and services, all geared toward continuity of life; a mandate our government long ago abandoned, but which Liberals believe is still its sole purview.
Whether it’s helping you stock the appropriate type and amount of provisions for you and your family in case of a supply-chain disruption, assembling a high-end bug-out-bag, subscribing to updates from their global analysis center, or developing post-event contingency plans, Sovereign Deed is all about helping people survive situations all of us hope never happen.
But being self-reliant threatens the Liberals’ vision of dependence upon a glorious, utopia-promising big government, so they attacked Sovereign Deed as being nothing more than salvation for the rich.  In their twisted view of the world, private sector businesses should simply give their services away.  If the truth be told, Sovereign Deed has actually done just that.  After the earthquake in Haiti, Moore and his company donated over 200+ metric tons of relief supplies (310 pallets) including food, medicine, medical equipment, tools, shelter and children’s toys with no fanfare whatsoever.
When the Michigan Messenger’s ridiculous, anti-private sector message failed to gain traction, they moved to the next page in the Liberal playbook and attacked Moore personally.
At DePauw University, Moore nearly single-handedly revived the university’s Army ROTC program (which had been driven off the campus by liberals in the 1970s) and simultaneously joined the US Army Reserves; working with a military intelligence unit based at Eli Lilly’s Indianapolis laboratory facilities where it focused on the Soviet bioweapons program.  A highly intelligent, physically fit, patriotic young man, Moore was on the radar screens of many prominent government agencies.
After graduation, Moore disappeared for seven months of “additional training” before turning up in Australia – a covert hotspot for illicit weapons trafficking.  Within a short time, Moore had “amazingly” established an exotic car import business (bringing Porsches in from the United States and Europe), which allowed him to infiltrate a major organized crime ring affiliated with the Russians.  But a perfect James Bond plot this wasn’t.
Whether it was via the Russians from on high, or via members of the crime syndicate Moore was mapping, it became suspected that he wasn’t who they thought he was and they attempted to assassinate him and send a message to the US.  Moore,survived the attack and has the bullet wound to show for it.
When the plot to assassinate him failed, corrupt Australian law enforcement officers (tied to the organization Moore had been working to infiltrate), created a sophisticated plan to frame him.  By the time the High Court of Australia (their Supreme Court), had officially and fully exonerated him, Moore had spent forty-three days in a maximum-security Australian prison.

All of this became fodder in the Soros-backed Michigan Messenger’s attempt to discredit Moore and prevent him from locating Sovereign Deed’s supply distribution nerve center in a small northern Michigan community suffering in tough economic times.  Such is the nihilism of Liberals that they’d rather attack Moore, than see his business provide much-needed jobs in a community all too happy to have him there.
In its final attempt to smear Moore, the Liberals (many of whom have probably never had a real job, much less created jobs for others) lumped him in with a host of other “evil” men like Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Henry Heinz (of Heinz Ketchup fame), Milton Hershey (of Hershey’s Chocolate fame), Henry Ford, Mickey Rooney, Johnny Unitas, Wayne Newton, Walt Disney, Larry King, and Donald Trump; all because at one point in his long and successful career as a businessman, Moore had filed for personal bankruptcy when a Taiwanese manufacturing company had falsified insurance documents on a factory in which millions of dollars of his inventory had been destroyed.  By falling on his sword, Moore not only saved his business and the jobs of his employees, but he was able to build the business back up and eventually sell it.  That business is still alive and well today.  But that’s not the story you’ll read in the Soros/SEIU funded Michigan Messenger.
With the power of the Internet, the Michigan Messenger screeds against Barrett Moore and his noble efforts at Sovereign Deed, pop up to the top of any search prospective clients conduct.  Those articles have tarnished a good man.
Barrett Moore’s reputation and good name have been besmirched and that’s wrong. It is important for me that the record be set straight and that the facts win out.  What’s more, it’s important that the dangers of Leftist advocacy journalism as practiced by the Michigan Messenger and other Liberal “news” outlets of its ilk, be brought to everyone’s attention.  Today, it’s Barrett Moore and Sovereign Deed, but we all need to ask ourselves: who will it be tomorrow?  Me?  You?
When the going gets tough, the Liberals all pull together on behalf of their team, but conservatives too often pull apart.  It’s time we took care of our own – especially when it comes to the life and business-destroying, “just-the-fiction-ma’am” assassinations the Left so revels in and so thinly veils as “journalism.”
So how do we do that?  How do we begin to take care of our own?  We begin by calling these people out and exposing their lies just as Andrew Breitbart did with Max Blumenthal at CPAC.  Simply put, we no longer roll over.  We set the record straight and we commit right now to back each other up every time a Liberal journalist attacks.  Believe me, Barrett Moore wasn’t the first and he definitely won’t be the last, but working together we will dull the impact of these attacks and eventually drown them out all together.

Big Journalism