Showing posts with label Andrew Breitbart. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andrew Breitbart. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Insight into the world of insider trading & crony capitalism on Capitol Hill via Peter Schweizer's new book; gets the 'Sixty Minutes' halo effect!



CBS News Sixty Minutes: Congress: Trading stock on inside information? Steve Kroft reports that members of Congress can legally trade stock based on non-public information from Capitol Hill.
Aired November 13, 2011, posted online at 4:02 PM


Transcript and story at:


Insight into the world of insider trading & crony capitalism on Capitol Hill via Peter Schweizer's new book, "Throw Them All Out"; gets the 'Sixty Minutes' halo effect!


So, I don't know whether or not you were able to see the powerful segment on CBS News' Sixty Minutes on Sunday with correspondent Steve Kroft interviewing Peter Schweizer of
the Hoover Institution -whose mailings, like those of AEI and Brookings, I've been receiving for well over 20 years- about his hot new book on the Congressional culture of insider trading that's long existed on Capitol Hill, and its current manifestation as crony capitalism, but if not, you were in the distinct minority among the well-informed set.
I guess you were probably watching NBC's far-too-long Football in America pre-game telecast.

(Surprise, NBC sports gave us a New York team playing again on national TV!
What are the odds of that? More of the unfortunate NFL/Madison Avenue nexus cramming down our throat of Cowboy, Jet & Giant games early in the season to get those network TV ratings up before the holidays, and the late-season cherry-picking which allows NBC to select games that are actually of interest to the greatest number of fans outside the East Coast!)

This particular story has absolutely blown-up, and is driving much of the discussion about Congress among the smarter and more-observant Beltway pundits and think tanks.
And this story has legs with the general public far from the Beltway precisely because everyone can understand exactly what it means; no translation necessary!


(Just asking: Is anyone at the Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel or South Florida's local TV news outfits actively asking who among our South Florida congressional delegation -or their spouses- has profited from this sweet pipeline to inside info and $$$Don't hold your breath!)

Today, a few hours later than I originally planned, I've got some of the things that have been said and written about the book that's caught fire and how it's arrived on the national stage at a most opportune time for both the public and the publisher.

Above, for your perusal, I've got the segment itself, and below, I've got a terrific Washington Post column by AEI's Marc A. Thiessen about the author -a friend of his- and this ethical subject du jour, along with some links to more blog posts about the book and what it says about the political class in Washington we currently have.

Crony capitalism and insider trading were something I heard discussed a lot, mostly in dribs-and-drabs during my 15 years living and working in the Washington, D.C area, at parties and get-togethers, formal and informal, all over the D.C. area, even up at Camden Yards during Orioles games, but always, of course, sotto voce.

And it goes without saying, always said after craning their neck around to see who was nearby before the magic words were spoken: "Dave, I don't know if you have heard but..."

The variation on this was usually something like, "Did you hear that the WSJ might be working on investigating the links between...?"

After awhile, in part because of my great memory and sheer repetition, I had practically memorized who was reportedly taking advantage of their position for financial gain, as well as the location of House and Senate members offices by heart, along with things that while not THE most-important things to know, still came in damn handy.

Things like knowing which House Post Office was most efficient and usually had extra FREE copies of Roll Call displayed longer in their lobby, in case I needed more, since I often mailed copies to friends from there, back in those pre-Internet days of yore, even sending a few to Bill Clinton in Little Rock in '91, long before he announced he was running; which soda vending machines always worked and were the coldest; which of the House and Senate cafeterias gave you the best value for your dollar -and had the quickest cashiers!; and which of the myriad House and Senate entrances were quickest to get thru when there was a horde of lobbyists descending on the Hill clogging up the works, based on which Capitol Police members happened to be manning the security areas.

In short, the very useful kind of info that you only obtain by actually being somewhere and which makes your daily schedule run more smoothly.

It's not a stretch at all to say that during the 1990's, I often felt like I lived in the Rayburn HOB and could find my way around the place blind-folded. The main plus, of course, was the number of very close friendships I made with staffers who were smart, thoughtful and dedicated, even while their boss or committee often weren't.
Relationships that came in handy many times over the years, and continue even today.

Not having read the book yet, I can't say with certainty whether or not there's anything good and juicy about former New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli, but his name was the first I thought of when I saw what the segment was about.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least something about him, given that his name was the one I heard about more than any other with respect to taking advantage of his position to make money via tips and insider info. Someone who lived far beyond his means.

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Marc A. Thiessen is a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and writes a weekly column for The WaPo.



The Washington Post
Marc A. Thiessen, Opinion Writer

Crony capitalism exposed
By Marc A. Thiessen
November 14, 2011


Insider trading is illegal — except for members of Congress. A Wall Street executive who buys or sells stock based on insider information would face a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation and quite possibly a federal prosecutor. But senators and congressmen are free to legally trade stock based on nonpublic information they have obtained through their official positions as elected officials — and they do so on a regular basis.
Read the rest of the column at:



CBS News Sixty Minutes video: Correspondent Candids - Questioning Pelosi: Steve Kroft heads to D.C.
November 13, 2011 6:46 PM
Article and video at: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57323518-10391709/questioning-pelosi-steve-kroft-heads-to-d.c/



Breitbart TV video: Democratic Minnesota Rep. Tim Walz calls on House Speaker John Boehner to take up "The Stock Bill" in response to revelations from Scweizer book.


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See also:

SLATE
Breitbart’s Big House
The conservative media firestarter opens up shop in Washington with a major story to sell.
By David Weigel|Posted Monday, Nov. 14, 2011, at 7:15 PM ET


Heritage Foundation
The Foundry blog
Heritage Foundation, Report: 80% of DOE Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Backers
By Lachlan Markay
November 14, 2011 at 10:43 am

From Schweizer's book, referenced above:


...But an examination of grants and guaranteed loans offered by just one stimulus program run by the Department of Energy, for alternative-energy projects, is stunning. The so-called 1705 Loan Guarantee Program and the 1603 Grant Program channeled billions of dollars to all sorts of energy companies…
…In the 1705 government-backed-loan program [alone], for example, $16.4 billion of the $20.5 billion in loans granted as of Sept. 15 went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party. The grant and guaranteed-loan recipients were early backers of Obama before he ran for president, people who continued to give to his campaigns and exclusively to the Democratic Party in the years leading up to 2008. Their political largesse is probably the best investment they ever made in alternative energy. It brought them returns many times over.
Andrew Breitbart's Big Government blog is all over this story of congressional insider trading, much to the dismay of his many MSM critics: http://biggovernment.com/
Peter Schweizer's new book, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, is available via Amazon.com at

Monday, August 8, 2011

It's all true! Amy Ridenour's "The Sad Truth About Media Coverage, and a Modest Plan for Reform"; Andrew Breitbart & the Norah O'Donnell contretemps


Smart Girl Summit: Andrew Breitbart on the MSM's Absurd Accusations About Tea Party Activists. August 1, 2011.

National Center for Public Policy Research
The Sad Truth About Media Coverage, and a Modest Plan for Reform
by Amy Ridenour
August 7, 2011 at 5:06 PM

The sad truth about media coverage is not just the bias, but the focus.

The country has just had its credit rating downgraded for the first time ever. The cable networks are all over it. So do you suppose the focus is on how to fix it? Only a minority of the coverage, and a small, superficial minority at that, goes in that direction. Mostly, news interviewers want to know: which political party's fault is it?
Read the rest of Amy's spot-on essay at:

Meanwhile, former MSNBC-er and new CBS News reporter Norah O'Donnell was part of a contretemps the other day about bias accusations at a recent White House press conference over the subject of the national debt limit, a fact that Andrew Breitbart noticed, too.
But in the current environment, no good deed goes unpunished.


AdWeek
Huffington Post Caves to Breitbart Retracts claim that he doctored video of WH press conference
By Emma Bazilian
August 2, 2011
Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart is celebrating a victory over the Huffington Post after the site retracted an article alleging he may have doctored a video clip from a White House press briefing to make it look like CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell was upset about the recent debt compromise.
In an article posted yesterday, HuffPo said that Breitbart was being accused of doctoring video of an exchange between O'Donnell and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
Read the rest of the post at:

Patterico's Pontifications had the two warring versions of said video in their August 2nd post:

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Friday, December 31, 2010

Hipper-than-thou Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein finds the U.S. Constitution musty and uncool. It's so 1776!

Posted by Larry O'Connor Dec 30th 2010 at 11:31 am at
http://bigjournalism.com/sright/2010/12/30/which-part-of-the-constitution-is-confusing-ezra/


And when that something tends to re-confirm your own seasoned intuition about why the American mainstream media has lost SO much credibility, respect and just plan eyeballs/readers the past 10-15 years, it makes you wonder if in the year 2010, reasonably smart print reporters STILL don't understand that when the red light is on, the TV camera is actually ON and that you are being broadcast for everyone to see; and some people record that for posterity. 

Such is the case today with this curious video featuring Ezra Klein, which I first discovered on Andrew Breitbart's popular MSM-skewering journalism website, Big Journalism

http://bigjournalism.com/, itself, a spin-of of its very popular parent website, Breitnat.com, http://www.breitbart.com/


After reading the accompanying article by Larry O'Connor and re-watching the video, I'm inclined to think that it's very likely that there will be a forthcoming new feature in this space in the new year titled, "Children's letters to liberal WaPo blogger Ezra Klein."

If you believe anything over 100 years old can't be properly understood, then why do we STILL love Shakespeare?

Why do some people -thou not me!- still pay big bucks to hear classical music or opera in concert halls that they've already heard hundreds of times?
Surely cable TV can do 'Better Than Ezra' as an eyewitness to history, but then that's why they're MSNBC, right?

Oddly enough, the U.S. Constitution proscribes the oath of office that the newly-elected President of the United States must utter under oath, and yet the person we were told two years ago was a brilliant constitutional law expert, Barack Obama, had no problem whatsoever understanding what those words meant -and neither did anyone else.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html


Klein seems to have no problem understanding the original part of our Constitution we call the Bill of Rights, and in particular, the First Amendment guaranteeing "freedom of speech"

But then that's part of the current MSM's problem isn't it?
Its very disconnectedness with the majority of the American electorate makes it a poor source to judge anything of note, and when something happens they don't expect, esp. with blue-collar or Southern appeal, they always cast it in negative and even sinister tones, out of habit.

It makes you wonder what would this crop of overly self-impressed reporters and columnists have made of John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams?

And God forbid if Jefferson had been from Georgia, forget about it!

So many current print and TV reporters are forever opining the merits of compromise for others in their columns, blogs and public/TV appearances -that's when you give in and let them have their way, in case you forgot- or trying to make heroes of pols who are unprincipled go-along types.


But when push comes to shove, reality has shown us that despite their talk, they aren't really the compromising type themselves.

Reality has shown us that what they like to do is pick-and-choose from American history and its institutions, as if it were a Chinese takeout menu, and while they are very protective of their own rights. yours? Well, YOURS are up for debate.


This continually shows itself thru their very opinionated screeds and squeamishness about the parts that they personally disagree with, like American's right under the Bill of Rights to bear arms, for example, which they want to do away with.
But you couldn't have one right without the other.


So much of today's MSM don't understand this fact -or want to understand- which is one of the reasons why so many Americans are genuinely repelled by certain of them when they appear on TV chat shows, because while the citizens know their history and what real compromises were made in order for the Constitution to be passed in Philadelphia 234 years ago, many young-ish reporters are clueless, and many of the worst offenders are currently toiling in South Florida.

Ernie Pyle is dead and he isn't coming back.

http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/
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Update of January 2, 2011 at 2:09 p.m.On The Drudge Report this afternoon, http://www.drudgereport.com/ 
Matt has this Klein story featured with the headline
Ernie Pyle is dead and he isn't coming back.
 
http://journalism.indiana.edu/resources/erniepyle/


Update of January 2, 2011 at 2:09 p.m.
On The Drudge Report this afternoon, http://www.drudgereport.com/ Matt has this Klein story featured with the headline: WASH POST STAFFER: Constitution Impossible to Understand Because It's Over 100 Years Old...
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Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough on History
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A4Kti0iw3M


See also: American Revolution "1776" - David McCullough
http://www.c-span.org/Events/American-Revolution-1776--David-McCullough/19609-1/
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Below are some prospective issues that may appear in upcoming letters to 'Ezra the Elder':If Tallahassee isn't the most corrupt state capital in the United States -and it isn't Albany, either- what is?
How do you solve a problem like JenJen? (Jennifer Gottlieb)
Can you explain how airplanes don't fall from the sky?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Billy_Goat


What's the reason there's no WMATA pedestrian tunnel connecting the north and south-bound Farragut North train station and the east-west-bound Farragut West Metro train station in Washington, D.C. when they are less than a city block apart, and would obviously make everyone's life easier?


Why are all the press hangouts near the Washington Post on 15th so very, very lame, unlike the way press bars always appear in films, hence one of the reasons so  much of DC's media drinks and eats between K Street and DuPont Circle.
Those cool images oif what life could be like are precisely why so many college students put up with crap while working for the student college newspaper, because they can picture that idealized life and can imagine making it a reality?

How will it all end for Daniel Snyder and the Washington Redskins, with his wife inheriting the team and running it after he sticks his foot in his mouth one time too many and suffocates, or with him selling the team to be rid of the headache and universal criticism of him and his grating personality, and the new team owner raising the Vince Lombardi Trophy within three years?


The extra-hard sports imponderable:
The sports teams I root for most fervently have had the following people associated with them over the past few years since I returned to South Florida from the Washington, D.C. area:
Dave Wannstedt (Dolphins football coach),
Mike Davis (IU basketball coach),
Randy Shannon (University of Miami Hurricanes),
Tony Sparano (Dolphins football coach),
Peter Angelos (Orioles owner),
Stephen Ross (Dolphins owner).
Hoosier head basketball Tom Crean seems to have gone a long way in solving IU's personnel problem, but the pious Dolphins and Hurricanes seem almost oblivious to the longstanding problems that have bedeviled them for years, despite the self-evident nature of those problems.
Why?


Big Ten Network's Mary-Rachel Dick is in Bloomington for the announcement of Indiana's new head basketball coach Tom Crean.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szn0VqSa61Q


Timeout during 2007 IU Basketball game against Kentucky at Assebly Hall, Bloomington, (IN), featuring the "William Tell Overture" and "Indiana Our Indiana" - the Indiana University Pep Band and IU Cheerleaders


See also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVpstk3WBk4
http://www.youtube.com/user/breitbart


Article: Which Part of the Constitution is ‘Confusing’ Ezra?

Sometimes, when you least expect it, say at the end of the year when you have a million things on your mind, something falls into your lap.

Yes, hipper-than-thou Uncle Ezra, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/ will ruminate on all matter of imponderables, but first, back to this video above.


Surely it must be more than the exposed cleavage everywhere, right?
So why is Uncle Ezra so confused?


Delicious!!!
Can you name the 7 'extra' U.S. states that Obama refers to when he says that there are 57 states? (Is one of them the State of South Florida?)


What's the point of two Carolinas and two Dakotas?

Will the curse on the Baltimore Orioles only end upon the death of Peter Angelos, or will it have staying power like the curse of the billy goat on the Chicago Cubs?