In 2014, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "Wind Power is Intermittent, But Subsides Are Eternal."  Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-TX) deserves credit for trying to prove them wrong.

Marchant and Rep. Mike Pompeo (KS) are seeking to end a two decade long subsidy to the unprofitable wind energy sector by introducing H.R. 1901, the PTC Elimination Act.  H.R. 1901 would phase out and repeal the renewable energy production tax credit (PTC), the central federal handout to unprofitable wind energy corporations.  

The PTC gives wind producers a 2.3-cent tax credit for each kilowatt-hour of electricity produced.  The industry has become reliant on federal and state support despite the fact that wind energy is unreliable and costs more to produce.  The industry, which claims to make $1 billion a year, does not need a federal handout and should sink or swim on its own, without taxpayer support.  The PTC was originally designed to kickstart the industry to be self-sufficientbut has become another form of corporate welfare.  A cottage industry of lobbyists have sprung up.  Their sole mission is to extend the needed government support mechanism. 

Congressman Marchant said “If we want to build a healthier American economy, Congress must get rid of the dead weight in the tax code that is limiting our nation’s potential. That’s why I have introduced legislation to eliminate the production tax credit. Since its creation in 1992, the PTC has ballooned from a temporary boost for energy innovation into a massive special interest handout for the now multibillion-dollar wind industry. Today the wind industry regularly produces more energy than the market demands while hardworking taxpayers shell out billions of dollars each year in PTC support. In fact, because the credit pays claimants for 10 years of energy produced, Americans are currently on the hook for a minimum of $6.4 billion over the next decade.

“The fully mature wind industry should not be spoon-fed by taxpayers any longer. Even the industry’s top lobbying organization admits wind is a mainstream part of the market and has publicly supported a future phase-out of the PTC. The PTC Elimination Act would begin this phase-out immediately by significantly scaling back PTC handouts to those who are eligible. Similar proposals have been estimated to save nearly $10 billion. But the PTC Elimination Act doesn’t stop there. It would also completely dismantle the credit’s statutory framework and use the savings to lower the U.S. corporate tax rate. Even the president agrees that the U.S. corporate tax rate – which is the highest in the industrialized world – must come down to keep American businesses competitive. The PTC Elimination Act may only be one piece of the effort to fix our broken tax code, but it puts the American people first and levels the playing field both at home and in the global marketplace. That’s the approach to tax simplification we must use to revitalize the American economy.”

The American people pay at least $12 billion annually to prop up wind energy.   The time has come to pull the cord and end the cycle of subsidies and cronyism.  

A RedState article highlights a remarkable event that will happen next week -- a member of Congress will hold a hearing exposing corporate cronyism.  

The issue is called 340B, a discount drug pricing program that was originally created to assist veterans get drugs they need at a cost they can afford.  The relatively small program was around for nearly two decades before it was turned into a corporate profit center for hospitals and chain drugs stores by its rapid expansion in ObamaCare.

ObamaCare rapidly expanded the program to the point where corporations soon recognized they could take in large amounts of discounted drugs and then turn around and bill insurance companies and the government for their full cost.  Policyholders and taxpayers are being shafted while hospitals and drug stores make hundreds of millions of dollars.  Congress is finally taking a look at the scam:

Next week, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, Chaired by Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) will take its first look at the program.  It will examine the genesis the program, an attempt to assist the poor to its current form -- a get rich quick arbitrage scheme that is helping investors and financial institutions rather than those in need.

A cottage industry of corporations and lobbyists has been spawned by the ObamaCare expansion of the program.  The 340B Coalition has become the lobbying are of nationwide drugstore chains line Walgreens and CVS that have profited greatly from being able to take in drugs at a price-control rate and then billing Medicare and private insurance companies for the full cost of the drugs.

The 340B drug program was passed as part of the 1992 Veterans Health Care Act. The program was a subsidy program designed for “safety-net” hospitals serving underprivileged communities, compelling drug companies to sell drugs at steep discounts as a condition of their being allowed to participate in Medicare and Medicaid.

 After the program's expansion in ObamaCare, investors recognized the potential locked in profits.  Duke University Hospital pocketed nearly $70 million through the program.  The Charlotte Observer reported the hospital "purchased $65.8 million in drugs through the discount program, which saved $48.3 million. It sold the drugs to patients for $135.5 million, for a profit of $69.7 million. The profit would have been $21.4 million if Duke had not participated.  At Duke, about 67 percent of patients who received those discount drugs were covered by commercial insurance companies, which often pay hospitals many times over cost for medications. Only 5 percent of the Duke patients were uninsured.

They weren't alone. The Healthcare Corporation of America sold $1 million in converted bonds with an 8 percent coupon in April to finance marketing of its 340B software program that helps facilities maximize their profits through the subsidy program.

With the program clearly hijacked by cronies who care less about the poor, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) has decided to take a look.  If Republicans are serious about ending crony socialism, reforming or abandoning the 340B Program would be a good place to start. 

Every day I speak to a person who has Pandora or another music streaming service.  I tell them to enjoy it while it lasts, because the Justice Department may take actions that will eliminate consumer choice in the not too distant future -- all to benefit their friends in Hollywood and the recording industry.

Many of my friends have a message for Washington – Don’t take away my Pandora.  They don’t really care about the details of a very complicated legal construct that allows them to listen to music streamed on the Internet.  They like this service and want it to continue.

Young people like the idea of the freedom from NSA Spying on phone calls.  They don’t want Internet regulation that sounds innocuous like Net Neutrality.  They hate the idea of the federal government imposing taxes on the Internet.  And they love applications that allow the them to listen to music or watch videos.

Sen. Mike Lee of Utah is holding a hearing on music licensing next Tuesday.  It is very important that people whom treasure music sharing programs to pay close attention to the hearing.  This hearing could have a dramatic impact on a large segment of Americans who use their phone or computer to listen to music.

The Justice Department is studying two consent decrees that have governed the sale of music licenses for nearly 75 years.  The distributors of those licenses have hired top gun lobbyists to pressure the Justice Department and members of Congress to lift the agreements allowing the recording industry and music publishers to fix prices on radio stations, television broadcasters and streaming music.  Let's not forget all the money that the recording industry raised for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

In a free market, there would be no reason for agreements with the government not to fix prices. But due to the unique nature of copyright law and the way musical rights are aggregated to music publishers, there is no competition. Without the consent decrees, there would be no market.

The results of vacating the decrees would be devastating and the impact would be felt must immediately by fans of streaming music.  With the bulk of their revenues going out the door in the form of royalty payments, Pandora and others probably wouldn't survive if the music publishers could dictate prices without the give and take of a marketplace.

Innovation is great.  People are embracing new technology but the recording industry seems intent on holding on to a business model that has become outdated. That's why they send millions of dollars on lobbyists and why they hate technological innovation.

Senator Mike Lee’s wants to discovering whether the Beltway Bandits will win another insider deal at the expense of the American people.  

It's not far fetched to envision a future where you turn on Pandora or your favorite streaming service and you hear the following message:  “We are sorry, but Pandora was put out of business by politicians in Washington, DC.”  The only thing preventing that from happening is two consent decrees with the government. 

A critical component of ObamaCare is falling apart before our eyes and the Obama administration is limit the damage by offering the failing entities loans that will probably never be paid back.

ObamaCare created health care co-ops as alternative to the "public option" that liberals were demanding. The co-ops would receive federal loans and offer alternative plans that would, in the minds of the Jonathan Gruber's of the world, out compete private market companies.  They haven't and in fact most are struggling to keep their heads above water.

Melissa Quinn at the Daily Signal reports "after receiving $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars from the federal government, the vast majority of nonprofit insurance companies created under the Affordable Care Act recorded losses in revenue...The Daily Signal examined the latest quarterly filings for 22 of the 23 co-ops and found that just one was profitable last year. Data was not available for New Jersey’s co-op, Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey."  The co-ops were created with $3.4 billion in federal loans and each has received an overage of $108 million.

Bloomberg News reports that the co-ops are "flirting with financial distress" as all but five have negative cash flow. CoOportunity Health, which serves Iowa and Nebraska, has already collapsed. The Iowa State Insurance Commissioner, Nick Gerhart, took over the failing CoOportunity Health in December and has already taken steps to liquidating it.  As David Holberg notes, maybe we should look at the bright side: The $146 million in taxpayer dollars lost on CoOportunity Health is a bargain compared to the $536 million that went down the drain known as Solyndra!

Make no mistake about it, the White House will try to prop these co-ops up with more federal largess.  Congress should pull the plug. 

Standard and Poor, the financial rating credit company, has been around since the 1860's but they were recently introduced to the "Chicago Way" of governance.  Tasked with issuing ratings for the debt of public and private companies, the company was the first to recognize that America's growing debt is a ticking time bomb that could explode on taxpayers and investors alike.  On August 5, 2011, the company downgraded the US's sovereign debt from AAA to AA+.  The Obama administration promised revenge and have extracted it.

Immediately upon issuing the change in ratings then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner threatened the Chairman of the company by promising the government would hold S&P "accountable" and their conduct would be "looked at very carefully."  Two years later, Eric Holder's "Justice Department" did just that by filing a civil lawsuit against the company claiming they were responsible for the financial meltdown of 2008 because of their ratings of mortgage-backes securities.  Other major credit rating agencies that issued similar, if not the very same ratings on the same financial instruments, were left alone.

The company tired to protect its reputation by fighting the allegations in court.  Facing the opposition of the unlimited resources of the federal government and the threat of massive fines by the innovative thinking of DOJ's lawyers, the company was forced to seek a settlement, a move the New York Times declared "support[s] the conclusion that it is futile to fight government fines." The paper detailed how lawyers for the federal government "invoked an obscure federal law passed a quarter-century ago after the savings and loan scandals. The law, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, or Firrea, requires a lower burden of proof than criminal charges and empowers prosecutors to demand unusually large penalties: up to $1.1 million per violation.” Faced with the threat of billions of dollars of fines, the company appears to have capitulated.  

This president has increased America's debt load by a staggering $7 trillion dollars in only six years.  The White House has sent a stark message to Wall Street -- ignore the growing debt crisis or face a similar wrath.  S&P tried to warn us of the coming storm.  For that they shouldn't be punished but they should be hailed.  

Eric Holder's Justice Department worked directly with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to deny legal businesses banking and lending services according to a new new House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The report,“Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) Involvement in ‘Operation Choke Point’,” details the agency's close relationship with the Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny banking services to gun stores, porn stars and even short-term lenders. 

The investigation by the Committee found documents revealing that the DOJ actively partnered with the FDIC in the prosecution of the infamous "Operation Choke Point." FDIC’s participation in Operation Choke Point included requests for information about the investigation, discussions of legal theories and the application of banking laws, and the review of documents involving FDIC-supervised institutions obtained by DOJ in the course of its investigation. FDIC also originated the list of “high risk” industries included in the DOJ subpoenas. Documents provided to the Committee also show that senior leadership at the FDIC opposed certain industries on purely moral and political grounds.

The Chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee issued a scathing statement denouncing the FDIC and DOJ:  “It’s appalling that our government is working around the law to vindictively attack businesses they find objectionable,” said Rep. Darrell Issa.  “Internal FDIC documents confirm that Operation Choke Point is an extraordinary abuse of government power. In the most egregious cases, federal bureaucrats injected personal moral judgments into the regulatory process. Such practices are totally inconsistent with basic principles of good government, transparency, and the rule of law.”

Key findings by the Committee include: 

1)  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the primary federal regulator of over 4,500 banks, targeted legal industries. FDIC’s explicitly intended its list of “high-risk merchants” to influence banks’ business decisions. FDIC policymakers debated ways to ensure that bank officials saw the list and “get the message.”

2)  Documents produced to the Committee reveal that senior FDIC policymakers oppose payday lending on personal grounds, and attempted to use FDIC’s supervisory authority to prohibit the practice.  Personal animus towards payday lending is apparent throughout the documents produced to the Committee.  Emails reveal that FDIC’s senior-most bank examiners “literally cannot stand payday,” and effectively ordered banks to terminate all relationships with the industry. 

3) In a particularly egregious example, a senior official in the Division of Depositor and Consumer Protection insisted that FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg’s letters to Congress and talking points always mention pornography when discussing payday lenders and other industries, in an effort to convey a “good picture regarding the unsavory nature of the businesses at issue.”

4) FDIC equated legitimate and regulated activities such as coin dealers and firearms and ammunition sales with inherently pernicious or patently illegal activities such as Ponzi schemes, debt consolidation scams, and drug paraphernalia.

Most Second Amendment advocates noted that Operation Choke Point was nothing more than a backdoor effort to put gun stores out of business.  

The saying "hypocrisy knows little bounds" is on full display in Washington, DC this week as lobbyists for some Native American tribes and tribal casinos work the halls of Capitol hill in a last ditch effort to remove language from a Defense Department spending bill that would create thousands of jobs in Arizona.  The language in question would allow copper mining in a desolate area in Arizona by swapping nearly 5,000 privately held acres of land in exchange for 2,400 currently held by the federal government. 

There is no debate about the economic value of the land swap.  Allowing mining will produce $60 billion in economic activity and create over 4,000 jobs.  Despite a U.S. Forest Service study showing that no Native American lands or sacred sites are affected by the mine or the land swap, lobbyists for some tribes are demanding removal of the language.  They claim the land in question was used to collect acorns and other medicinal plants by local tribes but the nearest reservation is over 20 miles away.  Incredibly, the same groups making these claims lobby on behalf of a tribe in Alabama looking to build a casino smack dab on top of an ancient Indian burial site.  

Among those lobbying against the language is the Mapetsi Policy Group, a small lobbying firm filled with liberal former government officials from the  Obama administration and Capitol Hill.  The Mapetsi Policy Group represents the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama and their efforts to allow a $250 million casino expansion project on top of the ancient burial lands of the Muscogee Nation tribe.  Unlike the Arizona project, the casino expansion truly affects sacred Native American land as over 60 grave sites have been desecrated by the casino project.

Likewise, the National Indian Gaming Association (NIGA), a coalition of Indian tribes with casino ownership, supports the Poarch Creek casino expansion and is demanding that the Arizona language be stripped from the bill.  It is clear that these groups care more about who is paying their lobbying fees that about protecting Native American history and culture. 

Federal land grabs have decimated large swaths of areas in the West from productive economic activity.  The Arizona language will produce thousands of well paying jobs while protecting the Native Americans.  This effort not only creates jobs, it exposes the agenda of the Beltway Bandits that prowl the halls of the U.S. Capitol.  Congress should ignore their last ditch efforts to stop job creation.  

Members of Congress are attempting to use a 1960s-era law governing organized crime and sports betting to regulate one of the Internet-age's favorite pastimes: online gambling. New analysis by Competitive Enterprise Institute consumer policy expert Michelle Minton delves into the history of the “Federal Wire Act” and why it was never meant to apply to online poker in the 21st century.

“Anyone concerned about over-criminalization or federal government encroachment on states rights should beware of this campaign aimed at eliminating online gambling," said Minton, author of “The Original Intent of the Wire Act and Its Implications for State-based Legalization of Internet Gambling,” published by the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Because anti-gambling lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass a stand-alone federal ban on Internet gambling, they are now attempting to stop states from legalizing and regulating that activity," said Minton. 

“Back in 1961, Robert Kennedy wanted to cut off the mafia’s profit stream, especially its most profitable activity, their gambling racket,” Minton added. "This is clearly a different goal than what lawmakers are trying to curb today."

President Obama's Department of Justice stated in a 13-page memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel that the Wire Act only applies to sports gambling. In response, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) have wrongly accused the Obama administration of re-writing the law, and they seek to pass a new law extending federal regulatory reach.

As Minton notes, before Members of Congress trample on the Bill of Rights, they should at least have a basic understanding of the history of the issue at hand.  Thanks to the Minton report, they now do. The last thing Congress needs to do is to trample on the Tenth Amendment to protect the profits of a Las Vegas billionaire.  

The League of Conservation Voters is flooding the airwaves with negative attack ads against GOP candidates across the nation but much of their funding comes from crony capitalists in the wind industry looking for renewal of their tax subsidies, the Washington Times reports: 

The League of Conservation Voters is going all in with $25 million on the table in a desperate gamble to keep the Senate in Democratic hands. “This is five times more than what we spent in 2010,” Daniel Weiss, a senior vice president of the league, tells a C-SPAN interviewer. In addition to the usual torrent of television commercials, the league will pay for a get-out-the-vote drive in the final weeks of the campaign. It’s all about green — including putting more of it into the pockets of the league.

At the top of the “environmental” agenda is renewal of the wind-production tax credit that expired last year. Since 1992, this credit transferred $24 billion to big companies invested in windmills, a hopelessly uneconomic power source that only works in a breeze.

Naturally, the wind-energy industry wants its free money, because without the government cash, it can’t keep the lights on. Enter the League of Conservation Voters, with campaign funds to aid the six most endangered Democratic senators, on whom they will count to press the subsidy button to restore the flurry of wind freebies.

The league says Democratic control of the Senate is the only thing keeping Republicans from rolling back other “green” subsidies. “Power plants are the No. 1 source of climate pollution,” says Mr. Weiss. ” If a number of senators lose and the Senate firewall is destroyed, then the Senate, like the House, will pass laws that will undo existing environmental protections.” (We must all hope.)

The league, including its treasurer, Tom Kiernan, has a lot at stake. Mr. Kiernan is the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, which blows hard for restoration of the multibillion-dollar tax credit. Another board member, Peter Mandelstam, is CEO of Green Sail Energy, a firm to develop offshore windmills. Board member Theodore Roosevelt IV, great-grandson of the president, is a managing director of Barclays Capital with a portfolio that includes a $400 million investment in the $2.5 billion Cape Wind offshore windmill farm in Nantucket Sound off the Massachusetts coast.

Republicans must remember who paid for these attacks on their candidates when Congress returns. Some in the party are susceptible to the claims of “renewable energy,” but now the boondoggle is as much bad politics as bad economics.

The self-dealing is done in the name of healing the planet, all of whose ills the league blames on affordable energy sources. “The prolonged drought that we’re facing in the Southwest and California may be climate-related,” says Mr. Weiss, ” … so we’re already seeing the effect of climate change here.”

Wind subsidies may keep the Dom Perignon flowing in the boardrooms of the environmentalists, but the subsidies won’t do a thing to make water flow to the farmers in California’s parched valleys, fields and deserts. Spools of environmental red tape won’t prevent forest fires and lower the planetary thermostat. Most of the available wind comes in a bag that looks a lot like someone from the League of Conservation Voters.

Neil McCabe at Human Events is asking the question:  Did a leaker under investigation by the SEC find a soft landing in the Senate where he was just hired by retiring Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI)?

Capitol Hill conservatives are whispering about the timing of a progressive lawyer’s departure from the Securities and Exchange Commission and his sudden return to the staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D.-Mich.).

The lawyer, Tyler Gellasch, a long-time aide to the Michigan senator, had been working as the staff attorney for Kara M. Stein, a Securities and Exchange Commissioner.

The speculation is that Gellasch was the source of leak from a closed-door meeting of the Securities and Exchange Commission. If he was the leak, it calls into question the integrity of a critical staff member on a critical committee and the SEC’s own processes and reputation as a fair broker.

It also betrays a brazen hypocrisy.

Gellasch is one of the leading insider trading alarmists, as well as the principal author of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act—get it? S-T-O-C-K? The act was partially-repealed at the behest of the President Barack Obama to relieve senior Capitol Hill staffers of its burdens.

If Gellasch proves to be the leaker, it will mean that although closely-held information stolen or misused is criminal activity, it is a criminal activity that he himself regards as just another took in his kit.

While Gellash was working for the Senate’s Michigan mandarin, he championed the federal government’s takeover of high-risk trading on Wall Street, specifically trading conducted at proprietary trading desks.

Unlike trades executed upon the instructions of clients, traders on the proprietary desk, working for a bank or other institution, trade on behalf of their employer’s own account. These traders typically have tremendous freedom to buy and sell inside, a freedom that increases as they develop a track record.

The lawyer even ghosted a policy essay for Levin and Sen. Jeffrey A. Merkley (D.-Ore.)with Merkley’s own champion for federal control of private transactions, Andrew Green. The article on the evils of proprietary trading was published in the Harvard Journal of Legislation.

Gellasch’s return to Levin’s fold coincides with the release of a closely-held report by the SEC’s Inspector General, which chronicled its futile search for a source inside the commission staff, who was leaking information about the commission’s vote to fine JPMorgan, Chase & Co., $920 million fine for its handling of the 2012 “London Whale” scandal to Reuters reporter Sarah N. Lynch.

London Whale was the nickname for JPMorgan, Chase trader Bruno Iskil, who was largely responsible for his bank’s taking a $6.2 billion loss. The loss became a rallying point for liberals looking to bring private transactions under federal control. The term “whale” is also Wall Street slang for a large position that is too costly to unwind and record on the books as a loss, thus the beached whale waits for the market tides to return and carry the whale back to liquidity.

In the case of the London Whale loss, the head of JPMorgan’s investments, Ina R. Drew, ordered the London desk to reduce the risk on the balance sheet of its Synthetic Credit Portfolio in December 2011, according to the bank’s 129-page review dated January 16, 2013.

When London traders told Drew it would be costly to unwind certain illiquid positions, Drew allowed the traders to execute high-risk, short-term trades to offset the illiquid positions. This hedging should have negatively correlated the portfolio to zero, as trades going in opposite directions would offset each other.

In time, the hedge may have worked, but because it also greatly expanded the size of the portfolio, which itself exposed the bank to greater risk. In March and April 2012, the bank went ahead and unwound the illiquid positions and its subsequent hedges for a $6.2 billion loss.

This loss was against the bank’s $100 billion in 2012 revenues and took the bank’s profits down to a mere $21 billion.

Granted a 25 percent hit to profits is significant, but in reality, it is the cost of doing business on Wall Street—or in this case, London with command and control from Wall Street.

In addition to becoming Exhibit A in the liberal campaign to put private transactions under the control of the federal government. The loss was brought before the SEC because it reflected poor internal controls in the bank’s trading department.

The Sept. 12 SEC vote was 2-1 with Stein and Daniel M. Gallagher voting for the fine and Commissioner Michael S. Piwowar opposed. There were two recusals, Chairwoman Mary Jo White and Commissioner Luis A. Aguilar. The meeting was a confidential executive session and the vote was reported to the press simply as being split.

Of course, the SEC IG’s report was itself leaked to the press, in this case to CNBC, which has put out some details July 29.

According to CNBC reporter Eamon Javers’ July 31 report, the investigators searched government-issued Blackberries, email accounts and other records to determine the source before giving up with its March 5 report.

The Office of the Inspector General got involved after Lynch called Piwowar Sept. 17 and spoke to him in detail about his objections made in the secret meeting that the commission was fining a company, not punishing the actual individuals responsible.

During the investigation that including interviews with commissioners and more than 50 SEC staffers, the IG determined that there was contact with Reuters around the time of the leak.

Javers quotes the report: “However, the OIG determined that a Commissioner and two SEC staff members had spoken to Lynch and one SEC staff member had spoken to Reuters reporter Emily Flitter around the time that the information was improperly disclosed. The OIG also found that one of those employees may have confirmed certain information.”

Upon CNBC breaking the story of the IG investigation, Lynch (!) reported Gellasch was leaving SEC staff to rejoin Levin’s team.

Maybe, it is just one of happy Washington coincidences.

Maybe, not.

Former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff is warning that efforts to prohibit states from legalizing online gaming is a form of corruption.  Speaking to Human Events, Abramoff warned that legislation pushed by billionaire Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson is a form of bribery.  Adelson has pledged to "spend whatever it takes" to enact the ban and has hired an army of lobbyists to see it done.  News reports suggest he will write a $100 million check to the GOP over the next few months, money that could help grease the skids to get the legislation passed:

Washington’s most notorious lobbyist told Human Events that the effort by gambling mogul Sheldon Adelson to outlaw online gambling is corruption. Adelson has crossed the line, but he is not alone, said Jack Abramoff, a former Washington operator and author of  “Capitol Punishment: The hard truth about Washington corruption from America’s most notorious lobbyist.” Abramoff served 43 months in federal prison for activities related to his lobbying. In addition to his media and speaking appearances, he comments on Washington events and people at his website: abramoff.com. Adelson is the CEO and chairman of Las Vegas Sands, a $14 billion-a-year gambling conglomerate and a major contributor to the Republican Party.

In the 2012 election cycle, Adelson is the man who stepped into keep the presidential campaign of former speaker Newton L. “Newt” Gingrich afloat, enabling him to come back and win the Georgia primary and seriously challenge the eventually nominee former Massachusetts governor W. Mitt Romney. After Romney was the GOP nominee, Adelson supported him, too. In the 2014 election cycle, Adelson has given Republicans notice that if they want his support, they need to pass a ban online gaming. To organize this effort, he created a front group, The Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, has gathered up a roster of strange bedfellows, such as Republican Texas Gov. Richard J. “Rick” Perry, former Republican New York governor George Pataki, as well as, Democrats, such as Massachusetts Attorney General Martha M. Coakley and former speaker of the California Assembly Willie Brown. The pressure to ban Internet gambling comes as Adelson is getting ready to stroke a massive check to fund the final mile of the GOP’s campaign to win the Senate in November. Some Capitol Hill whisperers put the check at $100 million based on the plans Republican strategists presented to Adelson. The political world is full of similar examples of businesses or industries using politicians to improve their own situation, Abramoff said. “It is a line that everybody is crossing all day,” he said. “Everytime an individual contributes money to a public official and then asks that politician to do something, you have crossed that line—that is the essence of D.C.—it is not just Sheldon Adelson.” Abramoff said he wanted to be careful in his phrasing regarding Adelson. “I don’t know all the details,” he said. “But, in general, if someone is giving money and asking for things back that is crossing that line—and unfortunately it is going on all over the place.” It is bribery. It might not be statuary bribery, but it is bribery, giving a public servant money, he said “I don’t know Sheldon Adelson, I only know what I read about him,” he said.

“But it seems to me that he has been very active politically with significant money before he jumped into this Internet gambling thing,” he said. “I don’t see any reason to believe that this is the reason he got active or gave money in the past,” he said. “I think it was more related to Israel and conservative issues.” The move against online gaming is new turn for Adelson, he said. “Obviously, this relates directly to his business and he is hiring lobbyists to protect his business,” he said. Adelson may profess to have traditional or other reasons to oppose online gaming, he said. “But, this has a major impact on his land-based casinos—or at least, he feels it does.” Then Abramoff was actively operating in the capital, he worked against banning online gamble because he believes the Internet should be free from government control, he said. The former president of the Massachusetts College Republicans said there are two reasons why he opposed the ban. “I didn’t want to see the government regulating the Internet, except for national security reasons,” he said. The second reason was that given that there were already land-based casinos, the real concern was being able to protect children from going to the sites to gamble, he said. The Adelson bid to outlaw online gaming is not really what he considers crony capitalism, he said. “It is different from what we have seen with the Obama administration, where the donors use their political connections to get the government to bail them out, give them loans, give them huge grants, give them contracts, and that kind of thing.” It could be that plying the government to outlaw your competition is a cousin to crony capitalism, he said. “Frankly, it is under the category of corruption.”

Tennessee’s US Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker are both given to espousing their “conservative principles” especially in proximity to an election campaign. Indeed, both have actually cast their fair share of conservative votes, but when it comes to doing the bidding of their home state industry, their grasp on the precise definition of either conservative or principles is tenuous at best.

The music industry is obviously big in Tennessee. The music industry also happens to be one of the most aggressive rent seeking, cronyism-reliant industries in the game today. The industry has refused to evolve with the world around it, preferring instead to run to government and seek new laws to kill new technologies and use the force of the state to mandate higher profits for themselves.

The industry’s newest gamut to prop up their 1940’s business model is known as the “Songwriter Equity Act” which is intended to change the formula used to set royalty rates for musical compositions. This legislation is the epitome of cronyism as the formula is rigged to move one direction--upwards--and it was introduced by none other than Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.

Of course they have attempted to make the crony shaped peg fit into the conservative shaped hole saying this is an issue of fairness and using phrases like “fair market value.” The truth is that there is little that resembles a free market in the music industry especially as it pertains to songwriters and publishers who have a long history of colluding and extorting licensees.

Copyright laws rightfully give songwriters absolute control over their works which they typically assign to major publishing companies. The issue arises in the structure of how licenses for using songs are negotiated and controlled. Effective control of 100% of all musical compositions is aggregated in three organizations that deal with those who wish to license music. These three organizations,the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI) and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC) don’t reveal which precise musical compositions they control. The result is absolute control and the absence of any competition or free market pressures.  Radio stations, restaurants and anyone seeking to play music must buy a license from all three organizations or risk millions of dollars in infringement fines. Playing one song without  license will cost you a cool $150,000. Total control of course includes the power to set prices and determine prices. That is why these organizations have been found to be true monopolies and are required to operate under consent decrees which empower a U.S. Court to set the royalty rates in the event the industry tries to impose monopolistic rates. The Court uses a pre-set formula for setting rates that is intended to determine what the cost would be in a real market place.

The publishers and songwriters recently attempted to use their domination to bully Pandora into exorbitant rate hikes but were defeated in federal district court so now they want to re-rig the formula used by the court. That is precisely what Corker and Alexander’s Songwriter Equity Act does. If passed the legislation will artificially increase the rate music licensees pay and could ultimately put platforms like Pandora out of business.

This is not innovation. This is not free market. It certainly isn’t an example of conservative principles at work.  The fact that Corker and Alexander’s hometown industry supports this bill doesn’t make it any less crony and should not give them a pass. Too many politicians who claim to be conservatives show up to Tea Party rallies to give speeches and get photographs for their campaign mailers only to jump on  board with legislation that undermines liberty and free markets to help out their buddies and campaign contributors.

To be fair, few politicians actually set out to blatantly perpetuate widespread cronyism in America. But every Senator and Congressman has a hometown industry and every hometown industry has an agenda that in some way seeks a leg up from government. It is the same selective home town cronyism being displayed by Corker and Alexander with their music industry legislation that has filled the books with so many egregious laws that are strangling the free market in modern America and bankrupting our nation’s treasury.

Both Corker and Alexander should be reminded that there are no geographic caveats to conservative principles. Hometown cronyism is still cronyism.

Ten conservative organizations are protesting legislation designed to help one of the richest men in the world warning that it violates federalism, opens the door to regulation of the Internet and is an pure example of crony capitalism.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), have introduced legislation known as the Restoration of America’s Wire Act as a way to helping billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson stamp out competition coming from states that have legalized online gaming.  Adelson's minions have testified that the movement in the states will have devastating impact on Las Vegas and the Sands Corporation's bottom line.

Led by David Williams, the President of Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the letter to Congress notes that “TPA has many concerns with the Restoration of America’s Wire Act, which would essentially ban Internet gaming across the country,” said Williams. “This legislation goes too far by interjecting the federal government in what has traditionally been a state issue. Additionally, the legislation would not stop online gambling and would instead embolden criminals to prey on consumers in a black market that is typically operated abroad with little oversight. I encourage the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to stand strong against this gross overreach by the federal government.”  Williams concluded, “this legislation is also a backdoor attempt to regulate the Internet.

The complete letter sent to Congress reads as follows:

Dear Chairmen Goodlatte and Leahy, and Ranking Members Conyers and Grassley,

We, the undersigned individuals and organizations, are writing to express our deep concerns about
the Restoration of America’s Wire Act (H.R. 4301), which would institute a de facto ban on internet gaming in all 50 states. The legislation is a broad overreach by the federal government over matters traditionally reserved for the states. H.R. 4301 will reverse current law in many states and drastically increase the federal government’s regulatory power. As we have seen in the past, a ban will not stop online gambling. Prohibiting states from legalizing and regulating the practice only ensures that it will be pushed back into the shadows where crime can flourish with little oversight. In this black market, where virtually all sites are operated from abroad, consumers have little to no protection from predatory behavior.

Perhaps even more concerning is the fact that this bill allows the federal government to take a heavy hand in regulating the Internet, opening the door for increased Internet regulation in the future. By banning a select form of Internet commerce, the federal government is setting a troubling precedent and providing fodder to those who would like to see increased Internet regulation in the future. We fear that H.R. 4301 will begin a dangerous process of internet censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by calculated international infringers while constraining the actions of private individuals and companies in the United States.

H.R. 4301 also creates carve-outs that exempt certain special interests from the federal government’s reach. This amounts to the federal government picking winners and losers – choosing select industries or private-sector businesses to succeed at the expense of others, which is at odds with free-market competition.

In total, H.R. 4301 is an inappropriate and unnecessary use of federal powers that infringes on the rights of individuals and states. We applaud you for standing against this government overreach and preserving the principles of federalism and free-market competition that underscore American democracy.

Sincerely,

Joe Jansen, Alliance for Freedom
Steve Pociask, President, American Consumer Institute
Michelle Minton, Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Matt Kibbe, President, FreedomWorks
Coley Jackson, President, Freedom Action
Carrie Lukas, Managing Director, Independent Women’s Forum
Andrew Langer, President, Institute for Liberty
Tom Giovanetti, President, Institute for Policy Innovation
Eli Lehrer, President, R Street Institute
David Williams, President, Taxpayer Protection Alliance

The first step to getting out of a hole is to stop digging. Yet, all too often, the reaction is to just the opposite. This is particularly the case with industries that have made a business model out of enlisting the government to pad their profits.  The New York Times recently reported on the legal fight between Pandora and The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), one of the two licensing entities that essentially control music publishing. 

The lawsuit highlights the wreckage caused by government intervention replacing market forces and involves things like Department of Justice consent decrees, mandated payments, and mandates for the use of other people’s property. In other words, its a total statist mess.  

One might think that this lawsuit and many others just like it would be a sign for the industry to move towards a far less complex and far more profitable market-based system. Not so much. 

Already in a government created hole, the industry’s apparent solution is to dig harder, deeper and faster. Rather than innovate, the recording industry makes ready use of lawsuits to try to maintain an outdated business model. In a rapidly changing world, sometimes that isn’t enough. So when lawsuits are ineffective, they turn to their lobbyists and seek even more government intervention to protect them from competition and advances in technology.  

One of the industry’s greatest desires is to put the Internet genie back in the bottle. Since they can’t do that, their solution is to use the government to censor it. In 2012, an industry backed bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was defeated in Congress thanks to an uprising among tech giants and advocates. The bill would have granted government the power to unilaterally shut down websites, without due process, based exclusively on industry complaints of copyright infringement.  There have been one million such complaints filed against Google alone.  Despite its failure in Congress, this issue remains very much alive with the industry and Obama administration continuing to push it. 

Another long time goal of the industry is performance royalties for songs played on the radio. Artists have benefitted from airplay on radio stations since radio first became widespread. In exchange for allowing radio stations to play their records, artists received millions in free advertising that sells records, concert tickets and other merchandise. Now the industry wants radio stations to pay artists for playing their songs. Such performance royalties would be fine as a voluntary free market exchange. That’s not how the industry envisions it. 

Their plan is laid out in legislation ironically known as the Free Market Royalty Act (FMRA) recently introduced into Congress. This bill goes even one step further than government intervention and actually seeks to make the industry itself a pseudo-government agency. The bill not only mandates that radio stations pay performers for their songs but grants a government enforced monopoly to an organization run by a handful of record industry executives with the power to set prices. Once these few executives have set a price, independent negotiations would be outlawed.  

The collision between the market and policies like FMRA and SOPA would have far reaching and complicated consequences for the market place and indeed the industry itself. Such crony government contrived systems are always doomed to fail in the long run. Eventually the hole just gets too deep and swallows up those doing the digging.

The crony capitalists in the ethanol industry is working with a left-wing veterans organization with connections to Clintonista Wes Clark, to promote the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the Daily Caller reports.  The progressive veterans group VoteVets.org announced a nearly $110,000 ad buy for a week of pro-RFS ads in Des Moines, Iowa and Washington, D.C. This ad buy comes during a time of increasing consensus among federal officials that the RFS needs to be reformed because it is straining the country’s refining capacity and harming the environment.

The ad features Iraq war veteran Michael Connolly, who argues that the RFS means less oil money is going abroad to America’s enemies who use funds to buy weapons to attack U.S. troops. In the ad he says the best way to support the troops is to use ethanol — use less oil and America’s enemies get less oil.

Connolly is not the first former serviceman to laud the benefits of ethanol. The ethanol industry has been invoking high-ranking military officers and veterans as a to highlight the national security argument for forcing refiners to blend ethanol into the fuel supply.

“I think you’re basically seeing a convergence of former military around the RFS issue right now, because it is soon to be decided by the EPA, and that’s clearly an issue of getting us off oil, which is important to a lot of former military,” VoteVets.org founder Jon Soltz told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Soltz was once quoted saying: “If they want to attack ethanol, that’s fine… but if you come after ethanol you’re supporting killing our troops.”

“A number of former military people have become very interested in renewable of all kinds, and have worked on the issue, as well as climate change,” Soltz added. “VoteVets, for instance, has been working on green energy for years now, before we ever got into the issue of the RFS or ethanol.”

General Wesley Clark, retired, is on the advisory board for VoteVets and is also a co-chair for Growth Energy, an advocacy group run by the ethanol industry. Clark was the supreme allied commander of NATO under President Clinton. He made a failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. His consultancy has also worked with Growth Energy in the past. Clark is also a senior advisor with Blackstone, which had investments in biofuel producers like Costaka.

Like locusts that kill nearly everything in their path, union bosses in Washington State are threatening to destroy thousands of local jobs over changes to Boeing's pension plans.  Without those needed changes, the company will uproot major manufacturing to Right to Work states like South Carolina.  While rank and file union members appear to understand what is at stake, the union leadership continues to play a dangerous game of chicken with the company.

As we have seen with Detroit, union pension demands can easily imperial a city's, and certainly a company's, financial future.  Boeing has paid generously to union pensions but has proposed to remain profitable by replacing the old retirement plans for generous 401k plans.  A vote on the proposed change is scheduled for January 3.

Rejecting the contract offer over the pension change could be devastating to Boeing workers and even the state of Washington, which relies heavily on tax revenue from the industrial behemoth.  If union bosses are successful at defeating the offer, Washington State could even see its credit rating downgraded.  The stakes could not be higher. 84,000 people in the Evergreen state are employed by Boeing but in recent years, because of union demands, the company has been forced to move some manufacturing to other states where union bosses do not hold has much power and sway.

Interestingly, the national Machinist Union recognizes what is at stake is touting the company's offer as a $1 billion upgrade over the existing plan.  It is the local union militants that are demanding even more concessions and are asking members to defeat the proposal and put their own jobs at risk. There is little doubt that defeat of the proposal next week will have tremendous implications both in Washington State and nationally.   

We have seen this movie many times before.  The union that represented Hostess Brands, the maker of Wonder Bread, Twinkies, Ding Dongs and Snow Balls, among many other bakery products, was forced to close shop and 18,500 workers were placed on the unemployment line when the union continued demanding higher compensation, outrageous benefits, pensions and insane work rules.  The company closed its doors and re-opened under new leadership sans a union.  The Washington State Machinist Union would be smart to learn a lesson from the Hostess fight -- stop being ding dongs.

With millions of Americans preparing to lose their health insurance to be forced into a government-run exchange, a Democrat pollster has called insurance companies "a fantastic enemy."  

“For the life of me, I do not understand why we as Democrats are not aggressively blaming that on the insurance companies,” Celinda Lake said on Monday during a media breakfast marking the release of the George Washington University Battleground Poll alongside Republican pollster Ed Goeas.

“We ought to say, The insurance companies are absolutely undermining this,’ and they don’t want to have policies that meet the minimum requirements and we’re not going to stand for it,” she continued. “It’s beyond me why Democrats don’t go after insurance companies for engaging in these practices. We’ve always said we’ll see what works and we’ll fix what doesn’t. Well, this is something we should fix.”

Insurance companies deserve their fair share of the blame for ObamaCare.  They went along with the scheme in the hopes the government would pad their profits.  But now, one can hope, they are begining to understand, they made a deal with the devil.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/article/2538447#.Unf2HMtB0Bc.twitter

Yahoo Auto News is reporting that second Tesla car has caught fire:

The first fire in a Tesla Model S earlier this month brought about all the expected reactions; a steep sell-off by Wall Street in its volatile shares, followed by a spirited defense of electric vehicle technology from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Last week, U.S. auto safety officials said they agreed with Musk's assessment that the fire was due to road debris, and said no official investigation was necessary — a fairly typical step given that NHTSA only investigates a fraction of the 180,000 vehicle fires in the United States every year.

So what to make of the second report of a Tesla Model S crashing and catching fire, in far different circumstances?

Unearthed by Axis of Oversteer, the crash happened Oct. 18 in Merida, a city in the northern Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. According to local news reports, the Tesla was speeding through a roundabout at 4 a.m. when it hit a raised pedestrian crossing and briefly took flight before crashing into a wall and tree. The driver and perhaps a couple of passengers quickly left the scene, leaving the Tesla to burn for several minutes before firefighters arrived. (Warning: if you understand Spanish, there's some rough language in the video below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCn1CufaCYc

As the video shows, the Model S burns freely, and in doing so sends off a couple secondary explosions before firefighters arrive to douse the flames. The fire appears more intense than the one in Washington State earlier this month, although it does stay contained to the front of the vehicle, which comports with Musk's assertions that the firewalls in the Model S battery compartment underneath the car keep flames from spreading.

Tesla says it's been in touch with the driver who fled the scene, and he's ready to get behind the wheel again:

We were able to contact the driver quickly and are pleased that he is safe. This was a significant accident where the car was traveling at such a high speed that it smashed through a concrete wall and then hit a large tree, yet the driver walked away from the car with no permanent injury. He is appreciative of the safety and performance of the car and has asked if we can expedite delivery of his next Model S.

Given the reported severity of the crash, a fire would have been likely from a gas-powered vehicle, and the fact the driver was able to flee does speak to the Tesla's crashworthiness. But the Model S remains rare enough, and first responders' experience with lithium-ion battery fires limited enough, that it will take several more cases before such events lose their notoriety.

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/second-tesla-model-fire-sparked-crash-mexico-141237816.html

The Washington Times notes that the lobbyists for the recording industry -- the same recording industry that raised millions of dollars of President Obama's re-election -- are up on Capitol Hill demanding the imposition of a new tax that would go directly into the pockets of their CEOs and companies.

In fact, the bill is worse than the Washington Times describes.  Introduced by liberal Rep. Mel Watt, H.R. 3219 would create a royalty tax on AM/FM radio stations.  The tax rate would be imposed by a non-profit called the "Sound Exchange."  The Sound Exchange is a creation of, you guessed it, the Recording Industry of America (RIAA).

For over 80 years, radio stations have given artists free airplay.  Every musician who ever cut a song has prayed for their songs to be played on AM/FM radio because of their reach to the public.  Even today, despite iPod and other forms of delivery, airplay touches over 240 million listeners.  Free promotion means record sales and concert sales.  

But now the greedy recording industry wants Congress to force the radio stations to pay the recording industry when they play a song.  They want the promotional value of airplay and they want the radio station to pay them for the privilege.

Thankfully some members of Congress are finally getting a spine and standing up to the recording industry.  Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) has introduced the “Local Radio Freedom Act,” a resolution that opposes a new performance tax on local radio stations. A companion bill, S. Con. Res. 6, was introduced in the Senate by Sens. John Barrasso (WY). This legislation is supported by more than 170 bipartisan members of the House and 12 senators. That is still not enough to stop the Watts bill but it is a start of a strong firewall.

The Watt's bill is a non-starter for people who support a free market and oppose government price fixing monopolies.  We will be watching to see how many Republicans are willing to throw aside principle for a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions.