Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. . . John Adams, ‘Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,’ December 1770

I am conscious of the world as consisting of multiple realities. As I move from one reality to another, I experience the transition as a kind of shock. . . Peter L. Berger & Thomas Luckmann, ‘The Social Construction of Reality,’ 1966

Shock may best describe the Chicago Cabal’s reaction to recent events as the narratives these political operatives spent a lifetime constructing lie in tatters, revealing an ugly reality long held at bay. While Barack Obama’s presidency may yet recover—especially if the White House can win back the mainstream media’s active support—the ability to frame, spin, distract, blame, deny, distort, demonize, and prevaricate on any issue unchallenged has been compromised. As the president continues to do everything but his job, more and more mainstream journalists are finally starting to do theirs.

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Prof·it /ˈpräfit/ noun. A financial gain, especially the difference between the amount earned and the amount spent in buying, operating, or producing something.

The importance of profiting from one’s efforts ought to be an easy concept to embrace. It is why humans no longer live in caves. If an endeavor—any endeavor—produces more value than it consumes, it will not only pay for itself, but create the means for growth. In contrast, endeavors that persistently generate losses are destined to wither and die.

Africa has long been a place where charity goes to die. Developed countries have been pumping charity into Africa for as long as photos of starving children have been used to capture our sympathy. Tragically, most of this aid has been wasted, either stolen by corrupt local politicians or handed out in a way that traps people in a state of dependency that only generates more need for aid. The result? A continent mired in poverty, where economic growth seems an elusive goal.

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What do polar bears, orangutans, the Walt Disney Company, Cheetos, recycled fundraising schemes, and corporate shakedowns have in common? It’s just another day on the social activism front.

Skillful fundraisers have long used charismatic megafauna–cool, cute, cuddly creatures whose pictures make you go squishy inside–to collect money from donors concerned about the environment who want to feel like they are doing something. Nothing wrong with that—voluntarism is a great American tradition and we all have our pet causes. But when the money is used to break the law in order to harass image-conscious corporations into making payoffs or driving their suppliers out of business, it stops being fun and games.

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Every time a plane crashes, a team of engineers and aviation experts jump into action, methodically reconstructing the event to determine the cause—whether mechanical failure, bad design, pilot error, or poor aircraft maintenance. This painfully acquired knowledge is then immediately fed back into remediation programs for existing airplanes, while informing future aircraft designs. If negligent culpability is found, executives are cashiered and enormous damage claims are paid. The insurers that make these payouts then revise their policies, rates, and eligibility requirements. Airlines with consistently bad safety records disappear. As a result of this feedback, air travel is safer now that it has ever been in the history of aviation.

Compare this to what happens every time a stock market, currency, or national economy crashes. Teams of bankers, economists, and technocrats are dispatched by those in power—to deny responsibility and affix blame on rival bankers, economists, and technocrats. Financial engineers who examine the wreckage rarely agree on what caused the problem, and even when they do politicians ignore their recommendations if they find them unpalatable. Painfully acquired knowledge is usually dismissed because “this time is different.”

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Consider the following list: 1) Marry someone of your same gender, 2) join a harem, 3) have sex with your donkey, 4) kill your baby the moment before, during, or after delivery, 5) smoke a dried weed, 6) eat a fattened goose liver, 7) shop with plastic bags, and 8) buy a 32-ounce Coke at McDonalds.

Every one of these items has been in the news lately, skirmishes in the perpetual culture war that defines too much of contemporary politics. (I’m sure you can add a dozen more.) Each has engendered legal action, legislative wrangling, kitchen table debate, and bloviating punditry.

Where do you draw the line, and why? More importantly, how do we draw the line for others, and by what right?

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Join Crony Chronicles and students across the country in a tweet-up on Tuesday 12:30pm ET with entrepreneur and Forbes columnist @BillFrezza! #crony

Flight delays are piling up around the country because air traffic controllers are being forced to take days off due to budget cuts.

Those automatic cuts came as a result of the so-called sequester, when Congress could not reach a deal to trim deficit spending.

To watch Bill’s interview on this subject, click here.

Yes, it looks like a wedding announcement out of The Onion, but when it comes to making a killing off the never-ending “War on Poverty,” the marriage of convenience between the financial services industry and federal bureaucrats is no laughing matter.

The idea that government welfare programs could eliminate poverty, rather than temporarily alleviate its worst impacts during hard times, took root during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiative. From modest beginnings, a panoply of federal welfare programs expanded and multiplied to the point where they now consume one-sixth of the federal budget—some $588 billion last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

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A debate is raging among free market advocates regarding the proper posture to take with respect to Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks. This has become an increasingly important issue as the financial sector has grown to take up an unprecedented share of our economy. While cleaving to tried-and-true libertarian defenses of finance as vital to the economy, some of us fear that the machinations of the crony capitalists running the TBTF banks—in cahoots with their allies in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve—will result in not only another global financial collapse, but a populist anti-capitalist backlash that could destroy what’s left of our free enterprise system.

But before we can tackle this problem, we must figure out what is really going on. In all public policy debates, perceptions matter, and public perceptions are often driven by the leading narratives that gain cultural acceptance. Let’s look at what these are.

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The controversy surrounding the $400-million Encode project’s dubious public relations claims surrounding the function of ‘junk DNA’ and the Battelle Institute’s defense of the $3-billion Human Genome Project (HGP) as an economic miracle make this a good time to examine President Obama’s recent attempt to bring more of American science under centralized direction and control.

Well-established and politically connected scientists are salivating over the $100 million down payment proposed by the president this week for his BRAIN Initiative, (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, previously referred to as the Brain Activity Map project). No surprised here given the $2 billion promised in his State of the Union address. But young scientists not yet aboard the federal gravy train should recognize this as a threat to their future as independent researchers.

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Alumni need to take a practical approach to ensuring safety

I’ve been a Chi Phi since a week after I arrived on campus in the fall of 1972. I can honestly say that ever since then Chi Phi has been the central institution of my life. It is the source of my greatest friendships, my strength in times of trouble, the avenue through which I’ve enjoyed a cornucopia of inter-generational relationships, and the organization to which I give the most back, currently taking my turn to serve as president of our house corporation.

Because the Greek system at MIT is so strong, I know that I’m not unique in any of this. But since some of the fraternities are less well supported by their alumni than others—and because undergraduates at even well supported groups sometimes forget what role we play—I thought I’d share a few thoughts about some of the responsibilities a fraternity house corporation carries in keeping their chapters healthy, thriving, and out of trouble.

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GDP: Gross Distorted Product? BLS: Bureau of Lying Statistics?

Rick Santelli & Bill Frezza tell it like it is. To watch the video click here.

Let’s face it. We Baby Boomers made a total hash of democracy, hoisting it aboard a runaway train of unfunded entitlement spending with the throttles on full. Then, rather than address the problem, we got the engineer and conductor brawling over how much the first class passengers should tip the porter. But despite the mess we made, we sure have held on to one important skill. Man, are we good at suckering the young into impoverishing themselves to pay for our folly.

Courtesy TobyToons

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Concerned scientists on the dole reacted with fury when an amendment to the Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013, offered by spending scold Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla), passed the Senate. It will limit the National Science Foundation’s ability to award political science grants to only those projects directly related to national security or the economic interests of the United States. “The amendment makes all scientific research vulnerable to the whims of political pressure,” shrieked the American Political Science Association in a press release.

The horror! Imagine what would happen if entrenched technocrats and the tenured professors they support were actually held accountable by the elected representatives of the taxpayers who pay their bills?

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As a chronic prognosticator of doom, I’m often asked, “Do you heed your own warnings?” I sure didn’t last time the stock market crashed. Despite forecasting the dot-com collapse in November 1999 (in an article titled, “Living in the Shadow of Vesuvius, The Dotcom Economy Parties On”) I froze like a deer in the headlights as I watched $2 million in newly earned wealth evaporate before my eyes, all the while chanting, “It’ll come back, it’ll come back!”

Never again. This time I am making contingency plans. Perhaps these will motivate you to make your own, if the recent unpleasantness in Cyprus isn’t reason enough.

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There are not many things on which Harvard professor-turned-Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and I agree. Yet, to her credit she has been sounding the alarm about the threat that “Too Big To Fail” (TBTF) banks represent to our economy. However, that is where our agreement ends. Like most progressives, she vastly overestimates the efficacy and wisdom of regulatory bodies that invariably become captive to the corporations they are supposed to regulate as that great revolving door refreshes the influence of crony capitalists regardless of who is voted into office.

In fact, the regulatory policies she proposes would increase the TBTF behemoths’ threat to the economy by further entrenching the alliance of Wall Street bankers, the Fed, the Treasury Department, the White House, and Congressional enablers from both parties that brought us to this point. Until we figure out how to unravel this single biggest threat to our prosperity, the best we can hope for the next time the TBTF house of cards comes tumbling down is for the ensuing violence and privation to be contained long enough to avoid the emergence of totalitarian regimes both here and around the world.

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Most people don’t give much thought to how our cultural institutions shape our world view, and the impact this has on politics, but I’m one of those who do. This can make it problematic to attend a modern art museum with me, a task my wife, a genuine and sophisticated art lover, approaches with a mixture of caution and bravado. While I’ve learned to stifle my public outbursts and gesticulations, her uncanny ability to read my mind invariably generates a burst of frisson best resolved by leaving the museum to take her to an expensive lunch.

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Lots of fun from the heart of the vast right wing conspiracy – please enjoy my ten minute video segment on The Blaze with Andrew Wilkow discussing the sequester, the Dems failed PR strategy, dysfunctional Republicans, my Mom, and the bleating goat.

To watch the video click here.

Reporting from the heart of the vast right wing conspiracy, surrounded by Tea Party luminaries like Jim DeMint, Michelle Malkin, and James O’Keefe, sponsored by the Charles Koch Institute to warn of the evils of crony capitalism, and extending a helping hand from Yankee libertarians, your intrepid Huffington Post contributor files this alarming report from the Conservative Leadership Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Freedom is on the march.

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President Obama has gone all-in trying to get Republicans to blink and serve up another round of tax increases in lieu of the looming spending sequester. Eschewing talks with Congress or any pretense of leadership, he is instead flying around the country burning $180,000 an hour on Air Force One laying out a parade of horribles that will descend upon us if the growth of federal spending were reduced by one iota.

Why is he doing this? Because the mainstream media are lapping it up. Poisoned meat coming to grocery shelves near you! Air traffic grinds to a screeching halt! Fires, murder, and mayhem in the streets as first responders are laid off! No visits to the Washington Monument! OK, it all makes for good copy.

But what would happen to the media narrative if the Republicans don’t collapse into a puddle of cowardice and the sequester were to actually stick?

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Should a miracle occur and the pending sequester actually kick in to reduce the growth of federal spending—said slowdown derided as “draconian budget cuts” even as actual spending rises—the political playing field will shift to new ground. The moment big-spending Democrats wrap up their “save us from sequester” theatrics and dump this Obama-originated bipartisan idea squarely onto the Republicans’ laps, they will pivot to a new narrative. After four years of justifying the abysmal Obama economic recovery using the mantra, “It could have been worse!” they will shift the narrative, aided by the mainstream media, to “It’s all their fault!”

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What was the National Cancer Institute (NCI) thinking when it decided to spend $678,952 to fund a notorious political activist to conduct a “scientific” research study designed to prove that the Tea Party was an invention of Big Tobacco and the Koch brothers, rather than a grassroots movement of disenfranchised Americans fed up with both the Republican and Democratic parties? Is the NCI so flush with taxpayer cash and so close to banishing cancer that it can indulge in petty partisan politics disguised as peer-reviewed science? Members of Congress on the hunt for ineffective discretionary spending programs to cut should take notice.

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Atheists such as myself look at the world and wonder, Why does religion have such power over men’s minds—power that has been used for both good and evil? Those of us who refuse to dismiss the phenomenon as a form of madness continue to search for a common thread that can both explain the beliefs and behaviors we observe and maybe–just maybe–offer something positive to non-believers.

What I’ve distilled from this exercise over the past four decades is something many call spirituality, which I define as the satisfaction of our yearning for a transcendent intimacy that connects us with our fellow man while reconciling us to the reality of our own impermanent existence.

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For those who believe we can still recover from our fiscal and economic death spiral, the time for hard choices has come. I’m talking to you, staunch Republican defenders of the military-industrial complex. I am begging you to rethink your priorities. What good will it do to preserve a military second to none if there is nothing left worth defending?

Through a century of wars, both cold and hot, America’s brave men and women in uniform successfully protected us from the external threats of fascism and communism. But the greatest threats facing America today don’t come from foreign enemies. They come from within.

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As President Barack Obama begins his second term, democratically returned to office by a majority of Americans who seem to buy what he is selling, it would profit us to pause a moment and examine the discrepancies between the vision he expounded in his inaugural address and the economic reality that surrounds us. This leads to a pivotal question: What, exactly, is the underlying purpose of Obamanomics, and how would we know?

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                                           courtesy TobyToons.

Only Mel Brooks had the comic genius to pull off an iconic movie scene that has become a staple of hardball negotiating strategies. And only the President and Congress of the United States could be dysfunctional enough to demonstrate that life really does imitate art, leaving the nation agog at the debt ceiling theatrics playing out on the Washington stage. You should be laughing if you’re not already crying.

As President Obama steps up to the inaugural podium to once again take an oath to protect and defend a Constitution that has long become nothing but a minor irritant to those seeking to expand federal power, his words paint a picture of a government on autopilot. Out of control, running low on fuel, leaderless and off course, rival politicians are engaged in a desperate battle not to solve our fiscal problems but to affix blame for a disaster caused by both parties.

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Roger Wilkow interviews Bill Frezza in a wide ranging discussion  on our tax and fiscal mess. “Here we go again?” Click here to watch the video.

POLITICAL CAPITAL OP/ED

A Barrage Of Legal Threats Shuts Down Whistleblower Site, Science Fraud

 By Bill Frezza

Those of us concerned about the decaying credibility of Big Science were dismayed to learn that the whistleblower site Science Fraud has been shut down due to a barrage of legal threats against its operator. With billions of dollars in federal science funding hinging on the integrity of academic researchers, and billions more in health care dollars riding on the truthfulness of pharmaceutical research claims, the industry needs more websites like this, not fewer.

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Too-Big-To-Fail Banks Gamble with Bernanke Bucks

By Bill Frezza

As Congress and the President wallow in finger pointing and fiscal gridlock, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke plows ahead with his plan to disguise the country’s economic ills by carpet bombing us with freshly printed money. Aided and abetted by the gnomes in the Bureau of Labor Statistics—who are doing their best to convince us that inflation remains at historic lows—Ben has promised to conjure up $1 trillion a year out of thin air until unemployment returns to a politically acceptable 6.5 percent.

Where is all that new fiat currency going, and why haven’t we seen it show up in double digit inflation? The answer should frighten you.

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POLITICAL CAPITAL OP/ED

Fiscal Justice Trumps Fiscal Sanity, Progressivism Marches On

In his first New Year’s Eve address since taking office, French President François Hollande—progressive poster boy and role model for class warriors the world over—defended his efforts to increase the top marginal income tax rate paid by France’s millionaires to 75 percent by appealing to a concept he termed Fiscal Justice. I had never heard that catchy phrase, which Hollande succinctly defined as, “Those who have the most, will always be asked for more.”

Get it? The rich will always be asked for more. You see, in politics it’s the asking that matters, not the getting. Immaterial to the concept of Fiscal Justice is whether those whom politicians ask to pay society’s mounting bills actually end up forking over their money or instead flee the country, as numerous French millionaires seem to be doing. As in all things progressive, policies are evaluated based on intentions, not results. So if raising marginal tax rates causes a decrease in tax revenue thanks to a combination of legal tax avoidance, illegal tax evasion, and voluntary emigration, so be it. Fiscal Justice has been done!

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