Freedom Line Blog

In its monthly report this morning, the Labor Department announced that unemployment has now remained at or above 9% for a post-World War II record 21st consecutive month.  Additionally, it reported just 36,000 new jobs, well short of the expected 140,000 number.

On the eve of the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, these numbers contrast the results of a big government agenda versus a free market agenda.  In the 23 months since Obama’s massive $1 trillion “stimulus” passage, unemployment has increased from 8.2% to 9%.  One would expect better results in exchange for deficits of $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010 and an expected record $1.5 trillion this year.  Keep in mind that Obama projected that if we followed his big government agenda, unemployment would be down between 6% – 7% by now.  In contrast, the 23 months following the effective date of Reagan’s tax cuts in January 1983 saw unemployment plummet from 10.4% to 7.2%.

The facts speak for themselves.  Inexplicably, Obama nevertheless called for even more federal “stimulus” in his State of the Union address.  As we celebrate the Gipper’s 100th birthday, we should remember the timeless lesson taught by his freedom agenda’s success.

Newt versus The Wall Street Journal editorial board – the unofficial 2012 Republican campaign is off to a very lively start.

On January 22, the Journal ran a commentary entitled “Amber Waves of Ethanol” in which it criticized federal ethanol subsidies.  It noted that, “Four of every 10 rows of corn now go to produce fuel for American cars or trucks, not food or feed,” which does nothing to improve the environment or our reliance on foreign oil, but wastes billions in taxpayer dollars and drives food price inflation.  Likely 2012 candidate Newt Gingrich responded in Iowa last Tuesday, repeatedly referring to himself “as an historian” and accusing the Journal as part of a sinister cabal, saying, “Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working, and you wonder, ‘What are their values?'”

This morning, the Journal responds in its lead commentary entitled “Professor Cornpone.” This dispute, it says, symbolizes the larger fight “between the House Republicans now trying to rationalize the federal fisc and the kind of corporate welfare that President Obama advanced in his State of the Union”:

Given that Mr. Gingrich aspires to be President, his ethanol lobbying raises larger questions about his convictions and judgment.  The Georgian has been campaigning in the Tea Party age as a fierce critic of spending and government, but his record on that score is, well, mixed…  Now Republicans have another chance to reform government, and a limited window of opportunity in which to do it…  So along comes Mr. Gingrich to offer his support for Mr. Obama’s brand of green-energy welfare, undermining House Republicans in the process.”

Regardless of one’s views toward Mr. Gingrich as a potential candidate, the fact that the race is already lively with substantive policy debate is a healthy sign.

Barack Obama assured Americans throughout his campaign that if we hired him, he’d reduce the deficit.  Here is Obama in his own words from his closing infomercial of October 29, 2008:

I believe we need to usher in a new era of responsibility.  Across the country, families are tightening their belts, and so should Washington.  That’s why, for my energy plan, my economic plan and the other proposals you’ll hear tonight, I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost.  I’ll also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that don’t work … and making the ones we do need work better and cost less.”

Here’s the ugly reality, over two years later:  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced this week that the 2011 budget deficit will reach a record $1.5 trillion.  That follows $1.4 trillion and $1.3 trillion deficits in his first two years.  The 2008 deficit, for purposes of comparison, was $455 billion.

Something to consider when assessing Obama’s latest State of the Union address, and his upcoming promises over the next two years.

Is there any promise that Barack Obama has kept as President?  He certainly made plenty of them, only to break them.

Now, it appears that we have two more.  Two very big ones.  Testifying before the House Budget Committee this week, Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster was asked a series of “true” or “false” questions by Rep. Tom McClintock (R – California).  Replying to McClintock’s question whether Obama’s famous pledge that “If you like your present health insurance, you can keep it” was true or false, Foster replied, “not true in all cases.”  And when asked whether ObamaCare would reduce costs as he explicitly guaranteed, Foster replied, “I would say false, more so than true.”

If the political left clings to their “Bush Lied!” belief, where are they now and what do they have to say about Barack Obama?  Just curious.

The festering “Collegegate” saga that CFIF has been following for weeks today reached front-page status in The Wall Street Journal.

We’ve detailed the allegations of insider trading against career colleges, which prompted Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) to ask whether officials within Obama’s Department of Education, “may have leaked the proposed regulations to parties supporting the Administration’s position and investors who stand to benefit from the failure of the proprietary school sector.”  We also detailed how the Government Accountability Office (GAO) withdrew, then revised and republished a defective study originally released last summer involving undercover “students” sent to capture information on for-profit colleges.  The GAO’s revisions all slanted in one direction – the original report inaccurately cast career colleges in an unfavorable light, while the revisions indicate that the GAO’s undercover students may have intended to entrap career college admissions personnel.  According to the GAO’s own estimate, only 1 percent of reports require correction, and the statistical likelihood that all of its flaws skewed in the same direction (unfavorably toward for-profit colleges) was 1 in 65,536.  Tellingly, the stock value of for-profit colleges reportedly fell 14%, or $4.2 billion, following the GAO report.

Now, under the headline “A ‘Short’ Plays Washington,” the Journal exposes how hedge fund operators sold short their stocks in for-profit career colleges, and sought meetings with federal officials at the Department of Education:

‘Hello, my name is Steven Eisman,’ began an email to an Education Department official in May.  ‘I wanted to bring to your attention many of the unsaid or unknown aspects of this industry.’  Mr. Eisman runs a hedge fund called FrontPoint Financial Services, whose hugely profitable 2007 bet that housing would collapse was chronicled in the book ‘The Big Short.’  In the past year, Mr. Eisman has sold short the stocks of for-profit education companies.  He and some other investors betting on these stocks to fall have sought meetings with Education Department officials, and in some cases gotten a hearing.  In emails and presentations, the investors have painted the for-profit industry in a highly critical light.”

The Journal also quotes Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which wrote Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan that hedge fund managers were able to secure “direct and sustained input into the regulatory process.”  “In what the group called ‘more troubling,'” the article states, “it said Education Department officials sought and received investors’ input despite knowing their financial motives.”

Career colleges have flourished for good reason.  They offer an education focusing on hands-on occupational training, and excel at serving non-traditional students who often have children, are working, are typically older and are more diverse than their peers at traditional schools.  This is particularly important during the current period of job scarcity and worldwide economic competition.  Unfortunately, the Obama Education Department seeks to cripple them by declaring them ineligible for federal aid.  CFIF has formally petitioned House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman-Elect Darrell Issa (R – California) to investigate the Obama Education Department’s continuing campaign against for-profit colleges, and that investigation is underway.

We at CFIF do not begrudge any citizen’s First Amendment right to petition the federal government for redress of grievances.  It is important, however, that the new 112th Congress ensure that these troubling allegations don’t reveal impropriety within the government itself.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her show “Your Turn.”  Today’s star guest lineup includes:

4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:  Edward Lengel, Author, “Inventing George Washington: America’s Founder, in Myth & Memory”

4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:  Attorney Jon Harris, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., Nashville, TN — Frivolous Lawsuits/Pleading Standards/Due Process and CFIF Amicus Curiae Brief

5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:  Jordan Sekulow, Director of International Operations, American Center for Law and Justice — Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Program

5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST:  Lucy Morrow Caldwell, Executive Director of Pass the BBA

Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here.  You won’t want to miss it today!

Are new “assault weapons” bans or pistol magazine limits appropriate responses to the Tucson murders?  Airheads from Senator Chuck Schumer (D – New York) to “conservative” commentator Peggy Noonan seem to think so.

If those were effective answers, then one could presumably find evidence that such laws reduce crime.  But that’s not the case, says Dr. John Lott, Jr.:

No research by criminologists or economists has found that the either the assault weapons ban or the magazine-size restrictions reduce crime.  This is not surprising, as magazines are simply small metal boxes with a spring and are thus very easy to make.  Besides, someone planning to harm a large number of people can easily bring two or more loaded guns.”

Indeed, the objective evidence shows that tougher gun restrictions increase crime and violence.  Fewer gun restrictions, on the other hand, reduce crime and violence.  Just look at Chicago, where everyone from Mayor Richard Daley to former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens predicted “more gun death” and “anarchy” following last year’s McDonald Supreme Court decision overturning that city’s draconian gun laws.  Instead, Chicago homicides fell to their lowest level since 1965.

Polls show that the American public understands this.  When will people like Peggy Noonan?

Last month, President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted by a partisan 3-2 margin to regulate Internet service via Net “Neutrality.”  On that date, we predicted,”The FCC’s reckless effort to regulate Internet traffic will now begin a slow death march to ultimate defeat from legal challenges and Congressional action.”

Exactly one month later, the judicial front in that battle is underway.

Yesterday, Verizon Communications challenged the FCC’s rogue vote in the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  That’s the same court that unanimously ruled last April that the FCC doesn’t possess lawful authority to impose Net “Neutrality,” but the FCC defiantly pressed ahead despite that unequivocal ruling.  In so doing, the FCC also defied 2-to-1 public opposition and a bipartisan group of 300 from Congress.  Obama took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal this week to profess a new commitment to regulatory restraint in pursuit of a healthier economy, job creation and more humble federal government.  But his own FCC belies that supposed commitment with its Net “Neutrality” agenda.

Leaders of the new 112th Congress have also committed to overturning the FCC’s destructive attempt to regulate Internet service.  Whether the demise of Net “Neutrality” comes legislatively or judicially, it can’t come soon enough for American consumers, investors and employers.

The nation’s capital is abuzz today over President Obama’s Wall Street Journal commentary, “Toward a 21st Century Regulatory System.” Astonishingly, Obama actually praises America’s free market system as “the greatest force for prosperity the world has ever known” while promising regulatory reform:

I am signing an executive order that makes clear that this is the operating principle of our government.  This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth.  And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive.  It’s a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades.”

Whether Obama speaks honestly, or simply seeks to deceive the electorate in anticipation of 2012, lies beyond our powers of divination.  The available evidence, however, justifies extreme skepticism.

One cause for doubt stands out immediately.  In identifying examples of the federal regulatory state run amok, the best Obama can do is point to saccharine, saying that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) permits it for consumption in coffee while his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) labels it a “dangerous chemical.”  That’s it?  That’s the best example he can cite?

Just one month ago, Obama’s own Federal Communications Commission (FCC) flagrantly defied two-to-one public opposition, a unanimous Court of Appeals and a bipartisan group of 300 members of Congress by voting to regulate the Internet via “Net Neutrality.” Obama claims in his column that he aims to prevent “regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive,” but that’s exactly what “Net Neutrality” will do.  The FCC seeks to regulate an Internet sector that has thrived over the past two decades precisely because the federal government has refrained from interfering with regulations such as this.  The result will be fewer incentives for continued Internet investment, expansion and innovation, as well as declining service as capacity fails to keep pace with demand.

Additionally, Obama’s Labor Department seeks to impose “card check,” which will end secret ballot voting in union elections, and his EPA seeks to impose global warming carbon cap-and-tax regulations.  Both of those agenda items failed miserably in Congress even when controlled by Democratic supermajorities, but Obama’s regulatory agencies now seek to impose them anyway.

So Obama talks a good game in today’s op/ed.  But unless he issues an immediate cease-and-desist order on “Net Neutrality,” card check and cap-and-tax, his words will prove just as meaningless as his other broken promises.

This week, the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal released the 2011 edition of their Index of Economic Freedom.

Once again, the facts speak for themselves:  Economic freedom means not only more prosperity, but also greater overall wellbeing.  In calculating economic freedom and ranking the world’s economies, the Index examines 10 criteria:  business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption and labor freedom.  The correlation between economic freedom and living standards is once again made clear:

Despite varying degrees of economic freedom across the regions, the relationship between economic freedom and prosperity remains constant within the regions.  Per capita incomes are much higher in countries that are economically free.  Not surprisingly, overall human development also thrives in an environment that is economically free…  Higher economic freedom induces greater overall human development as measured by the United Nations Human Development Index, which assesses the combined progress of life expectancy, literacy, education, and the standard of living.”

The good news is that 117 of the world’s economies improved over the past year, whereas only 58 declined.  For Americans, the bad news is that we fell from 8th to 9th.  On that front, note the Index’s comments about the  importance of reducing government spending:

Countries that reduced government spending had economic growth rates almost two percentage points higher in 2009 than countries whose government spending scores worsened, and countries with the highest rates of government spending had gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates 4.5 percentage points lower on average than countries where government spending was best contained.”

Will the new 112th Congress help reverse that decline?  As we approach the 2012 elections, that will prove a critical question.

Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her show “Your Turn.”  Today’s star guest lineup includes:

4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST:    Santa Rosa County Superintendent of Schools Tim Wyrosdick – State of Education

4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST:    Brett Haley, Director of Indie Film “The New Year”

5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST:    Quin Hillyer, senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator – The New Order (or Same Disorder) in Washington

5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST:    Dr. Bobby Eberle, GOPUSA – From Tragedy to Left Wing Attacks in Arizona

Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here.  You won’t want to miss it today!

This morning, the Labor Department announced a national unemployment rate of 9.4%.  Unfortunately, this means that the unemployment rate has surpassed 9% for a post-World War II record 20 consecutive months.  Moreover, the announcement of just 103,000 new jobs fell well short of the anticipated gain of 150,000 new jobs.

The Obama Administration will trumpet the misleading 0.4% decline from last month’s 9.8% rate as evidence that its agenda is somehow succeeding.  That claim, however, conceals the fact that the rate had already dropped from January 2010’s 9.7% rate to 9.5% in June, only to climb back to 9.8% to finish the year.  Further, this is the same Obama Administration that promised unemployment would peak at 8% in October 2009 – fourteen months ago – and be down to 7% by now if we just passed his so-called “stimulus” bill back in February 2009.  Almost $1 trillion in deficit spending and two years later, the verdict is clear.  It has failed miserably.

It’s something to remember as the Obama Administration attempts to “triangulate” and claim successful governance as we steam toward the 2012 reelection campaign.

CFIF has been monitoring the developing scandal surrounding the Obama Administration’s assault against for-profit colleges, and we’re pleased to report the new Congress is already taking action to get to the bottom of it.

First came allegations of insider trading within Obama’s Department of Education.  As detailed in a letter by Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina), Education Department officials “may have leaked the proposed regulations to parties supporting the Administration’s position and investors who stand to benefit from the failure of the proprietary school sector.”  Then, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) withdrew, then revised and republished a defective study originally released last summer involving undercover “students” sent to capture information on for-profit colleges.  That GAO report had been cited as vital evidence for the Education Department and a Senate committee as they prepare to promulgate the Gainful Employment rule, and even the Washington Post (whose parent company owns one of the largest for-profit schools) ran an article exposing that defective report.  The GAO’s numerous revisions are all clearly slanted in one direction – the original report inaccurately cast career colleges in an unfavorable light, while the revisions indicate that the GAO’s undercover students may have intended to entrap career college admissions personnel.  By the GAO’s own estimate, only 1 percent of reports are corrected, and the statistical likelihood that all of its flaws skewed in the same direction (against for-profit colleges) was 1 in 65,536.  Tellingly, the stock value of for-profit colleges reportedly fell 14%, or $4.2 billion, following the GAO report.

Now, incoming Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R – California) along with Democrats Alcee Hastings (D – Florida) and Carolyn McCarthy (D – New York) and fellow Republicans John Kline (R – Minnesota), Brett Guthrie (R – Kentucky) and Glenn Thompson (R – Pennsylvania) have written the GAO demanding answers to the following “number of troubling questions” by today’s date:

1.  Has GAO’s Office of the General Counsel (‘OGC’) examined or investigated the facts surrounding the need to revise the August 4, 2010 report?  Please explain.

2.  Has OGC reexamined the report’s conclusions to ensure that they accurately reflect the analysis contained in the report?

3.  Has OGC verified the allegations that the methodology GAO used in the report is flawed and biased?  Please explain what was found.

4.  What are GAO’s procedures for revising a previously issued report?  Please provide specific steps.  Were these procedures followed in this instance?

5.  Why is there no announcement from the release of the modified report on GAO’s web site?”

This constitutes a promising start by the new Congress, including its suggestion of possible disciplinary action.  Stay tuned…

The Wall Street Journal’s L. Gordon Crovitz just puts on a clinic on tech policy each Monday with his weekly “Information Age” column.  Today is no exception.  Entitled “Tech Resolutions for the New Year,” Crovitz directs his first resolution toward Chairman Julius Genachowski and the Obama Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that has again defied public opinion, a unanimous D.C. Court of Appeals and a bipartisan Congressional majority with last month’s “Net Neutrality” resolution:

For Julius Genachowski, FCC Chairman:  Focus on competition, not regulations, lobbyists and lawyers.  By a partisan 3-2 vote, the Agency just before the holidays issued a plan to regulate the Internet.  The claim is ‘net neutrality,’ but throughout the 194-page order the reality is vague standards such as ‘reasonableness.’  This uncertainty creates a ‘regulator-may-I?’ approach to innovation and ensures years of litigation for a vital industry that evolved freely.  The real problem remains a lack of broadband competition, caused by government grants of monopolies and duopolies.  As open source guru Lawrence Lessig recently argued in Newsweek, the FCC should be replaced with regulators whose mission is ‘minimal intervention to maximize innovation.'”

Good advice.  Crovitz’s weekly commentaries are a must-read – especially if your name is Julius Genachowski.

In October 2003, tough-talking optimist Arnold Schwarzenegger unseated bland public union yes-man Gray Davis as Governor of California in a revolutionary special recall election.  Today, Schwarzenegger departs with a depressed 22% approval rating that serves as a warning for Republican newcomers in Congress and across the 50 states against the perils of go-along-to-get-along “bipartisanship.”

During his first two years in office, Schwarzenegger maintained a confrontational demeanor that California desperately needed as it hurtled toward its current disastrous state.  In March 2004, for instance, he famously ridiculed California’s milquetoast political class as “girlie-men.”

Unfortunately, four common-sense and ultimately necessary ballot initiatives that he supported failed in November 2005.  Instead of sticking to principles, Schwarzenegger opted for “bipartisan” political expediency and personal survival.  What followed was a shameful litany of global warming bills, ObamaCare-like proposals, lack of leadership and tax hikes.  His capitulation provided a short-term payoff via reelection in 2006, but ultimately proved disastrous for himself and the state.  Today, despite Schwarzenegger’s early promise, California is in even worse shape than when he entered office.  And jaded voters witnessed yet another sad example of a politician who promised to change the political culture, only to allow the political culture to change him.

Schwarzenegger’s failure, however, provides a helpful cautionary guide for incoming Republicans this new year.  Namely, sacrificing the principles that got you elected at the tempting altar of “bipartisanship” will only deepen our nation’s current difficulties and eventually doom you politically.

As we gather with friends and family for this joyous holiday season, let us not forget those brave men and women who put themselves in harms’ way to protect our freedoms.  Many of them won’t be with their families; they’ll be on bases, in tents and aboard ships far from home.  So, let’s be sure to keep our troops in our hearts and in our thoughts this Christmas.  And if you see members of our Armed Forces, please make it a point to thank them for all they do every day in the service to our great country.

So let’s review:

The Internet revolution has brought us a level of innovation and prosperity unprecedented in human history.

Throughout two decades spanning both the Clinton and Bush administrations, deregulation has provided the fertile ground for private investment and productivity measured not in the billions, or even hundreds of billions, but in the trillions.

On that basis, the public opposes federal Internet regulation by a two-to-one margin.

Further, a unanimous D.C. Court of Appeals rejected Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authority to impose “Net Neutrality” just eight months ago.

Finally, a rare bipartisan coalition of 300 members of the House and Senate have admonished the FCC against its rogue “Net Neutrality” scheme.

So what does the unelected FCC do?  Learning nothing from the Administration’s ObamaCare fiasco, it moves full speed ahead with its hyperpartisan “Net Neutrality” agenda by a party-line 3-2 vote anyway.  As dissenting (i.e., sober) FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker summarizes, the FCC’s intervention threatens the future of the Internet:

The rules will give government, for the first time, a substantive role in how the Internet will be operated and managed, how broadband services will be priced and structured, and potentially how broadband networks will be financed.  By replacing market forces and technological solutions with bureaucratic oversight, we may see an Internet future not quite as bright as we need, with less investment, less innovation and more congestion.  Discouragingly, the FCC is intervening to regulate the Internet because it wants to, not because it needs to.”

The FCC’s reckless effort to regulate Internet traffic will now begin a slow death march to ultimate defeat from legal challenges and Congressional action.  In the meantime, unfortunately, the cost will be even more uncertainty at a time when our economy cannot afford it.

March 2000:  Charles Onians of Britain’s The Independent penned a global-warming doomsday warning entitled “Snowfalls Are Now Just a Thing of the Past”:

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change:  snow is starting to disappear from our lives…  According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become ‘a very rare and exciting event.’  ‘Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,’ he said.”

Does “the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia” ring a bell?  It was at the center of last year’s “Climategate” scandal in which global warming alarmists were shown to have manipulated their research and plotted against scientists whose views differed from their own.

Fast forward ten years, to December 2010, and a report from Britain’s Mail Online entitled “Coldest December Since Records Began as Temperatures Plummet to Minus 10 C Bringing Travel Chaos Across Britain”:

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.  And tonight the nation was braced for another 10 inches of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no letup in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.  The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond as temperatures plummeted to -10 C (14 F).  The Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910.”

Thanks to Al Gore’s amazing Internet, which provides us a record to test the amazingly ludicrous assurances that he and his fellow climate change alarmists have made.

It was embarrassing enough when the Government Accountability Office (GAO)  recently withdrew its defective “undercover study” issued last summer as part of the Obama Education Department’s campaign against for-profit colleges.  Readers will recall how the GAO sent undercover “students” to several schools to capture information as evidence for the Education Department and a Senate committee.  This was all part of their larger effort to justify the proposed “Gainful Employment” rule targeting for-profit career colleges that provide critical training and education to struggling Americans.  Worse, this came on the heels of a letter from Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) seeking investigation into allegations of insider trading within the Education Department relating to its campaign to cripple career colleges.

Now comes a report providing greater detail on just how malignant that the defective GAO “undercover” report was.  According to Frederick Hess and Andrew Kelly, fully 16 of the report’s 28 findings required revision.  Tellingly, every single one of those “findings” skewed the same direction – casting for-profit career colleges negatively.  The statistical likelihood of all 16 randomly tilting the same way, according to Mr. Hess and Mr. Kelly, is 1 in 65,536.

That doesn’t suggest extreme coincidence.  It suggests intentional malfeasance.

Amid persistent unemployment and intense global competition, for-profit colleges provide important alternatives for education and job skills.  That is why CFIF has formally petitioned Chairman-Elect Darrell Issa (R – California) of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform  to investigate this matter.  It is also important that supporters and activists across the nation contact their Senators and Representatives to help stop the Obama Administration’s unjustifiable scheme.

This week, the Battelle Memorial Institute reported that China will surpass Japan in 2011 as the second-largest spender on research and development, spending $154 billion to Japan’s $144 billion.  An interesting milestone, perhaps, but that should be kept in its proper perspective.  Specifically, that the United States still spends well over twice as much on R&D – over $405 billion in 2011.  That’s significantly more than China and Japan combined.

This isn’t merely esoteric or trivial.  To the contrary, it’s important to keep in mind at a time when naysayers here and around the globe question America’s continuing leadership role, and threaten to undermine American preeminence via regulations such as “Net Neutrality” and other big-government “solutions” in search of imaginary problems.