Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday said his department would propose regulatory changes to simplify and speed the leasing process for wind energy development off the Atlantic coast. In addition, the department will work aggressively to process applications to build transmission lines to move the electricity produced by offshore wind farms to consumers, he said at a news briefing in Baltimore with officials from Maryland and Delaware.

The proposed changes are the result of lessons the department learned in implementing the controversial Cape Wind lease off the coast of Massachusetts earlier this year, a process that took eight years. Salazar described the lease, which is expected to power 200 homes, as a “historic milestone in America’s renewable energy future.” But he said it was clear federal officials needed to make the permitting process more efficient if they are to realize the Obama administration’s goals of harnessing the economic and environmental benefits of producing energy from the strong and steady winds that characterize much of the Atlantic coast.

Through the accelerated leasing process, led by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the department could issue new leases by the end of 2011.

But while the administration is rushing to license offshore wind farms, offshore oil drilling is still stalled - by the same Department of the Interior:

A meeting between Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and offshore drilling executives on the Gulf Coast orchestrated by Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, failed to yield much progress on streamlining the permitting process for new wells in the aftermath of the BP oil spill, Ms. Landrieu said this week.

“I am extremely disappointed that Secretary Salazar’s presentation today failed to provide regulatory certainty and a clear path for speeding up the process of issuing drilling permits,” she said in a statement.

“Our industry leaders are skeptical and have every right to be,” she said.

Salazar met with drilling advocates on Monday, and made clear the White House will not be moving forward on drilling anytime soon. On Tuesday, he made clear where the administration’s favor lies: with green energy interests.

But the failure to expand offshore drilling is extremely costly. If the White House were willing to move forward with drilling, it would create thousands of jobs and add billions in new tax revenue – both of which would be especially valuable at a time of record deficits and a shortage of jobs. Instead, wind farms appear to be the nation’s only strategy for attending to domestic energy needs.

Cross-posted at Liberty Central

Executives at the casino giant Harrah’s pushed company employees to vote early in an all-out effort to help the Harry Reid campaign, according to internal emails obtained by Battle ‘10.

The stepped-up effort began Wednesday when a Reid staffer sent an email pleading for help to Harrah’s top lobbyist, Jan Jones. Soon after, Marybel Batjer, Harrah’s vice president of public policy and communications, distributed that plea via email to executives throughout the company.

The Reid campaign staffer, whose name was removed in the email Batjer sent to Harrah’s executives, said “ANYTHING” would be done to help with the company’s get out the vote effort. The staffer cited the fact that 1,100 MGM employees had already voted and indicated dissatisfaction with the turnout from Harrah’s.

Jones is the former Mayor of Las Vegas, and “has held senior positions with the Nevada state arm of the Democratic National Committee.” Her willingness to pressure her employer to pull out all the stops to help Reid would not be a surprise.

Go and read the whole piece for the E-mail chain.

Cross-posted at Liberty Central

P.S. – If the Republicans take the House of Representatives, California’s Darrell Issa will be chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee. I know he cares passionately about the right of Americans to cast their votes according to their own consciences, without heavy-handed pressure from their bosses. If he becomes Chairman, Issa maybe oughta hold hearings on this.

After the shooters turned off their cameras and started to break down, Hinchey made a beeline for Kemble and got in his face, according to a YNN videographer who was on the scene. The congressman poked Kemble in the chest aggressively, according to the YNN staffer.

I spoke with Kemble briefly this afternoon, and he told me Hinchey “put his hand on my throat” and then “realized what he had done and walked away.” The YNN shooter told me he did not witness this part of the altercation.

via HotAir

In stark contrast to Hinchey, we have no reason to think that George Phillips will assault a reporter – or sponsor earmarks that make him better off.

On a macro level, all the indications are that we are in for a seismic shift in Congress. The generic ballot continues to show America rejecting an extreme agenda.  The Hotline is talking about an ‘epic bloodbath’ that will make 1994 seem like ‘a walk in the park.’ And even some in Congress are starting to recognize that their baseless flailing could well backfire.

At no time in memory have conservatives had such an opportunity to deal a crushing blow against statism.

But with just a few weeks left until election day, this is no time to back off. If Congress is to reverse the disastrous course that the Obama administration has set us on, we will need every possible conservative vote. We have seen that the opposition is tirelessly committed to expanding the power of the state at every opportunity. In the effort to stop their momentum and reverse their course, we should spare no effort. No liberal should be left in office who can be defeated.

The good news is, there are more of us than there are of them. We only have to show it. And we have to show that with our time, our effort, and our dollars. If you have time to spare – even just an hour or two – get involved with a get out the vote effort. And if you have some dollars to spare – even $10 or $20 will help – find a conservative candidate you want to support, and make a donation. This is your last chance to do your part before the election, so get involved.

If you can donate, and if you are on Twitter, please join Erick, Lori, Tabitha, Michelle Malkin, Ginni Thomas, Dana Loesch, Tammy Bruce, and many others for the #1013bomb on Twitter tomorrow evening – starting at around 8:00PM Eastern time. We will be making donations to our favorite candidates, and encouraging others to do the same. This is a ‘moneybomb,’ with a twist: we’re not asking you to donate to one specific candidate. We’re asking everyone who is fed up with the direction of this administration to donate to someone who opposes it. Don’t think you can’t help; there are lots of us, and fewer of them. Please sign on to Twitter Wednesday evening, use the #1013bomb hashtag, and let us know who you will be supporting.

You can learn more by following me at BrianFaughnan

If you live in Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional district, Jerry Labriola could use your help. And if you live anywhere in America outside the district, he could certainly use a donation.

Al Gore’s fundraising at the Buddhist Temple? A search on google does not turn up much from the liberal media. A search for the name “Maria Hsia” shows that there wasn’t much of an effort on the Left to determine what Al Gore knew about her activities. Instead, he got a pass.

When President Obama’s campaign specifically disabled the ability of his online donation tool to track foreign donations, it got hardly any notice on the Left or in the mainstream media. To this date, there has been very little attention to Obama’s foreign donations, despite strong evidence that his campaign made a specific decision to accept such illegal contributions.

The multi-national Marxist front group International Answer works closely with many on the American left, but none of its apologists in the United States seem too concerned about its shadowy foreign funding sources. The AFL-CIO is one American organization that partners with International Answer. But again, you won’t see Think Progress questioning the propriety or legality of their operations. The AFL-CIO also boasts of its coordination with the International Trade Union Confederation.

We will not mention the influence of George Soros on the Left, even though much of his fortune derives from earnings abroad. Wherever his money comes from, Soros does hold US citizenship. Hence his political activities merit no more attention than any other American citizen’s.

Given the Left’s lack of attention to any previous instance of foreign money actually influencing American elections through donations to candidates of the Left, its hard to get too excited about their complaints that a non-partisan organization with international affiliates is involved in US politics. As Paul Mirengoff explains:

The allegation is that, in the words of Think Progress, “the Chamber is likely skirting longstanding campaign finance law that bans the involvement of foreign corporations in American elections.” Supposedly, the Chamber is doing so by using money from foreign corporations associated with Chamber affiliates overseas in U.S. elections.

I’d like to make three points about this claim. First, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence to support it. The Chamber says it has a process in place to ensure that foreign funds are not spent in U.S. elections. If so, as I understand it, there is no unlawful conduct. Moreover, neither Think Progress nor any those who picked up their claim, appears to have any evidence that contradicts what the Chamber says. Simply put, the left’s attack on the Chamber appears to be made up out of whole cloth.

Second, as the Center for Competitive Politics points out, there is a serious tension between the claim of Think Progress and other leftists that the Chamber’s alleged conduct violates the law and the standard leftist talking point that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to foreign spending in U.S. elections. In reality, as Think Progress’ allegations of illegality against the Chamber acknowledge, foreign spending in U.S. elections remains illegal. Again, however, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the Chamber is facilitating such foreign spending.

Third, Think Progress’ fallback position is that even if the Chamber isn’t putting foreign money into American campaigns, money is fungible, so that foreign money frees up other money for campaigns. But to the extent this argument has any validity, it also applies to a number of unions. The AFL-CIO has a robust foreign program. Moreover, as the Center for Competitive Politics notes, the Service Employees International Union represents employees in Canada. So does the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. And the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has members not just in Canada but also in Panama and several Caribbean nations. Don’t their dues free up money that these powerhouse unions can use in U.S. political campaigns?

Again, this is a case of panicked and depressed liberal activists trying to set up the post-election narrative. They lost not because the American people rejected their extreme agenda. Instead, they lost because a team of shadowy and well-financed international organizations orchestrated the results.

It might be time for the team at Think Progress to step away from the keyboard and get a little fresh air. Their histrionics suggest some oxygen-starvation.

via Ace

The Democratic leadership of the House and Senate cannot be allowed to think that the American people take them at their word, when they promise to cancel a part of this tax increase. The right time to address this is not in a lame duck session. It’s now – before millions of Americans have cast their votes for House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. The only reason to delay this vote until after election day is to leave Pelosi and Reid more room for raising taxes.

If you have not yet, go over to Heritage Action for more information about the looming tax increases. And add your name to the thousands who are demanding action now.

Take for example, this new ‘documentary’ from… some liberal activist. You can watch the preview if you have a masochist streak, or you can just accept my word that it’s another hack job aimed at grassroots activists – one that will make a nice rental for some sad left-wing coffee parties, starting on November 3. They’ll pop this in the DVD player ($14.99 – with free shipping!) and console each other with tales of how they could never hope to compete against the power of the Right Wing Machine. Because you see, the whole movie is about how the Tea Party movement is an astroturf operation. They have fancy charts and everything, which prove that this was put together by a bunch of shady billionaires. (Remember that projection is one of the signature habits of the professional left.)

But here’s where they are taking baby steps toward the truth: they no longer believe that the millions of people who have come out to tea parties are paid. Right there at the 1:40 mark, they mention that those millions of activists ‘are being secretly guided to suit the agendas of America’s corporate elites.’ And again at 1:55, they say that the people ‘are very much unaware of the front group,’ and of how ‘their thoughts are being manipulated.’ Now that may sound like an ignorant comment designed to soothe wounded egos on the Left, but nevertheless it represents progress.

Recall: it was not all that long ago that the Left seemed to think most of the Tea Party movement were paid political operatives or agents of the Republican party. Now some on the Left have graduated millions of tea partiers out of the ranks of ‘paid hacks,’ and into the ranks of ‘well-intentioned dupes and pawns.’ It may not be much, but it’s progress. At this rate, it might only take a few more years to convince them that this is a coherent movement, one that can change America and bring the nation back to its roots.

Ah… who am I kidding.

In the House, dozens of Democrats are seen as possible defectors on a potential vote to block all tax increases. And in the Senate, the second-ranking Democrat in the leadership tacitly acknowledges that there is a majority for blocking all tax increases. Listen to what Durbin says at the 4:50 mark of this interview:

“there won’t be 60 votes for the Bush tax cuts… the Bush economic policy. That’s not gonna happen in the United States Senate.”

Liberals have been complaining for years about the alleged refusal of conservatives to allow ‘majority rule.’ They have complained that conservatives have used the filibuster in the Senate to block the president’s agenda. Yet when it comes to a $700 billion tax increase that will deal a heavy blow to job creation in the United States, leaders in both House and Senate suddenly refuse to allow a simple up-or-down vote. Durbin even admits the fact when he says that opponents of tax increases must meet a 60-vote test to win.

Why are DC leaders so determined to raise taxes?

Cross-posted to Liberty Central

First Congressman Hare was caught on video confusing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and saying the Constitution ‘doesn’t matter to me.’ Then he calls questions about the Constitution ‘silly stuff.’ He had already earned an ‘F’ on the Liberty Central legislative scorecard. And now comes word that he has filed an FEC complaint against a group of veterans:

“The collusion between Bobby Schilling and ‘Veterans for the Constitution’ is not only unethical, it’s illegal,” Moody said in a statement…

In the news release announcing the complaint, [Rep.] Hare said Schilling should “emerge from the shadows and demonstrate the courage to challenge me directly.”

Schilling and the veterans group denied wrongdoing.

Bill Albracht, treasurer of Veterans for the Constitution, said the complaint is a sign it’s having an effect.

“We have taken the fight to Hare, and I see this as retaliation and intimidation,” he said.

The group Hare is targeting has raised just $6,000.

Furthermore, I’m told by a source on the ground that Congressman Hare’s supporters have prodded the City of Canton, Illinois, to try to force  Schilling’s supporters to remove a legal billboard that highlights the importance of the Constitution – Hare’s statements notwithstanding. Hare is apparently nervous enough about his race to resort to attacking groups whose resources are so limited -a few thousand dollars here, a billboard there – that they have negligible influence. At least, they had negligible influence – until Congressman Hare elevated them.

As Jim Geraghty has pointed out, at least one poll shows Hare trailing his Republican challenger by a margin of 45%-32%. Hare’s panicky reactions to these small groups suggests that poll may be right. After all, a confident incumbent would have shrugged off this opposition. Instead, Hare has given them more attention than they ever could have gotten for their $6,000, and he’s done so in a way that makes him appear vindictive and petty.

Cross-posted to Liberty Central

Given that sharp insight into her thinking – and into the way of thinking of many liberals – it should be no surprise that the shrinking circle of Obama supporters is no longer proud of America. Americans still want change, and they are still largely united. But now they want change from the Obama agenda, and they are united around their opposition to big government. And as Charles Krauthammer points out, that’s reason for liberals to regard Americans with shame and criticism, instead of the praise they lavished on them scant months ago.

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the predicted 40-year liberal ascendancy (James Carville) into a full retreat. Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the “bitter” people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging “to guns or religion or” — this part is less remembered — “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

That’s a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking…

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms). Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with “antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it succinctly, “just downright mean”?

Go and read the whole piece. Krauthammer points out that on the key hot-button issues of size of government, gay marriage, the mosque, and immigration, liberals argue that a significant majority of the American people are bigoted. Yet these are the same American people that Michelle Obama was so proud of just two years ago – the same ones who embraced Barack Obama and gave him a resounding majority. Have they really transformed so suddenly into bigots? Isn’t it more likely that they have gotten a taste of what liberals believe, and decided that it’s wrong for America?

Hopefully liberals can be proud of America – rather than contemptuous of it – even when they disagree.

Cross-posted from Liberty Central

Unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth.”

Not long ago, Otellini said, “our research centers were without peer. No country was more attractive for start-up capital… We seemed a generation ahead of the rest of the world in information technology. That simply is no longer the case…”

Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working…”

As a result, he said, “every business in America has a list of more variables than I’ve ever seen in my career.” If variables like capital gains taxes and the R&D tax credit are resolved correctly, jobs will stay here, but if politicians make decisions “the wrong way, people will not invest in the United States. They’ll invest elsewhere.”

Take factories. “I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip, and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the United States,” Otellini said…

“If our tax rate approached that of the rest of the world, corporations would have an incentive to invest here,” Otellini said. But instead, it’s the second highest in the industrialized world, making the United States a less attractive place to invest–and create jobs–than places in Europe and Asia that are “clamoring” for Intel’s business.

The most disturbing part of Otellini’s comments is that he says nothing groundbreaking, nothing unexpected, and nothing that we have not heard many times before. Otellini talks about regulation, taxation, litigation and transparency – all issues that have been cited by business leaders for years. But our ‘leaders’ in Washington ignore these concerns, and instead pile on more taxes, more regulation, more litigation costs, greater uncertainty about the climate going forward. And they do all this while claiming to be ‘pro-jobs.’

Will Congress and the White House ever realize that business leaders are telling the truth? As our government continues to make it more difficult to do business in the US, companies must increasingly look to more favorable climates abroad. If Washington really wants to spur job creation here in the US, they should repeal the health care overhaul, reduce spending, cut the corporate tax rate, give up on cap and trade, and reform litigation. Instead we have been treated to an extended experiment in government control – one that is obviously not producing new wealth, new jobs, or any real hope for the emergence of the industries of the future.

Cross-posted from Liberty Central

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That’s probably the reason Giffords took to the airwaves to make clear that she opposes the boycott favored by some liberals to pressure the state to rescind its new immigration law. This was probably smart politics, but it put her at odds with the liberal grassroots – and with Congressman Raul Grijalva, who was an advocate of the boycott. Worse still, Giffords’ border district abuts Congressman Grijalva’s and the two share the Tucson media market. It’s that market where her ads are airing.

For the grassroots, this is a major offense:

Giffords is looking like the point of the Blue Dog spear being thrust into the House progressive infrastructure. As we pointed out over the weekend, despite Pelosi’s efforts to tamp it down, the Blue Dogs are going on the warpath against progressive Democrats, using Henry Waxman’s interview with The Hill as an excuse. One thing we can always be sure of inside the Democratic Caucus– well, two, actually: Blue Dogs will always put self-preservation above the party’s principles, and the DCCC will do whatever it can to help them get re-elected…

When Grijalva took a leadership role in speaking out against SB1070 and called for civic, political and religious organizations not to bring their conventions and conferences to Arizona, it was a defining and courageous political stand. Since then, he has said that economic consequences mean nothing to political ideologues, and he has been actively working with industries to bring business back to the state to help amplify his voice and effect change (www.vivaarizona.org is one such example). Giffords’ attack on his stand and on everyone who joined him in fighting for what is right obfuscates her failure to exhibit meaningful leadership in this fight, and hurts those who did…

Minutes before publishing time I reached Raúl in Tucson and I was surprised to find him in such a determined mood. “I kind of feel like a character in the movie The Expendables, he told me. “In an effort to maintain their presence in Congress, Blue Dogs are throwing progressives under the bus. I find it disheartening and, quite frankly, I am embarrassed as a Democrat. In their effort to be Republicans, Blue Dogs often paint progressives as expendable. They’re going to find out that we definitely are not.”

Not only was Grijalva exorcised enough at this ‘attack’ to discuss it with liberal activists, he has now taken to the pages of DailyKos to attack Giffords, and to complain about being ‘thrown under the bus.’ He’s appealing for donations that will be used to advance the ‘progressive agenda’ – a thinly veiled attack at Members like Giffords.

Discord in the House majority seems to have hit a new level – with moderates and progressives more intent on fighting each other than governing the country.

Cross-posted to Liberty Central

New York City Mayor Anthony Michael Bloomberg is a strong proponent of the Ground Zero Mosque. He has gone out of his way to speak up in support of the rights of Cordoba House to build a mosque at Ground Zero, in Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal reports that Congressman Anthony Weiner – a frequent rival to the Mayor – has written to compliment Bloomberg on his handling of the controversy – but has managed to do so without clearly affirming his own support for the project. Weiner’s refusal to take a stand on the project has previously been noted and criticized; does he intend this letter to clarify, or confuse?

It seems safe to conclude that Weiner supports the mosque. He certainly does not forthrightly oppose it, and his words of encouragement to Mayor Bloomberg really leave no other interpretation. Why then, does he not make his support clear?

President Obama and the current Congressional leadership were swept into office on a wave of dissatisfaction with George Bush and a Republican Congress. Polls showed that Americans were open to the idea of greater government intervention as a way to address serious problems. President Obama promised that he would expand the role of government to ‘fix’ health care, Wall Street, the economy, energy, and other challenges. A new poll from the liberal Center for American Progress shows that less than 2 years later, confidence in the ability of government to solve such problems has plummeted. Faith in the federal government is now at its lowest level in the history of the poll:

Americans increasingly feel that government ‘is doing too much:’

Americans are ambivalent about whether government protects or curtails freedom, but strongly believe that it is opaque rather than transparent, and serves special interests rather than the common good:

Respondents now say that regulation of business does more harm than good – and support for regulation generally is at its lowest point since 1994:

CAP also decided to poll test a straw man: to find out what percentage favors the complete elimination of government from the marketplace. Even here, the collapse of public support for government involvement in the market is stunning. Not only is support for government at its lowest level on record, it has fallen 10 points from its previous all-time low, and 22 points from just 2 years ago:

In the last 18 months, the American people have witnessed an enormous expansion of the federal government, and they’re clearly very negative about the experience. Whereas support for bigger government was at its apex when Obama was elected, it has completely collapsed. Americans continue to believe Uncle Sam has a role in regulating some private activities – that’s no surprise. But clearly the debate over health care, the stimulus, the bailouts, Dodd-Frank, cap and trade, and others, have sown new doubts about the power of Washington to bring positive change.

Obviously, balancing the federal budget is a worthy goal – an extremely important one, in fact. Congress has massively increased spending, to the point that the United States is projected to run inordinately high deficits for years to come. The problem is one of historic proportions. It would be a welcome change if this Congress were to consider a package of spending cuts before the election, designed to restore the nation’s long-term fiscal balance.

But Congressional leaders and the White House recognize that it might be unpopular to push for spending cuts or tax increases before an election. They are deeply worried about the political impact of a controversial vote – one that might lead to catastrophic losses for the majority party. So rather than doing something gutsy, they are shifting responsibility to an unelected commission, and deferring a vote until a lame duck session of Congress:

Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad says a legislative session after the Nov. 2 election and before the new Congress is sworn in could be “one of the most significant lame-duck sessions in the history of the United States.”

In an interview with CongressDaily, Conrad referred specifically to the prospect of votes on the recommendations of President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. Conrad, who is on the panel, believes it could help lead the country to a sounder fiscal path.

That sentiment is echoed by Senate Budget ranking member Judd Gregg, also a commission member. Gregg even suggests the lame duck could trump the historic vote on healthcare reform, which he opposed, if the commission’s recommendations are meaningful and Congress embraces them.

The American people are expected to deliver a stinging rebuke to the current leadership on election day. If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid suddenly become convinced that spending has gotten out of hand, they might take action before election day to change the disastrous course that the nation is on.

One action that should not be taken is to vote on a massive package of tax increases and spending cuts once a new Congress has been elected, but before that new Congress is sworn in. Some reports suggest that the debt commission recommendations could total $100 trillion in new taxing and spending decisions. These decisions should not be decide by an unaccountable body filled with dozens of retiring and defeated Members of Congress. If Congress lacks the will to make difficult decisions before an election, they should leave such decisions to the new Congress to tackle.

And besides the risk of allowing a lame duck Congress to vote on these recommendations with little public debate, a lame duck session would also be an occasion for plenty of other mischief. According to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, cap and trade could be passed in a lame duck session. And Harry Reid himself is considering votes on amnesty, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and ENDA as well. We need to put an end to plans for a lame duck session.

Advocates of the president’s health care bill made a lot of promises in the run-up to passage of the law. They said health care costs would go down, people could keep insurance that they were happy with, the law would not increase the budget deficit, and small business would not be burdened by the new law. In the months since the law was signed, federal officials have begun to admit that all of those assurance were false. The latest shoe to drop comes from the IRS, which now says that businesses and charities will face significant new burdens – burdens which even this agency says may be ‘disproportionate’ to any benefit from the law:

The new regulations, which kick in at the start of 2012, require any taxpayer with business income to issue 1099 forms to all vendors from whom they purchased more than $600 of goods and services that year. That promises to launch a fusillade of new paperwork: An estimated 40 million taxpayers will be subject to the requirement, including 26 million who run sole proprietorships, according to a report released this week by National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson…

“The new reporting burden, particularly as it falls on small businesses, may turn out to be disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance,” the Taxpayer Advocate Service wrote in a report released this week.

The new rules are aimed at reducing the “tax gap” between what individuals and businesses owe and what they actually pay. The federal government misses out on estimated $300 billion each year from tax underpayment. The expanded reporting requirements, which Congress slipped into the landmark health care reform bill passed in March, are an attempt to create a paper trail of 1099s exposing business-to-business payments that might otherwise stay off the radar.

But the cost of that paper trail could swamp the small companies, sole proprietors freelancers forced to generate it. Pennsylvania business networking organization SMC Business Councils surveyed its members and found that they currently average 10 filings a year of 1099 forms. The new rules would push that average to more than 200 filings per year for a typical small business, the industry group estimates…

Henschke foresees another unintended consequence of the new reporting provisions: that in order to cut down on tax forms to be filed, businesses will trim the number of vendors they do business with. “I’ve actually heard businesses talking about consolidating their purchases, going from 150, 200 vendors, down to less than 100,” he said. “That will most certainly lead to some small businesses being swept under the door…”

That was just one of seven major pitfalls the Taxpayer Advocate Service foresees in the new rules. It also questions whether they will actually do much to close the tax gap. Because of product returns and other complications, the payments documented by the 1099 trail won’t match up cleanly against the revenue businesses report. “The IRS will face challenges making productive use of this new volume of information reports,” Olson’s office concluded.

That could help explain one otherwise puzzling aspect of the new tax law, which is that despite the sweeping reporting requirements, the Joint Committee on Taxation — a nonpartisan Congressional committee that analyzes pending tax legislation — estimated that it would bring in only about $2 billion a year in new tax revenue. Committee staffers wouldn’t comment on the record.

So 40 million more taxpayers will be required to file 1099 forms, and many businesses will go from filing about 10 annually to filing more than 200. Small vendors will likely lose a great deal of business, as their customers try to limit their purchases to only large suppliers. And even according to the Internal Revenue Service, these new reporting requirements will bring in only a negligible amount of new tax revenue.

How many businesses will be shut down by this new law? How many jobs will be lost? Speaker Pelosi suggested people would not find what was in it until after it was signed into law. She wasn’t kidding!

And apart from the burden imposed on businesses, the IRS also says it will need a lot more tax money to enforce this new law. The taxpayer therefore takes a double hit.

Is this the change American voted for?

The Obama administration and the Democratic National Committee opened a new chapter Saturday in their ambitious project to convert the energy from last year’s campaign into a force for legislative reform on health care, climate change, education and taxes.

More than 1,200 groups from Maine to Hawaii spent the day gathering signatures in support of Obama’s economic plan, the first step in building what the White House hopes will be a standing political army ready to do battle.

Seeking to create a grass-roots force on a scale never seen before, Obama called the volunteers into action in a video message reminiscent of the 2008 contest. In defense of his budget, under attack from many quarters, he asked his supporters to go “block by block and door by door.”

In his Saturday radio address, Obama called his budget “an economic blueprint for our future.” He said, “I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation. I came here to solve them.”

The idea of deploying a grass-roots army for legislative purposes is untested. Unlike a political campaign, where ballots are simple, if blunt, instruments that produce winners and losers on a fixed date, a policy campaign is amorphous.

“If successful, it would have revolutionary implications for American politics,” said Ross K. Baker, a Rutgers University political science professor who counts himself among skeptics. “You can generate an enormous amount of support for an individual personality. It’s much harder to do that for a piece of legislation…”

One hope is that local media will expand the message’s reach by reporting on the canvassing drives. To spread the word, former campaign manager David Plouffe and OFA Director Mitch Stewart e-mailed 13 million people on the 2008 campaign list and asked for help.

So in March, 2009, the ‘army’ assembled by President Obama to push for big government liberalism counted 13 million people in its ranks. And President Obama’s campaign team was sett to mobilize them to push the president’s agenda. The verdict on this effort was rendered by hundreds of townhalls and millions of angry phone calls. Opponents of big government were far better organized and far more motivated than were its supporters. So in a matter of months, we saw a new effort to organize the supporters or more taxes and spending:

Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party — the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending — Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update.

let’s start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss ‘em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let’s get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion.

Friends replied, and more friends replied. So last month, in her Silver Spring apartment, Park started a fan page called “Join the Coffee Party Movement.” Within weeks, her inbox and page wall were swamped by thousands of comments from strangers in diverse locales, such as the oil fields of west Texas and the suburbs of Chicago.

I have been searching for a place of refuge like this for a long while. . . . It is not Us against the Govt. It is democracy vs corporatocracy . . . I just can’t believe that the Tea Party speaks for all patriotic Americans. . . . Just sent suggestions to 50 friends . . . I think it’s time we start a chapter right here in Tucson . . .

The snowballing response made her the de facto coordinator of Coffee Party USA, with goals far loftier than its oopsy-daisy origin: promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.

The New York Times, Huffington Post, CBS News, the Washington Post, liberals blogs – all told us that the Coffee Party would be the counterbalance to the Tea Party. They said that this movement in support of progressive change would be the next big thing. But despite fawning treatment from the media, the Coffee Party seems to have fizzled.

So now it’s time for something new — ‘One Nation:’

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, the “tea party” movement must be honored.

In an effort to replicate the tea party’s success, 170 liberal and civil rights groups are forming a coalition that they hope will match the movement’s political energy and influence. They promise to “counter the tea party narrative” and help the progressive movement find its voice again after 18 months of floundering.

The large-scale attempt at liberal unity, dubbed “One Nation,” will try to revive themes that energized the progressive grassroots two years ago. In a repurposing of Barack Obama’s old campaign slogan, organizers are demanding “all the change” they voted for — a poke at the White House.

What are the odds this proves more successful than the previous efforts?

The advocates of big government are desperately trying to convince themselves that what they need is better organization. They look at declining poll numbers, job losses, a growing deficit, looming tax increases, a dispirited base, angry independents, and energized opposition, and conclude that they needed better committee structures. They won’t admit to themselves that their extreme agenda destroyed their ‘army.’ The energized progressives and pro-Obama independents are pretty much gone now – destroyed by the failures of a White House that sees every problem as an excuse to push for more government.

Here’s a hint to ‘One Nation:’ you can’t squeeze blood from a stone. If you want to win supporters, first try to convince liberals in Washington to make an effort to appear competent. And while you’re at it, try to convince them that not every initiative demands more taxpayer money. Until you distance yourself from an agenda that’s radioactive, your efforts will fall short.