Big Government: What a Difference a Year Makes

One year ago today, we launched BigGovernment.com. As you probably know, our first posts dealt with the video sting of ACORN, orchestrated by the new citizen journalists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles. It had an impact.

It also marked a new chapter in on-line media. Most of the conservative on-line media are scorekeepers. The provide opinion, but don’t really move the ball forward. I know that sounds both hyperbolic and self-serving, but consider: after the second day of our video release the U.S. Senate voted to defund ACORN and the Census Bureau severed all ties with the embattled organization. All of this happened before either the Washington Post or New York Times had devoted a single column inch to the burgeoning scandal. I’ve been in Washington D.C. for 16 years. Nothing politically happened until one of those papers weighed in. Until last year. The game totally changed and, even today, neither the JournoList-supporting Post nor the hemorrhaging Times understands this. Newsweek is dead. USA Today is shedding staff as fast as it can while Time clings to life as something to glance at on an airplane and every other part of the legacy media retires to “background noise.” Simply put, no one cares about them anymore.

There was a time that news organizations like the Post and the Times could set the national agenda. They were the arbiters of what was news and what was “important.” A wink from one of their reporters would set off a national debate. If they ignored a story, well, it went nowhere. They were the “casting couch” of all possible news. Those days are over.

I won’t go through all of the details, but Big Government was essentially launched because of the grass-roots uprising we’ve witnessed over the past year. We felt that, whether the debate was about stimulus, TARP, ObamaCare, Cap and Trade or bailouts, the fundamental issue that had galvanized the American public was the inexorable growth of government. They rightfully didn’t like what politicians in DC and state capitals (from both parties) were pushing down their throats. Big Government was for all of those patriots who rejected being lectured to or managed by an increasingly isolated political class. Try Freedom was our existential message.

It has been a wild ride.

We have broken a lot of stories beyond ACORN. From Jim Hoft’s great expose on Kevin Jennings, Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” to Liberty Chick and Don Loos’ great reporting on SEIU, Big Government has brought you actual news…rather than, as most do, simple commentary. We broke three videos: Phil “I Don’t Worry About the Constitution” Hare, Bob “Who Are You” Etheridge and Ciro “You Are Calling Me a Liar” Rodrigeuz that may have a real impact on the elections in November.

But, there has been so much more. The Build-a-Bear silliness, the first reporting of ObamaCare rationing with the de-listing of Avastin, the uncomfortably close ties between Google and the Administration and the only real defense of the “Tea Party Movement” against a baseless smear of racism. (Yes, we have noted who didn’t rise to the defense in the same way. Short answer: Most of the “tea party movement.”) And much more.

There is much more planned for this year. But, we can’t do any of this without you. You are why we created this site and, every day, you give us the inspiration to keep fighting. We were born to fight, but, without you and our great contributors, we would be fighting a fool’s game. You all give us the strength to keep up the fight. Your ongoing commitment to the fight gives us inspiration to strive and do better.

America has awoken from its slumber. We are ready.