The 10 Most Underreported Stories for 2010

I’ve said before that the media is so invested in this administration because their very survival depends upon its success. The only people who consume mainstream media anymore are the people who are part of the ideology that the MSM blatantly supports. They’ve bet all their chips on the success of the Progressocrats, the new amalgam of socialists and Democrats which saw the progressive caucus bubble up within the DNC before eating it away from the inside.

You won’t see the stories below in the pages of the NYT or on the screens of NBC. You won’t hear them discussed at the water cooler. They’re the stories that show without any doubt the cards held by those who wish to enslave the masses to the god of government. A theocracy, to be sure, but one that holds up the state above all else.

Each of these stories have been chronicled across the Bigs sites over the past year. These stories are what progressives are trying desperately to erase from the annals of history, an effort that the new penny press, new media, refuses to allow.

1. The Pigford Case

You have a finite number of black farmers discriminated against by the USDA. They are awarded a settlement. You have over 73,000 more applicants, more than the number of actual farmers or people related to farming, all claiming a piece of the settlement. The settlement is billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Over 36% of the claims were already rejected due to fraud. Instead of vetting the claims and awarding to those who were truly wronged, elected officials decide to increase the size of the settlement so everyone can get a check. People who farmed their whole lives got the same size check as someone who never farmed.

If you think that sounds wonky, then you may be someone who doesn’t believe that the Pigford case was on the up-and-up. Also, you are probably a racist, since this case involves black Americans and even the original black farmers who are raising concern about this case are also racists, according to INSERT SOROS OUTLET HERE.

Related:

Pigford Investigation Resources

Credit Where It’s Due: HuffPo Blogger On Pigford Fraud

2. Journolist

Long story short: a bunch of editorial geniuses decided to gather in an email distro and share ideas about how to inject their socialist narrative into mainstream media. They also talked smack about conservative political leaders because takes balls to talk cruelly about people with whom you disagree in a private email thread full of glee club members. These people all still write for the same publications that they did before, with the exception of the whistleblower, and these are the folks who tell you that media is not progressively biased.

Liberal Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein has disbanded the “Journolist,” an e-mail list-serv catering to liberal journalists, professors and think tank experts, after e-mails from one of its prominent members were made public yesterday.

That Journolist member, Washington Post reporter David Weigel, resigned Friday. E-mails disclosed by The Daily Caller showed he disparaged conservatives he covers for the Post and rooted for Democrats to succeed on key issues such as health-care reform.

3. Ken Salazar lied in a report and fabricated scientists’ testimony in order to ban deepwater drilling

President Obama’s MMS chief Ken Salazar fabricated entire quotes from scientists in a report to bolster the administration’s hyperbolic reaction to the Gulf oil spill with shutting down ALL the offshore drills and further crippling the coast states’ economies. The scientists who were exploited called out Salazar; the administration kept mum on the embarrassment, and media went searching for another Palin story on which to report instead.

4. DOJ voter intimidation case and coverup

Black Panthers are caught on tape standing outside a Philadelphia polling place during the 2008 presidential election, swinging billy clubs and cursing at those trying to get inside to vote. They said they were there to ensure voter integrity and had dismissed the notion that cursing out people and swinging billy clubs at them as they tried to enter a polling location was voter intimidation. The DOJ was set to investigate … but dropped the charges. All was silent on the story until a whistleblower, Big Government, Big Journalism, and Pajamas Media contributor J. Christian Adams, stepped forward.

– The Justice Department has seen fit to drop voter intimidation charges against Malik Shabazz’ New Black Panther Party’s involvement in the now infamous events at a polling place in Philadelphia on November 4, 2008. In light of the recent testimony by former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the story is gaining further attention and scrutiny.

– At the Justice Department, one man has played a central role in two of the most controversial racialist policies of the Obama Administration – Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli. This bundler of huge campaign contributions for the Obama Campaign is now the second highest ranking Presidential appointee at the Justice Department. Perrelli is best known for his central role in dismissing the slam dunk voter intimidation case brought and dropped against the New Black Panther Party.

American Hero: Coates Negates a Year of Justice Department Spin on New Black Panther Case

5. Hide the decline

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet. (Hat tip:Watts Up With That)

When you read some of those files – including 1079 emails and 72 documents – you realise just why the boffins at CRU might have preferred to keep them confidential. As Andrew Bolt puts it, this scandal could well be “the greatest in modern science.”

Global warming alarmists are now alarmed because they cannot account for the cooling trend that has been evident since the late 1990s in contradiction to their climate models. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests the planet has entered a cooling cycle that could persist for decades. Dr. Don Easterbook, for instance, a geologist and professor emeritus at Western Washington University, has concluded that sea surface temperatures will experience a drop that could last for the next 25 to 30 years based on his observations of the Pacific Decadal Oscilliation or PDO, a weather phenomenon that reverts between warm and cool modes.

The Great IPCC Meltdown Continues

Peer-to-Peer Review: How ‘Climategate’ Marks the Maturing of a New Science Movement, Part I, Part II and Part III

6. Obama’s sagging popularity

We’re fast approaching the halfway point in Barack Obama’s term. With Nov. 2 behind him, everything the president does will be calculated to boost, or at least not harm, his chances of re-election in 2012. What’s not clear is whether he fully appreciates how badly the coalition he led to victory in 2008 has frayed in just two years. A look inside his poll numbers suggests that if he cannot turn around some key trends, he’ll be a one-term president.

Rasmussen, NYE:

… 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12 (see trends).

Chris Matthews, of the old liberal vanguard, has even slipped and questioned the President at times. Matthews toes the line at classical liberalism at times, but many classical liberals have left the Obama Brigade, as polls have shown. Still, media would have you think that there’s nothing here to see.

‘Season of Progress’ Does Little for Obama’s Approval Rating

Obama Approval Slipping Among Liberal Democrats

Poll: Only 2/3 of 2008 Obama Backers Plan to Vote Democrat – Political Hotsheet – CBS News

Obama Loses Support in Poll as Joblessness Prompts Growing U.S. Discontent – Bloomberg

7. The ever-growing power and influence of the tea party

The Tea Party movement last night wielded a huge impact on the American political process that will ensure its influence for years to come, though it also suffered setbacks to its wilder fringes.

[…]

Tea Party leaders have insisted they have no regrets about choosing unconventional candidates who signal that this is a change from “politics as usual”. But as the movement shifts from being a mere channel of rightwing anger to being a real political force, it is likely to come under pressure to contain its more extreme edges.

I’m forgiving two presuppositions embedded in these graphs to prove a short point.

Now I’ll address them. First, it was never “right wing anger.” (No: Most Say Tea Party Has Better Understanding of Issues than Congress.) It was and is mainstream opposition to bad policy. Let’s go back a bit and track the polling, from oldest to newest:

More Disapprove Than Approve of Obama on Healthcare

Support Slips for Health Plan – WSJ.com

54% would prefer no bill to current ObamaCare proposals

CNSNews.com – Conservatives Now Outnumber Liberals in All 50 States, Says Gallup Poll

Gallup: Obama’s weekly average approval rating hits new low

58% of Americans Oppose Obamacare

Gallup: 80% satisfied with health care, 61% with insurance

Poll: Obama personal popularity at new low | Washington Examiner

Conservatives Maintain Edge as Top Ideological Group

More in U.S. Say Health Coverage Is Not Gov’t. Responsibility

Obama Job Approval Down to 49%

Obama’s 47 Percent Approval Lowest of Any President at This Point

Conservatives Finish 2009 as No. 1 Ideological Group

Majority Would Vote Against Obama – Hotline On Call

CNN poll: 56 percent oppose stimulus program

CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights

68% now oppose passing ObamaCare without Republican support

Americans Say Jobs Top Problem Not Healthcare (last spring! Contrast with THIS)

Health Overhaul Splits Democratic Party Faithful – WSJ.com

71% in Arizona Now Support State’s New Immigration Law

Independent Voters Favor GOP in 2010 Election Tracking

Does that look like “fringe” to you? Of course it doesn’t. I could easily turn my collection of polling data spanning over four years into a week-long series of posts on nothing but the trends that have brought us to this point. I’ll stop here, for now. Democrats have ignored the roaring message from voters which began as a peep in 2008 and by spring of ’09 was a massive chorus of Americans all saying the same thing: NO to big government. All of this explains why the movement has grown to be such a permanent force. The simple reality shown in the above – and how this administration has ignored that reality – has helped determine the scope of the grassroots movement.

Secondly, the grassroots movement is a new movement comprised of people who proudly eschew the corporatized process that out political system has become. The movement scored exponentially more wins than losses and came away with a better track record than either party.

Bloomberg: While losses by Tea Party-backed candidates may have helped cost Republicans control of the U.S. Senate, the movement furnished the intensity and enthusiasm that enabled the party to seize a majority in the House.

The tea party movement saved the Republican party. The bigger story is whether there will be such a classical liberal-driven movement on the left to save the Democrats.

Related:

2010: The Year of the Tea Party

8. The Unconstitutionality of Health Control

It’s the most inane reasoning ever: invoke the Commerce Clause to force those who opt-out of government care, thus economic inactivity which invalidates the Commerce Clause, into commercial activity. All this while refusing to apply the Commerce Clause in the manner it was intended, namely to lift sanctions on interstate insurance purchases which inhibit the industry and drive up costs.

It’s a complete bastardization of the Constitution rendered by people who don’t understand it. No wonder it was rejected by a VA judge.

And I vehemently reject the elementary unsound premise that those who choose to reject government care create a financial burden by way of bills on the others as it presupposes that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who rejects government care is broke or unwilling to foot the bill. Au contraire, mon frère, it’s the opposite. We want to pay our own way.

Powerline: The Democrats assumed, I think, that if they rammed Obamacare down our throats in spite of the bill’s well-known unpopularity, it would become a fait accompli and voters would become resigned to it. So far, at least, that hasn’t happened, and adverse rulings like Judge Hudson’s will add fuel to the pro-repeal fire.

It’s Official: 51% Won’t Be Able to Stay in Their Employer Health Plan | Health and Education

JCT: Healthcare law to sock middle class with a $3.9 billion tax increase in 2019

Review & Outlook: Kathleen Sebelius Has a List – WSJ.com:

She promised to keep a list of insurers “with a record of unjustified rate increases” and then to bar them from ObamaCare’s subsidized “exchanges” when they come on line in 2014. In other words, insurers must accept price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now.

Doctors Forced to Cut Elderly Patients Due to Medicare Costs

How Government Regulations Push Up Cost of Medicine and Limit Patient Choice

Death Panels Begin: FDA Votes to Block Avastin for Breast Cancer Treatment

9. The FCC Internet powergrab

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski appears to be preparing to dramatically increase the FCC’s regulatory role over the Internet (in TWO ways; more on that later).

He is doing so without the necessary Congressional authority – which he himself acknowledges he doesn’t have. And he is doing so by torturing and twisting the regulatory language he is drafting – so as to keep this extraordinary dictatorial seizure within the current Title I confines.

The latter is for The Chairman merely an optical effort. If he can feign the appearance of remaining within Title I, he avoids Reclassification to Title II – against which many of us have long been rightly fighting. He will then portray his fealty to Title I as testament to the alleged “moderation” of his (un)modest proposal.

This will be a totally bogus assertion, but he will make it – and the media will inparrot-esque fashion repeat it.

10. Voter fraud

– King Street Patriots and True the Vote: True The Vote made news early this month when initiative Chief Catherine Engelbrecht discovered that a former Service Employee International Union (SEIU) member had turned in over 23 thousand fraudulent voter registration cards. Englebrecht and the King Streeters then decided that they would initiate a grassroots poll-watching effort to make sure that the election was fair and that all laws and regulations were properly observed.

By the reaction of the well organized, heavily funded left, you’d have thought that the King Streeters had proposed shooting puppies.

– Anita MonCrief: Of course, the mainstream media continues to carry water for the Democrats. The question is: If the Democrats are so resigned to loosing, then what’s going on in Harris County, Texas? In recent days, tension in the county has been at a fever pitch as local Democrats spread fear and warn of voter intimidation. RedState reports that even the local Democrat party has gotten involved by posting an inflammatory message on its website.

– WTH: But even with all that recent history, ACORN’s Project Vote is still in operation and one of its main directors is a woman under a cloud of criminal charges in the state of Nevada.

Project Vote is supposed to be separate from ACORN, at least on paper. But as Matthew Vadum writes, “Although legally separate entities, in practice the two are the same, as the congressional testimony of former ACORN/Project Vote employee Anita MonCrief can attest. They share office space, employees, and budgets. Project Vote continues to operate out of ACORN’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Nevada: ‘Harry Reid’s Name Was Already Checked’

EXCLUSIVE: Illinois Elections Officials Caught Lying About Military Ballots

Thoughts? There exist many stories worthy of this list but I felt it important to chronicle those that stood/stand to bear the most damage by suppression. Chime in with your lists or suggestions below.