Current Events - June 2, 2013

Obama Signs Executive Order Giving Himself a Pay Increase

Friday a White House press release was inadvertently distributed early to news organizations announcing that President Barack Hussein Obama had signed an executive order giving himself a pay raise to $500,000 annually.

ObamaWhite House staff failed to squash the story as the press release was intended to be distributed late in the day on Friday, after the deadline when most news agencies are able to publish breaking news stories.

Critics of the President’s executive order say the move makes Obama seem “politically tone deaf” because he gave himself a raise at a time when the federal government is arbitrarily cutting services and benefits due to sequestration.

“What a Dick,” said a pizza delivery boy at The Palookaville Post’s news room.

Presidential pay raises are usually approved by Congress, the last increase being authorized by both Congress and Bill Clinton in 1999 and went into effect in 2001.

The Presidential pay raise also now includes a $50,000 annual expense account, a $100,000 nontaxable travel account and $19,000 for entertainment.

http://gopthedailydose.com/2013/06/02/obama-signs-executive-order-giving-himself-a-pay-increase/

Bad blood between Barack and Bubba may threaten Hillary's 2016 campaign

If journalist Ed Klein's new book is to be believed, the resentment between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, so evident in 2008 when accusations of racism were raised in the South Carolina primary, boiled over in the 2012 campaign, and threatens Hillary's 2016 campaign. Writing in the New York Post, Klein excerpts the new edition of his book, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House:

President Obama made a secret deal to support Hillary Clinton when she runs for president in 2016, campaign sources say, payback for the support her husband gave him in 2012. (snip)
According to two people who attended that meeting in Chappaqua, Bill Clinton then went on a rant against Obama.

"I've heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I've heard from Obama," my sources quoted Clinton as saying. "I have no relationship with the president - none whatsoever. Obama doesn't know how to be president. He doesn't know how the world works. He's incompetent. He's an amateur!"

But according to Klein, that deal is now in jeopardy, after Obama resented the reception Clinton's convention speech received, which far outshone his own acceptance speech in Charlotte:

But after his re-election, Obama began to have second thoughts. He would prefer to stay neutral in the next election, as is traditional of outgoing presidents.

Bill Clinton went ballistic and threatened retaliation. Obama backed down. He called his favorite journalist, Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes," and offered an unprecedented "farewell interview" with departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The result was a slobbering televised love-in - and an embarrassment to all concerned.

Now, of course, Benghazi threatens to pit then-Secretary of State Clinton against her boss, over who will be held responsible for the substandard security preparations for the 9/11 anniversary, and for the failure to respond in order to save the lives of an ambassador and those who guarded him.Stay tuned. This could turn into a civil war between the Clinton gang and the Obama gang. Watch closely the surrogates like Lanny Davis for the Clintons, and David Axelrod for the Obamas.   They have both  already said some surprisingly critical things, and that's just the opening round. And both sides believe the adage, "Don't get mad, get even."

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/bad_blood_between_barack_and_bubba_may_threaten_hillarys_2016_campaign.html#ixzz2V5cm3wSc

Cute Crony Capitalism

Imagine the following: A Koch brother tells the media that he’s going to spend more than $32,000—or, roughly one-and-a-half times the poverty line for a family of four—in order to lobby Barack Obama face-to-face for two minutes in order to push for regulations that would massively increase the cost of living for average Americans so that the Koch brother could increase his market share and damage the economic prospects of his competitors.

How do you think the media would cover that story? I imagine it wouldn’t look much like the coverage given to Paul Scott in USA Today. Reports Chris Woodyard:

Paul Scott, 60, says he isn’t a rich guy. He’s a $50,000-a-year Nissan salesman who plans to rub elbows with 24 bigwigs in a private luncheon that he says will put a crimp in his retirement plans.

But he says the goal is worthwhile. He wants to make a few points to Obama about on how to better support electric cars — a cause that Obama already embraces — and thought the private audience would be a fine way to do it.

So cute! The little guy, just trying to get a word in edgewise with the hotshots and the millionaires and the bigwigs. And what does he want for his massive donation to the president? Oh, nothing much:

He wants to tell Obama that as an electric car expert he believes the administration needs to push for a so-called “carbon tax” that would raise prices on oil-based fuels, making electric car prices more competitive.

He wants to ask Obama to increase his efforts to convince Congress to make electric-car rebates at the point of sale, not months later as part of a $7,500 tax incentive. He says he wants it even if Obama were to back down on increasing the incentive to $10,000.

And he says he wants to tell Obama to be more vigorous in standing up to opponents of electric cars and to support groups like Plug In America. “I can sell more cars,” says Scott, who specializes in electric vehicles, or EVs. “I am getting hammered in the press with all the anti-EV stuff.”

Oh, well, that’s actually not “nothing much” at all. That’s a radical realignment of our nation’s economic priorities and a series of policy choices that would massively harm the standard of living for virtually every single American. But hey: Paul Scott will sell more cars!

I’m not even mad. I’m impressed. Frankly, the $32k donation isn’t worth it if he wants to change Barack Obama’s mind: Scott’s paymasters and the wealthy backers of electric vehicles have already poured more lucre into the Obama war chest than our modern day Willy Loman could earn in ten lifetimes. But this kind of unquestioning—almost adoring, really—media coverage in one of the nation’s five largest newspapers? That’s worth way more than $32,000.

Someone at Nissan should give this guy a raise.

http://freebeacon.com/blog/cute-crony-capitalism/

Obama second-term campaign activity three times Bush’s

“This is my last election,” President Barack Obama assured Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last year, but the president’s post-reelection schedule suggests he has never stopped campaigning.

Since his second term began, Obama has headlined at least 15 fundraising events, according to an analysis of presidential events by The Daily Caller. That’s three times as many as President George W. Bush attended in the first six months of his second term, and a few more than President Bill Clinton — an inveterate campaigner who was widely condemned for spending too much time on politics during his presidency — attended in the same period of his second term.

Among the political events Obama has attended: a dinner at Alain Ducasse’s Adour restaurant to benefit Organizing for Action, the 501(c)(4) political organization that evolved out of Obama’s Organizing for America campaign nonprofit; a series of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee events at “Millionaire’s Row” residences in San Francisco’s Sea Cliff district, followed by fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee in Atherton, California and Dallas, Texas; a $10,000-a-plate luncheon [pdf] for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in Atlanta, Georgia; and this week, two DCCC fundraisers in Chicago, the second one at the Streeterville home of longtime Obama backers Bettylu and Paul Saltzman, during which the president expressed sympathy for the unemployed and joked, “We’ve got kind of an Obama cabal in this room.”

According to CBS, Obama has committed to attending at least five more DCCC events and a similar number of DSCC events. Also this week, First Lady of America Michelle Obama raised $600,000 in Boston for Democratic Senate candidate Ed Markey and what reporter Keith Koffler estimates to be more than half a million dollars for the DNC at a New York City event featuring haute couture icons Anna Wintour and Vera Wang.

By contrast, Bush attended just five political events by this point in his second term, according to records at an archive of the Bush-era White House web site. Clinton — who, unlike Obama, was facing Republican control of both houses of Congress — attended 13, according to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library.

The president’s perpetual campaign mode has begun to attract unwanted attention. Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer in March estimated to the New York Times that Obama had spent “the equivalent of five workweeks” on fundraising. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd has called new tactics by Organizing for America “selling access” to the White House. On Wednesday The New York Times wrapped Obama’s fundraising trips — many of which involve long-distance travel — into a general critique of Obama’s $180,000-an-hour use of Air Force One for less-than-vital business.

While Obama’s methods have been called into question, his goal — to win House and Senate seats for Democrats in 2014 — is clear.

“My job is to move the country forward, and I think we can best do that if Nancy Pelosi is Speaker,” Obama said in April during his appearance at the Sea Cliff mansion of Ann and Gordon Getty, addressing guests who according to a pool report were seated in “golden bamboo chairs” in a “two-story columned room with large French doors and ornate gold decoration.”

This week in Chicago, Obama reiterated that point, telling guests at the Saltzman home, “I could not be prouder of Nancy Pelosi and the work that she’s done and I could not be more anxious and eager to have her back as Speaker of the House.”

Obama’s logic may be sound. While it’s true that Bush (whose party had comfortable congressional majorities) gave less attention to legislative seats in his second term, it’s also true that he paid the price. The 2006 midterm elections ended in a rout for the Republicans, with Democrats taking both houses and ushering in the era of Pelosi dominance for which Obama now pines.

On the other hand, Clinton’s politicking, which was almost as energetic as Obama’s, didn’t achieve much. Although Democrats picked up handfuls of seats, the 1998 midterms left Republicans in charge of both houses of Congress. The divided government that resulted led to a period of relative piece, tax cuts, balanced budgets and the last economic boom in American history.

Obama’s position today is superficially better than Clinton’s was in 1997. The Democrats’ House minority (201 seats) is slightly less dire than it was in 1997 (198 seats), and the party has a majority in the Senate of 51 seats plus two independents who generally vote with the Democrats.

But the president is also facing a cascading series of scandals around the Benghazi terrorist attacks, IRS targeting of nonprofits opposed to the Democrats, an apparent fundraising shakedown of private companies by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and campaign of spying on journalists ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder.

None of these scandals are under control by conventional crisis-management standards, and in several cases the administration is still in headlong retreat, with new details surfacing on an almost-daily basis and no counternarratives coming out of the White House.

The White House press office did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/30/obama-second-term-campaign-activity-three-times-bushs/#ixzz2V5rqchys

Could the Obama Administration’s Next Scandal Be Brewing at the EPA?

With the continued Benghazi investigation, IRS political targeting and DOJ press surveillance, could a scandal at the EPA be the next shoe to droop for the Obama administration?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) been closely following the EPA’s misuse of private communication to conduct public business, and fees the agency has placed on conservative groups seeking information that they usual waive for media and watchdog groups. After successfully gaining access to former EPA Chief Lisa Jackson’s emails, CEI is now suing to gain access to the text messages of Gina McCarthy, the senior EPA official the President has nominated to now run the agency.

CEI’s Chris Horner joined “Wilkow” Thursday to discuss his organization’s request to access text messages sent by Jackson and McCarthy, and what they’re looking for.

“Where are these text messages? Are they really engaging in serial, coordinated, systematic document destruction in violation of criminal law?” he asked. “Because I have an affidavit in one of my lawsuits from NASA admitting that they are. OK, so this is not far-fetched, this is rather near-fetched.”

Horner noted that McCarthy is being promoted to an “enormous budget” and “enormous responsibility” and there are questions that need to be answered.

He went on: “The bigger issue the EPA is going to have to answer is: Are you just in contempt of Congress and violating the law by refusing to turn things over? Or are you really serially and systematically destroying records?”

“If so, these consequences have to go beyond people resigning to end the issue — we have to have real consequences because these are not their records, they’re ours,” Horner concluded.

CEI filed suit in federal court on Wednesday to compel the EPA to turn over McCarthy’s text messages sent after the EPA reportedly warned her that the text messages she was sending about members of Congress during hearings posed great risk to get and the agency.

“EPA must produce these records under the Freedom of Information Act and, in the process, admit one of two scenarios: Either EPA has maintained text messages as required by law but has chosen repeatedly to withhold them in the face of FOIA and congressional oversight requests for ‘all records’ or ‘all electronic records,’ or EPA has destroyed the texts, with possible criminal penalties under 18 U.S.C. § 2071 (Concealment, removal, or mutilation of federal records),” CEI announced in a press release.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/30/could-the-obama-administrations-next-scandal-be-brewing-at-the-epa/

Obama’s Dorothy Doctrine

Declaring the War on Terror over won’t make it so.

By Charles Krauthammer 

“This war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. . . . ”
— Barack Obama, May 23

Nice thought. But much as Obama would like to close his eyes, click his heels three times, and declare the War on Terror over, war is a two-way street.

That’’s what history advises: Two sides to fight it, two to end it. By surrender (World War II), by armistice (Korea and Vietnam), or when the enemy simply disappears from the field (the Cold War).

Obama says enough is enough. He doesn’t want us on “a perpetual wartime footing.” Well, the Cold War lasted 45 years. The War on Terror, twelve so far. By Obama’s calculus, we should have declared the Cold War over in 1958 and left Western Europe, our Pacific allies, the entire free world, to fend for itself — and consigned Eastern Europe to endless darkness.

John F. Kennedy summoned the nation to the burdens of the long twilight struggle. Obama, agonizing publicly about the awful burdens of command (which he twice sought in election), wants out. For him and for us.
He doesn’t just want to revise and update the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which many conservatives have called for. He wants to repeal it.

He admits that the AUMF establishes the basis both in domestic and international law to conduct crucial defensive operations, such as drone strikes. Why, then, abolish the authority to do what we sometimes need to do? Because that will make the war go away? Persuade our enemies to retire to their caves?

This is John Lennon, bumper-sticker foreign policy – “Imagine World Peace.” Obama pretends that the tide of war is receding. But it’s demonstrably not. It’s metastasizing to Mali, to the Algerian desert, to the North African states falling under the Muslim Brotherhood, to Yemen, to the savage civil war in Syria, now spilling over into Lebanon and destabilizing Jordan. Even Sinai, tranquil for 35 years, is descending into chaos.

It’s not war that’s receding. It’s America. Under Obama. And it is precisely in the power vacuum left behind that war is rising. Obama declares Assad must go. The same wish-as-policy fecklessness from our bystander president. Two years — and 70,000 dead — later, Obama keeps repeating the wish even as the tide of battle is altered by the new arbiters of Syria’s future — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. Where does every party to the Syrian conflict go on bended knee? To Moscow, as Washington recedes into irrelevance.

But the ultimate expression of Obama’s Dorothy Doctrine is Guantanamo. It must close. Must, mind you.

Okay. Let’s accept the dubious proposition that the Yemeni prisoners could be sent home without coming back to fight us. And that others could be convicted in court and put in U.S. prisons. Now the rub. Obama openly admits that “even after we take these steps one issue will remain — just how to deal with those Gitmo detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks but who cannot be prosecuted.”

Well, yes. That’s always been the problem with Gitmo. It’s not a question of geography. The issue is indefinite detention — whether at Gitmo, a Colorado supermax, or St. Helena. Can’t try ’em, can’t release ’em. Having posed the central question, what is Obama’s answer? “I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved.”

That’s it! I kid you not. He’s had four-plus years to think this one through — and he openly admits he’s got no answer.

Because there is none. Hence the need for Gitmo. Other wars end, at which point prisoners are repatriated. But in this war, the other side has no intention of surrender or armistice. They will fight until the caliphate is established or until jihadism is as utterly defeated as fascism and Communism. That’s the reason — the only reason — for the detention conundrum. There is no solution to indefinite detention when the detainees are committed to indefinite war.

Obama’s fantasies are twinned. He can no more wish the detention away than he can the war.

We were defenseless on 9/11 because, despite bin Laden’s open written declaration of war in 1996, we pretended for years that no war against us had even begun. Obama would return us to pre-9/11 defenselessness — casting Islamist terror as a law-enforcement issue and removing the legal basis for treating it as armed conflict — by pretending that the war is over.

It’s enough to make you weep.

http://nationalreview.com/article/349733/obamas-dorothy-doctrine-charles-krauthammer 

Gov’t Spending $32M on Housing for 1,300 AIDS Patients: Average $24,874 Each

  The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced it will spend $32 million to provide housing, life skills and job training for HIV/AIDS patients. 

“Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $32 million in grant awards to assist more than 1,300 extremely low-income persons and families living with HIV/AIDS annually,” HUD said in a press release on Thursday. 
A total of $32,336,685 will go to housing and rental assistance programs in 20 states.  On average, the 1,300 persons and families will receive $24,874.37 each.

“The grant awards will provide these households with a stable living environment, which is essential to accessing healthcare and HIV related services,” HUD said.  “In addition to housing assistance these grant programs will provide access to the needed supportive services in assisting beneficiary’s with a path to self-sufficiently such as life skills, job readiness services and employment training.”

The funding will be distributed through HUD’s Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS Program (HOPWA).

“These grants will provide our local partners with crucial funding that is necessary to provide individuals and families living with HIV/AIDS a place to call home,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan.

“The comfort of knowing that you have a roof over your head makes a huge difference in the well-being of families and gives hope to those who might otherwise end up living on the streets,” he said.

The top grants are going to Key West and San Francisco.  The city of Key West, Florida will receive $1,464,404 for its program that provides three housing units and rental assistance to 42 households for low-income people with HIV.  The program also provides nutritional and mental health services.

San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing is getting $1,461,622 for short-term rental assistance to 105 “rent burdened households.”

Many of the programs target persons with HIV/AIDS who are at a high risk of becoming homeless.  HUD said this initiative aligns with President Barack Obama’s “Opening Doors” strategic plan that “identifies housing as a key component to preventing the spread of HIV.”

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gov-t-spending-32m-housing-1300-aids-patients-average-24874-each

House panel: Report finds $50M for IRS conferences 

A government watchdog has found that the Internal Revenue Service spent about $50 million to hold at least 220 conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, according to a House committee.

That total included $4 million for an August 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., for which the agency did not negotiate lower room rates, even though that is standard government practice, according to a statement by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Instead, some of the 2,600 attendees received benefits, including baseball tickets and stays in presidential suites that normally cost $1,500 to $3,500 per night. In addition, 15 outside speakers were paid a total of $135,000 in fees, with one paid $17,000 to talk about "leadership through art," the House committee said.

The report by Treasury Department's inspector general, set to be released Tuesday, comes as the IRS already is facing bipartisan criticism after agency officials disclosed they had targeted tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to extra scrutiny.

Agency officials and the Obama administration have said that treatment was inappropriate. But the political tempest is showing no signs of ebbing and has put the White House on the defensive. Three congressional committees are investigating and a Justice Department criminal investigation is underway, and President Barack Obama has replaced the IRS's acting commissioner while two other top officials have stepped aside.

Asked for comment Sunday, Treasury spokeswoman Sabrina Siddiqui referred to a department statement Friday that said that since 2011, it has "increased scrutiny on all bureau travel and conferences and instituted stringent safeguards and policies."

IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge said Sunday that the number of large agency conferences with 50 or more participants fell from $37.6 million in the 2010 budget year to $4.9 million in 2012. The government's fiscal year begins Oct. 1 the previous calendar year.

On Friday, the new acting commissioner, Danny Werfel, released a statement on the forthcoming report criticizing the Anaheim meeting.

"This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era," Werfel said. "While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred."

Werfel, a former official at the White House Office of Management and Budget, said reducing excessive personal travel has been "a personal priority for me" and that "taxpayers should take comfort that a conference like this would not take place today."

Appearing Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union," the House committee chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., expressed skepticism.

"Understand that some of the things that they're saying, `Well, this wouldn't happen again,' they would still happen again," Issa said.

Issa's committee also released excerpts from interviews congressional investigators conducted last week with two IRS employees from the agency's Cincinnati office. The interviews, Issa contended, indicate that office was receiving direction from Washington, although that has not been proved so far.

The excerpts made available offered no direct evidence that the targeting was directed from Washington. But at least one of the IRS employees said they were told by a supervisor that the need to collect the reports came from Washington.

One of the workers also expressed skepticism that the Cincinnati office originated the screening without direction from Washington, according to the excerpts.

The interviews were conducted interviewed by Republican and Democratic aides on Issa's committee and also involved aides from both parties from the House Ways and Means Committee.

One of the employees was a lower-level worker while the other was higher ranked, said one congressional aide, but the committee did not release their names or titles.

The IRS Cincinnati office handles applications from around the country for tax-exempt status. A Treasury inspector general's report in May said employees there began searching for applications from tea party and conservative groups in their hunt for organizations that primarily do work related to election campaigns.

That May report blamed "ineffective management" for letting that screening occur for more than 18 months between 2010 and 2012. But that report - and three hearings by congressional committees - have produced no specific evidence that the Cincinnati workers were ordered by anyone in Washington to target conservatives.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, did not immediately provide a statement in response to the report or the transcript excerpts.

The latest report on IRS conferences will be the subject of a hearing Thursday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Werfel is scheduled to make his first congressional appearance as acting commissioner Monday when he appears Monday before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

According to congressional aides briefed by the inspector general's office, the IRS also did not formally seek competitive bids for the city where the agency's 2010 conference was held, for the event planner who assisted the agency, or for the speakers.

The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a confidential congressional briefing, said other benefits given to some attendees at the Anaheim IRS conference included vouchers for free drinks and some tickets to attend Angels baseball games.

"So they end up with free drinks, they ended up with tickets to games, basically kickbacks," Issa said on CNN.

Two videos produced by the IRS were shown at the Anaheim conference. In one, agency employees did a parody of "Star Trek" while dressed like the TV show's characters; the second shows more than a dozen IRS workers dancing on a stage. The two cost the agency more than $50,000 to make, aides said.

The lecturer who spoke about art through leadership produced six paintings while speaking with subjects that included Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, the rock singer Bono and the Statue of Liberty, the aides said.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_IRS_INVESTIGATION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-06-02-12-10-02

Integrity in a Post-Christian America

America is now called a post-Christian place; its government is overtly attacking Christian beliefs about birth control, abortion, and gay marriage.  The threat to these beliefs is a small though telling symptom of the larger social changes that, though little considered, are proceeding as traditional Judeo-Christian integrity departs. 

 The problem is, abandoning America's traditional religion discards its related moral behavior, too.  And societies without a strong moral order are very unpleasant places to live -- try Afghanistan, Somalia, or Mexico.


It's instructive to compare two dictionary definitions of "integrity" from the same source, Merriam-Webster, in 1943 and in 2013.


1943 definition: Moral soundness, honesty, purity, freedom from corrupting influences or practices. (Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, 1943)


2013 definition: Firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility.  (Free Merriam-Webster.com, 2013)


Both definitions agree on the avoidance of corruption.  But the older definition implicitly assumes a shared single standard of morality, while the current definition implicitly assumes the existence of more than one such, and thereby equates them.  The first was intended to reflect an objective standard applicable uniformly to all; the second, multiple standards of equal validity.


In 1943, integrity meant one's adherence to Judeo-Christian values; today, it means adherence to...something.  Without explanation, we really don't know what.  We've shifted from an engraved stone tablet standard to a rubber ruler.  When we now praise someone's integrity, we are praising his adherence to an unspecified system -- that is, we praise his stubbornness, not his values.  The word "integrity" has lost its older meaning.


Some accuse President Obama of lacking integrity because he doesn't tell the truth.  In the middle of the last century, they would have been correct; today, they're unfair.


The president promised that ObamaCare would help the deficit, save money, provide better care, and allow all to retain their existing insurance.  None of those are the case.  But under the situational ethics of moral relativism, the president said what he believed necessary to pass his program through Congress.  He saw obtaining that passage as a greater good than stating unhelpful facts.  And he was successful; ObamaCare is now law.  Under our present definition of integrity, the president showed exactly that in doing whatever was necessary to achieve the good as he saw it.


Scandals have arisen now from the president's use of government agencies against opponents of all stripes: media, Tea Party, GOP political donors, conservative non-profits, etc.  He faces significantly less scandal for his use of government agencies against Jewish and Catholic institutions via ObamaCare, but morally and legally, those differ little from the foregoing cases.


That sums up the problem with our replacement for Judeo-Christian morality: one may show integrity, as newly defined, by doing whatever one wishes to do -- with moral justification usually available, as when the president claims the right to kill whoever he decides is a threat.  And he's happy to use the entire resources of the U.S. Government in furtherance of his goals, at taxpayer expense.


Obama is entitled; he was elected; he "won."  Therefore, his goals, not the Ten Commandments, define what is moral.  That being the case, he has a duty to protect his goals with the entire resources of government.  Setting the IRS and the Justice Department onto his opponents is necessary and proper.  In simpler times, this was described as "might makes right."  It's all in the words you select, right?


 In the end, there is no law without a lawgiver.  If your lawgiver is the Creator, as the Declaration of Independence has it, then both you and the state are subject to that law.  That's what provides the people their right to correct or replace the government when it departs from that law, as the Declaration specifically provides.


When the Creator is not acknowledged as Supreme Lawgiver, none is left to fulfill that role but the State.  The state then decides everything and has a duty to enforce its decisions while the people must give up their right to correct or replace the government.  That justifies the government's taking any action it deems necessary, just as President Obama has repeatedly claimed.  All power originates in government in this scenario, recalling Mao Zedong of Communist China's remark: "All political power grows in the barrel of a gun."


It's notable that Communist China was and remains among the most corrupt governments on earth.  And in a post-Christian, and therefore post-constitutional, America, that is becoming the only available model remaining.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/integrity_in_a_post-christian_america.html#ixzz2V5bkpm6P

Former IRS commissioner Shulman’s wife works for liberal group fighting open campaign spending

Former Internal Revenue Service commissioner Douglas H. Shulman, a frequent White House guest during the period when the IRS was targeting conservative nonprofits, is married to the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, an “organization dedicated to sweeping campaign reform that aims to dramatically reduce the role of big special interest money in American politics.”

The IRS is under fire for improperly scrutinizing the tax-exempt nonprofit status of conservative groups between 2010 and 2012, demanding conservative training materials, personal information on conservative college interns and even the content of religious groups’ prayers. IRS supporters have defended the beleaguered agency by railing against outside spending and special interest money supposedly pumped into the 2012 campaign by conservative benefactors.

One of those defenders is the group of which Shulman’s spouse is an executive.

Shulman’s wife Susan L. Anderson is the senior program advisor for the Washington-based nonprofit organization Public Campaign, which claims that it “is laying the foundation for reform by working with a broad range of organizations, including local community groups, around the country that are fighting for change and national organizations whose members are not fairly represented under the current campaign finance system.”

Earlier this month, when news broke of the targeting scandal broke, Public Campaign president and CEO Nick Nyhart belittled the concerns of disenfranchised conservatives.

“There are legitimate questions to be asked about political groups that are hiding behind a 501(c)4 status,” Nyhart said in a statement provide to ABC. “It’s unfortunate a few bad apples at the IRS will make it harder for those questions to be asked without claims of bias.”

Shulman, who did not deny in congressional testimony that he visited the White House more than 100 times, met Anderson at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, which they both attended. The couple own a house in Washington, DC’s tony Embassy Row neighborhood which they bought for $1.3 million in 2003 and is now estimated by Zillow to be worth $1.8 million.

Public Campaign receives “major funding” from the pro-Obamacare alliance Health Care for America NOW!, which is comprised of the labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the progressive activist organization Move On, among others.

“Together we are building a network of national and state-based efforts to create a powerful national force for federal and state campaign reform,” according to Public Campaign’s website.

Public Campaign also receives funding from the liberal Ford Foundation, the Common Cause Education Fund, and Barbra Streisand’s The Streisand Foundation, among other foundations and private donors.

Public Campaign’s ninth-floor 1133 19th Street NW office in Washington, D.C. is located on the same floor as the liberal groups Common Cause and Center for Progressive Leadership.

Calls to Shulman’s residence and Anderson’s extension at Public Campaign were not returned.
 

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/31/former-irs-commissioner-shulmans-wife-works-for-liberal-group-fighting-open-campaign-spending/#ixzz2V5jeE2Pu

IRS actually fears man who doesn't file taxes

'Would blow them out of the water if this became public knowledge'

Amid an unusual spotlight on IRS conduct, a Colorado businessman contends his case is one the government particularly wants to keep hidden, because it could cause the whole federal agency to self-destruct.

Jeff Maehr, a Colorado chiropractor who has engaged in a number of business ventures, including PureHealthSystems.com, admits he has refused to file federal income tax returns since 2002, but he says the IRS is afraid to press criminal charges against him.

“They don’t want this to go to court, because there is so much information there that would blow them out of the water if this became public knowledge,” Maehr claimed.

“They are scared to death to bring this in front of a jury and give it a public hearing,” he said. “Instead, they know the IRS goes through administrative processes and ignorant judges and courts who all play this little game.”

Maehr insists he is not a “tax protester.”

“It’s not that I’m unwilling to pay my taxes. In fact, I acknowledge the principle of taxes is constitutional,” Maehr said. “However, I only want to pay the taxes that I owe.”

As WND previously reported, the U.S. Supreme Court docketed a case by Maehr in which he contended that while the government has constitutional authority to tax, the IRS has engaged in “unlawful, unconstitutional, unfair and biased” practices to declare salaries and wages to be income without any legal basis. Earlier this month, however, the high court declined to hear his case.

Maehr said there are questions he has asked the IRS that the agency has yet to answer.

“I am not talking about the answer given on their website, I am talking about a specific law or statute that defines income as wages,” he said. “They apparently cannot produce it, or they would’ve done so already.”
Maehr said that in 2007, the IRS attempted to gather the information from various sources such as PayPal and his mortgage company to prepare a $280,000 assessment it determined he owed for 2003 to 2006.
However, despite its claims, the IRS has made no apparent effort to hold Maehr accountable for refusing to pay.

Additionally, the agency has not attempted to go after Maehr for income from 2007 to 2011.

Maehr noted that the federal government’s unwillingness to prosecute him is particularly noteworthy because it has had no problem pressing charges against high-profile people such as actor Wesley Snipes.

Snipes was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison for failing to file tax returns for 1999 to 2001. The three years are a fraction of the time Maehr has refused to file.

However, Maehr says he has a paper trail that has prevented the IRS from going after him as it did Snipes.
“There are certain parameters they have to follow when attempting to prosecute somebody for willful failure to file,” Maehr said. “They have to be able to prove that I knew I had a duty to file and I didn’t file.

“However, my paper trail clearly shows that I do not believe I had a duty to file and the reasons for my believing that – and here’s where I have asked the questions, and I want them to answer and show me where that duty is in the law in the Internal Revenue Code.”

Maehr insisted that for the IRS to prosecute him, it would have to answer his questions in court.
“They would need to prove their case in court that wages are income and they can’t possibly make the case,” he said.

Circular logic?
Maehr asserts the courts and IRS are engaging in circular logic.

“The IRS attempts to argue in court cases that my argument is frivolous. However, in each of these instances there has never been any evidence entered into court,” he said. “They then turned around and cited previous rulings as to why my case is frivolous. Essentially they are saying it is frivolous simply because they say so.”
He said, for example, courts say his case is frivolous “because everybody knows that when you get some finances for working from somebody that’s income and that’s all profit.”

“However, they don’t want to look at the original intent of the law. They don’t want to look at the Constitution, indirect or direct taxation or any of the facts. Instead they simply ignore it all,” he said.

Maehr began researching the issue in 2002 and discovered legal cases indicating that the definition of income excludes wages and salaries.

Asking for help to clear up his confusion, Maehr asked the IRS to provide the statutory authority that wages were, in fact, income. Instead, he says the IRS simply pointed to its own statements to back up its assertions.
“I started writing some letters to the IRS and asking them some very basic questions,” Maehr explained. “I told them there appears to be this question and I would honestly like an answer since a particular law would say something, while on the other hand, they were saying something completely different.

“I simply asked them to please clarify their statements. However, it was always non-answers coming back, and finally they sent me a letter saying they were not going to respond to any of my questions anymore, and if I wanted to find an answer I would have to find it in the courts.”

So that is exactly what Maehr did.

However, he soon discovered that the courts were unwilling to address his claims, despite his clearly having standing.

A copy of a ruling from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, before judges Michael Murphy, Bobby Baldock and Harris Hartz, was included in Maehr’s filing. The ruling appears to support Maehr’s argument, because the judges, without responding to his questions and challenges to the constitutionality of the issue, dismissed the claims as “frivolous” and ruled, without support its argument, that Maehr’s petition “contains no valid challenges.”

In his petition, Maehr cites a wide range of historical court and congressional statements that back up his assertions regarding taxes. For instance, Black’s Law Dictionary defines income tax as being “a tax on the yearly profits arising from property, professions, trades and offices.”

Maehr argues based on this and other references that wages are not “profits” but are instead the simple exchange of labor for money. To bolster his assertion, he notes that while businesses frequently pay taxes on their profits, they do not pay taxes on their expenses.

Likewise, the labor of an individual is the “expense” required to obtain the money, therefore it is not “profit,” and to declare otherwise would subject corporations such as Sears to “income taxes” on 100 percent of their cash register receipts, he argues.

The U.S. Supreme Court itself said an 1883 case, “It has been well said that, the property which every man has in his own labor, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable.”

In 1969, the high court ruled: “Whatever may constitute income, therefore, must have the essential feature of gain to the recipient. This was true when the 16th amendment became effective. … If there is no gain, there is no income. … [Income] is not synonymous with receipts.”

And a 1946 case stated, “Reasonable compensation for labor or services rendered is not profit.”

Despite these references and the refusal of other courts to consider the merits of his case, the Supreme Court likewise turned down his petition.

Maehr said while he understands that the Supreme Court typically refuses to hear about 95 percent of the cases it receives, he believes his case met the criteria established because it involves an important issue of interpretation of the Constitution and federal law that directly affects every American.

“Based on their own criteria this is exactly the type of case that they should hear. It involves a constitutional issue and addresses a large segment of the population. A lot of their previous cases over the years and decades have always focused on constitutional law issues and due process.”

“With them refusing to hear this case and considering all the facts, they have basically stated I don’t get due process rights through the courts and I am not allowed to defend myself against the IRS. They will not hear it, none of the courts are willing to hear the case and adjudicate it.”

Maehr says while the news is focused on the IRS targeting of conservative groups, critics of the agency are missing a golden opportunity.

“The recent scandals coming out about the IRS shows the whole agency is corrupt, and what’s amazing is issues such as mine are not being jumped on,” he said. “What they have done with the targeting of the conservative groups pales in insignificance when compared to forcing every man, woman and child to pay a tax that they are not legally and constitutionally liable for.”

http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/businessman-irs-fears-prosecuting-me/

Arbitrary Process is the Ability to Arbitrarily Destroy

As Mark Steyn has so adroitly pointed out in his columns of late, the "Process is the Penalty".   May I take Mr. Steyn's observation a few steps further. 


In the mode of the "if p, then q" string of logic, may we thread together other observations with legal decisions to arrive at a logical conclusion?


John Marshall, in his McCulloch v Maryland noted in his landmark decision that the "ability to tax is the ability to destroy." It is regrettable that Mr. Marshall didn't realize such when he voted to ratify the Constitution in the Virginia convention.  Anti Federalists Patrick Henry and George Mason cautioned that allowing Federal taxation to operate side by side with State taxation could be destructive to State power. Alas. however, as Chief Justice, Marshall finally did come to his wits and acknowledged the destructive power of taxation.


As of late, we have the recent Judge Roberts ruling on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Chief Justice Roberts decided that a "penalty" is really a tax, or may be considered so when appropriate, or convenient.

Thus a logical conclusion presents itself.


A governmental "process" is actually a "penalty" as noted by Mr. Steyn. And, because  "penalty" is "tax" as ruled by Judge Roberts, a conclusion can be drawn.


"Process is Tax". 


Now to meld Judge Marshall's ruling into the mix. "Taxation is the ability to destroy".  We now have the grand conclusion. If "process is penalty,"  if "penalty is tax," and if "taxation is the ability to destroy," it must follow that; "Process is the ability to destroy."


Large government may destroy by taxation and by required process.When the requirement to suffer the process is arbitrary, government then may also destroy arbitrarily. This is the great cautionary tale that is punctuated by the recent IRS arbitrary actions, and to be bipartisan, the Nixon IRS actions of the Watergate era.


"Arbitrary Process is the Ability to Arbitrarily Destroy."


And as the proponents of larger government use as their defense, "we can't know what is going on, it's too big", we ponder their ability to find time to engage in the arbitrary and capricious rather than the objective duties of their posts. 


If only Mr. Shulman, and Ms. Lerner had been just rolling easter eggs at the White House, or better yet, dutifully executing their positions in a fair and equitable manner.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/arbitrary_process_is_the_ability_to_arbitrarily_destroy.html#ixzz2V5mrEmR9

How Did the Educated Become So Ignorant?

At present, the United States is a house divided against itself. It is a nation falling into disarray as two groups of people--those who know our nation's history and those who don't--stare blankly into each other's eyes with no commonality of which to speak. 

And these blank stares can be between the educated just as easily as they can be between the uneducated. In fact, when it comes to U.S. history, one couldn't be blamed for asking how the educated in this country became so ignorant.

This ignorance was birthed when radicals like Saul Alinsky, William Ayers, and their comrades struck out against our education system in the late 1960s and early 70s. As a result, it's now commonplace for a college freshman to know many ways to prove that all cultures are equal, but very few examples of what Thomas Jefferson or John Adams contributed to the founding of our nation. 

The posterity of Alinsky and Ayers have carried this war against education into the 21st century, poisoning graduate studies with a bait and switch tactic; history students study the various methods of studying history but rarely study history itself. 

In other words, a student pursuing a M.A. or a PhD in military history may spend the majority of his or her time studying the methodology of military history and even the historiography of certain military engagements, like the TET Offensive (1968), the U.S. POW experience in Japan (1945), or the War of 1812 (1812-14). Yet, they might never study the way the American forces turned TET back on itself, or the misery which U.S. POWs endured for our nation's sake, or the glorious morning after the Battle of Fort McHenry (1814) when Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" after seeing that our flag had survived the British bombardment.

It is the left's great ruse. A student can graduate with a 4.0 GPA in U.S. history and know less about history than the "uneducated" citizen who buys and reads good history books on his or her own time.

Because of this, we don't know ourselves, we don't know each other, and we don't know what it means to be an American.

When I was doing my M.A., I used to walk through the halls of the university talking with Dr. Bruce Brasington; he would say to me, "We have to know where we've been in order to know where we're going." As it stands right now, our nation appears largely comprised of citizens who have no idea where we have been and, consequently, not the least idea where we're going.

Didn't Thomas Jefferson write Common Sense? No wait, maybe that was Thomas Paine...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/05/28/How-Did-The-Educated-Become-So-Ignorant