Current Events - June 24, 2013

PK'S NOTE: This is my surprised face. 

Wow: Nearly All Americans Living Paycheck-to-Paycheck

The economy isn't getting better and the unemployment numbers we keep seeing are far from accurate. According to CNN Money, 76 percent of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Roughly three-quarters of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with little to no emergency savings, according to a survey released by Bankrate.com Monday.
Fewer than one in four Americans have enough money in their savings account to cover at least six months of expenses, enough to help cushion the blow of a job loss, medical emergency or some other unexpected event, according to the survey of 1,000 adults. Meanwhile, 50% of those surveyed have less than a three-month cushion and 27% had no savings at all.
 "It's disappointing," said Greg McBride, Bankrate.com's senior financial analyst. "Nothing helps you sleep better at night than knowing you have money tucked away for unplanned expenses."
Even more disappointing; The savings rates have barely changed over the past three years, even though a larger percentage of consumers report an increase in job security, a higher net worth and an overall better financial situation.

Meanwhile, a new Rasmussen Report shows the majority want the government to cut spending in order to spur economic growth. 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/24/wow-nearly-all-americans-living-paychecktopaycheck-n1626180

Obama's climate plan seen putting heat on power plants, appliances

President Barack Obama is preparing to bypass Congress on climate change and use his executive powers on everything from power plants to energy standards for appliances.

The president will outline the climate plan Tuesday in a highly anticipated speech, and though official details are still under wraps, a top White House official said last week the president’s agenda will focus broadly on Environmental Protection Agency regulations, energy efficiency and renewable power.

In a White House Web video released Saturday, Obama said he’ll use the speech to “lay out my vision for where I believe we need to go — a national plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change and lead global efforts to fight it.”

The White House plan is expected to rely on a series of executive actions that various federal agencies can take to address greenhouse gas emissions. The president said he would make such a move in his State of the Union address in February if Congress failed to act.

While the climate speech isn’t likely to touch on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the controversial project that has spawned a massive opposition campaign among the president’s liberal base, it is expected to involve these measures:

1. Power plant clampdown
All eyes are on EPA, the federal agency in charge of writing and implementing what are likely to be some of the most controversial regulations in the president’s second term: limiting carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants.

Heather Zichal, the White House energy adviser, suggested Wednesday that EPA is committed to moving forward with climate regulations for power plants, particularly from the fleet of coal-fired plants that have traditionally provided the bulk of the country’s electricity. Power plants are the biggest source of U.S. carbon emissions.

“Going forward, obviously the EPA is going to be working very hard on rules that focus specifically on greenhouse gas emissions from the coal sector. They’re doing a lot of important work in that space,” she said in a speech in which she promised “meaningful action” in Obama’s second term.

While Zichal would not offer details, observers and former Obama administration officials say the plan will call for EPA to go beyond its current efforts to limit carbon emission from new power plants to implement rules on power generating stations that are already in operation.

One leading environmentalist who has been in contact with the White House is “totally confident” that the administration is preparing to move forward with regulations for existing plants — a move that green groups see as crucial in the fight against climate change.

The plans for EPA regulations aren’t entirely new: Regulators, lawyers, lobbyists and Washington insiders have been parsing the Clean Air Act’s options for regulating carbon emissions from power plants since cap and trade went down in flames in Congress. But the government’s efforts have been on hold since early last year, when EPA officials abruptly shut down talk of new regulations.

Any new restrictions will surely trigger a legal fight. Power companies and states that will be hit hardest by the regulations are certain to drag the rules through the courts and could delay their implementation for years.
But Obama doesn’t appear to be backing away from the contentious issue, as his speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Wednesday showed. “Our dangerous carbon emissions have come down, but we know we have to do more, and we will do more,” Obama told the crowd.

And despite the lack of action so far in his second term, many climate action advocates remain hopeful Obama is now ready to make a move.

“I think the president does genuinely care about making progress on climate change. He thinks it’s an urgent priority for him and the world,” said Jason Bordoff, a former top energy adviser to Obama.
A Democrat close to the president said Obama has lots he would like to do on climate but faces significant political hurdles.

“The question is, what’s the most he can do with executive mechanisms like the EPA? I think he’s being very pragmatic about it,” the Democrat said.

2. Sun, wind, earth
The president is expected to set a new goal for expanding renewable energy on public land, a move that would build on the nearly 60 percent increase in renewable electricity produced from wind, solar and geothermal sources from 2008 to 2012.

Any new green power goals would build on Obama’s earlier target of installing 10 gigawatts of renewable energy projects on public land by the end of 2012 — which the Interior Department met ahead of schedule.
Implementing the new target would largely fall to the Interior Department, which could make available federal lands in the West and encourage developers to build new wind farms and solar power plants.

A former administration official also said the president could include measures to promote offshore wind. While offshore wind power has been growing in Europe, the U.S. has yet to build a single project.

Opponents say renewables aren’t as dependable as coal and other traditional power plants and that efforts to push clean energy at the expense of coal, gas and nuclear power will drive up energy costs for consumers and business, choking off the modest economic recovery.

“I think this is absolutely crazy,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday. “Why would you want to increase the cost of energy and kill more American jobs at a time when the American people are still asking where are the jobs? Clear enough?”

3. Lamps and refrigerators
Long considered the most cost-effective measure to fight climate change, energy efficiency may be the least controversial of the proposals, although crafting effective rules is a complex task.

Observers say the president could call for the finalization of a slew of Energy Department appliance standards, several of which are long overdue. There are four appliance standards, for example, that have been at the White House Office of Management and Budget for more than a year.

The president could continue his ongoing push to make the federal government — the country’s largest energy user — more efficient. Obama has made improving the energy efficiency of the federal government a top priority. He signed an executive order in 2009, for example, that requires agencies to set goals for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, improve efficiency and reduce fuel consumption.

And energy efficiency advocates plan to watch the EPA rulemaking process closely for signs that states will be given flexibility to meet the agency’s greenhouse gas emissions guidelines by improving efficiency.

“If EPA were to propose regulations on existing power plants, the agency could allow a significant amount of flexibility for energy efficiency to count in meeting the rule,” said Rodney Sobin, senior policy manager at the Alliance to Save Energy.

A commission formed by the Alliance to Save Energy put forward a plan last year to “double U.S. energy productivity by 2030,” a goal the president adopted in his State of the Union speech. Among other things, the plan, which could serve as a road map for Obama’s efficiency proposals, calls for reforming federal efficiency tax incentives and strengthening building codes.

Obama may also take a cue from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a panel of scientists and engineers that released a report in March at the president’s request outlining a second-term climate strategy. The council called on Obama to “focus on national preparedness for climate change” and remove regulatory roadblocks for clean energy development.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/obamas-climate-plan-seen-putting-heat-on-power-plants-appliances-93174.html#ixzz2X8w6wdfL

The Great Bugout

Obama’s retreat from the Middle East

Barack Obama’s foreign policy has one core principle: Get the United States out of the Middle East wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he “inherited” from George W. Bush and avoid repeating those mistakes. There have been other themes sounded by the White House, most notably the “Pacific pivot,” but backing out of perceived military overcommitments in the Muslim world has been the prime directive.

 

Unfortunately for the president, the worsening situation in Syria is raising doubts about the wisdom and universal applicability of this principle, even among the most resolutely war-weary. Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist with the uncanny ability to reduce every issue to its high-school essence, recently noted how “Bill” (i.e., ex-President Clinton, now acting as “Secretary of ’Splaining Stuff”) has had to warn “Barry” (our current commander in chief) that he was looking “like a total wuss” on Syria. And while making deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes “be the face of the Syria plan,” the president was off at “an LGBT Pride Month celebration, a Father’s Day luncheon and a reception for the WNBA championship Indiana Fever [women’s] basketball team.”

In sum, even the president’s most ardent supporters are beginning to wonder whether the Obama retreat has gone too far. It’s a good time to ask the quintessential Ronald Reagan question: Are you better off than you were four years ago? Or rather, is the United States in a better position in the Middle East today than it was when Obama replaced Bush? Not to kill the suspense, but we’re much worse off​—​no better liked, no longer feared, regarded as an increasingly inconstant ally or as an enemy prone to blink. The simple facts make the case.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/great-bugout_736868.html?utm_campaign=Washington+Examiner&utm_source=washingtonexaminer.com&utm_medium=referral#

Passing the Gang of Eight Bill to Find Out What Is In It

The race is on. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, with Republican Senator Marco Rubio's approval, is preparing to rush through the Gang of Eight's 1200 page amnesty legislation today by shutting down debate. Not surprisingly, according to Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, nobody has actually read the thing.

“The vote tomorrow is not a vote on just the Corker-Hoeven amendment. The vote tomorrow at 5:30 pm is a vote on Majority Leader Reid’s procedural motion to shut down debate on a 1,200-page substitute bill no one has read. The Corker-Hoeven amendment no longer exists as a standalone proposal. The amendment and the bill have been merged into a single 1,200-page substitute proposal. They are now one and the same," Sessions said in a statement. "And the Majority Leader’s motion will stifle amendments and accelerate the vote on final passage before anyone has vetted the modified legislation."
"Senator Rubio said he wouldn’t support a process that was rushed and that was not transparent. I hope that he, and all members who believe in open process, will vote against Majority Leader Reid’s motion to silence debate on a bill no one has read. And I would further issue a challenge to the sponsors of this bill: if your proposal is so good, then why not commit to extensive, open debate on it? Why do we have to pass this out of here before Members go home to face their constituents over July 4th? Whose interests do we serve?”

Sound familiar?  

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is ripping the Gang of Eight at Breitbart today:

Just like they did with Obamacare, some in Congress intend to “Pelosi” the amnesty bill. They’ll pass it in order to find out what’s in it. And just like the unpopular, unaffordable Obamacare disaster, this pandering, rewarding-the-rule-breakers, still-no-border-security, special-interests-ridden, 24-lb disaster of a bill is not supported by informed Americans.
I am an ardent supporter of legal immigration. I’m proud that our country is so desirable that it has been a melting pot making a diverse people united as the most exceptional nation on earth for over two centuries. But I join every American with an ounce of common sense insisting that any discussion about immigration must center on a secure border. The amnesty bill before the Senate is completely toothless on border security.
It's beyond disingenuous for anyone to claim that a vote for this bill is a vote for security.  

 

Senator Rubio said he wouldn’t support a process that was rushed and that was not transparent. I hope that he, and all members who believe in open process, will vote against Majority Leader Reid’s motion to silence debate on a bill no one has read. And I would further issue a challenge to the sponsors of this bill: if your proposal is so good, then why not commit to extensive, open debate on it? Why do we have to pass this out of here before Members go home to face their constituents over July 4th? Whose interests do we serve?”

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/24/passing-the-gang-of-eight-bill-to-find-out-what-is-in-it-n1626127 

 

10 Problems with the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill
The immigration debate barrels ahead in the Senate this week—and the Gang of Eight wants you to believe it’s a done deal.

The media and many Senators have been trumpeting a new amendment to the bill by Senators Bob Corker (R-TN), John Hoeven (R-ND) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), saying it would fix the border security holes in the original legislation. But Heritage experts have explained why the amendment is deeply flawed and “does not even promise a reduction in illegal immigration.”

The new border-security language isn't the only change. When the revised bill was released Friday afternoon, it had ballooned to 1,190 pages. Our colleagues at Heritage Action spent the weekend combing through the bill for other changes. Several sweetheart deals are included in the new bill text, such as special treatment for Alaskan seafood processing and $1.5 billion for youth job training.

Today, the U.S. Senate will vote at 5:30 p.m. to end debate. That's typical Washington—rush to pass a bill before lawmakers can find out what is in it.

To help you understand what's at stake, the Heritage Immigration and Border Security Reform Task Force released a paper detailing the top 10 concerns about the bill. Here is an infographic you can share with some of the highlights.



 http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/24/morning-bell-10-problems-with-the-gang-of-eight-immigration-bill/?roi=echo3-16058811475-13347261-2496435a1631c235d95da81e94e83af8&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

New amendment adds jobs bill to Gang of Eight immigration plan

Opponents of the Gang of Eight immigration bill have spent the weekend looking for hard-to-find changes in a piece of legislation that was substantially re-written by the Hoeven-Corker amendment. But there’s one big change that’s right out in the open — impossible to miss, in fact.

The original Gang bill ended with a section designated Title IV, which was headlined REFORMS TO NON-IMMIGRANT VISA PROGRAMS. The Hoeven-Corker version of the bill added a Title V, with the headline JOBS FOR YOUTH. The measure would provide $1.5 billion in the next two years to provide jobs for Americans between the ages of 16 and 24. It was originally pushed by Democratic Sen. Bernard Sanders, who wanted to come to the aid of young workers who were “hard hit by the Wall Street-caused recession.” Now, Sanders says immigration reform will further damage youth job prospects.

In the few days of Senate debate over the Gang of Eight bill, Sanders delivered several floor speeches that were almost bitterly critical of the legislation’s economic effects. The bill will cost jobs and reduce the standard of living of millions of low-skilled Americans, Sanders argued. His was the most vocal and persistent criticism of the bill from the left.

So how to make him happy, or at least less unhappy, with the legislation? Allow him to put in a few features of his own. A press release from Sanders’ office put it this way: “Sanders had argued that helping unemployed American young people was the least Congress should do in a bill that allows college students from around the world to take jobs that young Americans would otherwise perform.”

According to Sanders, each state would receive a minimum of $7.5 million to run a summer jobs program for young people in 2014 and 2015. States with high youth unemployment would receive a lot more. Many of the bill’s provisions are based on President Obama’s American Jobs Act, which Congress never passed. Sanders claims it would be paid for by “imposing a temporary $10 fee on employers who hire guest workers and international workers who receive green cards.”

Sanders’ amendment is entirely consistent with positions he has taken over many years. The only odd thing is that his proposal would be included in an amendment offered by two Republicans, John Hoeven and Bob Corker. Do they endorse Sanders’ policy positions?

On the one hand, a critic could ask what business lawmakers have recycling provisions from the American Jobs Act as new additions to a sweeping new immigration reform bill. On the other hand, one could argue that the Sanders addition is an attempt to counter some of the economic damage the bill’s sponsors will not admit it will inflict. In any event, Sanders’ project is likely to be part of the massive bill that wins Senate approval by the end of the week.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/new-amendment-adds-jobs-bill-to-gang-of-eight-immigration-plan/article/2532293

Hollywood Gets Special Breaks in Senate Immigration Bill

You can add Hollywood to the long list of industries and special interests securing carve-outs and favors in the Corker Amendment to the Senate immigration bill. Film studios and record companies already receive preferential treatment for visa applications. The Corker Amendment, however, goes even further and, in specific circumstances, waives any fees studios have to pay for these applications. These fees are used to underwrite immigration enforcement.  

Under current law, celebrities, athletes and people of extraordinary ability can apply for a special visa, designated as "O" or "P" to enter the US. The USCIS, tasked with internal immigration enforcement, is required to process these applications within 14 days. The Senate immigration bill continues this preferential treatment. A new provision in the Corker Amendment, authored by VT Sen. Pat Leahy, however, would also waive all fees if these applications weren't processed within 14 days. The fees are not insignificant and can total around $1,500. The fees are used to fund the USCIS's immigration enforcement. 

Sen. Leahy, it bears remembering, played himself in at least one recent Batman movie. 

In the months after enactment of the Senate bill, the USCIS is likely to be flooded with both visa and provisional status applications. Rock stars and other celebrities will not only stay at the front of the application line, but will be financially protected if the flood of applications causes them delays. 

There are possibly other special benefits for the film and recording industry tucked into the Corker Amendment. The 1,200 page bill was released late Friday, providing just around 72 hours for Senators and staff to digest its consequences before the Senate holds its critical vote. 

The full impact of the Corker Amendment won't be understood until long after the Senate has voted on the measure. Yet again, the Senate will vote on a bill "to find out what's in it." 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2013/06/23/hollywood-gets-special-breaks-in-senate-immigration-bill

WSJ: IRS scandal not a closed case

Rep. Elijah Cummings tried to short-circuit his committee’s probe into the IRS scandal by releasing the full transcript of an interview with a mid-level manager, which the ranking Democrat argued made the investigation “case closed.” National Review’s Eliana Johnson argues in today’s Wall Street Journal that the only case that’s closed is that Cummings is running interference for the IRS and the White House.  Not only does the testimony of John Shaefer not answer the questions about the extent of the scandal, Shaefer didn’t provide any potential answers at all:

Given the media coverage that the tea party was receiving, Mr. Shafer deemed the application a “high profile” matter and alerted his managers to its existence. Shortly thereafter, according to his testimony, lawyers in the IRS’s Washington, D.C., office said, “We want to look at the case.” On the evidence of the Washington office’s interest in that initial case, Mr. Shafer said IRS agents in Cincinnati then held the applications of tea-party groups until they were given “further direction” from D.C.

Case closed, according to Mr. Cummings, who wrote in a letter to Mr. Issa: “These statements by the screening group manager appear to directly contradict your allegations of political motivation.”

If Mr. Shafer or Mr. Cummings could read the minds of IRS officials in Washington, that might be true. In reality, Mr. Shafer was unable to say why officials in Washington were so interested in the tea-party cases or whether the officials’ interest was politically motivated.
“Did you have an understanding at the time about what the reason was for sending the cases [to Washington] for review?” investigators asked him. “No,” he responded. They pressed further. “Do you have personal knowledge of the motivations of Washington and how they worked the tea party cases?” “I do not,” Mr. Shafer said.

Johnson also points out that a case-closed conclusion ignores the information in other testimony that has already been conducted before the House Oversight Committee. That includes very troubling recollections from Elizabeth Hofacre, which we have excerpted at length here, but also from Gary Muthert, who testified that the IRS headquarters in Washington “wanted some [Tea Party] cases,” for purposes unknown. Shaefer certainly didn’t provide any answers to those questions, nor did he pretend to do so, unlike Cummings.
Johnson concludes with a few more questions that need answering:

Who at the IRS, for instance, developed the intrusive and exhaustive questions that were sent to the tea-party groups? Why did so many of those groups have to wait years for their applications to be processed, and why are many more still waiting? Who specifically were the IRS officials in Washington directing the Cincinnati agents targeting the tea-party organizations?
If the House Oversight Committee can overlook the distractions thrown up by one of its members, the answers may prove illuminating about the way Washington has worked during the Obama administration.

Indeed. And it will also be illuminating to see how many more Democrats on Oversight want to turn themselves into political human shields for the oh-so-sympathetic IRS. The fact that Cummings tried to do so makes it look as though the IRS isn’t the end of this particular road; otherwise, why try to end the probe with a stunt like this? Who benefits from trying to end scrutiny of the IRS’ political targeting? I don’t see much upside for Cummings if the problem stays isolated within that agency.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/24/wsj-irs-scandal-not-a-closed-case/

Supreme Court raises bar for affirmative action in college admissions

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed affirmative action to survive in college admissions but imposed a tough legal standard, ruling that schools must prove that there are “no workable race-neutral alternatives” to achieve diversity on campus.

While the ruling was not a sweeping pronouncement on the future of affirmative action, it amounts to a warning to colleges nationwide that the courts will treat race-conscious admissions policies with a high degree of skepticism.

By a 7-1 vote, with one justice recusing herself, the court sent a case about the University of Texas admissions policy back to a federal appeals court for review — the Supreme Court’s equivalent of a grade of Incomplete.

The case was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white woman who applied to the university in 2008 and was denied, and claimed that her constitutional rights and federal civil rights laws were violated.

The Supreme Court ruled that the appeals court had failed to hold the university to a “demanding burden of strict scrutiny.” Instead, the appeals court “presumed that the school had acted in good faith” and required Fisher to show otherwise, the high court found.

While the ruling was favorable to Fisher, civil rights advocates were “really breathing a sigh of relief,” said Tom Goldstein, the publisher of SCOTUSblog and a Supreme Court analyst for NBC News.

“There was the potential that the justices would issue a really major ruling headed in a conservative direction, limiting or eliminating affirmative action,” he said on MSNBC. “Instead the justices did something more modest.”

The University of Texas admits about three-quarters of its students by guaranteeing a spot to anyone who finishes near the top of his or her high school class. When Fisher applied, the standard was the top 10 percent of the class. For the remainder of undergraduate admissions, race is considered as one of many factors.

A Supreme Court ruling in 2003 allowed public universities to consider race to get a critical mass of minority students, but Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who wrote that opinion, has since retired, and today’s court is more conservative.

The legal standard known as strict scrutiny “does not permit a court to accept a school’s assertion that its admissions process uses race in a permissible way without closely examining how the process works in practice,” the court said, in a ruling by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Instead, the burden of proof is on a university to show that “each applicant is evaluated as an individual and not in a way that makes an applicant’s race or ethnicity the defining feature of his or her application,” the court said, quoting language from the 2003 opinion.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, part of the liberal wing of the court, was the dissenter. Justice Elena Kagan, who worked on the issue while she was solicitor general under President Barack Obama, recused herself from the case.

The decision is not the court’s final word on affirmative action. It has agreed to take a case in its next term about whether voters can decide at the polls to ban affirmative action in their states.

The court still has three major rulings to make in this term. One is a challenge to a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and two are about gay rights — the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which blocks federal recognition of gay marriages, and Proposition 8, a California ban on gay marriage.

The Supreme Court said it would issue decisions Tuesday and on at least one day after that. Supreme Court terms traditionally, though not always, end in June.

In the Texas case, Bert Rein, a lawyer for Fisher, had told the justices at an oral argument last October that the university had not shown “any necessity for doing what they were doing” in its admissions policy.

“Race should have been a last resort,” he said. “It was a first resort.”

Chief Justice John Roberts pressed Gregory Garre, a lawyer for the university, over how much diversity was enough.

“What is the logical end point?” he asked. “When will I know that you’ve reached a critical mass?”

The Obama administration had supported the Texas system.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli was asked during the argument whether it was acceptable for the university to give a preference to black and Hispanic applicants from privileged backgrounds. Verrilli said that the university wanted to make individual decisions that “further the educational mission.

“For example, they will look for individuals who will play against racial stereotypes just by what they bring: The African-American fencer, the Hispanic who has — who has mastered classical Greek,” he said.

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/24/19115041-supreme-court-raises-bar-for-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions?lite

Yes, IRS harassment blunted the Tea Party ground game

The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups continues. President Obama's team continues to blame low-level bureaucrats. Some conservatives suspect a more sinister explanation: that the levers of government were used to attack an existential threat to the president's 2012 reelection. The president and his party dismiss this as a paranoid fantasy. The evidence, however, is enough to make one believe that targeting Tea Party groups would have been an effective campaign strategy going into the 2012 election cycle.

It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his famous "shellacking" in the 2010 midterm election. Less well-known is the actual number of votes this new movement delivered — and the continuing effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been demobilized by the IRS.

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3 million-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum.

The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 - 8.5 million votes compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million.The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. -Stan Veuger

President Obama's margin of victory in some of the key swing states was fairly small: a mere 75,000 votes separated the two contenders in Florida, for example. That is less than 25% of our estimate of what the Tea Party's impact in Florida was in 2010. Looking forward to 2012 in 2010 undermining the Tea Party's efforts there must have seemed quite appealing indeed.

Unfortunately for Republicans, the IRS slowed Tea Party growth before the 2012 election. In March 2010, the IRS decided to single Tea Party groups out for special treatment when applying for tax-exempt status by flagging organizations with names containing "Tea Party," "patriot," or "9/12." For the next two years, the IRS approved the applications of only four such groups, delaying all others while subjecting the applicants to highly intrusive, intimidating requests for information regarding their activities, membership, contacts, Facebook posts, and private thoughts.

As a consequence, the founders, members, and donors of new Tea Party groups found themselves incapable of exercising their constitutional rights, and the Tea Party's impact was muted in the 2012 election cycle. As Toby Marie Walker, who runs the Waco Tea Party, which filed for tax-exempt status in 2010 but didn't receive approval until two months ago, recounted recently: "Our donors dried up. It was intimidating and time-consuming." The Richmond Tea Party went through a similar ordeal, and was only granted tax-exempt status in December, right after the election--three years after its initial request. Its chairman explained the consequences: the episode cost the Richmond Tea Party $17,000 in legal fees and swallowed time the all-volunteer network would have devoted to voter turnout, outreach in black and Latino neighborhoods and other events to highlight the constitution and "the concept of liberty."

It might be purely accidental that the government targeted precisely this biggest threat to the president. It may just be that a bureaucracy dominated by liberals picked up on not-so-subtle dog whistles from its political leadership. Or, it might be that direct orders were given. In any case, it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it seriously. The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign. Its remarkable competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would have been equally sophisticated.

We may never know to what exact extent the federal government diverted votes from Governor Romney and thus, how much it influenced the course of a presidential election in the world's oldest democracy. At the very least, however, Americans of all political persuasions can be forgiven for a little cynicism when the president has the nerve to say, as he did on May 5th in his commencement address to graduates of the Ohio State University: "You've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems. You should reject these voices." And that cynicism, that lack of trust in the country's governing institutions, becomes harmful quite easily: when the people are asked to have faith in the NSA's efforts to protect the nation from terrorist threats, for example.

http://www.aei.org/article/economics/yes-irs-harassment-blunted-the-tea-party-ground-game/

PK'S NOTE: I won't be covering the trial which started today. This is a good article though. For more on Big Media and their agenda about race, read the very excellent MUGGED: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama by Ann Coulter

Big Media and the Trayvon Martin Case: Wrong from Minute One

Jacob Sullum at Reason has an interesting piece about how Big Media's reporting on the Trayvon Martin story has been fundamentally wrong - in a way that they had to get deliberately wrong - from the very first minutes of the "scandal."  You may recall that the original outrage - the detail that kicked the story onto every front page in Florida, then national news - was the Sanford P.D.'s refusal to arrest George Zimmerman, who was so obviously guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin.  Even if a trial might potentially have cleared Zimmerman of murder charges, how in the world could those racist cops have failed to arrest him on the spot?  

Angry cries from local community leaders, and later big out-of-town activists, found their way into every media report.  If you lived in Florida, you got a few days of this storyline before it broke into national news.  A white man shot a little black boy just because he was walking in a gated community, and the cops didn't even arrest him!  This swiftly transitioned into a gun-control wail of anguish about Florida's supposedly crazy "stand your ground" laws, which effectively gave trigger-happy neighborhood watch loons a license to kill.

Everything about this narrative fell apart, from Zimmerman not being white to Trayvon not being an innocent little tyke (remember how the first wave of Big Media coverage invariably used photos of a cherubic, smiling Martin that were several years old?) to the fact - known from Minute One of this story, to any reporter who bothered reading the police reports - that Zimmerman had an understandable reason for pulling that trigger, because Martin was beating the crap out of him.  But even that very first "outrageous" detail was nothing of the kind, as Sullum points out at Reason, and every reporter in the United States should have known it:

The police said they did not charge Zimmerman right away because of a provision that prohibits a law enforcement agency from arresting someone who claims to have used deadly force in self-defense "unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful." In other words, the fact that Zimmerman killed Martin (which he has always admitted) was not enough; the police also needed reason to doubt his self-defense claim. We can argue about whether that is a reasonable requirement, but it is completely distinct from the right to stand your ground. Even a state that imposes a duty to retreat could still require police to meet this test before arresting someone who claims self-defense.

From the beginning press coverage of this case has routinely conflated these issues, implying that Florida's definition of self-defense is so broad that it gave Zimmerman a license to kill in circumstances that did not justify the use of deadly force.

And as every reporter knew, the police had no reason to doubt his self-defense claim; he was beaten bloody when they arrived on the scene.  It's all in the very first incident reports filed by police officers and paramedics.  But Big Media went to insane lengths to conceal this fact; at one point, ABC News tried to air a "blockbuster expose" that "proved" Zimmerman wasn't injured, by running security-camera footage of him arriving at the police station long after the paramedics had cleaned him up, and even at that, ABC found it necessary to obscure a few moments of footage showing the bruised back of Zimmerman's head with their logo.

Sullum is particularly critical of the New York Times' deliberately dishonest coverage of the case (he notes they took pains to "obscure or misstate" the legal issues on numerous occasions.)  And we all know that the New York Times still shapes coverage for much of the remaining mainstream media herd.  I suspect a lot of the early coverage was shaped by a "rip and read" attitude toward press releases from the activists who descended upon Sanford; their statements were accepted as fact and given heavy coverage, while few in the mainstream press wanted to balance those big headlines with highly inconvenient facts from the police reports.  

(And it didn't help that the Sanford P.D. didn't handle public relations well during the early days of the story; the local government acted guilty and apologetic from the beginning, rather than standing their ground.  This could be taken as a lesson in the importance of standing up to mob rule.)

A lot of people had a vested interest in turning this tragic story into a national fable about race relations and gun control.  Big Media was very happy to oblige.  In fact, they're one of the groups that had such a vested interest, because the coverage brought big ratings, and every aspect of the false story fit comfortably with both their ideological biases, and their friendly connections to the grievance-mongers who brought this thing to the edge of riots.  And would we have gotten to that dangerous level of social pressure if Big Media hadn't distorted its reporting so much?

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/23/Big-Media-and-the-Trayvon-Martin-case-wrong-from-Minute-One