Obama Pivots to Economy… Again
President Obama will once again try to refocus the public’s attention and the political debate on the economy on Wednesday, delivering what’s being billed as a major economic address in his home state of Illinois.
The White House is trying to drum up support for the speech, but it’s
a tough sell, given how often the president has launched similar
campaigns in recent years.
Republican critics claim the president has publicly pivoted back to
the economy numerous times, but to little avail. “Tomorrow the president
says he’s going to go out and pivot back to jobs. Well, welcome to the
conversation Mr. President,” House Speaker John Boehner mockingly told
reporters at the Capitol today. “If the president was serious about
helping our economy, he wouldn’t give another speech. He’d reach out and
actually work with us.”
The president’s Wednesday speech at Knox College, the site of his
first major economic address as a Senator in 2005, kicks off a series of
events intended to reframe the economic debate ahead of key
negotiations with Capitol Hill this fall.
The White House says the economy has always been the “central
preoccupation” of the Obama presidency and that progress has been made,
but that there’s more work to do.
“There is no question that here in Washington, at least, if not out
in the country, there have been a great many distractions from the
central preoccupations of the American people, which have to do with the
economy and the need to ensure that individuals have good jobs,” White
House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday. “[The president]
hopes and believes it’s essential that we set our sights high and that
we look more broadly at the state of the economy and where we need to go
as a nation as we engage in the discussions that we’ll be having in the
next several months.”
Asked by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl about his repeated pivots, Carney
explained “the fact is the president has repeatedly — you say 10 or 11 —
I would say even more than that — focused on the economy in major
speeches, events across the country, small gatherings, roundtables,
throughout his presidency and prior to his presidency. And he will
continue to do that because it is the number one most important issue in
his mind.”
For those keeping track, here’s a look at some of Obama’s pivots to the economy:
February 2009: The president tells Congress “now is the time to jumpstart job creation” and his agenda “begins with jobs.”
November 2009: Meeting with his Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the
president says his administration “will not rest until we are
succeeding in generating the jobs that this economy needs.”
April 2010: Obama goes on a “Main Street” tour, saying “it’s time to
rebuild our economy on a new foundation so that we’ve got real and
sustained growth.”
June 2010: The president declares a “Recovery Summer” to highlight
the jobs created by stimulus-funded infrastructure projects. “If we want
to ensure that Americans can compete with any nation in the world,
we’re going to have to get serious about our long-term vision for this
country and we’re going to have to get serious about our
infrastructure,” he said.
December 2010: The president tells reporters “we are past the crisis
point in the economy, but we now have to pivot and focus on jobs and
growth.”
August 2011: After lawmakers reach a compromise to avert default, the
president vows “in the coming months, I’ll continue also to fight for
what the American people care most about: new jobs, higher wages and
faster economic growth.”
February 2013: At the start of his second term, the president
refocuses on job creation in his State of the Union address, saying “a
growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs – that must be the
North Star that guides our efforts.”
May 2013: Kicking off his “Jobs and Opportunity Tour,” the president
says “all of us have to commit ourselves to doing better than we’re
doing now. And all of us have to rally around the single-greatest
challenge that we face as a country right now, and that’s reigniting the
true engine of economic growth, a rising, thriving middle class.”
July 2013: The president says his speech Wednesday is going “to be
the kickoff to what is essentially several months of us trying to get
Washington and the press to refocus on the economy and the struggles
that middle-class families are going through.”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/07/obama-pivots-to-economy-again/
The 'economy tour': It happens every time his polls drop
It happens every spring or maybe every summer or maybe every time that the Obama approvals start dropping.
Like Willie Nelson, President Obama is "on the road again". Get ready for another economic tour - another round of speeches about how his agenda is tied up by that GOP that does not care about poor people, children, grandmothers and everybody else.
Hopefully he won't use that bus "Made in Canada" this time around.
"With major battles looming in the fall over the federal budget and the debt ceiling, President Obama
is trying to regain the initiative, embarking on a campaign-style tour
of the Midwest this week to lay out his agenda for reinvigorating the
nation's economy, administration officials said Sunday. "
Does this guy know that he's been president for the last 5 years? or that he passed a "stimulus" in the spring of 2009?
President Obama is doing a little more distraction than unveiling anything new about the economy:
"The
longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been
marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same
period."
2) Gasoline prices are going up and that's squeezing middle class incomes:
"The
economic recovery of summer 2013 is playing out in an all-too-familiar
way for poor and middle-class Americans: Gas prices are up, growth is
slowing, and there still aren't nearly enough new jobs to employ the almost 12 million people seeking work." (Washington Post)
3)
The Senate immigration bill is dead. We will probably get something
from the House but I'm not sure that President Obama will sign it:
President Obama has little to talk about or show for his 5 years in the presidency. Job growth is weak. Immigration is stuck in the Congress. ObamaCare is not off to a good start.
Why not get out of Washington DC and go around the country giving speeches to pre-screened "yes we can screamers"? It beats governing, tackling problems or showing leadership!
Democrats and Economic Alchemy
Politicians seem to think they can make something so with mere incantations.
There was a time when people believed in
magic. Say the right words and one could turn lead into gold; the laws
of the natural world did not matter.
Today, too many politicians
operate as if they have discovered special powers that allow them to
rise above other laws — such as those of economics. All they need to do
is to invoke the proper spell or incantation and the outcome they want
will come to pass.
Take, for example, the Washington, D.C., city
council. They recently became the latest group of politicians to decide
that many workers were not being paid enough. They might have tried to
fix the city’s high taxes and anti-business regulations, the kind of
reforms needed to bring better-paying jobs to the city. Instead, they
simply spoke the magic words and declared that, henceforth, big-box
stores, such as Walmart or Home Depot, would pay their workers $12.50
per hour.
But here’s where the laws of economics come in: The
amount of compensation a worker receives is more or less a function of
his or her productivity. Walmart is not going to pay workers $12.50 per
hour unless those workers provide roughly $12.50 worth of productivity.
As Greg Mankiw notes,
“Economic theory says that the wage a worker earns, measured in units
of output, equals the amount of output the worker can produce.” This
oversimplifies, of course. There are other factors involved. But one
can’t just arbitrarily declare a worker’s value.
So, it should
come as no surprise that Walmart has already announced that, if the law
goes into effect (it faces a possible mayoral veto), the company will
cancel plans to build three stores in the District and will explore the
logistics of canceling the three others that are under construction. The
net result will be a loss of at least 1,800 jobs.
In a similar
way, reality trumps magic when President Obama declares that companies
have to provide workers with health insurance. A worker’s compensation
is not just wages but the full cost of employing that worker, including
taxes, benefits, and health insurance. Obamacare’s employer mandate —
now delayed but not canceled — simply increases the cost of employing
workers.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, when employers are
reluctant to hire new workers, or when they shift to part-time workers
who are not subject to that mandate. According to a Gallup Poll, 41
percent of small businesses said they have already held off on plans to
hire new employees, and 38 percent said they’ve pulled back on plans to
expand their businesses in other ways. Worse, 11 percent indicate that
they have already laid off workers or cut back their hours. And we have
seen a dramatic increase in part-time workers. According to the June
jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of part-time
workers rose by almost 600,000 from March to June of this year, with
the number of Americans in part-time work for economic reasons rising to
8.2 million, while full-time jobs fell by 240,000.
Politicians
cling to plenty of other magical fantasies — for example, the belief
that government can create jobs. The president and many in Congress may
believe that they can simply speak those jobs into existence. But
government has no resources with which to create jobs unless it first
takes those resources from the private, job-creating sector. As Frédéric
Bastiat wrote in “The Seen and the Unseen,” when government “gives jobs
to certain workers . . . it deprives certain other laborers of
employment. That is what is not seen.” That is why Bastiat concluded
that trying to increase employment through government was “a ruinous
hoax, an impossibility, a contradiction.”
Politicians seem to have
a magic spell for every occasion. If they create a program to fight
poverty, poverty will disappear. Yet despite 126 separate federal
anti-poverty programs, adding up to nearly $1 trillion in spending per
year when combined with state efforts, poverty persists, nearly
unchanged.
If they declare that “no child will be left behind,”
our failing schools will get better. But despite more federal intrusion
into local schools and massive increases in federal education spending,
we see little improvement.
If they say that Social Security and
Medicare are solvent, trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities will
simply disappear. Yet every year those programs plunge deeper in debt.
Politicians
on the right have their own versions of magic, of course. Passing a law
will not make people more moral; you can’t impose democracy on
non-democratic societies by wishing (no matter how many tanks you
sprinkle into the pot); and not every tax cut pays for itself.
Government
is not a wizard. Politicians can’t make things happen just because they
want them to, any more than the alchemists of old could transmute lead
into gold. It’s not a question of good intentions. It’s just the way the
world — the real world — works. If politicians would realize this, we
might do a better job of actually dealing with the problems we face.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/354258/democrats-and-economic-alchemy-michael-tanner
Stalled Motor City
Bu John Stossel
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry -- the same TV commentator who said
Americans need to stop raising kids as if they belong to individual
families -- had an extraordinary explanation for why the city of Detroit
sought to declare bankruptcy last week: not enough government.
"This is what it looks like when government is small enough to drown
in your bathtub, and it is not a pretty picture." She says
budget-cutting Republicans threaten to transform all of the U.S. into
Detroit.
What? Detroit has been a "model city" for big-government! All
Detroit's mayors since 1962 were Democrats who were eager to
micromanage. And spend. Detroit has the only utility tax in Michigan,
and its income tax is the third-highest of any big city in America (only
Philadelphia and Louisville take more, and they aren't doing great,
either).
Detroit's automakers got billions in federal bailouts.
The Detroit News revealed that in 2011, the city had around twice as
many municipal employees per capita as cities with comparable
populations. Detroit's water and sewer department employed a
"horseshoer" even though it keeps no horses.
This is "small enough government"? Harris-Perry must have one heck of a bathtub.
Politicians think they know best, but they can't alter the laws of
economics. They can't make mismanaged industries, constant government
meddling, welfare and bureaucratic labor union rules (Detroit has 47
unions) into a formula for success.
County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina wants to stop the bankruptcy process
on the grounds that state law forbids Detroit to cut government
services. But how will Detroit pay for the services? Unsustainable
public-sector pensions, a bloated workforce -- it's all supposed to
continue somehow.
Politicians on Detroit's city council aren't even willing to sell off
vacant lots that the city owns, or even a portion of the billions of
dollars in art in its government-subsidized museum (including the
original "Howdy Doody" puppet).
On my TV show, I confronted the council's second in command about his
refusal to let Detroit sell land. He says he voted against it "because
the developer wants to grow trees. We don't need any more new trees in
our city." The politicians micromanaged themselves into bankruptcy, and
they want to keep digging.
A member of the British Parliament writes that Detroit is like the
fictional city of Starnesville in Ayn Rand's 1957 novel "Atlas Shrugged"
-- a car-manufacturing city that became a ghost town after
experimenting with socialism. In the novel, Starnesville's demise is the
first sign that the entire society is approaching collapse.
Detroit is already there. 911 calls sometimes go unanswered. Two-thirds of the population left town.
As usual, the politicians want to try more of the same. They
constantly come up with plans, but the plans are always big,
simple-minded ones that run roughshod over the thousands of little plans
made by ordinary citizens. Politicians want new stadiums, new
transportation schemes, housing projects.
Andrew Rodney, a documentary filmmaker from Detroit, says many bad,
big-government ideas that have plagued the U.S. were tried out first in
Detroit. "It's the first city to experience a lot of the planning that
went into a lot of cities."
Home loan subsidies, public housing, stadium subsidies, a $350
million project called "Renaissance Center" (the city ended up selling
it for just $50 million), an automated People Mover system that not many
people feel moved to use (it moves people in only one direction),
endless favors to unions -- if a government idea has failed anywhere in
America, there's a good chance it failed in Detroit first.
And if you criticized them for it, politicians like former Mayor
Coleman Young called you a racist. "To attack Detroit is to attack
black," Young said. That tends to shut critics up.
But the laws of economics apply to us all.
Insulated from serious criticism, insulated from economic reality,
Detroit thought somehow it'd muddle through -- until now. There is a big
lesson, if people elsewhere are willing to learn before it's too late.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2013/07/24/stalled-motor-city-n1647074/page/full
Jay Carney: Obama not focused on ‘pretend scandals’
White House press secretary Jay Carney, previewing a speech on the economy President Obama is to deliver Wednesday, said that Washington needs to focus
on things important to the country and not “phony” or “pretend scandals.”
The
focus “shouldn’t be on the skirmishes that cause gridlock; it shouldn’t
be on the phony scandals that have consumed so much attention here, all
to come to naught,” Mr. Carney said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.
“It should be focused on what we can do to strengthen and grow the middle class,
because when the middle class is thriving, when the middle class is
growing, our economy is at its best and that’s what we need to do as we
move forward in the 21st century,” he said.
Mr. Carney said that the issue with the IRS,
which was discovered to have improperly scrutinized mainly conservative
groups seeking nonprofit status, is important. But he argued that
Republicans have inflated it into something it’s not.
“I think
what we’ve seen is inappropriate activity that the president forcefully
came out and said he would not tolerate and that he installed somebody
at the IRS to take care of,” he said, accusing the GOP of selectively leaking “cherry-picked information” that only tells one side of the story.
“The president will not tolerate poor performance
or inappropriate activity at any agency, and when he finds out about it, he acts on it,” Mr. Carney
continued. “But he’s focused on the economy. … He’s not focused on
pretend scandals that Republicans on Capitol Hill want to turn into
partisan skirmishes.”
After a somewhat testy exchange with host Joe Scarborough, who said, “I’m not someone you talk down to from your podium,” Mr. Carney continued.
“The IG report and every bit of evidence that has come out since then makes clear that no one at the White House was involved at all or even knew what was happening — and that has not changed, Joe,” he said.
“I accept the fact that we need to get to the bottom of what happened at the IRS, and we need to make sure that our government is performing
in a way that Americans can be proud of, but we also need to focus on
the economy. And what’s frustrating, I think, for so many Americans, is
that we’re not here in Washington focused on the things that matter the
most,” Mr. Carney said.
When will Jeffrey Zients return from South Africa?
Amid new revelations about the IRS targeting scandal, the Obama
administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said Tuesday that
former OMB head Jeffrey Zients’ extended absence from the United States
is due to a family vacation.
OMB’s statement came after The Daily Caller reported that former
leader Jeffrey Zients met at the White House with key figures at the
Internal Revenue Service just before news broke that the IRS was
targeting conservative nonprofit groups for abusive audits and delays.
Zients has still not returned from an overseas trip that began after
his departure from the Obama administration in April, two weeks before
the IRS scandal broke. A White House source told The Daily Caller that
Zients’ absence from the country has been noticeable and concerning.
“Mr. Zients’ wife’s family lives in South Africa. He is visiting them now, as he and his family do every summer,”
an OMB spokesperson told Fox News in a statement Tuesday. The agency
did not address the concerns raised by the White House source, nor did
it provide either the date Zients began his overseas trip or the date he
is expected to return.
OMB, which had declined to comment on Zients’ abrupt departure prior
to The Daily Caller’s report, did not return a request for comment.
As The Daily Caller reported,
Zients met with then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman and Shulman’s
political aide Jonathan Davis and spokesman Frank Keith at the
Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House complex on April
24, 2012.
Only Zients, who was in charge of OMB at the time, and the three men
from the IRS attended the meeting, according to White House visitor
logs. Their appointment ended more than eight hours after it began,
according to the logs.
The next day, April 25, the IRS’s chief counsel’s office — led by William Wilkins, who met with Obama at the White House that same week —
sent Washington-based IRS officials “additional comments on the draft
guidance.” These guidelines covered approving or denying tea party
tax-exempt applications, according to a report on the IRS scandal compiled by Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George.
“The meeting referenced in the Daily Caller article had nothing to do
with IRS guidance on tax exempt entities. Mr. Zients never had a
meeting on this topic during his entire tenure at OMB. The meeting
referenced was focused solely on IRS budget and spending issues,”
according to the OMB’s statement to Fox News.
It remains unclear why Shulman’s political and press aides were present at the meeting.
After a Senate vote confirming his successor — Sylvia Mathews Burwell
— Zients left his post at OMB on April 24, 2013 with no public fanfare
and no official White House statement on his departure, leading
Washington insiders to speculate that he “disappeared.”
The Daily Caller looks forward to speaking with Zients upon his return.
Records of Christine O'Donnell tax snooping disappear
The Washington Times is reporting that computer
records showing how often Delaware state officials accessed former GOP
Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell's tax records were probably
destroyed.
The revelations to Sen. Chuck Grassley's office came Tuesday as the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, the government's chief watchdog for the Internal Revenue Service, formally reopened its investigation into the matter by re-interviewing Ms. O'Donnell.
"It is an active investigation now," Ms. O'Donnell
told The Washington Times after meeting with the same Treasury agent
who first informed her in January that her tax records were improperly
accessed.
She declined to be more specific about what the agent questioned her about in Tuesday's session.
But Mr. Grassley,
an Iowa Republican who serves on the Judiciary and Finance committees,
said he was concerned by the information Delaware state officials shared with his investigators.
Specifically, Mr. Grassley's staff was told that a Delaware state investigator asked for and received permission from his boss on a Saturday to access Ms. O'Donnell's tax records based on a local newspaper article about a civil lien. The lien, it turned, out was issued erroneously.
Mr. Grassley
said he was concerned that a simple newspaper article that alleged no
criminal wrongdoing could be used to pierce one of America's most
protected privacies, tax information.
He is pressing for more information on what safeguards the IRS
is using to stop such snooping and whether the system used by Delaware
state officials may amount to an unmonitored back door into
confidential IRS tax records.
"The state says it looked at Ms. O'Donnell's federal records because of a newspaper article describing a federal tax lien against her," Mr. Grassley
said. "Does the state look at every taxpayer who faces a federal lien
or only those who happen to appear in a newspaper article? Is it routine
for a state employee to email his boss about looking at a taxpayer's
records on a Saturday, when the article appeared? It's hard to evaluate
what happened in the O'Donnell case without answering these questions, and I'll continue to work to get more information."
I
had no idea state government employees could access anyone's IRS
information. Can other states do it? If so, no one's privacy is safe
with these arrogant bureaucrats.
Did Delaware officials share O'Donnell's info with anyone? The press?
With Democrats? There had to have been a reason besides idle curiosity
why they did it. Let's hope Grassley can get to the bottom of it.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/07/records_of_christine_odonnell_tax_snooping_disappear.html#ixzz2ZzFZYz1g
DHS nominee under investigation for allegedly helping Hillary Clinton's brother
Authorities are investigating the man President Obama tapped to take
over the second highest spot at the Department of Homeland Security for
allegedly using his position and power to unfairly obtain U.S. visas for
foreign investors in a company run by Hillary Clinton’s brother,
FoxNews.com has confirmed.
Alejandro Mayorkas, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services, was named by Homeland Security's Inspector General's Office as
a target in an investigation involving the foreign investor program run
by USCIS, according to an email sent to lawmakers late Monday.
The investigation was opened in September 2012 following a referral
from an FBI counterintelligence analyst. The probe was first reported by
The Associated Press.
The investigation into Mayorkas is based on allegations he helped
secure U.S. visas for Chinese businessmen after they had been denied by
his own agency’s officials. The visas had been sought by Gulf Coast
Funds Management, a financing company headed by then-Secretary of State
Clinton’s brother Anthony Rodham, according to an aide to GOP Sen.
Charles Grassley, who had received internal USCIS emails about the
matter from a department whistle-blower.
According to an email sent to lawmakers Monday, the IG's office said,
"At this point in our investigation, we do not have any findings of
criminal misconduct." The email did not specify any criminal allegations
it might be investigating.
White House press secretary Jay Carney referred questions to the
inspector general's office, which said that the probe is in its
preliminary stage and that it doesn't comment on the specifics of
investigations.
The program, known as EB-5, allows foreigners to get visas if they
invest $500,000 to $1 million in projects or businesses that create jobs
for U.S. citizens. The amount of the investment required depends on the
type of project. Investors who are approved for the program can become
legal permanent residents after two years and can later be eligible to
become citizens.
If Mayorkas were confirmed as Homeland Security's deputy secretary,
he probably would run the department until a permanent replacement was
approved to take over for departing Secretary Janet Napolitano.
The email to lawmakers said the primary complaint against Mayorkas
was that he helped a financing company run by Rodham to win approval
for an investor visa, even after the application was denied and an
appeal was rejected.
Mayorkas, a former U.S. attorney in California, previously came under
criticism for his involvement in the commutation by President Bill
Clinton of the prison sentence of the son of a Democratic Party donor.
Another of Hillary Clinton's brothers, Hugh Rodham, had been hired by
the donor to lobby for the commutation. Mayorkas told lawmakers during
his 2009 confirmation hearing that "it was a mistake" to talk to the
White House about the request.
Hillary Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of state on Feb. 1, is
considered a possible contender for the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2016.
According to the Inspector General's email, the investigation of the
investor visa program also includes allegations that other USCIS Office
of General Counsel officials obstructed an audit of the visa program by
the Securities and Exchange Commission. The email did not name any
specific official from the general counsel's office.
The email says investigators did not know whether Mayorkas was aware of the investigation.
The FBI's Washington field office was told about the investigation in
June after it inquired about Mayorkas as part of the White House
background investigation for his nomination as deputy DHS secretary.
The FBI in Washington has been concerned about the investor visa
program and the projects funded by foreign sources since at least March,
according to emails obtained by The AP.
The bureau wanted details of all of the limited liability companies
that had invested in the EB-5 visa program. Of particular concern, the
FBI official wrote, was Chinese investment in projects, including the
building of an FBI facility.
"Let's just say that we have a significant issue that my higher-ups
are really concerned about and this may be addressed way above my pay
grade," an official wrote in one email. The FBI official's name was
redacted in that email.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, sent the FBI a lengthy letter Tuesday asking for
details of its review of the foreign investor visa program and Chinese
investment in U.S. infrastructure projects.
Chinese investment in infrastructure projects has long been a concern
of the U.S. government. In September, the Obama administration blocked a
Chinese company from owning four wind farm projects in northern Oregon
that were near a Navy base used to fly unmanned drones and
electronic-warfare planes on training missions. In October, the House
Intelligence Committee warned that two leading Chinese technology firms,
Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corp., posed a major security threat
to the U.S. Both firms have denied being influenced by the Chinese
government.
The most routine users of the EB-5 program are Chinese investors.
According to an undated, unclassified State Department report about
the program obtained by the AP, the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China,
processed more investor visas in the 2011 fiscal year than any other
consulate or embassy.
The document says "applicants are usually coached and prepped for
their interviews, making it difficult to take at face value applicants'
claims" about where their money comes from and whether they hold
membership in the Chinese Communist Party. Party membership would make
an applicant ineligible for the investor visa.
Anthony Rodham is president and CEO of Gulf Coast Funds Management
LLC in McLean, Va. The firm is one of hundreds of "Regional Centers"
that pool investments from foreign nationals looking to invest in U.S.
businesses or industries as part of the foreign investor visa program.
There was no immediate response to an email sent to Gulf Coast requesting comment.
It is unclear from the IG's email why the investor visa application
was denied. Visa requests can be denied for a number of reasons,
including a circumstance where an applicant has a criminal background or
is considered a threat to national security or public safety.
White House scrambles to defeat bill to defund NSA program
The White House took the rare step of releasing a statement opposing an amendment to a House bill Tuesday night, taking aim at a measure that would shut down significant parts of the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities.
In the statement, White House spokesman Jay Carney accused Republican
lawmakers of trying to “hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence
Community’s counterterrorism tools” and said the “blunt approach is not
the product of an informed, open or deliberative process.”
The House is preparing to vote on an amendment, written by Rep.
Justin Amash, R-Mich., that would cut off funds to the NSA if it
collects data on individuals who are not under investigation — a move
that would effectively shut down the sweeping Internet and phone data
collection programs that have been revealed in news reports.
After hearing that the amendment would be given a vote as part of the
Defense Appropriations bill Tuesday afternoon, the White House
scrambled to try to defeat it. NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander headed
up to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a question and answer session with
lawmakers in a classified, members-only briefing.
“We urge the House to reject the Amash Amendment and instead move
forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need
for a seasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation,” Carney
said.
Amash took to Twitter to respond to the White House statement,
calling on supporters to contact their members of Congress and express
their strong support of the measure.
“Pres Obama opposes my #NSA amendment, but American people
overwhelmingly support it,” he tweeted. “Will your Rep stand with the WH
or the Constitution?”
The White House decision to release the statement and send Alexander
to Capitol Hill to try to quash one amendment of 100 the House is
considering adding to the Defense spending bill demonstrates the premium
Obama's national security team places on the surveillance program and
its counterterrorism powers.
Amash also must overcome opposition from most members of the House
and Senate Intelligence committees, who say the program has helped them
thwart multiple terrorist plots.
Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Intelligence panel,
has vocally supported the program from attacks from those on the right
concerned that the program violates constitutional civil liberty
protections.
Leaders from the House and Senate Intelligence committees publicly
denounced Amash's amendment Tuesday, and seven House committee chairmen
wrote a letter to colleagues urging a “no” vote.
Still, Amash has plenty of support for his view among Republicans, as
well as liberal Democrats who have criticized the NSA programs sweeping
reach. He only won the right to offer the measure as an amendment on
the House floor after he said he had enough support to prevent the
Defense bill from moving to the floor by voting down a procedural
measure.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-scrambles-to-defeat-bill-to-defund-nsa-program/article/2533418
Questions raised about IRS executive travel
A new report by the inspector
general of the IRS found that a small group of top executives at the IRS
ran up "extremely high travel expenses" in recent years, with some
basically commuting each week to work in Washington, D.C. by plane from
around the nation.
"In some cases, the travel days exceeded the
number of business days due to employees remaining in travel status
during the weekends and holidays," the report said.
An IRS source
told me the most frequent travelers were four different officials inside
the tax agency who "work" in Washington, at IRS headquarters, but
actually live in Dallas, Minneapolis and Atlanta.
In other words,
they would fly weekly to and from Washington, D.C. by plane, and then
bill the taxpayer for that travel and their extended stay in D.C. - and
it is not a temporary situation, but has been going on for years.
One
IRS official, labeled "Executive B" in the report, traveled to
Washington, D.C. a total of 282 days in Fiscal Year 2012, claiming
almost $127,000 in travel costs. (That's $450/day if you do the math.)
In FY 2011, "Executive B" traveled to Washington 238 days, with total travel costs of almost $116,000.
"In
such cases, the cost and frequency of travel indicate that some
executives may not live in the best location to economically accomplish
their roles and responsibilities," the report noted.
"Executive C" spent 213 days in Washington in FY 2011 at a cost of just over $105,000.
More
examples from that same year include "Executive A" spending 290 days in
Washington for $88,951 in expenses; "Executive G" spent 193 days in
Washington for $86,433 in costs.
While such examples might not seem to make sense to some, it has evidently been seen before at the IRS.
"I
retired from IRS 13 years ago," one of my Twitter followers wrote me on
Tuesday night, "and it was a common practice even then."
Here is a
breakdown of some of the 2011 long-term executive travel by IRS
officials to the single destination of Washington, the number of days
and the expenses claimed:
Executive D - 172 days - $135,333
Executive A - 290 days - $88,951
Executive B - 238 days - $115,806
Executive C - 213 days - $105,127
Executive G - 193 days - $86,433
Executive E - 179 days - $47,322
Executive K - 174 days - $64,521
Executive L - 173 days - $62,233
Weeks
before this report was issued, the IRS quietly approved new travel
guidelines, unveiling a "new policy that restricts Executives from being
in travel status more than 75 nights in any fiscal year."
But as with most things in government, exceptions to that policy can be approved by the head of the IRS.
One
ironic part of that internal memo on long term travel is that it
reminded IRS employees that some long-term travel is taxable.
"It
is imperative that all Executives incurring long-term taxable travel
comply with the requirements outlined," the memo stated.
In a
letter attached to the inspector general report, the IRS concedes that
extensive regular travel is not in the best interest of the tax agency.
"Moreover,
we recognize that in the current fiscal environment, the long-term
travel by a few executives represents an excessive expense we cannot
sustain," wrote Pamela LaRue, the Chief Financial Officer of the IRS.
You can read the report on IRS executive travel here.
One important note - the investigation of IRS executive travel found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jamie-dupree/2013/jul/23/questions-raised-about-irs-executive-travel/
Fraud, Waste and Death in Afghan Anti-IED Program
Millions of dollars that were supposed to be spent protecting
American troops from deadly improvised explosive device (IED) blasts on
Afghan roads were squandered by government contractors whose inaction
may have cost lives, according to a new inspector general report.
Roughly $32 million was supposed to pay for so-called “culvert denial
systems,” which are essentially steel grates installed to block access
to the drainage culverts that run beneath Afghan roadways. Insurgents
had been using the culverts to hide explosives.
“Contractors either had failed to properly install culvert denial
systems, rendering those systems ineffective and susceptible to
compromise by insurgents, or did not install them at all,” according to
the report by Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction,
which was made public Tuesday morning.
“Our preliminary investigation found that at least two Afghan
contractors—with a total contract amount of nearly $1 million—in one
Afghanistan province have committed fraud by billing the U.S. government
for the installation of 250 culvert denial systems that were either
never installed or incorrectly installed,” the report says.
The report says the inspector general’s office is continuing its
investigation, and that one goal is to determine whether the failure by
any contractors to perform the work may have been a factor in the death
or injury of American troops.
Already, the report says, one Afghan contractor and his
sub-contractor have been arrested and charged with fraud and negligent
homicide.
Investigators appear to have had a great deal of difficulty determine
just how many of the drainage covers were supposed to be installed, and
of those, how many actually were put in place. In part, the report
says, that is because the contracts were handed out by a variety of
different military commands inside Afghanistan. The inspectors were able
to find contacts for at least 2,500 installations, but found hundreds
of those were never actually completed.
Col. Jane Crichton, a military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, told The New York Times
that military commanders in Afghanistan have introduced quality
assurance experts and policy guidelines to better oversee projects. She
told the paper, which first reported on the inspector general’s
findings, that commanders were also trying to locate the grates and
ensure they were working.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/07/fraud-waste-and-death-in-afghan-anti-ied-program
Nancy Pelosi, Creep Enabler
By Michelle Malkin
The most powerful female Democrat on Capitol Hill has turned her back
on women. Again. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, entrenched 13-term
incumbent, refuses to say whether creepster San Diego Mayor Bob Filner
should resign amid an avalanche of longstanding sexual harassment
allegations, staff resignations and now a lawsuit.
"What goes on in San Diego is up to the people of San Diego. I'm not
here to make any judgments," declared the very same feminist crusader
who has spearheaded unabashedly judgmental nationwide attacks on the
so-called "Republican War on Women."
Democrat Filner's former spokeswoman revealed Monday that he ordered
her to "work without her panties on" and viewed women "as sexual objects
or stupid idiots." Other women alleged that Democrat Filner groped,
forcibly kissed and harassed them. His own fiancee broke up with him two
weeks ago after taking stock of his "abusiveness" and "disrespect" for
women. Filner "apologized" and admitted, "I need help," but he refuses
to step down.
The sheriff's office has set up a Bob Filner Abuse Hotline, and the
mayor is now forbidden from meeting with women behind closed doors. At
least one legal expert believes some of the claims rise to the level of
sexual assault.
Instead of anger toward her misogynistic Democratic colleague, Pelosi
got all hot and bothered at a journalist who asked her last week about
the former 10-term California congressman -- with whom she co-founded
the Congressional Progressive Caucus, by the way. "Don't identify him as
my former colleague," Pelosi snippy-snapped.
Okey-dokey. Let's just refer to boorish Bob Filner as the latest
beneficiary of Pelosi's Democratic Male Perv Protection Racket. When it
comes to holding scandal-plagued predatory liberal men accountable for
their scummy behavior, See No Evil Nancy's pattern of malign neglect is
unrivaled.
In a New York non-shocker of the year, another of Pelosi's former
colleagues, Anthony Weiner, is embroiled in a new sex controversy.
Weiner admitted Tuesday that transcripts of lewd sex chats between him
and a 22-year-old woman in 2011 -- leaked on a gossip site called "The
Dirty" -- are real. His apparent nom de sext: "Carlos Danger."
Vocal Democratic women were nowhere to be found. No surprise.
Remember: When the original Weiner nude Twitter selfie scandal broke,
Pelosi and her femme-a-gogue twin Debbie Wasserman Schultz dragged their
Beltway heels as long as possible. Not until Weiner's interactions with
an underage girl in Delaware were exposed by conservative bloggers and
confirmed by police did the women call for him to resign.
Pelosi's soft-on-Dem skeeviness policy extended to Oregon Democrat
Rep. David Wu, as well. While local Oregon activists and journalists
exposed the sicko's bizarre behavior for months in 2011, Pelosi looked
the other way at her former colleague's vulgar antics. The seven-term
liberal congressman made national headlines after his own mortified
staff revolted against their Tigger costume-wearing, drunk-texting boss.
Wu's closest advisers demanded that he seek treatment. But House
Democrats (who had poured some $80,000 into Wu's re-election coffers)
remained silent and took no action. As I noted at the time, Wu's
sexually aggressive, alcohol-addled and erratic outbursts stretched over
decades. He admitted in 2004 that he engaged in "inexcusable behavior"
as a 1970s undergrad at Stanford University, where school officials
disciplined him after his ex-girlfriend told campus police he attempted
to rape her and stifle her screams with a pillow after a breakup.
Only after The Oregonian newspaper published allegations by a teenage
girl who had complained for months to apathetic Capitol Hill offices of
an "unwanted sexual encounter" with Wu did Nancy "Drain the Swamp"
Pelosi call for an investigation by the House ethics committee.
In a demonstration of equal-opportunity callousness, Pelosi showed
the same disregard for male victims of a Democratic lecher. Pelosi's
office was told in October 2009 by the chief of staff of predatory
former colleague Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., that the congressman had
sexually harassed several young male staffers. Massa's former deputy
chief of staff and legislative director also contacted leading Democrats
on the House ethics committee. Former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer
also knew of the freaky habits of the married Massa.
True to form, Pelosi and the creep enablers did nothing for five
months -- until after Massa resigned in March 2010. A House ethics
inquiry into the sexual harassment scandal has gone where most House
ethics inquiries go: nowhere.
Whether she's carrying a gavel or just carrying water, Pelosi has
served as a loyal apologist and abettor of the Democratic Bad Boys Club.
What exactly will it take before voters finally turn this perv
protector into a "former colleague"?
http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/07/24/nancy-pelosi-creep-enabler-n1647430/page/full
Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton for President
The
left, especially the unruly mob of feminists, seems likely to rally
around Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton for the Democrat nomination for
president in 2016. She has certainly earned that right. Her first
major life success was being married to the Democrat nominee for
Congress in 1994, and her husband also defeated Congressman
Hammerschmidt. Then she was the loyal wife of the attorney
general of Arkansas. After that, she was the faithful wife of the
governor of Arkansas for four terms, and Mrs. Clinton stood by her
husband when he lost his bid for re-election as governor in strongly
Democrat Arkansas in the 1982 election.
As
the wife of President William Jefferson Clinton, she served a
sacrificial wifely role as cannon fodder for an ill-fated comprehensive health care
reform bill. Then, in the best tradition of country music, Frau
Clinton performed the duty to "Stand by Your Man" even when those who
believed in protecting women from creepy male bosses and other forms of
male intimidation of women must have been rolling their eyes in disgust.
This
is all in the grand tradition of leftist champions of the myriad
elements of their cobbled coalition. Young black women are encouraged
to cripple themselves and hobble the lives of their children by out of
wedlock child-rearing. Hispanics seeking to become American citizens
are urged not to learn English so
that they are utterly at the mercy of the rhetoric of their notional
"leaders." Public-school children learn nothing but are persuaded that
they are fully educated by the bosses of public teachers' unions --
moreover, the poor are connived into "investing" into state lotteries as
a way of helping themselves and education, often in states which have
"gambling addiction" government programs to help the poor.
Mrs.
Clinton is in that same grand tradition of other leftist feminist
icons. Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, had the wisdom to
be born into one branch of the Roosevelt presidential family and to
marry into the other branch. Mrs. John Kennedy was born into an
aristocratic European family and then married into a rich political
family led by a patriarch who had wished to abandon Britain to Hitler in
1940.
All
three of these women who so enchant leftists are were cheated on by
their husbands -- in the cases of Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Kennedy, cheated
on so flagrantly and widely that it took a deep sense of obedience to
their husbands and a willingness to put their rights as wives and their
pride as human beings aside. We now have begun to understand just how
deeply the spouses of Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Kennedy sank in the muck of
moral depravity: very young and naïve women serviced their husbands
while these champions of women's rights bit their tongues and turned the
other way -- or even, in Mrs. Clinton's case, accused the powerless young ladies victimized by her lord and master of lying.
Mrs.
William Jefferson Clinton stands in the long and proud tradition of
leftist women who railed against America or against the notional
misogyny of Christianity while ignoring the stoning of girls in Iran for
the offense of being gang-raped or the gendercide of girls in China and
India caused by selective abortion of unborn girls -- and, in some
parts of India, the calculated death by neglect of newborn girl-babies.
Conservatives
have nothing to compete with these giants. Michele Bachmann and Sarah
Palin, whose rise in politics happened without a powerful husband or
great wealth, are merely self-made women who rose to national prominence
based upon intelligence, work, and persistence. There are a number of
conservative Republican women, like Susana Martinez, Nikki Haley, and
Mary Fallin, who rose to power by their own skill and now run states.
Phyllis Schlafly, whose book A Choice Not an Echo
was decisive in gaining Goldwater the Republican nomination in 1964 and
whose battle to defeat the so-called Equal Rights Amendment was almost
unprecedented in American political history, fought with courage,
eloquence, and grit -- not something leftists like to see in women.
Jeane Kirkpatrick was probably the most passionate and coherent voice in
Reagan's plan to win the Cold War (she obviously thinks too much for a
good feminist leftist). Claire Boothe Luce, a brilliant writer, a
congresswoman, an ambassador to two key posts, and stuff like that was
also too smart for her own good.
What
leftists like in Mrs. Clinton is her utter predictability, her
liberation from independent thinking, and her loyal mouthing of leftist
cant on every occasion. Expect all the regiments of leftism to line up
behind her -- she is just what they want in a woman.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/07/mrs_william_jefferson_clinton_for_president.html#ixzz2ZzKrpGVH
Government Wastes More Money than You Think
If we saved only half of the $788 billion we waste, we could dump the
sequester, fix our infrastructure, bolster education, and grow the
economy.
During last week’s celebration of Richard Cordray’s confirmation as
head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama said,
“The financial sector was able to make huge bets with other people’s
money. And that strain of irresponsibility eventually came crashing
down on all of us.”
Just like the banks and
credit card companies now being patrolled by the CFPB, Washington has
trillions of dollars at its disposal and complex forms that are almost
impossible to decipher. It might make you wonder why Washington doesn’t
have a single agency to monitor and expose government waste and
mismanagement of our tax dollars.
In fact, we have several.
There are 73 inspectors general at different federal agencies. The
White House contains an Office of Management and Budget that looks for
ways to cut costs. The Government Accountability Office also checks
expenditures. And so do legions of congressional staffers who are eager
to help their bosses score political points.
But none of their scolding
seems to work. Politicians always campaign on the vague promise of
reducing federal bloat, yet their pet interests, lack of cohesive
leadership, or lack of financial management skills usually enable the
excesses. When a new report identifies wasteful spending, someone always
tends to say, “It’s a mere $600 million, or, “It’s only $1 billion—a
rounding error” compared to the $3.8 trillion that makes up the Federal
budget.
We can see your eyes
rolling over yet another federal agency! But think about an agency with
teeth—one led by a sole director with decision-making authority who
does not depend on congressional appropriations to survive. For any
shred of waste, it could extract penalties from those agencies. This is
what the CFPB does. The IGs at the Pentagon and Treasury Department tend
to audit bureaucratic “processes,” pick up pieces of the financial
paper trail, and submit recommendations.
The piecemeal nature of
these IG reports diffuses their impact. More importantly, some
financial audits are never done, prompting the GAO to designate the
Department of Defense, which is responsible for more than half of all
federal discretionary spending, as “high risk” for government finances.
The DOD is not alone: Add to this list in 2013 the IRS, Homeland
Security, NASA, federal disability programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and
dozens of others and you get the picture.
Taxpayers should think of
themselves as “investors” in the United States government—the largest
financial entity in the world. Would you hire a CEO of, say, Health and
Human Services—with a budget of $700+billion a year—who had no
management training and financial education? Probably not. Federal
officials tend to be knowledgeable about bureaucratic processes, but not
the kinds of common sense management practices that get taught at
business schools.
If Congress created the
ultimate government watchdog, one area that deserves a serious look is
program redundancy. Last April, President Obama acknowledged the problem
and proposed eliminating certain agencies that duplicated the work of
others. USA Today reported, “Over the past three years, the Government
Accountability Office found 162 areas where agencies are duplicating
efforts, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.”
Last year, The Fiscal Times highlighted a GAO study that found:
• Eleven federal agencies
continue to operate 94 separate initiatives to spur energy-efficient
construction in the private sector.
• Nine agencies or
departments lead programs to safeguard food and agricultural systems
from natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
• Thirteen agencies spend a total of $30 million annually funding 15 separate financial literacy programs.
The study prompted Sen. Tom
Coburn (R-OK) to tell a congressional committee, “Today’s findings are a
testament to failed congressional efforts of oversight and a reminder
Congress continues to shirk its duty to address even blatant areas of
waste and mismanagement of taxpayer funding.”
The Fiscal Times decided to look at annual wasteful
spending and mismanaged funds, with the exception of massive war
expenses which could not be time stamped. Since this was not a massive
study, we probably missed a lot, and we included what some might
consider one-time expenses—in particular those in Afghanistan.
Nevertheless, what becomes clear is that billions of dollars – even in
an incomplete snapshot – are going down the drain instead of being
poured into infrastructure, education and other sorely needed programs
and services.
“A billion here, a billion
there. Pretty soon you’re talking about real money,” Senator Everett
Dirksen once said. So let’s see how we’re doing, almost half a century
later.
| Agency |
Project |
Amount |
Time Spent |
| Department of Agriculture |
Smuttynose brewery - 3 brew tanks |
750,970 |
1 Year |
| Department of Agriculture |
Improper payments to farm producers |
16,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Agriculture |
Improper loans |
208,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Agriculture |
Alabama Watermelon Queen Tour |
25,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Defense |
Soccer Field in Guantanamo |
750,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Education |
Student Aid Scams |
1,400,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Energy |
Initiative for Proliferation Prevention (A Cold War Program) |
15,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department Of Justice |
Conferences |
58,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Labor |
Dropouts from Underperforming Job Programs |
118,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Labor |
Overpayments |
148,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Labor |
Consumer Fraud |
14,000,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Department of Transportation |
Contract Mismanagement |
157,000,000 |
1 Year |
| Economic Dev. Agency |
Fake Cyber Threat Purge |
3,000,000 |
1 Year |
| FAA |
Oklahoma Empty Airport |
450,000 |
1 Year |
| Federal Grant |
Book Vending Machine |
35,000 |
1 Year |
| Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services |
Star Wars Event |
365 |
1 Year |
| General Accounting Office |
Overlapping Programs |
95,000,000,000 |
1 Year |
| General Accounting Office |
Bank Fees for Empty Accounts |
890,000 |
1 Year |
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