Two Marks, Levin and Meckler, notably and nobly are proposing to change the rules of modern politics and governance.
Debuting at Amazon Number One (for all, not merely political, books) is syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic. Sporting an average of 4.7 stars from, at the time of this writing, 153 reviews on Amazon, Levin calls for a populist suite of Constitutional amendments to be initiated by the States.
Levin proposes to reform the federal government from its degenerate, bloated, imperial structure back to its (small r) republican roots. Even more interesting than his specific proposals is the mechanism.
There is a little-known “emergency cord” built into the Constitution by the Founders. Find it in Article V. It allows for the States, rather than just the Congress, to propose Constitutional amendments. It is obscure yet entirely legitimate — and invaluable. It was extolled by James Madison in The Federalist No. 43.
Meanwhile, on August 15th, on the ground and the Web, a civic “Seal Team Six” — of operatives and activists — has constituted itself as ConventionOfStates.com. (This columnist has there enlisted as a foot soldier.) Its purpose? “COS seeks to call a Convention of States for a particular subject—limiting the jurisdiction and power of the federal government. This strategy would allow the states to formally consider almost all of Mark Levin’s ‘Liberty Amendments,’ giving delegates the freedom to propose the necessary amendments to stop the runaway power of Washington, D.C.”
COS’s president is Mark Meckler, head of Citizens for Self-Governance. Meckler co-founded and co-coordinated the Tea Party Patriots, the largest and most authentic Tea Party mega-group. He departed thence “to work more broadly on expanding the self-governance movement beyond the partisan divide.” Head of Citizens for Self-Governance’s Convention of the States Project is the powerful and principled Michael Farris, Chancellor of Patrick Henry College and Chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association. They are joined by Mark Wohlschlegel II, Executive Director, Laura Fennig, Coalitions Director and Jordan Sillars, Communications Director.
While ConventionOfStates.com recruits and mobilizes political commandos Levin takes to the printing press and to the airwaves — with important support from such megaphonic forces as Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh, generously lauding Levin’s efforts, recently had this to say on his show:
“Have you heard of Mark Levin’s new book, The Liberty Amendments? … It’s fascinating. Everybody still asks me, “Rush what can I do, besides vote?” Everybody wants to do something. Well, look, the standard, ordinary give-and-take and back-and-forth of politics isn’t gonna work anymore. There are remedies for this. … The American people are going to have to fix this, and that’s what Levin’s book is about. It’s a wonderful book.
Indeed we do.“I don’t want to say it’s simple, but it makes so much sense. … And it is something that, the more people read it, the more people become familiar with it and demand that something be done to reaffirm and strengthen the Constitution, it’s something like this that is going to be necessary … The American people have the power to change this …”
Levin’s book is the first mass-emergence of something that Meckler and others — including, among others, the Goldwater Institute’s Constitutional expert Nick Dranias and the Independence Institute’s Constitutional scholar Robert G. Natelson — have been working on for some time.
As this columnist wrote here in 2011 Meckler was one of the two lead figures in a seminal gathering held at Harvard University at the initiative of the great (albeit decidedly social democratic) humanitarian populist legal sage Prof. Lawrence Lessig.
As then stated:
“Last week the unthinkable happened. While you were distracted by the banal and only marginally important presidential primaries, the lion, Harvard Law School, publicly lay down with the lamb, the Tea Party Patriots. The long-term political implications are, potentially, far more potent than a mere presidency.”The essence of this epochal event was just (but no less than) this:
“Lessig and the Tea Party, and its guiding spirits, are populists. Populism was forever redefined by Jeffrey Bell ([then] a business partner of this columnist) as optimism about people’s ability to manage their own affairs better than an elite can manage them for them. Populism is neither left nor right wing. Populists of all stripes share in common a conviction in ‘power to the people,’ a belief that in a republic ‘citizen’ is the noblest office. And while Lessig and Meckler may disagree about just about every ideological issue, their respect for the wisdom and dignity of the citizens unites them in a realm far more important than the ideological.
They came together to explore a mechanism by which America’s government can be changed by, of, and for the people. Jefferson was unequivocally right when he wrote:
‘Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.’
So. Are there insufferable evils?Are there insufferable evils today? You bet there are. Is Article V a valid means of redress? Yes.
…
For the first time in modern history the populist left and populist right came together to endorse, and seek a way to operationalize, a transcendent belief in citizens over government.”
Yet there are figures on the right who oppose a states-driven constitutional amendment process. Foremost among these has been the great Phyllis Schlafly. The conservative proponents of Article V now, indeed partly out of deep respect for her, offer iron-clad safeguards against her concern about the possibility of a “runaway convention.”
The support by such deservedly respected bodies as the Goldwater Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council have allayed the fears of all but the “’til the last dog dies” skeptics. Among these skeptics include some lions of the left as well. Consider Harvard’s Prof. Laurence Tribe under the quilts with the John Birch Society in opposition. Together they make perhaps the strangest-bedfellow tableau in constitutional history since Hamilton and Jefferson served together in Washington’s cabinet.
We, the people, have, of late, sent waves of reformers to Washington to restore to us our power, money and dignity. We see our champions (mostly) stymied by the System. Therefore… it is time to change the System. Amending the Constitution represents a classical liberal, conservative, not radical, solution.
As James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 43,
Time to use the U.S. Constitution’s Article V to restore the precedence of the people over the government. Time to use Article V to restore America’s Constitutional rights to their native classical liberal, fierce, status.“That useful alterations will be suggested by experience, could not but be foreseen. It was requisite, therefore, that a mode for introducing them should be provided. The mode preferred by the convention seems to be stamped with every mark of propriety. It guards equally against that extreme facility, which would render the Constitution too mutable; and that extreme difficulty, which might perpetuate its discovered faults. It, moreover, equally enables the general and the State governments to originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side, or on the other.” (Emphasis added.)
It’s been an unequal fight. Our government has much too much power and money. We, the people, demand our money, our power, and our dignity back.
We mere citizens cannot, it seems, win the game as now constituted. Article V, the game changer, is a path back to liberty. Bravo, now, to the two Marks, Levin and Meckler. Time to pull the Constitution’s emergency cord to stop the runaway federal freight train.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/08/19/mark-levins-game-changer-using-the-constitution-to-arrest-federal-drift/
Spoiler Alert: What's Really Going To Happen When Congress Is Back In Session
Ah August. Gideon’s Law is “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” (It’s named after the lawyer, politico, and newspaperman who coined it, Gideon J. Tucker.) This law still is at least as true as it originally was in 1866. August, and with it a Congressional recess, now is upon us. So we can, for a few weeks, let down our guard and open a cold one.When next September Congress returns, refreshed, all Hell will (appear to) break loose. There are only 9 legislative days in September, with the end of the fiscal year looming. So … expect it to begin with a portentous swell and staccato rhythm. Cue the 1812 Overture. Forewarned is forearmed so…. consider this column your Secret Decoder Ring for what’s actually going to happen.
Politics, that’s what. There are two political theaters (theaters in both senses of the word) slated for this Fall. One is the debt ceiling fight. The other is repealing Obamacare. The debt ceiling fight will be front and center.
Except… the debt ceiling fight is not really about the debt ceiling.
It’s about the Democrats’ attempt to make the Republicans look bad enough that the Democrats can regain control of the House in 2014. (Statistically, there is little chance of this. But the dreamers at the top of the Democratic Party have a special relationship with reality.)
And the fight over repealing Obamacare is only secondarily about repealing Obamacare.
It’s about the Republicans attempt to wrap that albatross around the Democrats’ necks, making them look bad enough that the Republicans can take control of the Senate in 2014. (The GOP actually has a pretty good chance at this… better even then appeared earlier. Unless, that is, it fumbles the opportunity by failing to execute the elegant strategy mapped out by the shrewd Mitch McConnell. With the GOP’s chronic ineptitude a fumble cannot be ruled out.)
The action, this Fall, is all about prepositioning for the 2014 Hill races. It is hardly at all about “governing” in the conventional meaning of that word. Here’s the largest dose of reality that the FDA reluctantly will allow this columnist to administer:
President Obama is, mainly, going to try to use the debt ceiling fight to threaten the Republicans with the blame for a government shutdown. He will try to force them to pass the tax-and-spending increases presented, disingenuously, as “reform” and “job creation.” Most of the mainstream media will present Obama as being reasonable, conciliatory, and sensible. They will present the Republicans as being obstructionist and reactionary. As Lincoln said, you can fool all of the people some of the time and, as MSNBC has proven decisively, some of the people all of the time.
Obama has been pretty forthright about it. He told his chief admirer Jan Wenner, of Rolling Stone, in a cover interview on April 25, 2012:
Note on the president’s stated hope that “the American people send a message that’s consistent with the fact that Congress is polling at 13 percent… and they suffer some losses in this next election.” Did not happen. Republicans suffered trivial losses. They retained the majority.“My hope is that if the American people send a message to them that’s consistent with the fact that Congress is polling at 13 percent right now, and they suffer some losses in this next election, that there’s going to be some self-reflection going on – that it might break the fever. They might say to themselves, ‘You know what, we’ve lost our way here. We need to refocus on trying to get things done for the American people.’”
Did the president take the converse of the lesson prescribed for his adversaries? Don’t be preposterous. The president was expressing an equivalent of the Brezhnev Doctrine, “what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is up for grabs.” (Didn’t work out particularly well for the Soviet Union. Not likely to work out particularly well for the Democratic Party.)
We mere voters thwarted the president’s yearning for a Democratic Congress in 2012. Yet we voters exist, in this president’s view, only to teach Republicans, never Democrats, a lesson. (When Obamacare cost the Democrats their House majority in 2010 … the Democrats simply doubled down on their Utopian Romantic agenda.)
After his own respectable, though indecisive, re-election victory Barack Obama, as reported by the Huffington Post, stated his desire baldly: ”I actually just want to govern – at least for a couple of years.” “Govern… at least for a couple of years” means that he hopes that the Democrats will take back the House. His party thus controlling the legislature could pave the way for Obama to get enacted his social democratic agenda. To “govern.”
The prospects of the Democrats actually winning a House majority in 2014, of course, are dim. As political analysts Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik observed on March 18th in the Wall Street Journal:
“Since the start of the modern two-party system in the mid-19th century, the party of an incumbent president has never captured control of the House from the other party in a midterm election.”Instead of politicking Obama, indeed, could govern now. He could work with Republicans to generate faster job growth by seeking at least incremental solutions to reining in spending, lowering confiscatory tax rates, liberalizing job-stifling regulation, and fixing a monetary policy of QEs, Twists and Tapers which resembles nothing so much as a scene from the Mad Tea Party (the one in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland not the one triggered by Santelli’s Rant).
Instead Obama… engages in pure political maneuvering.
To mere citizens — such as this columnist, a Hard Shell Tea Party Patriot — the primary purpose of government is to, well, govern. And … govern well. That means doing things that will make the American people (and world) better off.
Many veteran politicos, far more sophisticated than this mere columnist, see this view of governing as naïve literalism. It is akin, in the civic sphere, to that of Biblical literalists in the spiritual. The elite see us as kind of … hick.
Clausewitz famously observed, in On War , that “War is merely the continuation of policy by other means. We see, therefore, that War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to War relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses.”
As it happens, most elected officials view government, like Clausewitz viewed war, as “not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument….” So, dear Reader: when Congress returns … do not misinterpret what will be coming out of Washington as … government.
Politics is afoot. We have entered (if we ever left) the era of “the permanent campaign.” You will be observing nothing more or less than the opening skirmishes of Campaign 2014.
For technical reasons the GOP has a slight edge in the 2014 races — absent the economy unexpectedly reviving notwithstanding continued job-crushing policies… or an international incident that unites America against a foreign aggressor. GOP legislators gamely will be trying to stymie much of the Democrats’ efforts to make government more expensive and more intrusive. The GOP, for all of its many flaws, mostly doesn’t believe that bigger government makes us better off. (Except, of course, the Pentagon. A story for another day.)
Spoiler alert: this Fall the government, at the last possible moment, won’t shut down. This Fall, Obamacare will not be defunded. Stalemate will continue. And, dear Reader, please ignore the nonsense that the state-controlled media will be whispering in your ear about Congress having accomplished so little.
That’s the liberals’ way to spin how outgunned GOP forces are fighting, admittedly imperfectly yet valiantly, for smaller government. They are battling Big Brother to a standstill. Gideon’s Law holds. “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” But the House and Senate GOP have had remarkable success in keeping Big Brother’s depredations contained. And the GOP, if it manages to take the Senate majority in 2014, really might be able to get rid of the monstrosity that is Obamacare.
Welcome, then, to the opening of the 2014 election cycle. Cue the 1812 Overture.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2013/08/05/spoiler-alert-whats-really-going-to-happen-when-congress-is-back-in-session/
PK'SNOTE: Not only no, but HELL NO.
Christie, Establishment Darling
The New Jersey governor cements the support of Republican power brokers.
Governor Chris Christie’s darkest moment, at least in the eyes of some members of the Republican establishment, came on a chilly Sunday night in early November of last year, just days before the presidential election. What Christie and his team did that evening, in a series of terse e-mails and calls with the pleading Romney camp, remains murky. On Capitol Hill, insiders still treat the episode like the Zapruder film, analyzing it and trying to discern, from limited context, what exactly happened.But what didn’t happen is indisputable: Christie didn’t attend Mitt Romney’s rally at Shady Brook Farm in Lower Makefield, Pa., an affluent township in the Philadelphia suburbs. Christie’s aides insist he was busy working on Hurricane Sandy relief, but to this day many of Romney’s donors and former advisers suspect the governor coolly abandoned them at the eleventh hour. They note that Trenton, New Jersey’s state capital, was only a 15-minute drive away, a short hop over the Calhoun Street Bridge, and that Christie made no effort. Two days later, Romney would lose deeply purple Pennsylvania and the election.
Ever since, Christie’s relationship with the Republican political class has been uneasy — he’s been seen not as a traitor, necessarily, but as a too-clever-by-half operator who didn’t do all he could for the nominee. The image of Christie happily hugging President Obama on the tarmac — and being AWOL for Romney, right as he was slipping in the polls — was seared into the consciousness of the conservative elite.
Christie’s inner circle has taken the complaints seriously, fearing their implications ahead of the 2016 presidential election. For the past nine months, they have quietly labored behind the scenes to woo the party’s skeptical power brokers. Their maneuvers have included huddles with Republican moneymen, off-the-record powwows with conservative journalists, and late-night conversations with past backers.
Officially, such sessions with national Republicans and figures of the right are considered part of Christie’s reelection campaign, but his playbook is filled with the broader, tacit push for his political rehabilitation. According to Christie sources, the nuanced relationship-building and donor outreach is being led by Bill Palatucci, Christie’s longtime strategist and friend, while Mike DuHaime, Christie’s other (and younger) senior political adviser, is more focused on the mechanics behind Christie’s gubernatorial race and day-to-day politics.
Ken Langone, the billionaire cofounder of Home Depot, is another important player in this informal project. Two years ago, as Washington Post reporter Dan Balz chronicled in his book Collision 2012, Langone gathered a group of more than 50 prominent Christie supporters from Wall Street and elsewhere at a tony restaurant in New York City, where they urged Christie to jump into the Republican presidential primary. Since January, Langone has been staying in touch with those financiers, planning fundraisers and keeping them enthusiastic about Christie’s future. In the meantime, more than $9 million has poured into Christie’s coffers.
Later this month, Christie will be in the Hamptons, chatting up Republican donors at the home of Clifford Sobel, a former ambassador in the George W. Bush administration. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, erstwhile darling of the Big Apple’s GOP set, will host the event. Palatucci, who is close with the Bush family, having led the Garden State campaigns for both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, is reportedly taking care to connect the vaunted Bush network, which has been friendly to Christie in the past, with his Jersey boss.
“The group is there, believe me, and it’s growing by the day, maybe by a factor of 50 times more than what it was in 2011,” Langone tells me. “He’s getting traction with people because people want to win. After 2012, it dawned on a lot of us that we need to have a better candidate, somebody who can connect, and Christie is the person who can do that.” Langone doesn’t make much of criticism of Christie’s handling of Hurricane Sandy: “I know some people say [Christie] got too close to [Obama], but it wasn’t a time for politics and pandering. It was a crisis! I saw it firsthand at NYU’s medical center, and people who get that aren’t unhappy with him.”
Christie has worked diligently to repair his ties to Romney World, which remains influential in national Republican politics. In late March, he had a private dinner with Romney in Boston, and a few days later Romney praised Christie during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Christie then attended Romney’s donor retreat in June, where his aides linked up with Romney’s former finance director, Spencer Zwick, and Romney’s major donors, and courted them at receptions. Last month, he spent time in Las Vegas with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of Romney’s big-dollar supporters during the general election. And for his reelection campaign, he has hired Russ Schriefer, a former Romney adviser and consulting whiz, to produce his campaign ads.
New Jersey state senator Joe Kyrillos, who chaired Christie’s 2009 campaign and Romney’s state campaign, traveled with Christie to Park City, Utah, this summer for the Romney confab. “Going in, we knew that there might be some lingering frustration with some Romney folks, but he was swarmed as he made his way through the lobby,” Kyrillos recalls. “He was a rock star. At one point, he was stuck off to the side of the room; the crowd, waiting in line to take iPhone photos, was that thick.”
“His early moves have been good,” says Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican operative who managed the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. “He’s now looking at a decisive reelection victory this year in a blue state, and then he becomes chairman of the Republican Governors Association next year, which will enable him to build all of his relationships to an even greater extent than he has done already. There will always be commentary about [the Sandy controversy], but I don’t think a photograph from five years ago will be an issue in a primary that’s driven, as almost all Republican primaries have been, by electability over ideology.”
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who encouraged Christie to run last year, agrees. In an interview, he tells me Christie remains a top-tier candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, owing to his willingness to wade into foreign policy and his ability to broaden the Republican coalition. “We’re friendly, and I think extremely highly of him, and he knows I’d be delighted if he became a national candidate,” he says. “Conservatives should recognize his long-term potential.” Christie’s work with Obama during the storm, he acknowledges, “might not have been the high point of his political career, but I was never angry about seeing him do what he needed to do for his state and his reelection.”
The crescendo of Christie’s reemergence as the establishment’s frontrunner came last week in Boston, where, less than a year after the Romney-related recriminations, the members of the Republican National Committee embraced him, for the most part, during their summer meeting. He cast himself as a national leader capable of leading the party out of its political wilderness. He seemed eager to snuff the post-election friction, once and for all, with a charismatic and upbeat performance.
“I’m in this business to win,” Christie told the RNC attendees, to approving cheers. “For our ideas to matter, we have to win, because if we don’t win, we don’t govern, and if we don’t govern, all we do is shout into the wind.” It wasn’t an ideological overture but a pugnacious and pragmatic message directed to a group that’s tired of losing. And they loved it, and Christie, too, since he increasingly looks like the only center-right governor and national star looking hard at a 2016 campaign. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is widely believed to be leaning against it, and senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, though popular with tea-party activists, are privately viewed with wariness by the Republican donor class.
Former New Jersey governor Tom Kean, who has mentored Christie since he was a young man, tells me he’s unsurprised by Christie’s comeback among top Republicans. Christie, he explains, is confident in his appeal but also keenly aware of how he can sometimes irritate allies within his own party. Instead of fretting, he says, Christie has engaged with his critics in his own way, spending time with them and reminding them about why he was once their favorite pol.
“He’s a charmer,” Kean says, chuckling. “Once people spend time with him, they like him. That’s important, and all too rare in politics. I’ve spoken with Ken Langone and others, and the sense is that everybody wants to find a way to win and they think Chris is the best candidate out there. But it’s also about people just liking Chris. He’s been a leader of our party for a few years now, and that won’t be changing anytime soon.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356215/christie-establishment-darling-robert-costa
When welfare pays better than work
Here’s an offer for you: $38,004 per year, tax free.No work required.Apply at your local welfare office.The federal government funds 126 separate programs targeted towards low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. (The rest fund community-wide programs for low-income neighborhoods, with no direct benefits to individuals.) State and local governments operate more welfare programs.Of course, no individual or family gets benefits from all 72 programs, but many do get aid from a number of them at any point in time.
Today, the Cato institute is releasing a new study looking at the state-by-state value of welfare for a mother with two children. In the Empire State, a family receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, public housing, utility assistance and free commodities (like milk and cheese) would have a package of benefits worth $38,004, the seventh-highest in the nation.
While that might not sound overly generous, remember that welfare benefits aren’t taxed, while wages are. So someone in New York would have to earn more than $21 per hour to be better off than they would be on welfare.That’s more than the average statewide entry-level salary for a teacher.
Plus, going to work means added costs such as paying for child care, transportation and clothing.Not to mention that, even if it’s not a money-loser, a person moving from welfare to work will see some form of loss — namely, less time for leisure as opposed to work.
Is it any wonder, then, that, despite the work requirements included in the 1996 welfare reform, only 27.6 percent of adult welfare recipients in New York are working in unsubsidized jobs?(Another 13 percent are involved in the more broadly defined “work participation,” which includes job search, training and other things.)
Welfare is slightly more generous in Connecticut, where benefits are worth $38,761; a person leaving welfare for work would have to earn $21.33 per hour to be better off.And in New Jersey, a worker would have to make $20.89 to beat welfare.
Nationwide, our study found that the wage-equivalent value of benefits for a mother and two children ranged from a high of $60,590 in Hawaii to a low of $11,150 in Idaho. In 33 states and the District of Columbia, welfare pays more than an $8-an-hour job. In 12 states and DC, the welfare package is more generous than a $15-an-hour job.
Of course, not everyone on welfare gets all seven of the benefits in our study. But, for many recipients — particularly the “long-term” dependents — welfare clearly pays substantially more than an entry-level job.
To be clear: There is no evidence that people on welfare are lazy. Indeed, surveys of them consistently show their desire for a job. But they’re also not stupid. If you pay them more not to work than they can earn by working, many will choose not to work.
While this makes sense for them in the short term, it may actually hurt them over the long term. One of the most important steps toward avoiding or getting out of poverty is a job.Only 2.6 percent of full-time workers are poor, vs. 23.9 percent of adults who don’t work. And, while many anti-poverty activists decry low-wage jobs, even starting at a minimum-wage job can be a springboard out of poverty.
Thus, by providing such generous welfare payments, we may actually not be helping recipients.
There should be a public-policy preference for work over welfare. And while it would be nice to raise the wages of entry-level service workers, government has no ability to do so. (Studies have shown that attempts to mandate wage increases, such as minimum-wage hikes, primarily result in higher unemployment for the lowest-skilled workers.)
If Congress and state legislatures are serious about reducing welfare dependence and rewarding work, they should consider strengthening work requirements in welfare programs, removing exemptions and narrowing the definition of work.
In New York, lawmakers should consider ways to shrink the gap between the value of welfare and work by reducing current benefit levels and tightening eligibility requirements.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/when_welfare_pays_better_than_work_GGZfz3wTztSW3BoMxn2VrI
The Die Harder States
Minnesota has increased the incentive to move to Florida.
Washington finally declared a truce on the death tax this year, with estates now taxed at 40% with an exemption of $5 million. President Obama insisted on preserving this tax to spread the wealth, though it raises less than 2% of federal revenue and discourages lifetime savings, as even a 1981 study by Mr. Obama's former chief economist Larry Summers showed.Now the death-tax debate has shifted to state capitals, with mixed results depending on which party runs the state. Prior to 2001, states could impose an estate tax of up to 16% with no extra burden on their residents because a federal tax credit offset state estate taxes. That policy has ended and now state death levies are paid out of the assets of the deceased.
Four states—Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee—have reacted wisely by eliminating or phasing out their estate taxes. This leaves 18 states plus the District of Columbia that still impose a gift or estate levy. (See the nearby list.) Most of them still apply a 16% rate—as if federal rules haven't changed.
The grand prize for self-abuse goes to Minnesota, which this year enacted a new 10% gift tax with a $1 million exemption. A gift tax is a levy on money given away while still alive. This tax is in addition to Minnesota's 16% estate tax. The new law is all the more punitive because it applies the 16% estate tax (6% on top of the earlier 10% gift tax) to any gift within three years of death.
This is essentially a clawback tax, or more taxation without respiration. Democratic Governor Mark Dayton, who signed the law, is the heir to a department store fortune and knows a lot about inheriting wealth but not much about creating it.
Studies by Mr. Summers and many others conclude that successful people who have built up wealth continue to invest in the enterprise and save money in their later years in order to leave a legacy to their heirs. This accounts for the trillions of dollars of wealth passed from one generation to the next. The higher the tax rate the more this incentive for wealth creation is reduced. The combined federal and state death tax rate now approaches 50% in many states (after accounting for deductions). This explains why estate tax planning and avoidance is a booming industry.
State death taxes are especially futile because residents subject to the tax can avoid it by fleeing before they die. No less an ardent liberal than the late Senator Howard Metzenbaum moved to Florida from Ohio to avoid estate taxes after he retired from politics. A successful New York business owner with, say, $50 million of lifetime savings can move his family and company to Florida, Georgia, Texas or 29 other states and cut his death-tax liability by up to $8 million.
Thousands of Minnesota snow birds move to Florida during the winter months already, and so the new tax adds an extra financial incentive not to return. The Center for the American Experiment, a Minnesota research group, found that $3 billion of income has been lost to the state since 1995 after Minnesotans relocated to Florida and Arizona.
The think tank's conclusion should be required reading for policy makers in every state still imposing a death tax: "If enough people move away and stop paying Minnesota taxes, then Minnesota will experience a net revenue loss due to the estate and gift tax." This will mean that people making less than $1 million a year will be left paying the tab. So much for spreading the wealth.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323639704579013040148683248.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
The Middle East: All Bad Choices
From Libya to Iran, our past actions have drastically limited our current choices.
By Victor Davis HansonSurvey the Middle East, and there is nothing about which to be optimistic.
Iran is either fueling violence in Syria or racing toward a bomb, or both.
Syria is past imploding. Take your pick in a now-Manichean standoff between an authoritarian, thuggish Bashar Assad and al-Qaeda franchises that envision a Taliban-like state. There is increasingly not much in between, other than the chaos of something like another Sudan.
Our Libyan “leading from behind” led to Mogadishu-like chaos and Benghazi. Do we even remember the moral urgency of bombing Tripoli as articulated by the ethical triad of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power?
A day late and a dollar short, we piggybacked on the Arab Spring in Egypt, damning the damnable Mubarak without much thought of who or what would take his place. The result is that a kleptocratic dictatorship gave way to a one-vote/one-time Muslim Brotherhood theocracy — and then full circle back to the familiar strongmen with epaulets and sunglasses. Even in the Middle East, it is hard to get yourself hated all at once by Islamists, the military, the Arab Street, Christian minorities, and secular reformists. In Egypt, the Obama administration has somehow managed all that and more. I wonder about all those supposedly pro-Western Google-using types who toppled Mubarak: Are they still there? Were they ever there? For now, the military is engaged in an existential struggle against the Islamists, who retaliate by going after Christians — a crime of enormous proportions going on throughout the Middle East, which is completely ignored by Western governments.
In Iraq, would it have been that hard to leave 5,000 U.S. troops at a fortified air base so that they could monitor Iraq’s air space, hunt down remnants of al-Qaeda, and keep the Maliki government somewhat constitutional — given the toll up to that point in American blood and treasure? In terms of strategic policy and U.S. self-interest, the answer is no; in terms of Obama’s 2012 reelection talking points, certainly it would have been problematic.
What is left to be said about our twelve years in Afghanistan? Obama’s 2008 “good war” that he was going to “put our eye back on” descended into surges, deadlines, withdrawals, musical-chair commanders, drone proxy wars, and finally inattention. The only remaining mystery is how many Afghan refugees and asylum seekers do we let in once the Taliban replays the North Vietnamese scenario and Kabul becomes a sort of Saigon 1975.
The West Bank is quiet to the degree that the Obama administration does not give loud lectures on solving the “Middle East problem” — as if Egyptians were killing Copts over Jewish settlements or Syrians leveling towns because of an Israeli checkpoint. But if John Kerry keeps trying to match Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, then we may yet stir things up enough for another intifada.
Turkey was supposed to be Obama’s model for an authentic Middle East, the circle of Islamic democracy squared by Erdogan’s New Ottomanism. For now we are in the surreal situation of pointing to Turkey as the model of compatibility between Islamism and democracy as Erdogan is doing his best to make the two incompatible.
Obama ran in 2008 on the notion of resetting the Middle East — his qualifications as a new sort of messianic leader being little more than that he was a utopian African-American novice senator with an Islamic middle name, and thus the opposite of the supposedly hated Texan George Bush. That was the subtext of every word Obama spoke for two years, culminating in the Al Arabiya interview and the Cairo speech. Five years later, the region is in chaos, and American popularity there is still at historical lows. False affinities and cheap visuals turn out to be a poor substitute for no-nonsense talk backed by strength.
What is the current status of the war on terror? It is something waged against somebody, but what and how and why, we are not being told. I think Islamists are the terrorist bad guys trying to kill us, but who knows, since the Obama administration has defined jihad as a holy struggle, had classified the Tsarnaevs as poor political refugees, and considers Major Nisan a danger to the Army’s diversity program? About April or May 2009, Guantanamo was virtually closed, renditions were declared over, tribunals and preventive detentions left the side of the barn wall, and the ghost of George Bush kept droning thousands of poor innocents. But do we remember when Senator/candidate Obama referred to the drone bombings by saying, “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” When I heard that, I supposed he wanted a vast curtailment of the drone war and a new, rugged conflict on the ground in Afghanistan. Six years later, it hasn’t turned out that way.
What are our options at this point?
In Iraq, would it have been that hard to leave 5,000 U.S. troops at a fortified air base so that they could monitor Iraq’s air space, hunt down remnants of al-Qaeda, and keep the Maliki government somewhat constitutional — given the toll up to that point in American blood and treasure? In terms of strategic policy and U.S. self-interest, the answer is no; in terms of Obama’s 2012 reelection talking points, certainly it would have been problematic.
What is left to be said about our twelve years in Afghanistan? Obama’s 2008 “good war” that he was going to “put our eye back on” descended into surges, deadlines, withdrawals, musical-chair commanders, drone proxy wars, and finally inattention. The only remaining mystery is how many Afghan refugees and asylum seekers do we let in once the Taliban replays the North Vietnamese scenario and Kabul becomes a sort of Saigon 1975.
The West Bank is quiet to the degree that the Obama administration does not give loud lectures on solving the “Middle East problem” — as if Egyptians were killing Copts over Jewish settlements or Syrians leveling towns because of an Israeli checkpoint. But if John Kerry keeps trying to match Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, then we may yet stir things up enough for another intifada.
Turkey was supposed to be Obama’s model for an authentic Middle East, the circle of Islamic democracy squared by Erdogan’s New Ottomanism. For now we are in the surreal situation of pointing to Turkey as the model of compatibility between Islamism and democracy as Erdogan is doing his best to make the two incompatible.
Obama ran in 2008 on the notion of resetting the Middle East — his qualifications as a new sort of messianic leader being little more than that he was a utopian African-American novice senator with an Islamic middle name, and thus the opposite of the supposedly hated Texan George Bush. That was the subtext of every word Obama spoke for two years, culminating in the Al Arabiya interview and the Cairo speech. Five years later, the region is in chaos, and American popularity there is still at historical lows. False affinities and cheap visuals turn out to be a poor substitute for no-nonsense talk backed by strength.
What is the current status of the war on terror? It is something waged against somebody, but what and how and why, we are not being told. I think Islamists are the terrorist bad guys trying to kill us, but who knows, since the Obama administration has defined jihad as a holy struggle, had classified the Tsarnaevs as poor political refugees, and considers Major Nisan a danger to the Army’s diversity program? About April or May 2009, Guantanamo was virtually closed, renditions were declared over, tribunals and preventive detentions left the side of the barn wall, and the ghost of George Bush kept droning thousands of poor innocents. But do we remember when Senator/candidate Obama referred to the drone bombings by saying, “We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.” When I heard that, I supposed he wanted a vast curtailment of the drone war and a new, rugged conflict on the ground in Afghanistan. Six years later, it hasn’t turned out that way.
What are our options at this point?
These banalities might be toughened up with more rhetorical red lines to Syria, professed deadlines to Iran, and leading-from-behind strategies in Libya. We could assure the French and the Brits of more clandestine support should they take the lead again as they did in Mali and Libya.
John Kerry seems a disciple of this school, and on occasion, despite his ponderousness and self-satisfied manner, he can still level an Obama-like empty threat or turn a pseudo-Lincolnesque banality. I am sarcastic but not entirely sarcastic, given that the present veneer of appearing engaged might be better than appearing disengaged.
2. Neo-isolation. By 2030 America will be energy independent, one way or another. Strategic significance is shifting to the Pacific, given the rise of China, India, and the Asian Tigers, especially in comparison with the stagnant Mediterranean lake. The latter is historically comparable to what it was not a.d. 100 or even 1400, but more like 1830. Southern Europe mopes along in the economic doldrums. New energy sources have lessened the importance of Mediterranean navigation, and Cairo, Damascus, and Tripoli don’t seem to offer much more dynamism than Tangiers or Lagos.
We have strategic and humanitarian interests, of course, in the region, but, with a $17 trillion debt, in comparison to what? For many Americans, after Afghanistan and Iraq, preempting Iran’s nuclear program, intervening in Syria, or rebuilding Egypt is a bridge too far.
If there is a theme of the last decade, it is that whatever the U.S. does, the Arab Street does not like it. We can debate the role of human passions like envy and jealousy, or the modern therapeutic notion of victimization, but do any of these elemental reasons matter any more, given that the American public has largely lost interest in whether the Islamic Middle East considers us friendly or hostile? In this regard, the implosion of Obama’s outreach has changed the question from whether they are angry at us to whether we care — or whether we are not angrier at them.
3. Whack-a-mole. From time to time, America has preferred the empty but nevertheless sometimes emotionally satisfying tactic of sending missiles and bombs — or now drones — after bad guys. If the result was always small, so was the cost. Shelling the Bekaa Valley, bombing Qaddafi’s headquarters in 1986, blowing up an African pharmaceutical factory, or sending some cruise missiles in the general direction of Osama bin Laden — all those were a sort of cheap containment, the precursors of the current policy of incinerating terrorist suspects in Yemen or Pakistan.
True, as in Libya, even limited interventions of this sort would mean we would have to lie again to the U.N. and the Russians about confining our operations to “no-fly zones” and “humanitarian efforts” (“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”), but it might stop or lessen a bit the threats against American interests. Or, less grandly, we might not officially intervene at all but just shoot off stuff and break things: If you kill an American ambassador, expect a drone; if you storm an American embassy, look for bombs. That such retaliations might be inaccurate or irrelevant (as so often in the past) is secondary to the expectation that they will follow any attack on U.S. interests or personnel. Of course, the impotence of this choice is what we were reacting against when we went into Afghanistan and Iraq following 9/11.
4. Iraq redux. We go whole hog and topple Assad; then we train the new Syrian army, with State Department types instructing the good Syrian dissidents in the arts of consensual government. That way Hezbollah is checked, Iran is rebuffed, and there is a chance of something better for the Syrian people.
I think right now there is less than zero support for this fourth option.
5. Just a few — real — red lines. We also could accept the hopeless situation but silently adopt a few red lines that reflect only U.S. interests: Iran cannot have the bomb and should expect something quite bad if it is on the verge of a nuclear test. We ensure that Israel is well supplied so that it can continue its deterrence against its enemies. That is about it.
Our moral and occasional non-military material support would not be for a Middle Eastern general X, reformer Y, or Islamist Z, but simply for the idea of consensual government — not one-time plebiscites — and the rule of constitutional law. To the degree that this is absent, we would be indifferent to the country in question — not necessarily hostile, but non-supportive. To the degree that there is real progress toward such a goal, we would give encouragement and limited aid.
In this fifth option, we would expect the worst in a world of misogyny, tribalism, anti-Semitism, religious fundamentalism and intolerance, dictatorship, and statism. Meanwhile, we would ensure that our fiscal house is in order, become energy independent, and not promise any help we could not deliver or threaten anyone whom we are not willing to attack.
I think most Americans would favor this last option, but at this point a complete break from the dysfunctional Middle East would be a close second.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356176/middle-east-all-bad-choices-victor-davis-hanson
10 Truths about America's Entitlement Programs
In a landmark speech before the U.S. Chamber’s Board of Directors, Chamber Executive Vice President Bruce Josten laid out “ten truths” about entitlements (see below) and called for a national conversation and swift action on the reforms needed to strengthen and improve the nation’s core social insurance programs.
“We are speaking out—we are Americans, too, and the success of these programs impacts our families, friends, and employees. We need to make the responsible common-sense choices now, even if they are hard, to guarantee the promise of these programs to the next generation,” Josten told a capacity audience of business leaders and media. “The business community wants to use its skills and expertise to help the country find smart solutions to the many issues these programs face.”
The tone of the speech was urgent and reflected the current situation facing the nation. Without federal spending reform—driven primarily by entitlement costs—interest payments on the national debt will reach almost $1 trillion per year by 2023, and explode well beyond that—not if, but when, interest rates return to normal levels.
Josten left the door open on specific policy recommendations, but noted that the Chamber has supported a number of specific entitlement reforms, upgrades, and modernizations over the years. “We’ve been around this track enough times to know that until we can get the public and the politicians to agree there is a problem, there’s no sense in endorsing specific solutions. Our support for any particular combination of fixes will be based on an evaluation of the entire package—and not on the inclusion or exclusion of a particular provision.”
Any solution, however, will depend in large part on how effectively the nation deals with three other critical challenges: containing health care costs; preserving and enhancing the role of private savings in America; and pursuing a vigorous economic growth agenda, including energy development, trade expansion, education and infrastructure investments, an immigration overhaul, and tax and regulatory reform.
The Chamber’s role now is to educate the public and fill the current leadership void around the topic. “The real challenges surrounding entitlements is an ill-informed public, organizations that have existed for decades that oppose entitlement reforms, and the absence of real national leadership. These will be tough hurdles to overcome, but we must try,” he said. “With reason, facts, common sense, and quiet urgency, we aim to change that conversation by telling the American people the truth.”
10 TRUTHS ABOUT ENTITLEMENTS
Truth #1: Entitlement programs are huge, expensive, and reach into every corner of American life.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid already cost $1.6 trillion per
year. “These programs also reach into every corner of American life by
the way they are financed—direct payroll taxes, borrowing from income
tax revenues, and using federal debt,” Josten said.Truth #2: Entitlement programs are not self-funding and are a main driver of deficits. Medicare, for example, has had a cash shortfall every year since its creation except two: 1966 and 1974. Medicare’s annual cash shortfall in 2011 was $288 billion. Social Security had a cash flow deficit of $58 billion in 2012. “It is important for citizens to understand this. Many oppose changes in entitlement programs because they believe they are just getting out what they put in.”
Truth #3: Entitlement costs are growing at an alarming rate. In ten years’ time, the total price for these three programs will soar to an astounding $3 trillion a year. As Social Security provides benefits to millions of retiring baby boomers, its costs will balloon to $1.4 trillion.
Truth #4: Longer life expectancies, changing demographics, and soaring costs explain why entitlements as we know them today are unsustainable. In Social Security’s early years, the ratio of workers to retired beneficiaries was high—16 to 1. By 2035, the ratio of workers to retired beneficiaries is projected to drop to 2-to-1. “Social Security and Medicare as currently structured and financed can’t come close to meeting the demand.”
Truth #5: Not a single major entitlement program is projected to be financially solvent 20 years from now. Social Security will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2033. Absent legislative action, all Social Security beneficiaries would face an immediate 23% benefit cut at that time.
Truth #6: The cost to make these programs financially solvent for the next 75 years is almost $40 trillion. “Absent reform, the situation will soon require either economy-crushing new taxes or painful benefit cuts in the programs—or both,” Josten warned.
Truth #7: Mandatory spending—entitlement programs and interest on the debt—are already squeezing out important investments in other essential programs. In fact, mandatory spending already exceeds all federal income tax revenues collected. “We have to borrow money and increase debt to pay for everything else,” he said.
Truth #8: We have nothing to fear from carefully crafted, phased-in adjustments to our entitlement programs. America’s entitlement programs have been adjusted and modernized many times over the years to keep up with changes in the economy and society. “Strengthening and improving entitlements in the face of compelling financial and demographic realities is reasonable and achievable.”
Truth #9: We can reform entitlements without baseline cuts and without breaking our commitment to the nation’s seniors, disabled, and poor. “No one in our mainstream political system today is talking about actually cutting the amount of money spent on entitlement programs. All that’s being discussed is ways to restrain the increases and make the programs sustainable.”
Truth #10: The biggest threat imaginable to Medicare or Social Security as we know them will be if we do nothing at all. “To do nothing will set into motion the most harsh, extreme, and burdensome entitlement changes of the them all—the massive benefit cuts and tax hikes that would have to be imposed when the programs’ funding just flat runs out.”
http://www.freeenterprise.com/economy-taxes/entitlements-face-truth-or-face-consequences?utm_source=Outbrain&utm_medium=Article_Custom&utm_content=10-Entitlement-Truths-That-Will-Blow-Your-Mind&utm_campaign=OngoingPaid
Starry-eyed Liberal Meets the Reality of Medicaid Patients
President Obama addressed health rights in his August 17 radio address, but he didn't mention what happens inside an inner city emergency room. Wait until his lemmings find out what having a "right" to healthcare means according to the single-payer collectivists. If the dulled masses, schooled in the evils of capitalism these last forty years, don't wake up in time to the connection between free market principles and the genius of American medicine, the progressives' long yearned for single-payer system, already in the works, will become a reality.Those of us in the healthcare field have seen up close what government programs like Medicaid mean in terms of a "right" to medical care. Our emergency room happens to be in a major southern urban area. If any one of the 20-somethings who voted for Obama would be willing to volunteer for at least a month at our facility, I can almost guarantee these same hoodwinked young people would be singing the praises of capitalism, warts and all.
Just ask Samantha (name changed to protect identity). With so many college graduates looking for work, we recently hired the 24-year old at our registration desk. Samantha is a die-hard liberal, but it just so happens her boyfriend is a 28-year-old conservative-minded accountant. When first hired about three months ago, she talked a great deal about their political differences.
Samantha was very sympathetic to the plight of the poor and their need for assistance. Moreover, she felt her boyfriend didn't understand the situation with this segment of the population which would be unable to survive without help from the government.
After one month of doing her job registering 45 ER Medicaid patients daily for various reasons like STD's, painkillers, child abuse, infected fingernails from having their nails done, old gunshot wounds, and pregnancy tests for as young as 12 years old, Samantha was visibly on the verge of a breakdown or a breakthrough, I couldn't tell which.
By the end of 90 days, Samantha told me what really affected her was the cold reality that most of the Medicaid patients treated her like dirt. They showed no gratitude for the fact that Samantha's taxes were going to help them. On top of their sense of entitlement, Samantha noticed many welfare mothers and fathers mistreated their children while the kids were the ones waiting to be seen!
She witnessed many, many Medicaid patients slap, spank, push, pull and yell obscenities at their children as young as 2. If that's not egregious enough, the mostly black perpetrators had no problem yelling at Samantha. They called her "stupid," and told her repeatedly "you don't know what the hell you're doin'."
One afternoon I came in and she was in tears. She told me that some irate friend of a patient had demanded to see the doctor. Samantha relayed the message from the nurse that the physician was busy. The guy called her a "heifer'. She had to finally call security when he wouldn't get off her case. I tried to cheer her up by telling her that one day a woman patient said I looked like "one of those tea party b-ches. "
Samantha no longer thinks everyone has a right to healthcare. She thinks we have an obligation to help those with chronic, genetic conditions and those struggling mothers and fathers truly interested in the welfare of their children. Like most people brought up with loving parents, Samantha cringes when she hears mothers telling their kids to "shut up, or I'll give you something to cry about," or "I'll take you into the bathroom and whip your ass." This goes on throughout her shift and it's getting to be too much for her, I can tell.
Recently she brought reading material, coloring books and crayons for the kids because she never sees the caretakers bring little toys for their children to play with during the long ER visit.
Instances of insanity occur often.
When security or Child Protective Services is called because a child has been hit, and it's on camera, the parent becomes irate instead of admitting fault.
In one incident, a white nurse approached a teenage black mother because another patient in the waiting room reported she heard the child screaming in the bathroom. The teenage mother told the nurse, "that's what's wrong with you white people, you never hit your kids, you think you're all that."
Samantha appears to be coming undone from this day-to-day contact with real, generational hardcore government addicts. She would love to quit this job tomorrow, but she needs the money. I try to ease her mounting frustration by telling her she might be here for a reason. I even attempted some oral history to let her know she's not alone.
I related something my Depression-era father once told me. He had to quit school to help the family when he was still a teenager. Later on, after he was able to earn a degree and get a decent paying job he said he was actually grateful for the experience. He had learned many life lessons being in the real world at such a young age, especially during one of the worst periods in the country's economic history.
My father said there are two kinds of education -- the kind you get between the ears and the kind you get between a rock and a hard place. Both are valuable. Samantha's getting the second kind now. Unfortunately, she says, the first kind didn't prepare her for this job, or the fact that she's helping to subsidize the kind of craziness she sees every day. She says the DC politicians that have made her complicit in this madness sometimes make her angrier than the patients do.
Since she's open to real conversation, I'm trying to fill in the historical blanks for Samantha. I tell her, for example, that when a progressive/Democrat/so-called liberal says the word "right" they are not talking about the kind of rights our founding fathers had in mind. It's the pursuit of happiness we have a right to, not happiness.
All the free cell phones, subsidized housing, phony mortgage loans, education programs, ADC payments and trillion dollar healthcare plans have made most people more broke and miserable, not happier. She now agrees.
There may be some bad fat cats out there, sure, but the ruling class of government planners have eaten up more of our financial resources, through redistribution to corrupt companies, NGO's, Baby Mamas and non-profits than any greedy capitalists.
I discovered Samantha and most of her contemporaries have no clue how long this sore has been festering. I explain to her that part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty program was the signing of Medicare and Medicaid into law in 1965 as a way to not only extend health insurance benefits to the poor and elderly, but to calm the stormy waters of racial division.
Some civil rights leaders may have been giving speeches about the content of one's character, but legislation being passed was all about color. The shakedown by various leftist civil rights organizations in the 60's gave birth to the massive welfare state and the mess we have in the inner cities today.
At this point in our discussion, Samantha made an astute observation. She said, "Nobody seems to care about all of this, how some things begin, until it gets so bad, and then it's too late."
Well, it's been almost four months since Samantha began her employment with the hospital. The young woman who started out a typical, idealistic, middle-class, white liberal railing against those mean, cold, dispassionate conservatives unmoved by the poorest of the poor in America's inner cities, has started to see the light.
Like the reality show, Scared Straight, where delinquents are forced to sit around listening to hardened criminals talk about prison life, Samantha has experienced firsthand what people become when the Collectivist State takes over and gives us 'rights.'
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/starry-eyed_liberal_meets_the_reality_of_medicaid_patients.html#ixzz2cWhTmeUP
The Myth of Liberal Compassion
By David LimbaughWhat will it take for the country to wake up to the destructive ravages of liberalism -- and finally do something about them?
Liberals continue to masquerade as exclusive proprietors of compassion, but their policies stubbornly undermine their possessory claim. Indeed, Obama's "fundamental transformation" of America is nothing less than America's decline and destruction in the name of compassion and fairness.
You can't scan a day's news without seeing proof of this. Let's look at just two items in today's news digest.
The Cato Institute has released a report documenting that in Obama's America, "welfare pays better than work." Cato's Michael Tanner concludes that the federal government funds 126 programs targeted at low-income Americans, a shocking 72 of which involve the transfer of cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. This does not include the many assistance programs provided by state and local governments.
The Cato study examines the state-by-state value of welfare for a mother of two children. In the state of New York, for example, "a family receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Medicaid, food stamps, WIC, public housing, utility assistance and free commodities (like milk and cheese) would have a package of benefits worth $38,004, the seventh-highest in the nation."
Because welfare benefits aren't taxable, a New York wage earner would have to earn in excess of $21 per hour to do better than his welfare recipient counterpart, which is more than a beginning teacher makes. Though benefits vary among the states, for many recipients, especially long-term dependents, welfare pays substantially more than an entry-level job.
Ponder the powerful disincentive this constitutes to work -- just like the endless extension of unemployment benefits over which Obama is always willing to shut down the government.
How can a society that embraces the work ethic not shudder in horror at this development? Yet a great portion of our society and political class doesn't.
Obviously, this state of affairs threatens America's fiscal integrity and is punitive to those in the workforce. Perhaps what's not so obvious, at least to bleary-eyed utopians, is that such excessive transfer payments ultimately harm the recipients in the long term. So do punitive taxes on the "rich." A powerful piece in The Wall Street Journal on Monday demonstrates that "targeting the wealthy kills jobs." In other words, folks, liberal compassion is not compassionate.
Cato posits that the best cure for poverty is still a job. And contrary to what the compassion snobs doubtlessly believe, even minimum-wage jobs can launch people out of poverty.
A specific remedy is to strengthen work requirements in welfare programs. In fact, we've done it, and it worked. But Obama didn't like it and reversed it because he is trapped in his radicalized worldview, a narrow-minded ideology that misinforms him that we have a closed economy with a fixed amount of income -- a finite, zero-sum pie that offers the opportunity for individual growth only through redistribution. Is it any wonder he has given us perpetual economic malaise?
In our next news item of the day, we read about the enormous expansion of the regulatory state under Obama and how it will outlast his term in office.
In my most recent two books, in which I chronicled President Obama's ongoing assault on America, I substantiated the frightening growth of the regulatory state under Obama, which has since become even worse -- by Obama's design. Just as he lied about increasing domestic oil production, he falsely claimed he has streamlined our regulatory climate.
He's frequently huffed that he will use all tools at his disposal -- many of them regulatory -- to advance his agenda when Congress won't bend to his will. He has acted unilaterally on immigration, labor, energy, gun control, cybersecurity, sentencing guidelines for drug offenses and the environment, to name a few.
The Hill reports that in Obama's first three years in office, the Code of Federal Regulations increased by 7.4 percent, almost twice the rate of President George W. Bush's first term. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, asserts, "It would be difficult for anyone to pretend that this isn't a high water mark in terms of regulation."
These rules and regulations are not only smothering our economy but also destroying our individual liberties and threatening our constitutional framework because they are promulgated and enforced by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.
You don't need to be an economist to understand that Obama's massive taxing, spending and regulations are causing America's economic decline. You don't need to be a sociologist to grasp that his runaway welfare schemes are robbing people of their dignity while doing little to alleviate poverty.
At some point, Obama and his fellow liberals need to be judged for the effects of their policies, not the grandiosity of their self-congratulatory rhetoric.
It's often said that there is nothing compassionate about being charitable with other people's money. It's not said often enough that arrogant liberal experiments in forced "fairness" are affirmatively cruel because they comprehensively destroy wealth and prosperity and greatly harm the people they promise to benefit.
http://townhall.com/columnists/davidlimbaugh/2013/08/20/the-myth-of-liberal-compassion-n1668326/page/full
Judge in Fort Hood massacre case bans evidence of Jihad as motive
A self-professed jihadist who screams "alahu akbar" while murdering 13 people is actually not engaging in jihad.So says a military judge in the trial of Nidal Hasan who attacked a gathering at Ford Hood in November of 2009, killing 13 soldiers and wounding 40.
ABC News:
Lawyers representing the family members of those killed and injured in the Ft. Hood shooting rampage were outraged today when an Army judge limited prosecutors from introducing evidence, including emails to a known Al Qaeda operative, that would establish accused shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan's "jihadi" motives.Is the judge an idiot? Well, yes. But the reason for his ruling is that if the massacre were declared a terrorist attack rather than "workplace violence," the military would be on the hook for millions of additiional dollars in benefits for the families, not to mention the increased financial exposure in a planned civil suit by family members.
The judge's rulings could inhibit the ability of the victims' families to claim in a civil suit that the shootings were an act of terror. Federal lawyers involved in the civil suit claim that the people shot during Hasan's murderous rage were victims of workplace violence, a designation that could sharply limit the damages in a civil suit.
"This is first degree mass murder case and motive is absolutely relevant to prove premeditation," said Neal Sher, a lawyer representing many of the victims and their family members in a separate civil suit against the government.
Prosecutors have sought to portray Hasan as a Muslim extremist, motivated by Islamist ideology and in touch with known al Qaeda member Anwar Alwaki.
"He didn't want to deploy and he came to believe he had a jihad duty to murder soldiers," lead prosecutor Col. Steve Henricks said in his opening statements. He wanted to "kill as many soldiers as he could."
The judge, Col. Tara Osborn, ruled today that prosecutors could not mention Hasan's correspondence with Alwaki, an American born al Qaeda recruiter and organizer. Osborn also barred prosecutors from mentioning Hassan's interest in seeking conscientious objector status and drawing parallels to a 2003 incident in which another Muslim American soldier attacked U.S. troops in Kuwait, according to the Associated Press.
The judge found much of that evidence was too old, but permitted prosecutors to introduce evidence about Hasan's internet usage and search history from the time of the attack.
Many of the victims and their family members have filed a civil suit against the government, arguing that the attack should be classified as a terrorist attack, allowing victims to receive combat medals, like the Purple Heart, and receive better benefits.
The government maintains that the attack was an incidence of "workplace violence."
President Obama could fix this ridiculous situation by simply declaring the massacre a terrorist attack. After all, he gives billions to his union friends and cronies. Why not a couple of extra million for the families of the fallen?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/judge_in_fort_hood_massacre_case_bans_evidence_of_jihad_as_motive.html#ixzz2cWq5wt2C
The Left’s Faux Martyr
Ninety-two-year-old Rosanell Eaton’s ability to vote is unharmed by North Carolina’s new law.
The Left has a new martyr. Rosanell Eaton is a 92-year-old black woman with a compelling story about the harm done to vulnerable people, especially members of minority groups, by North Carolina’s new voter-ID law.But none of it holds up. Rosanell Eaton isn’t a martyr at all, in fact.
The law, signed by Republican governor Pat McCrory a week ago, ends same-day voter registration, pre-registration of high-school students prior to their 18th birthday, and straight-ticket voting. It also reduces the number of days of early voting by a week, from 17 days to 10 (though early-voting hours and locations will be expanded, keeping the total number of hours available the same). But the major, most controversial feature of the law requires voters to present a government-issued photo ID in order to vote.
Liberals have trotted out the usual overwrought rhetoric. Chris Brooks, the legal director of the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation called the law a “blatant attempt” to make it more difficult to vote, and the Reverend Dr. William Barber, the president of the North Carolina NAACP, has labeled it “voter suppression straight up” and “an outright attempt to manipulate voting.”
Mrs. Eaton, their standard-bearer, has just the sort of personal history that critics of the law want to bring to the fore. It indeed speaks to the country’s racist past: Mrs. Eaton was one of the first blacks to register to vote in her county, after completing a literacy test that required her to recite the preamble to the Constitution. Given that personal history, she deserves to be hailed for her intrepid commitment to voting rights.
The Left’s case, though, is that she’s facing the same sort of obstacle today.
Mrs. Eaton and the North Carolina state conference of the NAACP claim in a federal lawsuit that the law will directly injure her because it means she will “incur substantial time and expense” reconciling her driver’s license and her birth certificate with her voter-registration record, all three of which have different spellings of her name.
This is flatly false for at least four different reasons.
First, she already has a driver’s license, as the lawsuit concedes. This is an important point because so much of the criticism of the law relies on the assumption that many people in the Tar Heel State don’t have valid photo identification, and thus will be blocked from voting. But the woman whom the Left wants to make the face of the victims already has valid ID.
ThinkProgress declares that reconciling her voting registration with her ID will be a “costly and time-consuming administrative endeavor.” Nonsense. If she wants to change her license to match her voting record, she doesn’t need her birth certificate to do it.
North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles does accept a birth certificate as one way of proving age and identity when renewing or registering for a license, but only one of many. It’s hard to believe that Mrs. Eaton lacks all of the other documents that the DMV accepts — especially since she has been able to renew her license up to this point.
To prove her age and identity, Mrs. Eaton could present a pair of any of the following documents: her current driver’s license; a certified or uncertified North Carolina driver’s record; documents from a North Carolina school (a transcript/registration signed by a school official; a diploma or GED from a school, community college, or university); her Social Security Card; tax forms that reflect her full name and Social Security Number; a certified marriage certificate; or documents from a court with U.S. jurisdiction such as a divorce decree, adoption papers, or a court order for a change of name or child support.
If for some reason she doesn’t want to deal with renewing her driver’s license, she might choose to acquire a state ID card after January 1, 2014, which she can also use to prove her identity at the polls. The same type of documents that prove her identity for a driver’s license are applicable here, but there’s no charge for obtaining a state ID if the applicant is over 70 years old, legally blind, or homeless, or has had his driver’s license revoked due to a physical or mental disability or disease.
The birth-certificate issue is a red herring, plain and simple.
Second, if Mrs. Eaton chooses not to change the name on her photo ID to match her voting record, she could do the reverse. According to Lisa Goswick, the director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, Mrs. Eaton would need to request a verification form, make the corrections to her name on the back, and then show her driver’s license. The process, Goswick says, can be done in about five minutes.
I asked Goswick if Mrs. Eaton — who has lived her entire life within seven miles of her birthplace in Louisburg, N.C., worked as an assistant poll worker for 40 years, and registered more than 4,000 people to vote — is likely familiar with the process. “By working with us all these years, yes sir, she should be,” Goswick said.
Third, if making the trip to the local board of elections — apparently less than ten miles from her home — sometime over the next three years before the law goes into effect in 2016 is too inconvenient, she has yet another option. Goswick confirmed that Mrs. Eaton could update her information on Election Day through the use of an Authorization to Vote form. In other words, if Mrs. Eaton had to show a photo ID at a polling place tomorrow, she would still be able to vote, her mismatching documents notwithstanding.
Finally, there’s still another option if her voter record and documents don’t match by the 2016 election cycle, when the ID provision goes into effect. ”Should anyone legitimately not be able to get a photo ID, they would still be able to vote absentee,” Republican state representative David Lewis, the head of the North Carolina House Election Law Committee, told me. According to Mrs. Eaton’s voter record, she has voted via absentee ballot six times since 2002.
All of this is why Lewis insists that “it’s absolutely false to claim that her right to vote has in any way been infringed upon because she may have difficulty getting a photo ID.”
There isn’t a single thing in the new law that will prevent Mrs. Eaton from voting. Her claim rests on the allegation that it would be less costly and time-consuming to sue the state of North Carolina than to run an errand or send a few pieces of mail.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356112/lefts-faux-martyr-sterling-beard
Federal Energy Efficiency Programs Have Little Effect on Emissions: Report
A June report from the National Academies found that numerous federal programs designed to increase energy efficiency or promote renewable fuels have almost no effect on carbon emissions — or, in some cases, actually increase emissions.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board reported on some of the Academies’ findings in a Tuesday editorial:
Take ethanol and other biofuel subsidies, which the committee calls a “most striking” example. The 45-cents-a-gallon ethanol tax credit expired in 2012, but before it died it was increasing carbon emissions by five million tons every year, at a cost of $5.26 billion. As they say, it’s not easy being green. […]
Other tax provisions are more useless than harmful by the green lobby’s anticarbon standards. The renewable electricity tax credit for wind and solar will reduce emissions by roughly all of 0.3% by 2035, which is still minuscule globally.
The panel also tried to study tax credits for home energy efficiency improvements, but these programs “resisted analysis” because they are so complicated, which is a running theme in the report. One of the committee’s main conclusions is that “the best existing analytical tools are unable to determine in a reliable fashion the impact of some important subsidies.”
Ponder that one: The roughly $24 billion that the U.S. spends annually on energy subsidies is so complex that its impact can’t be understood by America’s top scientists and economists.http://freebeacon.com/federal-energy-efficiency-programs-have-little-effect-on-emissions-report/
Good News: US Taxpayers Now Funding Obamacare Propaganda Video Contest
Frankly, if creative-types somehow manage to put lipstick on the grotesque pig known as Obamacare, they deserve some sort of award. Too bad we're paying for it. Think of it this way, young filmmakers -- if you win Kathleen Sebelius' propaganda contest, you might be able to afford the law's rising premiums for a year or two. So congrats in advance, or something:The administration will partner with Young Invincibles, a non-profit youth issues organization, to run the contest, with the goal of reaching those younger Americans who are skeptical of the need for health coverage. Participants will be encouraged to submit three different types of videos advertising the benefits of the exchanges: a song, an animated short, or a video designed to convince viewers that they aren't invincible. Using funds from the Affordable Care Act's education and outreach budget, HHS will award $3,000 each to the creators of the three most popular and persuasive videos, while second and third place winners will get $2,500 each...The contest is designed to dispel the notion that even young and healthy individuals would be better off simply not purchasing health insurance. It may seem like an odd choice of battlegrounds. But attracting the young demographic is key to the effectiveness of the exchanges, providing insurers with the type of low-risk customers that will help lower premiums across the board. It's no coincidence that many conservative opponents of the Affordable Care Act are actively urging young people to skip the exchanges altogether, even though doing so would mean incurring the tax penalty for not having insurance coverage.Of course it's true that young people aren't "invincible." No human being is. But the young are a lot less likely to need costly medical care than older folks, which is why Obamacare is such a lousy deal for them. In order for the law to cover high-risk, high-cost patients (including those with pre-existing conditions), it must significantly overcharge the young and healthy. The latter group would generally be best-served by procuring inexpensive "catastrophic" plans, under which they're covered in the event of a statistically unlikely medical emergency or serious illness. Instead, they'll be required to purchase plans packed with ancillary and expensive mandates, driving up the price tag -- by a lot, in many cases. In spite of the Sebelius dog-and-pony show, the rational move for millions of young-ish, fairly healthy Americans is to pay the relatively low individual mandate tax as a penalty for not obtaining government-approved insurance. But then they'd be at great risk if something goes wrong! Not really. If a thirty-something suffers a serious medical incident, he or she must be treated at an Emergency Room. Then, once the next Obamacare's open enrollment period rolls around, insurance companies would be required to take them on, regardless of their recent medical history. It's after-the-fact "insurance," which is an oxymoron. The only way this sort of system doesn't collapse is if the overwhelming majority of healthy people agree to pay more than they currently do for coverage. That's a tough sell, especially when they've been promised repeatedly that the law will substantially reduce their premiums. Even if you factor in the much-balleyhooed taxpayer-funded subsidies, the majority of people in the individual marketplace won't be eligible (once eligibility standards are implemented, that is), and many of those who do qualify will still see their rates increase. And of course there's the latest Obamacare delay, which undercuts the rationale for overpaying with Obamacare even further.
Parting thought: Is this a win/win for Democrats? If they coax, manipulate, prod, and bully enough people into participating in Obamacare, their system doesn't collapse -- even if it's still deeply flawed. That's a low bar, but a "win" at this stage. But if the funding "death spiral" ensues, Harry Reid & Co. waltz in with a new "solution." Before you answer my question, read the tail end of John McCormack's take on the second scenario.
Frankly, if creative-types somehow manage to put lipstick on the grotesque pig known as Obamacare, they deserve some sort of award. Too bad we're paying for it. Think of it this way, young filmmakers -- if you win Kathleen Sebelius' propaganda contest, you might be able to afford the law's rising premiums for a year or two. So congrats in advance, or something:
The administration will partner with Young Invincibles, a non-profit youth issues organization, to run the contest, with the goal of reaching those younger Americans who are skeptical of the need for health coverage. Participants will be encouraged to submit three different types of videos advertising the benefits of the exchanges: a song, an animated short, or a video designed to convince viewers that they aren't invincible. Using funds from the Affordable Care Act's education and outreach budget, HHS will award $3,000 each to the creators of the three most popular and persuasive videos, while second and third place winners will get $2,500 each...The contest is designed to dispel the notion that even young and healthy individuals would be better off simply not purchasing health insurance. It may seem like an odd choice of battlegrounds. But attracting the young demographic is key to the effectiveness of the exchanges, providing insurers with the type of low-risk customers that will help lower premiums across the board. It's no coincidence that many conservative opponents of the Affordable Care Act are actively urging young people to skip the exchanges altogether, even though doing so would mean incurring the tax penalty for not having insurance coverage.Of course it's true that young people aren't "invincible." No human being is. But the young are a lot less likely to need costly medical care than older folks, which is why Obamacare is such a lousy deal for them. In order for the law to cover high-risk, high-cost patients (including those with pre-existing conditions), it must significantly overcharge the young and healthy. The latter group would generally be best-served by procuring inexpensive "catastrophic" plans, under which they're covered in the event of a statistically unlikely medical emergency or serious illness. Instead, they'll be required to purchase plans packed with ancillary and expensive mandates, driving up the price tag -- by a lot, in many cases. In spite of the Sebelius dog-and-pony show, the rational move for millions of young-ish, fairly healthy Americans is to pay the relatively low individual mandate tax as a penalty for not obtaining government-approved insurance. But then they'd be at great risk if something goes wrong! Not really. If a thirty-something suffers a serious medical incident, he or she must be treated at an Emergency Room. Then, once the next Obamacare's open enrollment period rolls around, insurance companies would be required to take them on, regardless of their recent medical history. It's after-the-fact "insurance," which is an oxymoron. The only way this sort of system doesn't collapse is if the overwhelming majority of healthy people agree to pay more than they currently do for coverage. That's a tough sell, especially when they've been promised repeatedly that the law will substantially reduce their premiums. Even if you factor in the much-balleyhooed taxpayer-funded subsidies, the majority of people in the individual marketplace won't be eligible (once eligibility standards are implemented, that is), and many of those who do qualify will still see their rates increase. And of course there's the latest Obamacare delay, which undercuts the rationale for overpaying with Obamacare even further. I broke this controversy down with Neil Cavuto yesterday:
Parting thought: Is this a win/win for Democrats? If they coax, manipulate, prod, and bully enough people into participating in Obamacare, their system doesn't collapse -- even if it's still deeply flawed. That's a low bar, but a "win" at this stage. But if the funding "death spiral" ensues, Harry Reid & Co. waltz in with a new "solution." Before you answer my question, read the tail end of John McCormack's take on the second scenario.
Obamacare 'Navigators' Looking Sketchier By The Day
Last week the Obama administration released $67 million for Obamacare navigators (who have access to personal information) to explain how the new legislation works. But who exactly are these 'navigators'? Apparently, Health and Human Services doesn't really care who they are so long as they show people how to enroll in the new Obamacare system. Becoming a navigator only requires 20 hours of training with no background check or fingerprinting requirement. In other words, criminals can easily sign up to become navigators.
Now, a number of Attorneys General from across the country are sounding the alarm, pointing out that navigators with access to personal information will only expose millions of Americans to identity theft and fraud.
Remember when ACORN was going to do the Census before getting busted for illegal activity and fraud on video? Yeah, this is kind of like that.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/08/20/obamacare-navigators-looking-sketchier-by-the-day-n1669000
How Functional Illiteracy Could Doom Obamacare
The troubles for Obamacare continue to mount. The White House has delayed the employer mandate. Those implementing the program said some computer exchanges are not expected to be ready in time. According to the GAO, the IRS, which will enforce the mandate, is not ready. It might be impossible to confirm someone’s eligibility. Employers are already looking for ways around it.All of these problems are technical in nature. The underlying and perhaps most pressing concern is also the most difficult to solve: Much of the nation is simply health care illiterate and unable to understand the complex health choices the Obama administration is expected to offer starting Oct. 1.
According to the CIA Fact Book, although 99 percent of Americans over the age of 15 can read, 20 percent are functionally illiterate. Those 20 percent are often among America’s poorest and most disadvantaged, the very group the Obamacare is designed to serve.
But many can’t read contracts, fill out job applications properly, and understand newspaper articles or other documents. At the top of the problem: reading and understanding complex health care options.
A 2003 study by the Health and Human Services Department found that only 12 percent of Americans were healthcare literate. Some 77 million Americans were found to have basic of below basic health care literacy.
Just 53 percent of Americans were found to have an intermediate understanding of health care, modestly defined as being able to make informed medical choices and follow instructions on drug labels.
The HHS study also found that only six percent of those without health insurance were proficient in health care. This means that the very people that Obama must enroll have very little idea of what they’ll be signing up for.
These people will have to receive a crash course on how the modern American health system works. They’ll need to learn what deductibles and co-pays are. They’ll have to understand prescription drug coverage, and how networks of doctor’s interact. They’ll also have to be convinced that it’s better to pony up hundreds of dollars for insurance and a tax break down the line than to roll the dice and hope they don’t get sick.
“It’s a complex product. Often times you find there’s a specific set of benefits to compliment certain situations,” said David Smith, director of payer services at Leavitt Partners, a Utah-based consultancy that’s helping to implement the program. “But to find that takes wading through several plans to 100 plans.”
INITIAL OFFENSIVEIn an effort to educate people, the Obama administration is training a fleet of experts to help people make decisions. HHS just committed another $67 million to its Navigator program, which trains guides for enrollees. It’s also created an in-person assistor program to give guidance as people sign up.
“Navigators will be among the many resources available to help consumers understand their coverage options in the marketplace,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said last week. “A network of volunteers on the ground in every state – health care providers, business leaders, faith leaders, community groups, advocates, and local elected officials – can help spread the word and encourage their neighbors to get enrolled.”
Smith said that his group had also been conducting focus groups to determine how to best educate people. They rounded up consumers who will be eligible for Obamacare to determine needs and how best to reach out to potential enrollees.
In poor areas, he said Navigators would be reaching out to people through social institutions – “Everyone in Mississippi said churches and hair salons,” he said – as well as knocking on doors to encourage sign up. Enroll America is also expected to continue its work through the fall and winter.
The White House has already failed to win some big partners. They asked the National Football League, which will be in full swing when enrollment opens, for assistance, but were denied. It has also reached out to the National Basketball Association for enrollment help, although the league has yet to commit.
However, Smith admits that enrolling people, not improving health literacy, is the top priority. Without hitting its enrollment figures, Obamacare would ultimately fail.
“The administration's objective right now has to be able to hit an enrollment number that’s defensible enough that it’s working. The tertiary objective is educating people," he said. "The longer term goal is to increase health care literacy."
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/08/19/How-Functional-Illiteracy-Could-Doom-Obamacare.aspx#page1
Nonprofit executive overseeing the White House's Obamacare youth video contest is the disgraced ACORN group's former top lobbyist
A liberal organization tapped Monday to manage a new federal government-sponsored video contest aimed at encouraging young Americans to embrace Obamacare is run by ACORN's former top lobbyist, MailOnline can reveal.ACORN, the once-mighty Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, crumbled in 2010 just months after a video sting operation showed its employees advising activists posing as a pimp and prostitute on how to evade federal taxes and hide crimes including human trafficking and prostitution.
Congress voted officially to defund it shortly thereafter.
The far-left ACORN was also dogged for years by allegations – some proven, others not – that its street-level organizers engaged in widespread voter registration fraud.
In its heyday, ACORN's legislative agenda was managed by Deepak Bhargava, an Indian-born community organizer. Bhargava left ACORN in 2002 after holding the top government affairs position there for 10 years. He is now executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Community Change.
In 2013 that organization sponsored a new youth outreach arm called Young Invincibles, which announced a partnership on Monday with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Their joint effort will award cash prizes to the creators of online videos that convince millennials to sign up for Obamacare health insurance exchanges, which open for enrollment on October 1.
Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, who was among the most vocal Republicans during the 2010 battle over ACORN's federal funding, told MailOnline that the White House is risking a public backlash with its choice of partnerships.
'The fact that the Obama administration is putting a senior staffer of the now defunct and notoriously corrupt ACORN in charge of giving away cash to bribe young Americans into accepting Obamacare is cause for grave concern,' Gosar said.
'This new effort goes to show that the Obama administration will go to questionable lengths to force the American people into government run healthcare.'
Young Invincibles co-founder Aaron Smith told MailOnline on Monday that his group is 'an independent organization that operates under the fiscal sponsorship of' the Center for Community Change.'
But another Center for Community Change insider told MailOnline on Monday that Bhargava was personally involved with the agreement that lets Young Invincibles piggyback on his group's federal tax-exempt status.
'He's one-part manager, one-part showman,' said the employee, who asked not to be identified. 'And he's far too smart to let anything go on under his roof that he hasn't approved.'
Smith also would not dispute that IRS regulations require nonprofit fiscal sponsors to exercise substantial oversight over their dependent groups, and to assume responsibility for the legality of their activities.
Young Invincibles made its pitch in a statement Monday, saying that 'as many as 17 million uninsured young adults could be eligible for free or low-cost health insurance in the coming years.' Its video contest, which is co-branded with HHS, promises to award $30,000 to 100 winners in three categories.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius addressed a Young Invincibles-sponsored conference in Houston on Monday, telling organizers that 'educating young people about new coverage options requires an all-hands-on-deck approach.'
'For millions of young people,' she said, 'health insurance hasn’t been an option because it's always been out of reach – because it costs too much, or isn’t offered through a job.'
But the Newark Star-Ledger reported Monday that under Obamacare, about 106,000 people in New Jersey – mainly young families – will no longer be able to count on what has been the most affordable insurance option to date.
The state's 'basic & essential' policies, which often cost only a few hundred dollars per month, have 'made them the most popular option for those who don’t get insurance through an employer or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid,' the newspaper reported. 'About 71 percent of those covered by the individual health market have a B&E plan.'
The contest's online pitch says that 'Young Invincibles and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have created a competition that will tap into the creativity and energy of young Americans while raising awareness about the new law and encouraging young people to take advantage of the benefits of health insurance.'
Broadly, the promotion is designed to discourage young Americans from thinking that they will be better off without purchasing insurance at all.
Economists estimate that the White House needs at least 2.7 million young adults between the ages of 18 and 35 to enroll in its health insurance exchanges in order for Obamacare's financial model to work as it was designed.
If too few register, there will likely be a financial shortfall since not enough healthy young Americans will be in the system to offset the spiraling health care costs of older, sicker taxpayers.
Conservatives warn that if a funding gap results, the federal government will be forced to resort to 'rationing' health care.
Matthew Vadum, senior editor at the conservative Capital Research Center and the author of a book about ACORN, told MailOnline that for most young Americans, the lure of cash prizes is small consolation if they end up with a poorly-run insurance plan that the government manages.
The Obama administration, he said, 'is offering cash rewards to aspiring young propagandists to produce videos and songs that make government-run medicine seem cool.'
'When they have to wait in long, DMV-style lines to get heart surgery or chemotherapy as they do in Britain and Canada, Obamacare may not look so cool after all.'
Rep. Gosar said that employing a former ACORN executive's organization as a sales tool for the new health insurance law 'shows the desperation of the Obama administration to sell this unworkable and unpopular program to the very generation whose back it will fall on to foot the bill for it.'
The Center for Community Change was founded in 1968 in response to the decade's civil-rights upheavals. It reported raising more than $16.2 million during its most recent fiscal year, which ended in September 2012, according to records the group provided to the state of Colorado in connection with its fundraising license.
In two other recent fiscal years, the group's tax filings show that more than three-quarters of its donations came in amounts of $250,000 or more.
It has engaged in health care policy for nearly ten years, following on its decades-long focus on broader public health issues, immigrants' rights, and forcing lenders to write mortgages for low-income and minority borrowers.
IRS records reviewed by MailOnline show that in 2011 the California Endowment awarded it $65,000 to support campaigns organized 'around implementation of the health reform law focused on young adults.'
The California-based Tides Foundation, a virtual crossroads of progressive funding and policy initiatives, gave the group $90,000 in 2009, at the height of the national debate over President Obama's health care law, for 'work in the media and field mobilization on health care.'
The federal government is directly funding the cash prizes in the Young Invincibles video contest, out of the Affordable Care Act's education and outreach budget, The Huffington Post reported Monday.
Sebelius has a larger pool of money, $75 million, allocated for Obamacare public relations efforts. The $30,000 in prizes will come from a different pot of money.
'During the transition, we are going to call all of you in to help shape the agenda,' Obama said. 'We're going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for next presidency of the United States of America.'
A month after the 2008 presidential election Bhargava, also a member of the editorial board at the liberal magazine The Nation, delivered a speech urging progressives to prepare to partner with Obama.
'We are here because the crisis our country is facing demands big and bold solutions, not small and timid ones,' Bhargava said. 'The two roundtables today of community leaders, leaders of allied organizations and policymakers will take on the two great challenges of our time, building a new economy for shared prosperity and expanding our democracy. We will need to move from the politics of protests to the challenge of governing.'
Bhargava and his organization's spokespersons did not respond to questions about his relationship to the Young Invincibles project. But Vadum said the professional community organizer is a strong reminder of where President Obama came from.
'Having the slippery former ACORN lobbyist Deepak Bhargava hand out the cash' for the video contest, said Vadum, 'is just another way that Obama is rewarding his old buddies in the radical left-wing world of community organizing.'
The White House and HHS did not respond to requests for comment about their partnership with Bhargava's group.
In Eric Holder’s DOJ, enforcing the law equally is ‘high heresy’
In the final part of his interview with The Daily Caller, J Christian Adams, a former lawyer with the Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division turned whistle-blower, explains how the internal dynamics of the DOJ operate and how a political agenda is being instigated through the implementation or non implementation of law.“I saw it on the inside of justice, at the Justice Department,” Adams said. “I saw the structures, the attitude, the philosophies, the conference room meetings and you begin to get an appreciation for how this whole left-wing apparatus works when you are actually a part of it. … When you’re on the inside, you learn the architecture.”
Adams, who started as a lawyer with the DOJ in 2005, recounts how cases he brought regarding white people drew huge criticism compared to the cases he brought regarding black or Hispanic minorities.
“One of the things I was brought in there to do was to simply be objective and neutral, but see, that’s high heresy. They don’t want people who are objective and neutral. They want people who are part of the orthodoxy, so during the Bush administration, a very small number of people were brought in and it was like an anti-body in the system. The left went absolutely wild. They had congressional hearings. They could not abide by people who were willing to enforce the law to protect everybody.”
In his new book “Injustice” Adams details how a request by the Civil Rights Commission to appear under a subpoena over the Black Panther voting intimidation case was blocked by the DOJ and how Adams was informed not to comply with the subpoena. “They said that if you comply with the subpoena, you’re violating our directives. The problem was that there’s a federal statute that says that you have to comply with the subpoenas and if you don’t it’s a crime — it’s a crime, its a criminal offense to interfere — so I just resigned my job and testified about what’s going on.”
Obama administration asks Supreme Court to allow warrantless cellphone searches
If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.In 2007, the police arrested a Massachusetts man who appeared to be selling crack cocaine from his car. The cops seized his cellphone and noticed that it was receiving calls from “My House.” They opened the phone to determine the number for “My House.” That led them to the man’s home, where the police found drugs, cash and guns.
The defendant was convicted, but on appeal he argued that accessing the information on his cellphone without a warrant violated his Fourth Amendment rights. Earlier this year, the First Circuit Court of Appeals accepted the man’s argument, ruling that the police should have gotten a warrant before accessing any information on the man’s phone.
The Obama Administration disagrees. In a petition filed earlier this month asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, the government argues that the First Circuit’s ruling conflicts with the rulings of several other appeals courts, as well as with earlier Supreme Court cases. Those earlier cases have given the police broad discretion to search possessions on the person of an arrested suspect, including notebooks, calendars and pagers. The government contends that a cellphone is no different than any other object a suspect might be carrying.
But as the storage capacity of cellphones rises, that position could become harder to defend. Our smart phones increasingly contain everything about our digital lives: our e-mails, text messages, photographs, browser histories and more. It would be troubling if the police had the power to get all that information with no warrant merely by arresting a suspect.
On the other hand, the Massachusetts case involves a primitive flip-phone, which could make this a bad test case. The specific phone involved in this 2007 incident likely didn’t have the wealth of information we store on more modern cellphones. It’s arguably more analogous to the address books and pagers the courts have already said the police can search. So, as Orin Kerr points out, if the Supreme Court ruled on the case, it would be making a decision based on “facts that are atypical now and are getting more outdated every passing month.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/19/obama-administration-asks-supreme-court-to-allow-warrantless-cellphone-searches/?print=1
Cumulus Radio Wages War on Conservatives
In the American Spectator Tuesday, Jeffrey Lord exposes Cumulus Media owners Lew and John Dickey for their dishonest corporatist ways. While Cumulus made noise about how Hannity was dragging the stations down, as we reported yesterday, the actual numbers show the complete opposite: Cumulus is dragging Hannity down -- which is why Hannity fired them.Lord also reminds his readers that in an obvious swipe at conservative talkers and listeners, Cumulus came up with the slogan, "More Conversation, Less Controversy"… and then hired 72-year-old flamethrower Michael Savage to replace the two-decade younger Hannity in order to improve the 25-54 demo:
It would appear the Dickeys are either
the most cynical radio station operators in the business — or the
dumbest. Hannity will be gone from 30-very-replaceable Cumulus stations
that in fact are not a big part of his audience. Meanwhile the Team of
Dickey, Dickey and Savage will make “radio history” — Savage’s words —
without doubt. Although one can be reasonably sure that “radio history”
will not be the way it was.
As one radio source (who does not have a
talk show) told me months ago, the Dickey aim is to own all of radio. At
this moment they are trying to buy CBS Radio, thereby combining, in the
memorable words of Inside Music Media’s Jerry Del Colliano, “the worst
radio company with the best.” Hint: “the worst” does not refer to CBS.
The Dickeys are, in the thoughts of the
above-mentioned source, a one-trick pony. They buy a station or
stations, then immediately set about cutting costs — firing popular
(read: expensive) hosts and good staff, regardless of whether it wrecks
popular formats and angers the audience. This has been, says the source,
their operating modus operandi wherever they go. The only difference
with conservative talk radio is that the hosts and the format are so
visible on the national level.
This has made the Dickeys, naturally and
obviously, wildly unpopular with radio professionals from one end of the
country to the other, as witness the “worst radio company” comment
above from Del Colliano.
What kind of fire have the Dickeys been playing with?
Google “Hannity fired” and one
finds…ready?… 2,460,000 results from desperate — and I do mean desperate
— Hannity-hating liberals.
Over there at Media Matters they’ve run
15 Hannity-hating stories in the last 28 days alone. Say again….15
stories in 28 days. Media Matters has become so obsessed with Hannity
they make the word “fanatical” into an understatement.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/20/cumulus-war-cons
Cumulus Already Lost Two Battles in War on Conservatives: Huckabee, Geraldo
In March of 2012, Cumulus Radio made a very big deal of how they were going to bring down Rush Limbaugh with failed presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee. Even though Limbaugh's show aired on Cumulus stations, company owners Lew and John Dickey pitched Huckabee to advertisers as the "safe alternative" to Limbaugh.Instead of rallying around Limbaugh when Media Matters was pouring all of its resources into an effort to destroy the conservative movement's most prominent and effective voice (after his comments about free-birth control activist Sandra Fluke), Cumulus joined the Media Matters crusade with the delivery of Huckabee as that "safe alternative."
“Rush is talking to his audience, the governor is going to be talking with his audience. That’s a huge difference,” Dickey said. “Rush talks to people. Some might argue that he yells at people. Some might argue that he badgers people. I don’t know.”
Surrounded by all kinds of mainstream media love, fanfare, and free publicity, Huckabee debuted on 200 stations and not only flopped but was trounced by Limbaugh:
In San Francisco, where Mike's heard on KSFO, Rush has a 143.4% larger overall audience.
In Dallas, where Cumulus seeks to remove
Limbaugh from his longtime home at WBAP, El Rushbo is CRUSHING the
Huckster with eleven listeners for every one fried squirrel fan. Mike
ranks 40th in the Metroplex.
Portland Oregon: Rush's ratings are 1444% higher. Huck ranks 27th there, heard on KUFO-AM.
Salt Lake City: Rush beating Mike by 13900%. The latter ranks 40th at KKAT.
Providence / New Bedford / Fall River: Huck stuck in 44th, Rush with 766% higher ratings.
Jacksonville: Rush beats by 8500%, Huck takes 27th place.
Over a year-and-a-half later, Huckabee is still on only 200 stations.
In June of 2012, Cumulus Media again thought they could make an end-run around conservative radio listeners with the launch of Geraldo Rivera's radio show. Like Huckabee, Geraldo was advertised as being above ideology. Geraldo summed up his place on radio as the "militant middle":
I’m thrilled that just as the nation
hurtles toward the highly charged and hard-fought 2012 presidential
election, I’ll be coming on the air nationwide. Fasten your seat belts,”
said RIVERA. “With AMERICA divided along red/blue, right/left lines, I
hope to occupy the militant middle and be a referee between ideologies.
Everyone is welcome on the radio show, and the conversation is
no-holds-barred.
As with Huckabee, Geraldo was an immediate disaster:
According to Arbitron, KABC's morning
programming averages 14,800 listeners six and older per quarter-hour
from 9-10am. When Rivera takes over at 10am, that figure immediately
drops to 6600 and remains stuck there until the conclusion of his show
at noon.
In the especially important 25-54 demographic, the numbers are bleak, averaging about 2600 listeners per quarter-hour.
When Sean Hannity airs at noon,
listenership shoots straight back up to an 18,300 average per
quarter-hour. By the end of his show, Hannity's number has increased to
22,200. Larry Elder fares even better at 3pm, with 26,500....
Meanwhile, in New York City, where
Geraldo has been hosting a separate program unique to that market, the
story is the same. On WABC, he's again the lowest-rated host on that
station's daytime lineup, with a 1.2 share in the 25-54 demo.
Worse, he's actually played a key role in
sinking WABC's overall figures since joining, from a 3.6 share of the
audience last December to 2.7 today.
It was Cumulus Media co-chief operating
officer John Dickey who had the radio world rolling on the floor
laughing when he cracked that Geraldo Rivera was so popular that it was
time to launch a national show.
"When Geraldo agreed to host shows for
Cumulus stations in New York and Los Angeles, we had a hunch there'd be
national substantial listener interest in his incisive and insightful
style," he told the trades. "Now we're thrilled that with Geraldo such a
success in those two markets the show will now be available across the
country."
Why is that so funny? Because Geraldo's
most recent Arbitron ratings pegged him at a 0.5 share of the audience
on KABC (790 AM), or 38th in the city. For people ages 25 to 54, the
rating was even more dismal, 0.4, though it was back to 0.5 for people
ages 35 to 54.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/20/cumulus-already-lost-war-geraldo-huckabee
That Was Fast: NPR CEO Resigns After 20 Months
When Gary Knell became CEO of National Public Radio (NPR), it was in the wake of James O'Keefe's hidden video exposé showing the fundraising arm of the publicly funded radio network trashing Republicans and seemingly complicit with receiving donations from a group purportedly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.Knell claimed that his top priority was to "depoliticize" the debate over public radio. Twenty months later, Knell has announced his resignation:
I will be leaving NPR after my term ends in late fall to join the National Geographic Society as its President and CEO. I was approached by the organization recently
and offered an opportunity that, after discussions with my family, I could not turn down.
NPR released a press release claiming Knell will leave in the fall. Knell will "remain with NPR until then to work with the board to ensure a smooth transition as it launches a search for his successor."
"Gary and the management team have worked effectively to strengthen NPR as a world-class media organization, technological innovator and industry leader," Kit Jensen, chair of NPR's board says in that statement. "NPR has built a firm foundation for providing the highest quality journalism and programming. We will be working closely with Gary over the next few months, and deeply appreciate the lasting impact he has made."
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/20/NPR-CEO-Resigns
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