How A Republic Dies

Congress is handing its indispensable constitutional role to the executive branch.

In his dazzling revolutionary polemic, Common Sense, Thomas Paine explained in no uncertain terms that

in America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

John Adams put this a little more pithily a few years later, distilling into the new constitution of Massachusetts an ancient English value: This state, Adams wrote, would be “a government of laws and not of men.”

Adams’s axiom has become American scripture; an impulsively recalled maxim of liberty to which all men who feel threatened by government power return at will. Yet recent trends call into question whether the two things remain mutually exclusive. In Common Sense, Paine sets the king and the law as being diametrically opposed. But what if, instead of holding him back, the law is happy to give the king carte blanche? And what if a Congress that we instinctively believe to be jealous of its territory is in fact content to cede it to the executive branch, thereby producing not traditional laws but enabling acts?

It is a small jump from regarding the Constitution as “living” — as swathes of the will-to-power Left unashamedly do — to regarding legislation as “living,” too. This is a jump that many appear to have made. One of the more insidious developments of this presidential era has been the replacement of prescriptive, detailed, and fixed domestic law with bloated and open-ended legislation that is punctuated ad nauseam with instances of “the secretary shall.” As my colleague Andrew Stiles has noticed, the Senate’s desired immigration bill fits this new model of “living law” perfectly. He writes:

The 844-page bill contains 129 instances of what the DHS secretary “shall” do to implement its myriad provisions, 102 mentions of what she “may” do, and 35 cases in which implementation will be based on what the secretary “determines.” On five occasions, the bill affirms the DHS secretary’s “unreviewable discretion” to waive or alter certain provisions as she sees fit.

This should come as no great surprise to anyone. Obamacare, which makes the Senate’s immigration bill look like an exercise in legislative restraint, contains over 2,500 references to the secretary’s discretion, 700 cases in which the secretary “shall,” 200 instances in which the secretary “may,” and 139 cases in which the secretary “determines.” Its twin, Dodd-Frank, which effectively allows an unelected Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to police the personal-finance sector, is little different, aggregating the power of the three branches into one, stripping Congress of its traditional capacity to set an agency’s budget and severely limiting the courts’ opportunity to review the CFPB’s legal interpretations. This is law, Jim — but not as we know it.

To ask for a concise explanation of what these new sorts of laws do would be futile, because the only meaningful answer is that they give the president the scope to run certain parts of the economy the way he wants. And what he wants is what Woodrow Wilson wanted in The Study of Administration: a means by which to “open for the public a bureau of skilled, economical administration” that is filled with the “hundreds who are wise” and that thwarts the “selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, or foolish.” Government of the expert, by the powerful, and for the unworthy, in other words.

This, it should not need saying, stands in diametric opposition to the underlying principle — the “all-important English trait,” Orwell called it — that made the Anglosphere exceptional in the first place: that the law is regarded as “something above the state and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.” “The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root,” Orwell claimed of his native England. It has not quite taken root in America, either. But even here, the law, which should be firmly and beautifully dead, is in danger of taking on a life of its own. If it is allowed to do so, Americans will invite in caprice, the half-brother of whim, which, as Christopher Hitchens astutely observed, is the “essence of tyranny.”

Students of history will know that Americans have flirted with such expansive measures before, with consequences that were catastrophic for good and limited government. In the modern era, the worst such example is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964), which, by virtue of its wildly ambiguous language and a remarkable and fail-safe provision that allowed the president to “take all necessary measures” in Southeast Asia, effectively gave President Lyndon Johnson license to launch and escalate the Vietnam War without the need for Congress’s warrant. The eventual outcry, joined with general disillusionment with the imperial presidency, led not only to repeal of the resolution itself but also to the War Powers Act (1973), which, for some time at least, went some way toward restoring congressional constraints on the executive branch. Do we need a Domestic Powers Act to complement it?

According to all the president’s men, the answer is no. Instead, they insist, we should be happy about our fickle new arrangement. “If you look at the polling” on Obamacare, David Axelrod explained on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last week, “the majority of the people say let’s move forward and fix it along the way — and that’s exactly what the president will do.” This, to say the least, is a rather novel theory of the American political system. Whether the “majority of the people say let’s move forward” on a particular project or not is rarely the salient question. The United States is a republic. It is not a monarchy, it is not a majoritarian democracy, and it is certainly not a direct democracy. Its highest value, in fact, is “nomocratic” — that is to say, that the rule of law and the overarching constitutional system trumps pretty much everything else.

In that they carry Congress’s blessing, our living laws are distinct from rule without Congress, a rule for which Obama is becoming increasingly famous. Nevertheless, both living legislation and executive rule rely for sustenance on the same appeals to urgency and necessity that our 44th president has perfected. Michael Oakeshott shrewdly observed in On History that the nomocrats will always be at a disadvantage because, while the rule of law “remains the most civilized and least burdensome conception of a state yet to be devised,” it nevertheless “bakes no bread, it is unable to distribute loaves or fishes (it has none), and it cannot protect itself against external assault.” Suffice to say: That the rule of law can distribute no loaves or fishes, in an age in which distributing loaves and fishes is regarded as the highest of all government functions, is a desperate problem for it.

Moved as we now are by our fetishization of democracy, claims of tyranny in America tend to be curtailed by the sight of elections. It is the German Enabling Act of 1933 that we mostly fear — a dramatic measure that would allow a man to rule in perpetuity as a king. But we overlook the real danger posed by other, duly passed, acts of Congress. America has never worked on the basis that the executive branch may do as it wishes during its four-year term with the understanding that, if the people don’t like it, they may remove the president when his time is up. Even presidents who win virtually every state in the union are required to follow the law, and they are required to remain in their designated sphere, too. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong place for our despotism?

In Federalist 47, Madison forthrightly characterized as “tyranny” the investment of great power in one branch of government. In Federalist 48, he built on this idea, warning that “powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments.” America’s constitution operates on the presumption that the branches of government will inevitably compete with one another for influence. Thus do “parchment barriers” prevent the encroachment of one branch over another, and the deleterious “accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands.”

But for the essential balance of power to be upset, one needs neither a tyrant nor a coup; one needs only a compliant or underconfident branch of government. This we have seen since Obama’s inauguration. In the past four years, Congress has happily handed over to the executive branch regulation of the environment, of the financial sector, and of the health-care market. It is currently considering doing the same thing with immigration.

George Washington’s parting warning about the “necessity of reciprocal checks of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories and constituting each the guardian . . . against invasions by the others” has never looked more prescient. The legislature, which has for so long now deferred to the president, must insist that, if Americans are to be governed by law, that law must be precise, and it must be dead. Down the “living law” road lies caprice — and caprice, remember, leads to tyranny.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356322/living-law-charles-c-w-cooke

The RNC Chair's Horrific Open-Borders Pandering

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus had a message last week for outspoken conservatives who support strict immigration enforcement policies: Shut up.

Yes, the head of the RNC is more concerned about protecting the party's Hispanic vote-pandering campaign than protecting law-abiding citizens from the devastating consequences of illegal immigration.

At the RNC's annual summer meeting in Boston, Priebus complained that openly advocating self-deportation policies during last year's election season was "horrific" and that rule-of-law rhetoric "hurts us." Yes, really.

So is it OK to discuss during off-year election cycles? Leap years? Weekends? Holidays? Can the GOP sensitivity police let us in on their approved immigration discussion calendar?

Priebus has yet to explain what exactly is "horrific" about telling foreign rule-breakers that they shouldn't wait for the government to eject them, and that the right thing for them to do would be to abide by our laws and go home on their own. This is an exceedingly and ridiculously polite policy suggestion, given how most other countries treat illegal line-jumpers, border-crossers, visa overstayers and deportation fugitives.

But Priebus treats the idea as if it were an international human rights violation.

Tellingly, the RNC chair has no response to the families of all races, classes and creeds who have raised their voices against America's perilous deportation abyss, systematic non-enforcement and coddling of illegal alien DREAMers who have wreaked violence and havoc on their lives.

The relatives of murdered Los Angeles teen Jamiel Shaw posed a question to Priebus on Twitter after the RNC chair's remarks at the GOP event last week touting minority outreach and diversity: "How many Americans Have U Talked To Whose Kids were Killed by illegals?"

Priebus has not answered.

As I first reported in 2008, 17-year-old Jamiel was gunned down by 19-year-old illegal alien Mexican gang member Pedro Espinoza. Young Espinoza was smuggled into the U.S. illegally when he was a toddler, just like all of the DREAMers the open-borders propagandists are always extolling in sweeping terms.

One day after he was released from jail for serving time for assault with a deadly weapon, this known illegal alien gang-banger was back on the streets. The feds failed to deport him. Local authorities failed to detain him. Espinoza celebrated his freedom by shooting star student athlete Jamiel execution-style in the head for carrying a red Spider-Man backpack, which the Latino 18th Street Gang thug mistook for gang colors. Jamiel's mother, Army Sgt. Anita Shaw, had to travel home from serving in Iraq on her second tour of duty to join her family in burying her son.

Illegal alien teen killer Espinoza was sentenced to death last fall. Grieving parents Anita and Jamiel Sr. and their loved ones have valiantly kept Jamiel's memory alive by supporting efforts to repeal dangerous illegal alien sanctuary laws, spotlighting lapses in detention and deportation policy, calling attention to violent illegal alien gangs targeting blacks in L.A, and opposing reckless bipartisan amnesty proposals.

As Mr. Shaw told Breitbart's Matthew Boyle: "Just because you were brought here under no fault of your own doesn't mean you give amnesty to everybody." Amen. And instead of phony promises of enforcement later for blanket amnesty now, we need immediate reform of our bloodstained, loophole-ridden, under-funded and systemically sabotaged criminal alien detention and deportation system. Pronto.

Jamiel Shaw's family members are vigilant community organizers against illegal immigration. But their activism will never be hailed by Hollywood, The New York Times op-ed page, the White House or the RNC's elitist open-borders outreach panderers. Mr. Shaw, who testified at a House GOP panel hearing on the horrific consequences of our failed deportation policies earlier this summer, warns astutely that Republicans are "up to something" as they prepare to cut deals with open-borders Democrats in conference.

I think he's right. I also believe it's no coincidence that the RNC is now publicly marginalizing those who dare to challenge the rose-colored DREAMer propaganda of McCain-Graham-Rubio-Ryan-Mark Zuckerberg-La Raza -- just as the forces of Amnesty Incorporated conspire behind closed doors.

Question: Why won't Priebus acknowledge the horrific suffering of the Shaws and countless other families who have been harmed by illegal alien nightmares? The political timing is inconveeeenient. Innocent lives be damned.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/08/21/the-rnc-chairs-horrific-openborders-pandering-n1669377/page/full

Fed Chairman Update: Odds Shift Heavily Towards Tweedle-Dum vs. Tweedle-Dee

In Tweedle Dum vs. Tweedle Dee; Does Janet Yellen Have What It Takes? I made the case it did not matter much whether Larry Summers of Janet Yellen was the next Fed chairperson.

Here is a recap:

Tweedle Dum vs. Tweedle Dee

The only candidate that makes sense is the candidate who will set a target date to end the Fed. Unfortunately, no such candidate is on the short list.

The choice is between Tweedle-Dee who rates to slosh money around even more than Bernanke in a futile effort to create jobs, and Tweedle-Dum who will do whatever Wall Street wants.

Practically speaking, is there really a difference?

The "Dums" Have It

Last week I thought it was something on the order of 50-50 (Tweedle-Dee heads we lose vs. Tweedle-Dum tails we lose) since both potential nominees are losers.

I now think it's more likely a case of Tweedle-Dum tails we lose, with Larry Summers playing the role of Tweedle-Dum.

I changed my 50-50 lose-lose stance to a 65-35 lose-lose stance after reading Obama Focuses on Risk of New Bubble Undermining Broad Recovery.

President Barack Obama, who took office amid the collapse of the last financial bubble, wants to make sure his economic recovery doesn’t generate the next one.

Obama this month spoke four times in five days of the need to avoid what he called “artificial bubbles,” even in an economy that’s growing at just a 1.7 percent rate and where employment and factory usage remain below pre-recession highs.

“We have to turn the page on the bubble-and-bust mentality that created this mess,” he said in his Aug. 10 weekly radio address.

Why the Odds Changed

Yellen has all but guaranteed she will keep the money flowing faster than Bernanke, and coupled with the above warning from Obama about asset bubbles, the odds shift heavily towards Tweedle-Dum as Obama's choice.

Don't Fret, It Does Not Matter

Some will be delighted by this, others severely disappointed. But I am here to ease your mind. It does not matter. They will be equally horrendous.

The timing may change slightly , but the outcome won't.

“We have to turn the page on the bubble-and-bust mentality that created this mess” said Obama. Mish says "It's too late" the Fed has already re-blown bubbles in both stocks and bonds.

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2013/08/21/fed-chairman-update-odds-shift-heavily-towards-tweedledum-vs-tweedledee-n1669429

Dem. Rep. Suing IRS Over Rule at Root of Intimidation Scandal

Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen has joined a cadre of left-wing groups funded by George Soros in a lawsuit challenging the rule at the heart of the IRS intimidation tactics leveled against groups seeking a tax status, most of which were conservative leaning groups.

Van Hollen, the Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21 and Public Citizen, are filing their lawsuit on August 21 essentially saying they feel that the IRS has allowed too many groups to attain 501(c)(4) tax status. They maintain that many of these groups don't legally qualify for the coverage and they want the IRS to tighten its application rules.

At issue is how much "social welfare" work is done by those groups seeking the status. Democrats maintain that in order to qualify for a 501(c)(4) status, the law says that applicant groups can't spend any money on political causes, but the IRS has been somewhat vague on the issue leading some organizations to claim that if they spend up to 49 percent of their funds on political causes, they should still qualify.

Groups like the George Soros funded Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21 have been working since 2010 to deny conservative groups a 501(c)(4) tax status with several lawsuits and letter-writing campaigns designed to force the IRS to their point of view.

In fact, it was the work of Soros that helped spark the intimidation policy initiated by the IRS in the first place when these left-wing organizations sent letters to the IRS demanding that closer scrutiny be paid to conservative groups petitioning the IRS for a tax status.

It is this ongoing campaign that Representative Van Hollen has joined.

As an example of the sort of unfair demands made on conservative groups, Houston-based True The Vote was forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on fees, representation, and compliance costs in an attempt to get a tax status.

True The Vote has filed its own lawsuit seeking damages for the unfair treatment it faced.

The voter integrity group, for instance, has been beset by claims that it is a partisan, "voter suppression" effort. In a recent story on True The Vote's lawsuit, for instance, The Washington Post included this line in its report: "True the Vote has come under fire for intimidating African-American and other minority voters at the polls."

This is typical of the narrative the progressive media employs against the organization. While it is true that the organization has "come under fire" for intimidation, the fact is that it has been investigated by local, state, and federal authorities numerous times and there has been no case of voter suppression ever found. In other words, "come under fire" simply means people are making the false claim despite the truth of the matter.
But the chief goal of Van Hollen and the Soros-funded liberal groups is that of "transparency."

Van Hollen is an opponent of the Citizens United case and has been unsuccessfully pushing legislation to require more public disclosure of campaign-related spending not to mention public identification of donors for groups involved in political advocacy.

The Maryland Congressman has previously said that "Requiring full disclosure and transparency would go a long way to getting the IRS out of the business" of determining how much money an organization is allowed to spend on politics.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/20/Democrat-Rep-Suing-IRS-Over-Rule-at-Root-of-Intimidation-Scandal

PK'S NOTE: This is like saying they're coming so the jobs will be there. No they won't. Jobs are not generated by workers coming.

GOP Establishment Uses Obama's, Left's Data to Argue Amnesty 'Creates Jobs'

The American Action Network (AAN), a GOP establishment organization headed by former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), is trying to argue that passing an amnesty would “create jobs.” Coleman went to lead AAN, an establishment group openly advocating for amnesty, shortly after he lost his reelection to Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) back in 2008.

According to ABC News/Univision writer Jordan Fabian, AAN released a web app and economic data that reportedly shows the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration bill “would add nearly 14,000 new jobs on average in each congressional district over the next decade.”

A web tool AAN published lets users select any member of the House of Representatives and see how many “jobs” would be “created” in that member’s district if the Senate bill were to pass.

AAN appears to be violating American Economic Association (AEA) standards in presenting this information. The group has not released the required disclosures, which gives the appearance the data may not be as accurate as claimed. Numerous requests from members of Congress and requests from news media outlets including Breitbart News were ignored. The group has not disclosed the assumptions it made, nor has it disclosed the economic model it used, or much of the data involved.

AEA sets standards for best practices in economics a lot like how the American Medical Association (AMA) sets similar guidelines for doctors practicing medicine. They are widely respected, and these rules are generally strictly adhered to by economists.

“It is the policy of the American Economic Review to publish papers only if the data used in the analysis are clearly and precisely documented and are readily available to any researcher for purposes of replication,” AEA says on its website. “Authors of accepted papers that contain empirical work, simulations, or experimental work must provide to the Review, prior to publication, the data, programs, and other details of the computations sufficient to permit replication.”

AAN’s Eric Wilson, whose byline the “jobs created” web tool appears under, told Breitbart News when reached by phone early on Tuesday that he is not personally responsible for the economic data; he said he just built the web application. He said the AAN staffer in charge of the economic data, Dan Conston, would provide Breitbart News on Tuesday with the three economic pieces of information any credible economist is required to release about any analysis: the assumptions made, the economic model used and specific descriptions about the data input used to achieve the results. Neither Conston nor Wilson nor any other AAN figure has provided any of that information in the time promised.

AAN is a sister group of American Action Forum (AAF) which is led by former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director and former President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers chief economist Doug Holtz-Eakin. Holtz-Eakin, a renowned economist, was presumably involved in the rollout of this information.

“This is outrageous,” a former Heritage Foundation staffer told Breitbart News, regarding the fact that an economic analysis produced by a shop that Holtz-Eakin is involved with would not publish the required economic data to be considered credible and has not released it upon request. “Doug is a prominent economist who belongs to the American Economic Association, and the AEA’s rule is that all published authors in their journals must submit all of the researcher’s data and models to the AEA for public inspection. It is a complete disclosure rule. It is standard at Heritage, and if Heritage discloses all data and modeling upon request, then AAN should, of course, do the same.”

According to the information about the data that the group has disclosed, what is known about AAN’s work is that it used economic data that President Barack Obama’s White House has touted after the Institutional Left funded the production of the research. The Ford Foundation and the Unbound Philanthropy, two different liberal foundations that are connected with and support the George Soros-funded National Immigration Forum (NIF), and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, another bastion of the Institutional Left, funded research and a report by Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI), according to a disclosure at the bottom of the first page of the report. That REMI report, published on July 17, 2013, argued would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the first few years after an amnesty.

President Obama’s White House then took that report and on August 1, used it to argue that “[c]ommonsense immigration reform will strengthen the U.S. economy and create jobs.”

“Independent studies affirm that commonsense immigration reform will increase economic growth by adding more high-demand workers to the labor force, increasing capital investment and overall productivity, and leading to greater numbers of entrepreneurs starting companies in the U.S.,” the White House wrote on its official website, before again endorsing the Senate “Gang of Eight” bill as one that it argued would economically boost the country and individual states.

AAN states on its website that it conducted the analysis it used to make the web tool with numbers from CBO and with that REMI report that Obama’s White House has used. “Statewide jobs created reflects the number of jobs created by 2023 by temporary workers visas and legalization of undocumented workers under the Senate’s immigration bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013,” AAN writes on its website. “This number was calculated using data from the Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI) study “Key Components of Immigration Reform”.”

“The number of jobs created per district reflects jobs created from both temporary worker visas and permanent immigration through green cards as these programs would change due to the Senate bill,” AAN adds. “These numbers were calculated with data from the REMI study and the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the benefits of Senate bill’s economic impact.”

Ironically, that same CBO report points out that wages of American workers would be driven down for at least a decade if this bill were to pass.

This is hardly the first time Obama’s White House has been seen working alongside Holtz-Eakin’s AAF and its sister group AAN on economic information regarding immigration. A July 10, 2013, report from the White House’s Executive Office of the President touting purported economic benefits of the Senate bill cited the CBO as its first source and Holtz-Eakin as its second. “Analysis by former CBO Director and Chief Economist for President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers Douglas Holtz-Eakin also finds that immigration reform will raise the pace of economic growth,” Obama’s White House wrote in that report.
In response to these revelations, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) told Breitbart News on Tuesday that the group needs to either release the relevant information or pull it down from its website. “The American Action Network should either release their methodology or remove the claims from their website,” Sessions said in a statement provided to Breitbart News.

Sessions also told Breitbart News that the Senate Gang of Eight bill’s failure to stem the tide of future illegal immigration—according to the same CBO report that AAN says it cited here, the Senate bill will only at best reduce illegal immigration 30 to 50 percent from current levels—and President Obama’s demonstrated willingness to not enforce laws like E-Verify, many illegal immigrants would continue taking jobs away from American citizens and legal immigrants.

Sessions’ communications director Stephen Miller told Breitbart News, too, that even if one were to believe these jobs numbers from AAN, that purported increase in the amount of jobs would still not be enough to match the number of new people the Senate bill or a plan like it would bring into the country via legalization or via new unprecedentedly massive increases in legal immigration to ensure American citizens and legal immigrants get jobs first.

"Based on conservative CBO projections, the senate bill would add approximately 46 million immigrants by 2033,” Miller said in an email. “Even using AAN's inflated claim of 6 million jobs - for which they provide no supporting data - that's not nearly enough to keep up with the expansion of guest workers and low-skill immigration contained in the proposal. That's why CBO reports that joblessness will grow, wages will fall, and per-capita GNP will shrink for the next 25 years.”

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told Breitbart News that “whatever the logical basis for” AAN’s claim that passing an amnesty would “create” 13,298 “jobs” in his district, Iowa’s fourth, “I’d like to see it.”

“If it’s jobs created providing services for people who cannot fund their own services, that is a net economic negative,” King said in a phone interview. “If these are jobs, what kind of jobs? Where do they go? I know my district and I don’t see anyone jumping up and down at the prospect of any jobs being created by granting amnesty to 11 million people.”

When presented with many of the details contained in this article, King said “I would just say it’s got to be ‘voodoo economics.’ They believe, Doug Holtz-Eakin and the establishment wing of the Republican Party thinks anything that can be projected as growing the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] is good for America. There are a lot of things that are necessary before that formula is sound. For example, we need to increase the average annual productivity of our people. If it’s 316 million people, you divide that into our Gross Domestic Product—that number has got to increase, not decrease. If you bring people in who do not have a chance to sustain themselves in this economy, then that is an economic negative not a plus.”

“So far, this has the look of Obamanomics,” King added, specifically in reference to those leftwing foundations that funded the REMI study.

A different GOP congressional aide added in an email to Breitbart News that this type of potentially dishonest economic argument seems like it could be akin to how the People’s Republic of China can claim their nation is booming economically while the country’s citizenry suffers.

“Just look at China to understand how disingenuous they and others are being,” the aide said. “Red China has a huge economy and has had tremendous growth, but it doesn't mean its citizens are wealthy. In fact most of them are dirt poor. What you need to look at is the impact on individuals, particularly those who are already here legally."

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/20/Exclusive-Obamanomics-101-GOP-establishment-uses-Obama-s-Left-s-data-to-argue-amnesty-creates-jobs

Left Claims 80 Percent of Americans “Economically Insecure”

Eighty percent of U.S. adults are “economically insecure,” according to media reports of a new study. But just what is “economic insecurity”? Are most Americans experiencing severe hardship?

The measure of “economic insecurity” used by the researcher, Mark Rank of Washington University in Missouri, gives no understanding of a household’s actual living conditions. To be “economically insecure,” according to his study, an adult must fit one of three criteria:

Temporary unemployment,
Use of government welfare, or
Being “near poor,” meaning an income below 150 percent of the poverty line.

The study counts a person as “economically insecure” if he meets any one of these criteria—at any point, even once over an entire adult lifetime (defined as between 25 and 60 years of age).

That means an adult college student working part-time or living on financial aid would be considered basically the same as a person who is chronically unemployed and living in poverty.

Periodic unemployment is not particularly uncommon, especially at the beginning stages of one’s career. Additionally, with the growth of means-tested welfare and policies that make it easier to receive welfare, a larger portion of Americans are on the rolls. And, according to Rank, a person can also qualify as “economically insecure” if his annual income falls to $18,000 or less at any time during his adult life (or around $34,000 for a family of four).

“Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event,” Rank says, “can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need.”

In other words, more Americans in need equals greater justification for increased government welfare spending.

But poverty in the United States is far from the picture of material poverty painted by the media. And “economic insecurity” is even more distant. Even among households living below 100 percent of poverty, significant material hardship is rare.

There are, of course, those who do experience deep material want, but that number is nowhere near 80 percent and far lower than even the 15 percent poverty rate reported by the Census Bureau. To meet the needs of those truly in need, it’s important to understand poverty accurately.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/08/08/left-claims-80-percent-of-americans-economically-insecure/

PK'S NOTE: I'm allergic to the word "subsidize". Say no to subsidizing.

Number of Long-Term Unemployed ‘Unprecedented’ Under Obama

Almost 5 million workers now classified as ‘long-term’ unemployed

The economy has seen an “unprecedented” number of long-term unemployed under the Obama administration, according to a liberal think tank, and economists say plans pursued by Democrats in Washington are unlikely to curb the problem.

Nearly 5 million workers are classified as long-term unemployed, while 900,000 more have stopped looking for work altogether, according to a new series of reports issued by the Urban Institute.

Three percent of the labor force has been out of work for more than six months, an improvement of only one percentage point since unemployment spiked in October 2009, according to the study.

“That long-term unemployment would rise during a recession is not at all surprising, but the extent of the increase and its persistently high level since the start of the recovery are both troubling and unprecedented,” the report states. “The U.S. economy is now well into its fourth year of recovery, the unemployment rate is below 8 percent, yet the long-term share of unemployment is still near 40 percent.”

The center-left think tank said that those startling figures are unlikely to change unless the United States can achieve dramatic job growth, rather than the middling 2 percent overall economic growth figures the Obama administration has averaged.

While the think tank stresses that many of the causes of long-term unemployment are outside of the control of the government, it outlined a number of policies that could help alleviate long-term unemployment, including reforming unemployment insurance to subsidize wage decreases and hour reductions and increasing workforce training subsidies at the local level, rather than a “one-size-fits-all federal approach.”

Michael R. Strain, a labor economist with the American Enterprise Institute, said the Obama administration has failed to lead in the effort to solve the crisis of long-term unemployment.

“There are plenty of solutions that could be supported by Republicans and Democrats, but we’ve failed to find someone to champion them—most of the blame lies with President Obama because he sets the agenda in Washington,” Strain said.

He agreed with the Urban Institute that unemployment benefits could be better utilized by using them to subsidize workers who take lower-paying jobs following layoffs. Getting back in the job market quickly, even at a lower salary, can prevent workers from suffering long-term damage to their earning potential as well as ensure that they do not fall further behind in the skills gap.

However, the debate over America’s record-high spending on unemployment has focused on how long workers receive benefits, rather than how to spend that money effectively.

Many of the long-term unemployed come from the manufacturing and construction industries. Minorities and those with less education are the most likely to be out of work for long periods of time, according to the Urban Institute.

Job seekers are also stuck in regions that have failed to produce new jobs. Strain said that these workers could be assisted using unemployment benefits to help them relocate to areas that have wider access to jobs, rather than repeating a cycle of poverty in cities like Detroit.

“Let’s allow firms to pay workers whatever they can, supplement those earning with subsidies; let’s open those workers up to new skills and new lines of work and new locations to cope with manufacturing’s decline,” Strain said.

Democrats have focused on playing politics with hot-button political issues such as the minimum wage and top tier tax rates “to paint Republicans as the party of the elite and wealthy.”

The minimum wage is an area where Democrats are pursuing good politics using bad policy, according to Strain. It raises the cost of hiring young and inexperienced workers—those hit hardest by the recession.
“Raising the minimum wage is a debate to have during boom times when there’s money to spread around,” Strain said. “Raising the minimum wage now is a bad idea; the government should be reducing the rigidity of the labor market rather than making it harder and more expensive to hire workers.”

He sees politics at play.

“Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have been explicit in saying that the minimum wage is being used as a midterm election issue and President Obama is helping them achieve that,” Strain said.

http://freebeacon.com/number-of-long-term-unemployed-unprecedented-under-obama/

Government Watchdog Group Puts States on Notice Over Obamacare

States are legally liable for how they spend federal grants meant for Obamacare implementation

A government watchdog group sent letters to three governors on Tuesday warning them about potential legal liabilities facing their states because of Obamacare.

Cause of Action sent letters to the governors of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania outlining the various ways that they could violate the law and expose them to whistleblower lawsuits.

“We seek to notify the State of Ohio, as well as entities, contractors, subgrantees, subrecipients and subcontractors who are utilized in furtherance of federally-facilitated exchanges, of potential liabilities that might apply if any of these entities or their agents misuses the taxpayer funds it receives,” the letter to Ohio Governor John Kasich said.

The letters are the latest in a series of liability alert letters Cause of Action is sending to states. The group has sent seven letters, with the other four going to the governors of Arizona, New Hampshire, and North Carolina and the general counsel for California’s health insurance exchange Covered California.

All of the states are receiving millions of dollars in federal grants for the implementation of Obamacare. The misuse of this money could expose these states to civil suits under various federal laws and regulations such as the False Claims Act.

“Cause of Action is prepared to bring challenges against crony nonprofits that are misusing our federal tax dollars,” said Cause of Action executive director Dan Epstein.

The federal grants have created a situation very similar to another federal program, Communities Putting Prevention to Work, in which federal grant money given to states was ultimately used illegally, Epstein said.

“What ended up happening, as we feared and were right, [was that] an enormous amount of money was being used for lobbying,” Epstein said. It is illegal to use federal money to lobby.

Cause of Action released a report on the program earlier this year after a 19-month investigation.
“The same story is now true under the healthcare law,” Epstein said.

The states have not violated any laws yet, Epstein said. “We basically want to notify them before these exchanges open,” he said.

“A lot of these states and localities don’t understand what the law is,” he said.

The goal of the letters is twofold: to inform the state governments of their legal obligations and to deter them from wasting federal money.

“There’s a high chance that our tax dollars get wasted, embezzled, misused,” Epstein said.

Epstein noted that there’s a greater risk for misuse of federal dollars when they are given in grants and not contracts. Groups under contract have to produce results, while oversight of grant recipients is laxer.

“Our goal here is to kind of send out a warning shot to the state governments that are running these exchanges,” Epstein said.

The Department of Health and Human Services, which is giving out the grants, did not return a request for comment.

http://freebeacon.com/government-watchdog-group-puts-states-on-notice-over-obamacare/

Experts: No Appetite for Social Security Disability Reform

Lawmakers unlikely to push reforms with 11M Americans on disability

Though nearly 11 million Americans are collecting disability benefits from the Social Security Administration (SSA), and its trust fund is expected to be exhausted by 2016, there is little desire to reform the programs on Capitol Hill.

“I haven’t heard of any member on the Hill sort of championing disability insurance reform,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies for the Cato Institute, during a briefing Tuesday on the rising costs of Social Security disability, which will total over $200 billion this year.

“I agree with that statement,” said Jagadeesh Gokhale, a senior fellow at Cato. “I think the intensity of the discussion should be much greater, given how close the system’s trust fund is to expire.”

Federal Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) will cost an estimated $144 billion in 2013, and its trust fund will be depleted in just three years. The program is financed by a 1.8 percent payroll tax.

Additionally, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a means-tested program for working disabled adults and children, will cost $57 billion in 2013. SSI is not part of the Social Security trust fund but is administered by the SSA.

There are over 19 million claims distributed through the disability programs, as of July 2013. The number of Americans collecting SSDI is at a near record high of 10,914,232 and 8,352,764 individuals are enrolled in SSI. Some people qualify for concurrent benefits, or both programs at the same time, though the data does not reflect how much the programs overlap.

The experts at Cato, a libertarian think tank, said enrollment in Social Security disability has skyrocketed in recent decades as eligibility requirements have lessened over the years.

“The system is broken,” said Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst.

“One day I’m at Walmart and I overhear a conversation between two women,” he said. “And the one woman says to the other, very matter-of-factly, ‘I either take the pay cut or just go on disability.’”

“And it really struck me that she saw it as just being an obvious choice, take the pay cut or go on disability,” DeHaven said.

“It’s don’t go on disability, or so I thought.”

A primary reason for the increase in the disability rolls is the benefits for mental conditions and “nonexertional restrictions,” which have increased by 323 percent since 1984, when the category was added.

SSA explains that a person could have a “nonexertional limitation or restriction” that causes difficulty in functioning because they are “nervous, anxious, or depressed,” or “have difficulty understanding or remembering detailed instructions.”

“The inherent problem here is disability is almost impossible to define,” DeHaven said. “They knew that from the beginning, the planners were told from day one by the private sector, ‘we can’t do this.’”

“And that was always the fundamental problem from the get-go, is how do we give to the truly disabled without letting this blow out of proportion,” he said.

DeHaven said the share of children enrolled in disability has also risen, from 4 percent in 1980 to 16 percent today.

“You have a lot of kids developing this identity of being disabled, whether they are or they aren’t,” he said. “A lot of these kids are able to work, but they don’t because they don’t want to jeopardize the check that’s coming home.”

“There’s this big object, huge gravitational force pulling people off the work force and getting them into the system,” Gokhale said. “Everybody seems to be focusing on not how to change this object, how to put fences around it to prevent this migration from the labor force onto disability.”

The speakers called for a comprehensive overhaul, with reforms to delay and prevent workers from entering the system, and more incentives to return people to the workforce once they are enrolled.

Getting members of Congress on board may be problematic

“Do you want to be the member that has the quote, unquote, ‘disabled’ activists outside of your office protesting?” DeHaven said. “It’s like any other program, you’ve got to be willing to stick your neck out and you’ve got to be willing to find people to go along.”

“And having worked in the Senate, I don’t see it,” he said.

http://freebeacon.com/experts-no-appetite-for-social-security-disability-reform/

Stopping the Hillary Juggernaut

It's obvious to any sentient being that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee. Already she has begun the round of speeches at influential venues, the visits to primary states, the media spin, the heightening of speculation on "Will she run?" All of this, along with a five-part miniseries and full-length documentary planned for release ahead of the 2016 election. As for fund-raising, that is hardly a problem for the Clinton machine.

Actually, Hillary Clinton is already not only the frontrunner for her party's nomination, but also the favorite to win against any GOP candidate. The polls and oddsmakers here and abroad already confirm this assertion.

Clearly, stopping Hillary at the polls should be the first priority for conservatives. But the only way to stop her is by employing the same ruthless tactics Democrats used against Romney in 2012. Identify her greatest weakness, isolate it, and pound on it from now until November 2016. In Hillary's case, the weakness is Benghazi.

Conservatives should remind voters that Hillary Clinton was in charge when four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. As she attempts to wriggle out, as she will, they should play that video of her admitting responsibility. Play it alongside the video of the burning consulate. Play it with the photos of the men who died there.

Remind voters how she failed in her most basic duty as secretary of state: the responsibility to protect American embassy staff abroad. Then remind them of the cover-up in which she participated for weeks after the attack. Then let them know how she tried to duck responsibility altogether, assuming that the whole matter would just slip away and be forgotten.

For that to happen, she had to avoid testifying in the months following the event. How convenient that she suffered a fall and was unable to appear before the congressional hearing on Benghazi. She seems to have fainted and suffered a mysterious concussion -- so mysterious that she at first couldn't say how it happened. Then she decided that it was the result of dehydration -- probably resulting from the heat she was about to take on Capitol Hill.

But unlike most cabinet members, who would have been rushed to the hospital following a concussion, Hillary seems never to have been examined by any medical staff other than her family physician. She just stayed home, taking it easy, while those unpleasant and overly strenuous congressional hearings were taking place.

In other words, Hillary Clinton's duties as secretary of state were so demanding that she was unable to perform them without fainting away. So what makes her think she can perform the duties of the presidency?

It won't do, though, just to remind voters of these facts. The point has to be drilled in. That's where the Democratic Party tactics of 2012 come in.

Even before receiving his party's nomination, Romney was shadowed during the primaries by protesters raising questions about his corporate background and his stance opposing new taxes on the rich. At one Iowa State Fair event, he was mercifully heckled and practically driven from the stage. Now "it's my turn" to speak, he kept repeating, but the hecklers never gave him a chance. As a result, he appeared weak at a crucial moment in his campaign.

Similar tactics should be used against Hillary, but they need to start now. The "primary" is all but over -- the general election has begun. Peaceful volunteers need to shadow Hillary wherever she speaks. Preferably volunteers wearing T-shirts emblazoned with photos of the Benghazi victims and carrying placards with their photos and birth and death dates as well. For those who have forgotten, four Americans died at Benghazi, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens (1960-2012), Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith (1978-2012), Glen Doherty (1970-2012), and Tyrone Woods (1971-2012). Doherty and Woods were both security personnel (and former Navy SEALS) contracted by the CIA.

And every time Hillary speaks, those peaceful protestors need to remind voters of where the four died:

BEN-GHA-ZI

BEN-GHA-ZI

BEN-GHA-ZI

BEN-GHA-ZI

After a few minutes, they might repeat the names of the four heroes, and remind Hillary that their safety was her responsibility:

Chris, Sean, Glen, and "Tee,"

Your responsibility

Chris, Sean, Glen, and "Tee,"

Your responsibility

Finally, they could segue into a five-beat refrain:

WHAT DIF-FERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

WHAT DIF-FERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
WHAT DIF-FERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
WHAT DIF-FERENCE DOES IT MAKE?
"What difference, at this point, does it make?" was, of course, Hillary's outrageous comment to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in January 2013, a mere four months after Benghazi. Did she really believe that "at that point" it no longer mattered? That was her inference.

I'm sure Hillary already has an answer for all of this, and that her answer has already been circulated to the national press for distribution. She'll point out that she didn't micromanage every one of the hundreds of State Department outposts around the world, despite evidence that she had ordered Ambassador Stevens to Benghazi. And besides, Republicans in Congress had cut the funding she had requested to defend our embassies and consulates. If they had only given her unlimited funding, Benghazi would never have happened. It was Boehner's fault.

And there will be other excuses. Maybe she had fainted when the attack began and had misplaced her smelling salts.

The national media will do everything it can to elect Hillary in 2016, even more than it did for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. But at least the public would hear the other side. And the truth might just sink in. "What difference does it make?" is one of the most callous and self-serving statements ever uttered by a high government official in the history of the United States. Conservatives need to remind people of that.

Imagine George W. Bush addressing the nation following the World Trade Center attack and coming out with "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Instead, he stated eloquently and simply that "Today, our nation saw evil," and he resolved to "find those responsible and bring them to justice." America would not rest until those responsible had been brought to justice.

That was very different from the tenor of Hillary's remarks in the days following Benghazi. For days she was unsure, at least publicly, that a terrorist attack had actually taken place. I suppose she had to clear it with Obama. Then she was half-sure it was a terrorist attack. Well, it might have been. And she was totally vague as to what we were going to do about it.

By the way, what exactly have Hillary and her boss, Barack, done to bring the perpetrators of Benghazi to justice? Dozens of militants, including hard-core al-Qaeda fighters, took part in the attack. As of yet, there have not been any convictions. I can't think of a five-syllable phrase to convey that thought. Maybe it will be enough to remind voters during the debates.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/stopping_the_hillary_juggernaut.html#ixzz2ccN04xe2

15 Pictures of Ridiculous Government Spending Guaranteed to Make You Mad

In 2013, federal spending approached $3.5 trillion. Now that’s hard to wrap your brain around. It’s about $27,700 for every American household.

All across America, families balance their budgets, rein in spending, and pay down their debts. If Americans can do it, why can’t the federal government?

Instead, they’re wasting your taxpayer dollars on programs like the ones below. We’ve compiled just 15 examples of the ridiculous spending that is driving America toward a $17 trillion national debt.

1. GATHERING DUST: The Transportation Security Administration let 5,700 pieces of unused security equipment worth $184 million sit in storage in a Dallas, Texas, warehouse, which costs $3.5 million annually to lease and manage. Taxpayers lost another $23 million in depreciation costs, because most of the 472 carry-on baggage screening machines had been housed there for nine months or more. That’s a lot of money!

2. DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY: The National Science Foundation used part of a half-million dollar grant to develop a video game that simulates a high school prom.

3. BIRD IS THE WORD: The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent $300,000 on a study that concluded the first bird on Earth probably had black feathers.

4. CAFÉ CAR: Taxpayer-funded Amtrak recovered only 44 cents of every dollar of its food and beverage costs on long-distance routes, which already annually lose money.

5. SO MUCH FOR ROBOT NANNIES: The Office of Naval Research spent $450,000 on a study that determined unintelligent robots do not have the ability to maintain a baby’s attention.

6. RENOVATIONS ON A PRESIDENTIAL SCALE: The Oval Office is getting a facelift. While it’s out of commission, the President will need a pseudo-Oval Office, right? $376 million will go to an Oval Office renovation and plans to construct a second office for the President to use during the renovation.

7. FELLAS, GET YOUR GUNS: Do you think this guy appears taller, stronger, and manlier? The U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research spent $681,387 on a study to confirm that he does—when he’s carrying a firearm.

8. THAT’S ILLOGICAL, CAPTAIN: The Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a lavish conference in 2010 for 2,609 of its employees in Anaheim, California. Expenses included $50,000 for line-dancing and “Star Trek” parody videos, $135,350 for outside speakers, $64,000 in conference “swag” for the employees, plus free meals, cocktails, and hotel suite upgrades.

9. DOUBLE DIPPERS: In 2010, 117,000 people who double-dipped into Social Security’s disability insurance program and the federal unemployment insurance program received $850 million in cash benefits.

10. GET IN THE HOLE! Did you know that golfers who imagine that the hole is bigger boost their confidence and accuracy? Thanks to the National Science Foundation, Purdue University, and $350,000 in taxpayer money, now you do.

11. MORE THAN POTATOES: In 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture spent $300,000 on activities promoting caviar produced in Idaho.

12. IT’S THE UNLIMITED ICE CREAM: The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded a $149,992 grant to researchers at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey who are trying to eliminate the infamous “freshman 15” by studying college students’ on-campus dining selections.

13. GIRL POWER? A $100,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts funded a video game that depicts a female superhero sent to save planet Earth from climate changes allegedly caused by social issues that affect women.

wastefulspending_14

14. SO THAT’S WHAT “TRANSPARENCY” MEANS: Have you ever visited USASpending.gov? It’s a website dedicated to unveiling government spending. The Department of Health and Human Services failed to report $800 billion in spending on time. So much for “government transparency.”

15. WELL, THEY CAN’T WORK…: 1,000 prisoners like these in Pennsylvania collected weekly unemployment benefits over a four-month period, costing taxpayers $7 million. Thank you, poor oversight!

If you’re as mad as we were after reading this list, forward along to your friends. Make sure they know where their tax dollars are really going.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/08/20/morning-bell-15-pictures-of-ridiculous-government-spending-guaranteed-to-make-you-mad/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign&utm_content&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell