Current Events - January 15, 2014

Bills to stop O-Care payments to insurers gain support

By Elise Viebeck
Republican lawmakers are quietly gathering support for legislation to stop the federal government from cushioning the blow for health insurance companies whose costs rise more than expected under ObamaCare.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ark.) are behind bills to repeal the healthcare law's "risk corridors" provision. That section creates a temporary pool of money to pay insurers who enroll a higher-than-expected number of sick patients with expensive bills.
While at least some of the payments will be funded by insurers themselves — the law requires companies with better-than-expected results to contribute to the pot — critics argue that the payments will be a burden on taxpayers.
Representatives from both offices said support grew for their bills after conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer derided the payments as a "government bailout" for insurance companies in a piece published Jan. 2. 

PK'S NOTE: A) this is illegal for the administration to do and B) I'm sure insurance companies are thrilled (not)

WH delays another ObamaCare deadline

 By Jonathan Easley
The Obama administration announced Tuesday that it was again extending the ObamaCare enrollment deadline for people with pre-existing conditions.
The administration said it would extend the Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan (PCIP), slated to end Jan. 31, until March 15.
...The deadline was originally at the end of December, but last month, the administration pushed it back through January because of the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov.
The new extension is just the latest in a string of unilateral delays the administration has implemented to buy time after the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov.
The Obama administration has so far delayed the premium payments deadline, delayed by one week the sign-up date for coverage beginning Jan. 1, pushed back by six weeks the sign-up date for those seeking coverage by April 1 and delayed the second-year enrollment period until after the 2014 elections.
The $5 billion PCIP program was intended as bridge health coverage to sick patients waiting for the full implementation of ObamaCare. The administration says 135,000 have used the program at some point.

Omnibus Spending Bill Continues Funding Food Stamp Ads in Mexico

 By Matthew Boyle
The omnibus spending bill before Congress continues to fund U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advertising programs for food stamps in foreign countries like Mexico, Breitbart News has learned.
The bill was hashed out between House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). The funding will continue despite claims in a document the House Appropriations Committee published that the bill contains a “prohibition” on such programs. Page three of this press document states regarding food stamps that the omnibus spending bill contains a "prohibition on advertisements or outreach with foreign governments."
The entire paragraph that contains that statement reads: 

Requirements for the Secretary of Agriculture to help weed out and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the SNAP program – including a directive to ban fraudulent vendors, and a prohibition on advertisements or outreach with foreign governments.

However, upon reading through the text of the bill and the bill summary explanatory document, there is no such “prohibition” included in it. Instead, the explanatory document that Rogers published just states that USDA is “strongly discouraged” from advertising food stamps programs with foreign governments.
“There is concern about the use of valuable tax dollars to promote enrollment of SNAP through radio, television, and other advertisements as well as outreach activities with foreign governments to encourage the use of SNAP,” the explanatory document Rogers published states. “USDA is strongly encouraged to cease these types of government-sponsored recruitment activities.”
There is a massive difference between actually prohibiting the use of funds via law through the omnibus bill, or defunding the program, and merely issuing a strongly-worded warning to the USDA about the practice.
House Appropriations Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Hing admitted to Breitbart News that there is not really a “prohibition” on funding for such programs.

Senate Steering Committee: 'CHIMPS' Gimmick Hides Extra $18 Billion in Omnibus Spending

 By Matthew Boyle
A document published by the Senate Steering Committee Tuesday found that there is actually $18 billion more than advertised in spending in the omnibus spending bill House and Senate establishment leaders introduced late Monday.
The Senate Steering Committee, chaired by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and vice-chaired by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), found that the omnibus spending bill uses a gimmick called CHIMPS, or changes in mandatory programs, to hide $18 billion in more spending.
...“The omnibus contains $18 billion in CHIMPS,” the Steering Committee added later in the document. “$9.4 billion of that total is from the Crime Victims Fund, with another $6.3 billion coming from the Children’s Health Insurance Fund.”
...“Language that delays $10 billion in mandatory spending for one year is scored as saving $10 billion,” Sessions’s Honest Budget Act explanation of this type of gimmick reads, as quoted by the Steering Committee. “Thus the $10 billion savings can be used to increase spending elsewhere in the bill by $10 billion without affecting the overall cost of the bill. Over a ten year period the same $10 billion can be delayed one year at a time, resulting in total 'savings' in the appropriations process of $100 billion ($10 billion X 10 years). However, the actual savings over the ten year period is only $10 billion (the same $10 billion simply got deferred each year). The result is $90 billion in phony savings.”

Jeff Sessions: Budget Deal 'Fix' Still Slashes More than 90% of Vets' Pensions

By Matthew Boyle
Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) announced Tuesday that the “fix” Washington politicians developed to stop cuts to veterans’ pensions actually still slashes pensions for more than 90 percent of retired members of America’s armed forces.
...Roby and Fitzpatrick together introduced a bill that would restore all veterans’ pensions, not just those for wounded warriors, offsetting those cuts with the closing of a loophole in the tax code that allows illegal aliens to access the Refundable Child Tax Credit. Their bill is a House version of an amendment that Sen. Sessions attempted to offer during the budget fight on the Senate floor in December, but was blocked from doing so by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Democrats.
“I was pleased that the House-Senate package includes a provision restoring the pensions for disabled veterans, after we called attention to the fact that wounded warriors would be impacted by the budget deal,” Sessions said about the omnibus spending package from House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). “However, the deal fails to restore pension payments for millions of active duty and retired military personnel and leaves more than 90 percent of the original reductions in place. For a currently-serving officer nearing retirement, this cut could exceed $120,000 in pension payments, reducing the cost-of-living adjustments by more than 60 percent.”

Budget Deal Fails to Stop EPA from Regulating Carbon Emissions

 By Ben Shapiro
The budget deal proposed by Democrats on Republicans on Tuesday includes restoration of cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency under sequestration. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) had fought to remove EPA rules regulating carbon emissions, but failed in his attempt to cut funding from the EPA for enforcement of such rules.


As compensation, Republicans did prevent the Department of Energy from immediately enforcing the incandescent lightbulb ban.


While the EPA will have its funding cut $143 from last year, it will still have $8.2 billion to spend, $47 million more than President Obama’s budget request. Republicans continue to state that the agency budget is down 20% since 2010, but that is weak tea considering the elevation in the agency’s budget prior to sequestration.

Obama, Principles, and the Breakdown of the Family

By Lauri B Regan
....Alas, let's take a moment and look at the example that Barack Obama has set for young Americans with hopes and dreams of making it big, immigrants who have traversed great distances and endured great hardships in order to succeed in the land of opportunity, and even politicians and media personalities. Obama has bowed, hugged, and whispered sweet nothings to dictators, dissed and belittled America and its citizens in far-off lands, and lied to the electorate about everything from their national security to the future of their healthcare. He uses Chicago-style mobster tactics to silence his critics and throws lifelong friends and colleagues under the proverbial bus whenever politically expedient.
He has used the White House and Air Force One as his own private playgrounds hosting concerts and parties, attending fundraisers, and playing 160 rounds of golf and untold numbers of basketball games -- all with the rich and famous. He has stoked racial tensions denouncing anyone with white skin who has a conflict with a black person while playing the race card at every ill-opportune moment possible. He has denounced and over-regulated every major jobs-producing industry from automobile and coal to finance and healthcare. He has ignored the constitutional limitations of office and abused his power like a third-world dictator. And he put our soldiers in harm's way in a war he had no intention of winning.
Obama is teaching generations of American citizens that laziness and self-entitlement are virtues, success and wealth are only acceptable when in the hands of powerful liberals, starting a business is not worth the effort, big government is the answer, and rich people are the root of all evil. He is teaching class resentment, racial hostility, and sexual disorientation while instigating anti-American resentment across the globe.

Obama’s Misguided Inequality Message

He’ll probably spend his State of the Union talking inequality — a bad idea, and he’ll get it wrong.

By Michael Tanner
In a little less than two weeks, President Obama will deliver his fifth State of the Union address, and early reports suggest it will focus on income inequality.
It is always possible that the president will have something interesting to say on the issue — especially since inequality has increased substantially during his presidency. In fact, according to a study by Emmanuel Saez of UC Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, the top 1 percent of earners have captured more of the income gains under President Obama than they did under President Bush, meaning income inequality has grown faster under Obama.
But, seriously, one has to ask, why, aside from envy, is income inequality an issue at all?
Some might suggest that inequality has something to do with poverty. Certainly, too many Americans still live in poverty (despite nearly $1 trillion per year in government spending on anti-poverty programs). But there is no evidence that anyone is poor simply because someone else is rich.
....Some Americans do indeed use their connections to extract benefits for themselves at the expense of others. But the Obama administration seems curiously indifferent to this activity, a form of “rent seeking.” Indeed, the administration is now preparing a massive bailout of the insurance industry as part of Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act contains a $25 billion reinsurance fund designed to protect insurers from losses due to adverse selection: Everyone who holds an insurance policy will help pick up the tab for 78 percent of claim costs from $45,000 to $250,000 per insured individual. It was already well known that over the next ten years Obamacare would direct more than $1 trillion of taxpayer funds to insurance companies through subsidies for their products, but the bailout is further proof that Obamacare is one of history’s great examples of crony capitalism. (For even more evidence of how the federal government enables rent-seeking inequality, consider that five of the ten wealthiest counties in this country are in suburban Washington, D.C.)
...The president’s focus on inequality, then, could serve to rev up the Democratic base but may not be a successful political strategy overall.
Ultimately, Americans should seek not a more equal society but a more prosperous one. Entrepreneurial capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty, and improved the lives of more people, than any other force in history. Unfortunately, we’re not likely to hear that from President Obama a week from Tuesday.
 

More Democrats than Republicans Sit on 10 Richest Members of Congress List

By Stephanie Wang
While Republicans often get the reputation for being “the party of the rich,” seven of the 10 richest members of Congress are Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
CRP compiled a list of the 10 richest members of Congress using 2012 personal finance disclosure information, the latest available.
These wealthy Democrats are not afraid to use their big bucks and high-powered connections to get ahead.
Here are the seven Democrats in the top 10 list:

Mark Warner

Mark Warner, the senior senator from Virginia, is the richest member of the Senate. CRP estimates his net worth at up to $418,742,000. Warner used his political connections to make his millions, according to the 2014 Almanac of American Politics.

Jared Polis

Jared Polis, who serves as representative to Colorado’s 2nd District, has a net worth of up to $326,099,998, according to CRP.
Polis made his fortune as an entrepreneur, launching popular sites such as electronic greeting card site bluemountainarts.com and fresh flower delivery site proflowers.com.

John K. Delaney 

The net worth of John K. Delaney of Maryland’s 6th District is up to $244,051,998.
Delaney founded Healthcare Financial Partners, a company that offered financing to healthcare providers, in 1993 and served as the company’s CEO until 2000 when he founded a new company, CapitalSource,

Scott Peters

Scott Peters, of California’s 2nd District has a net worth of up to $197,415,991.
Peters was a successful lawyer for 16 years, eventually opening his own practice. His wife was successful in private equity.

Richard Blumenthal

Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s senior senator, has a net worth of up to $121,299,056.
The second-richest man in the Senate was born to wealthy parents in New York.... Much of his wealth comes from his wife, Cynthia, who is the daughter of real estate tycoon Peter Malkin.

Jay Rockefeller 

Jay Rockefeller, senior senator from West Virginia, has an estimated net worth of up to $139,312,004.
...Rocherfeller’s great-grandfather was oil billionaire John D. Rockefeller, who was at one time America’s richest man.

Nancy Pelosi

CRP estimates the net worth of Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California’s 12th District to be up to $174,947,989.Pelosi’s husband is a successful real estate investor. The couple also made up to $5 million in offshore investments in Asia.

The EPA’s Privacy Problem

Farmers and ranchers sue after the EPA releases confidential information to environmental groups.

By Jillian Kay Melchior
... last year, the Environmental Protection Agency released to environmental groups extensive personal information about 80,000 to 100,000 agricultural operations.
The data released included names of owners, addresses, global-positioning-system coordinates, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and, in some instances, notes on medical conditions and inheritances. Though environmental groups had requested information about “concentrated animal feeding operations” — “CAFOs” in the bureaucratic lingo, and “feedlots” in the vernacular — some of the information released clumped in data about crop farms, too.
Farm groups say the EPA violated farmers’ and ranchers’ privacy, increasing their risk of agro-terrorism as well as harassment or litigation from animal-rights and environmental activists. The EPA has admitted to having improperly released farmers’ data on two occasions, and has twice attempted to claw back those records.
The American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Pork Producers Council are now suing the EPA to prevent it from releasing even more information. Though it hasn’t been much covered, the case has significant implications regarding privacy. It also raises questions about whether the EPA acted politically, cooperating with environmental groups to help them achieve long-term regulatory goals.
...The legal battle over the EPA’s release of farmer data isn’t the first time the agency has found itself in controversy over its FOIA practices. Last year, a congressional review of 1,200 pages of EPA correspondence obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute appeared to show that the agency acted with a bias toward environmental groups and against conservative groups. The EPA approved green groups’ requests for fee waivers 92 percent of the time, while conservative think tanks saw their requests denied 73 percent of the time.
The legal battle over the EPA’s feedlot data also calls into question whether the agency acted politically, helping environmental allies while caring little about the effect on farmers. Finally, the outcome could set an important precedent for how the federal government weighs the release of personal information.  

Nothing to worry about with the NSA?

By Thomas Lifson

Do you feel that democracy is slipping away? If not, consider three  new  stories out this morning. David Sanger and Thom Shanker of the New York Times:

The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.

Okay, so even if you keep your computer off the internet, the feds can spy on you. But there's ntohgin to worry about, right? After all, those special courts exist to protect our privacy rights - you know, those rights found in the penumbra of the Constitution that make it OK to kill a baby before it is born. You are perfectly safe, as long as you aren't a terrorist. But Stephen Braun and Kimberly Dozier of AP write:

The U.S. judiciary told Congress on Tuesday it opposes the idea of having an independent privacy advocate on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, while members of Congress lauded the idea at a Capitol Hill hearing.
Speaking for the entire U.S. judiciary, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that appointing an independent advocate to the secret surveillance court is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive, and he slammed other key reforms as adding too heavy a caseload to the secret court's work. In FISA court hearings, judges only hear from the government seeking a spy warrant.
Bates said opening the proceeding to an advocate for privacy in general - who would never meet the suspect or be able to defend the charges against him - wouldn't create the kind of back and forth seen in open criminal or civil court proceedings.

OK, even if you don't have the right to counsel in a judicial procedure, despite what the Constitution says, we can rely on Congress to protect our interests. Right? Mario Trujillo reports for The Hill:

NSA can't say if it collected data on lawmakers, officials
The National Security Agency said it is lawfully unable to search its database to determine if it has swept up phone records from members of Congress or other elected officials. 
NSA Director Keith Alexander said, however, nothing the agency does can be fairly described as "spying on Members of Congress" or U.S. politicians, according to a letter dated Jan. 10.
The director said the agency could not cull its database because it can only access records that are reasonably suspected to be linked to a foreign terrorist group. 
"For that reason, NSA cannot lawfully search to determine if any records NSA has received under the program have included metadata of the phone calls of any member of Congress, other American elected officials, or any other American without that predicate," Alexander said. 

But what can lawfully be done is not always what IS done. Edward Snowden demonstrated that spooks spied on their ex-girlfriends, so we can't really rely on the law as our guardian.

If you're not scared, you aren't paying attention.

Probe Finds White House Wanted to Make Sequestration as ‘Painful as Possible’ for Rural Schools

Over USDA objections, OMB ordered that fiscal year 2012 disbursements be retroactively docked for 2013 sequestration.

By Bridget Johnson
A House Natural Resources Committee investigation has found that President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget ordered that sequestration cuts be applied retroactively to funding for rural schools over the opposition of the Agriculture Department.
The committee’s report released today, “A Less Secure Future for Rural Schools: An Investigation into the Obama Administration’s Questionable Application of the Sequester to the Secure Rural Schools Program,” detailed how last February the USDA had determined 2013 sequestration wouldn’t apply to 2012 funds that had already been distributed in the program. The White House stepped in and overruled the USDA, though both agencies haven’t turned over numerous subpoenaed documents that could reveal more behind the decision.

Government Failures Congress Wants You to Fund This Year

 By Amy Payne

Wasteful, ineffective, failed.
Those are all ways Heritage experts have described government programs Congress is funding—with your hard-earned money—in its new trillion-dollar omnibus spending bill.
Here are a few big failures that need to be eliminated or seriously reformed—but instead are getting millions (or billions) of dollars.
Head Start. Head Start is an emotional trap. It’s supposed to help children get a jumpstart on success—and who can be against that? Well, the fact is that it just doesn’t work. Head Start has been a colossal failure for those children and their parents. As Heritage’s Lindsey Burke explains, an Obama Administration study confirmed that “Access to Head Start had no statistically measurable effects on all measures of cognitive ability, including numerous measures of reading, language, and math ability.” This omnibus increases funding for the failed Head Start and Early Head Start programs by $612 million.
U.S. Postal Service. The USPS already defaulted on its debt last year—after seven straight years of deficits. It’s saddled with billions owed to retiree benefits, and customers are sending less and less mail with each passing year. If it is to survive, the USPS needs big reforms, but in this omnibus spending bill, Congress blocks two needed money-savers: discontinuing Saturday delivery and closing some rural post offices.

Amtrak. Despite operating in the red (even its snack cars lose millions of dollars), Amtrak would get $1.39 billion in the omnibus. Heritage expert Emily Goff reminds Congress that, as a step toward full privatization, it should make Amtrak subsidies contingent on reductions in its operating costs. How? Competitive contracting. Goff says, “Competitive contracting would improve Amtrak’s quality of service and lower its operating costs, which is good news for both riders and taxpayers.”
Job Corps. A job training program—sounds like a good thing. Except when it doesn’t boost participants’ wages or help them secure full-time jobs. The omnibus gives Job Corps $1.65 billion, even though Heritage’s David B. Muhlhausen concluded years ago that “Job Corps does not provide the skills and training necessary to substantially raise the wages of participants.”
Firefighter grants. Once again, a program that sounds like it should help people does not. Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis evaluated the effectiveness of fire department grants and found that the grants were ineffective at reducing fire casualties. They failed to reduce firefighter deaths, firefighter injuries, civilian deaths, or civilian injuries. Yet the omnibus sends $680 million to this program.
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The omnibus gives this failed hiring grant program $214 million. Heritage expert Muhlhausen points out Heritage research findings: COPS failed to add 100,000 additional officers to America’s streets and was also ineffective at reducing crime.
Congress will be pushing through all this spending in the next couple of days. Since the bill was just released Monday night, we’re wondering how many Members of Congress will actually know what’s in it before they vote.

Soylent Green Liberals

By Ed Driscoll
Ex-NY Times Editor Keller to Cancer Patient: ‘Going Gently’ Saves Money,” as spotted by John Nolte of Big Journalism:

The Kellers are engaging in life-shaming, which like fat-shaming, is an excuse to tell someone else what to do while couching it in a “greater good” argument. To hell with personal freedom, let’s force people to be healthy because obesity costs our beloved State money.  And now this brave woman, who is understandably desperate to see her children grow up, and who believes sharing her story will help others, is being life-shamed on the pages of the Guardian and New York Times because the Kellers are made uncomfortable by the idea of someone making the personal choice to stay alive for every possible day and minute she can.
What the Kellers appear to be doing is worse than lobbying for euthanasia, which at the very least is a personal decision. From their elite perches, the Kellers are tag-teaming a woman hospitalized with Stage IV cancer as a selfish and narcissistic financial drain over the twin sins of aggressively fighting for her life and, through her example, possibly encouraging others to do the same.
This is yet another glimpse into those I call “Soylent Green Liberals.” The left’s mask of compassion slipped late last year as they attempted to dismiss millions losing their health insurance as an overall positive.  And now the Kellers have given us another chilling example of those who are all too eager to sacrifice a few to serve some cold robotic vision of a cold robotic Utopia.

Glenn Beck Outlines How America Can Start Fixing Its Failing Education System

By Erica Ritz

Glenn Beck tackled America’s failing education system on his television program Tuesday, saying it is one of the many failures of progressivism.

The multimedia personality referenced a recent New York Post report on a Queens, N.Y. school where students are reportedly being forced to attend class in vermin-infested “temporary classrooms” that “smell like urine.” Most students sit in front of the television all day, rather than receive actual instruction, one source said.

Yet the school is receiving a whopping $2.9 million to serve its low-income population, and 98 percent of its students are eligible for free lunches, the report adds. Where is all the money going? Well, at least $128,207 per year is going to Principal Marcella Sills, who allegedly rarely shows up to school.

“This school has been churning kids through this system, and sending them out to the world with absolutely no chance of success,” Beck said. “And no one, really, has cared.”

To all the parents in the audience, Beck asked: “How long would you let your kid sit in that school? How long?”

Beck also asked the mainstream media where it has been, before noting that one of the top news stories today has centered around Justin Beiber and an alleged egg throwing incident.

Common Core Rooted in Math Class Social Justice Indoctrination

By Dr Susan Berry

While proponents of the Common Core claim that the new standards are focused on “college and career readiness,” more evidence is surfacing that a central purpose of the initiative is social justice and income redistribution indoctrination.
Social justice indoctrination in Common Core is not just limited to language arts.
Radical Math is a group founded by Jonathan Osler who teaches math and community organizing at a Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) high school in Brooklyn, New York. Its website states Radical Math is "a resource for educators interested in integrating issues of social and economic justice into their math classes and curriculum.”
The CES reform movement, whose purpose is to indoctrinate students with a Marxist-Communist political and social ideology, had been supported and expanded through the efforts of President Obama and his fellow community organizer Bill Ayers when both worked on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 1990s.
As Danette Clark wrote at EAG News, Common Core “architect” David Coleman’s Grow Network also worked with Chicago Public Schools, Obama, and Ayers during that time. In addition, Linda Darling-Hammond, who served as an advisor for the Bay Area CES, served as Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign education advisor and has more recently been involved in the development of the Common Core assessments.
....Radical Math boasts over 700 lesson plans, articles, charts, books, and websites that cover a wide range of socio-political issues including redistribution of wealth, discrimination against the poor by whites, corporations, banks, etc., and the message that widespread racism against blacks continues in the United States today.
Some of the Radical Math resources include Guide for Integrating Issues of Economic and Social Justice into Mathematics Curriculum, in which teachers are urged to educate students about topics such as prisons, racial profiling, and the death penalty, using math curriculum, and Rethinking Mathematics – Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, which boasts ideas and resources for teachers to help their students think critically about social justice issues.