5 Ways the Liberal Obsession With Income Inequality Hurts the Poor

By John Hawkins
...What liberals don't realize or alternately, just don't care about, is that their obsession with income inequality may make them feel good, but it actually hurts the poor in a number of ways.
1) The higher the government mandated minimum wage/living wage, the more people it prices out of jobs: When you force businesses to pay people more than they can return in value with their work, companies tend to respond either by hiring better quality people, replacing the jobs with automation, moving the posts overseas or by looking for opportunities to get rid of the positions entirely. The higher the wages and benefits the government insists on, the more stagnant it makes the labor market for the people who need to build their skills the most. If your goal were to deliberately put as many young, unskilled single mothers out of work as possible, the best politically feasible way to do it would be to jack the minimum wage up into the stratosphere.
2) It emphasizes making people more comfortable, not helping them succeed: There is no shame in taking any honest job, but you're not supposed to make a living pressing the button that drops the fries into the grease at McDonald's. If you work long enough at an entry level job to worry about raising the minimum wage, you're failing your family, your society and yourself. Instead of encouraging minimum skill workers to demand that the government force businesses to give them more money than they're currently worth, we should be encouraging people to build their skills and move up, move on or start their own business. Want poor people to be eligible for more education or training? Want to give them micro-loans? Want to make it easier for them to create small businesses? Those are policies that make poor Americans more valuable. That's good for them and the country. On the other hand, trying to redistribute income ultimately brings everyone down, especially the poor Americans who lose their drive after becoming dependent on it.

Ship of Warmist Fools

By Thomas Lifson
....Yet, in this age of social media and alternative news sources, the media cofferdam has been so unsuccessful that true believers are driven to distraction. Witness MSNBC's Chris Hayes: Charlie Spearling of the Washington Examiner describes his on-air near-meltdown (pardon the pun):

"The right wing had a field day, pointing and laughing at the global warming believers, who just to be clear, are only a group of scientists risking their lives for no monetary gain and little glory in order to help save the planet," he said defensively.

Actually they aren't just a "group of scientists." Many are wealthy eco-tourists, paying handsomely for the opportunity to brag to their friends about their dedication to reversing the pending inferno. Pierre Gosselin notes:

What made the expedition even more dubious is that Turney and his team brought on paying tourists in what appears to have been an attempt to help defray the expedition's costs and to be a source of cheap labor. According to the AAE website, the expedition was costed at US$1.5 million, which included the charter of the Akademik Shokalskiy to access the remote locations. "The site berths on board are available for purchase." Prices start at $8000!

The expedition brought with it 4 journalists, 26 paying tourists.

Here it seems that the obvious risks and hazards of bringing tourists to the world's harshest environment in a budget-priced vessel unable to handle ice-breaking may have been brushed aside, or at least played down. Was this reckless on the part of the expedition? That Antarctica is a harsh environment was in fact known to expedition leader Chris Turney: Bild online here quotes Turney: "In the Antarctic the conditions are so extreme that you can never make forecasts." Is this an environment you'd want to bring unfamiliar tourists in - on a vessel that cannot even break ice?

As an expedition to Antarctica is nothing less than an extreme adventure in every sense, employing guides who are highly trained professionals would seem a must when tourists are involved. Scientists are not tour guides. Many of the passengers were there for the very first time and had zero experience with the region's conditions. It seems reckless to me.

I don't wish these fools ill, and hope that a second rescue will free them and their Chinese rescuers. The carbon footprint they and their rescuers are generating is troubling, IF you believe the gospel of warmism. But they may have embarked upon a classic tragedy, the kind that is dependent on hubris.

When Government Breaks the Law

By Mark J Fitzgibbons

Rick Moran writes about 11 GOP state attorneys general who called President Obama's "fix" of Obamacare "illegal." It is heartening that some GOP officials with credentials in the law used "illegal" to describe Obama's acts. That word has more power than "above the law," "lawless," "rule of law," etc.
Many within the GOP, even conservatives, remain in a linguistic coma about government lawbreaking. Some still don't even use "unconstitutional" to describe Obama's acts. Senator

....Why are conservatives so timid? Have we lost -- or failed to acquire -- an appropriate understanding of how government is actually governed by the Constitution as law? Do conservatives believe we will win the debate by softening the charges? Polite discourse need not be passive.

The 1689 Bill of Rights used the term "illegal" extensively with reference to acts of government, and a couple are right on point for Obama's manner of governing:

That the pretended power of suspending the laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without consent of Parliament is illegal;
That the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal;
That the commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious;
That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time, or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal;
That it is the right of the subjects to petition the king, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal;
That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void.

....The Founders created a written Constitution as our supreme, fundamental and paramount law. A violation of that law is appropriately called "illegal."

Meanwhile, so many conservatives continue ignore the illegal, unconstitutional conduct of government officials in both parties and at all levels of government -- federal, state and local -- which does nothing to enhance our credibility or advance the cause to restore the Constitution and the rule of law over government.

Report: Amnesty Cash Cow for 'Boomtown' Lobbyists in 2014

By Tony Lee
The lobbyists that make up Washington's permanent political class in the country's "Boomtown" are banking on comprehensive immigration reform in 2014 to pad their profit margins even during a time when the country is revolting against them.
According to a report in Politico, "Washington Inc." continues to "hum along even as Congress failed to pass the kind of bills that lobbyists are paid top dollar by corporate clients and other special interests to influence."
That is a testament to the "to the resilience of Washington — and the firms that have thrived in the economy around it" even as the country is still trying to pull itself out of a recession. Indeed, as Breitbart News has reported, 8 of the 13 wealthiest counties in the nation are in the Washington region.
And one of the biggest reasons for that is the money lobbyists are making on comprehensive immigration reform.
"Downtowners continue to point to immigration reform as an area where there will be a lot of K Street spending," Politico writes. "The issue touches virtually every industry — and many of the biggest spenders are wealthy individuals like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who rely on their personal fortunes and whose commitment to Washington is less affected by short-term economic projections."
And an industry insider expressed the frustration that the permanent political class has with the pesky Tea Party by saying, "You can see where there would be common ground between Democrats and Republicans if you were to recognize that the tea party wing won’t be calling the shots anymore." That is why D.C. lobbyists cheered when House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has insisted that amnesty is "absolutely not" dead in this Congress, started taking on the Tea Party last month while passing a budget deal that raised taxes and cut military pensions.

By Tom Blumer

As 2014 begins, President Barack Obama’s approval rating is at its lowest point in his five-year tenure. Imagine where it would be if the establishment press treated him the way it did George W. Bush.
The president’s media apparatchiks are propping up what remains of the president’s popularity with five myths.
1. The economy has become strong, and is getting stronger.
Media reports have been calling recent job gains “robust.” Hardly. 2013′s estimated job growth of almost 2.4 million is still only 60 percent of what was achieved annually on a population-adjusted basis for a full six years during the 1980s. (See chart below.)
Job growth should be far greater, because there is still so much ground to make up from the disastrous POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy-driven recession of 2008-2009.
It’s bad enough that payroll employment is still 1.3 million below its January 2008 peak. It’s worse that employment in the Household Survey is 2 million shy of where it was in that same month. If we’re lucky and this plodding progress continues, it will have taken almost seven years for that more comprehensive measure of employment to return to where it was before the recession began — and several more years, if ever, before a recovery in employment catches up to eligible adult population growth.

Almost 40 percent of the reported economic growth during the first three quarters of 2013 came about because of inventory build-ups. Tentative results from the recent Christmas shopping season show that consumers haven’t been buying enough to significantly deplete those stockpiles. That does not bode well for production during the fourth quarter or early 2014.
2. The government’s finances have stabilized.
We’re supposed to be impressed that the Federal Reserve will only be creating $900 billion a year in funny money instead of $1.02 trillion. The truth remains, as outgoing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress in July, that without this historically unprecedented level of artificial stimulus, “the economy would tank.”
The Fed’s decision to barely taper its stimulus to $75 billion per month from $85 billion is really a vote of no confidence in the government’s ability to survive on its own. Before the taper, the Fed was financing $540 billion, or about half, of the government’s annual trilion-dollar 2012 deficit (the rest goes into sopping up mortgage-backed securities). The taper only reduces that to $480 billion, which is about 80 percent of the government’s projected fiscal 2014 deficit. This means that Bernanke & Co., soon to be Janet Yellen & Co., believe that precious few others want to own additional Treasury securities. They are probably right.
3. Obamacare will work out.
Most of the impact of Obama’s “Lie of the Year,” better described as a five-year series of dozens of lies — that “if you like your insurance plan, doctor, medical provider, and drug regimen, you can keep them” — has yet to hit home.
We have no idea how many of Obamacare’s vaunted 2 million enrollees will actually pay their premiums.
We have no idea how many will game the system by paying a single month’s premium and then milking the system at insurers’ and providers’ expense for another 60-90 days, as regulations now permit.
We have no idea if the government will ever be able to build the infrastructure elements it from all appearances deliberately chose not to build, including but certainly not limited to a legitimately secure web site and a system for paying tax subsidies to insurance companies.
We have no idea whether several states, e.g., Iowa, Maryland, Oregon, and others, can recover from their own calamitous rollouts.
We have no idea what the extent of the government-caused — and I would argue, likely government-orchestrated — chaos will be once patients who believe they have enrolled and are covered show up at doctors’ offices and find out they aren’t.
Finally, we have no idea how big the health insurance industry’s shortfall will be once it begins paying out claims. That there will be a shortfall is a virtual certainty, because Obamacare’s enrollees have from all appearances been older and sicker than the general population, and the program has utterly failed to sign up healthy young people in sufficient numbers. Whatever the deficit is, I certainly hope that people who should know better stop calling it a “bailout” when the government has to reimburse the industry. Though they seriously erred in failing to fight the law before it was passed, this disaster is not their fault.
4. We’re running out of time to stop global warming.
Even though we’re at 17 years and counting of no net increase in global temperatures, the Environmental Protection Agency still acts as if warming is settled science, and silences any dissent against dogma. Companies are being driven out of business and workers are losing their jobs because “scientists” would rather rely on faulty computer models than look out their windows.
5. Our “smart diplomacy” is holding our enemies at bay.
The administration continues to slavishly adhere to a long list of naive ideas about foreign relations.
In the real world, Iran continues to make progress towards possessing nuclear weapons. North Korea continues its attempts to deliver such weapons. The situation in Iraq, the war we won in 2008, is decaying. China and Russia are clearly emboldened. The White House and Secretary of State John Kerry are either okay with all of this, or clueless. Meanwhile, our military is being depleted and demoralized.
It seems likely that by fall the public, despite the press’s best efforts to cover up and obfuscate what’s really happening, will figure out that two or more of these five myths are utter fictions. This will make congressional and senatorial elections especially dangerous endeavors for Democrats and leftists throughout the land. Just how dangerous depends on how aggressively the president’s opponents work to expose the truth and overcome their annoying go-along, get-along tendencies.

By Bill Straub
...Regardless, the 113^th Congress is going to have to pass – or at least consider — something to justify its existence. Here are 10 quick possibilities.
THE FARM BILL – Lawmakers wrangled over this for months during the first session and the issue should come to a head sometime early on. It’s considered a must for farm-state representatives since it provides subsidies for agricultural interests – there are fears that the price of milk could reach $7 or more per gallon if it’s not quickly addressed.
The problem is food stamps, a major provision in the bill. The House wants to slash the program by $39 billion. The Senate, controlled by Democrats, is willing to accept a modest $4 billion cut. The question will have to be resolved in conference.
UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS – Democrats had hoped to gain an extension of emergency benefits to the nation’s unemployed as part of the budget deal that passed both chambers before the Christmas recess. But Republicans, as represented by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee, balked and the provision was left out of the deal.
As a result, about 1.3 million saw their unemployment insurance expire at the end of 2013, at a time when more than 7 percent of the nation’s workforce remains jobless. Democrats are unlikely to let the issue die and intend to use it to paint an ugly picture of the GOP in the fall elections. Boehner said he’s willing to consider an extension but the money for it will have to come from existing programs. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate to extend the benefit at an estimated cost of $25 billion.
DEBT CEILING – Here we go again. Opposing sides are once again rushing toward a showdown over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, which essentially authorizes the Treasury to borrow the funds necessary to pay the nation’s bills.
Republicans are reluctant to raise the ceiling, arguing that it leads to more government spending and, therefore, more debt, forcing the ceiling to be raised yet again in the near future. Democrats maintain that without a necessary adjustment the U.S. will default on its obligations, sending world markets swirling into chaos. The hike doesn’t increase spending, it simply allows the nation’s bills to be paid.
The last face-off didn’t place the GOP in a good light. Boehner sought fiscal concessions from President Obama in return for raising the ceiling – starting with repeal of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The White House balked, insisting that lawmakers deliver a clean bill. Republicans finally acquiesced.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has informed Congress that the U.S. is likely to hit the debt ceiling once again sometime in late February or early March, igniting a firestorm once again. Ryan maintains Republicans expect to receive something in return – like approval of the Keystone XL pipeline pumping oil to the Gulf Coast from Canada.
KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE – As long as we’re on the subject, Republicans likely will try to force the administration to approve pipeline construction. Obama has been slow-walking the 1,661-mile, $7 billion project, voicing serious concerns about feared environmental consequences. Republicans counter the project will create an estimated 20,000 direct jobs – opponents claim the total is significantly less — and carry nearly a million additional barrels per day of secure Canadian oil supplies to U.S. refineries, from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada, to an area near the Texas Gulf Coast.
The House has voted at least seven times to proceed with construction – often with significant Democratic support. The issue has died in the Senate but support seems to be growing, perhaps initiating another effort.
IMMIGRATION – The issue is being watched because, among other things, it may prove to be Waterloo for the presidential hopes of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). His support for a Senate measure has drawn disdain from Tea Party conservatives, perhaps leaving him in the station after the train takes off.
The Senate passed a highly publicized, sweeping measure last June that, among other things, provided the nation’s estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship. House Republicans balked and rejected the concept of one major bill. Instead, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is creating immigration legislation that will be broken into several component parts, each to be voted on individually.
Boehner has vowed to push the House version of immigration reform but it’s likely that whatever emerges will be a likeness to the Senate bill, meaning the lower chamber is unlikely to approve a path to citizenship. A difficult conference committee is in the offing.
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY – If there’s one area when the concerns of Democrats and Republicans might intersect it’s in the area of NSA surveillance, particularly in the area of retrieving domestic phone call records.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is working with Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) to curtail the sweeping powers afforded the NSA in the USA Patriot Act, adopted in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Leahy said “sweeping government surveillance programs” that recently have drawn the public’s attention “threaten personal privacy and threaten the economic health of American technology companies.” The proposed legislation is intended to “end the dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records and recalibrate the government’s surveillance authorities. All three branches of government have now called into serious question the effectiveness of these authorities.”
VOTING RIGHTS ACT – The U.S. Supreme Court last June struck down a key component of the Voting Rights Act which required several states – mostly those in the South – to clear any changes in election laws with the Justice Department before proceeding.
The process was initially instituted to determine how any changes might affect minorities. Soon after the high court struck down the pre-clearance provision, North Carolina – one of the affected states – instituted new voting restrictions, which included the requirement of strict voter ID to cast a ballot, cuts to early voting and the elimination of same-day voter registration.
Citing the North Carolina action, and similar initiatives in other states, voting rights proponents are seeking to re-institute pre-clearance. A task force created by the Congressional Black Caucus drafted a set of recommendations but legislation has yet to emerge. House Republican Leader Eric Cantor, of Virginia, has publicly declared his desire to address the parts of the law the court found to be constitutional, but the House GOP leadership has yet to provide direction to the caucus.
EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION – Last November the Senate passed in bipartisan fashion the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, 20 years in the making, aimed at outlawing discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals in the workplace.
The measure has a long way to go in the House. Boehner already has deemed the proposal unnecessary.
“The Speaker believes this legislation will increase frivolous litigation and cost American jobs, especially small-business jobs,” said Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman.
Regardless, proponents are expected to exert tremendous pressure in an effort to get the bill up for consideration. That’s unlikely unless a majority of the House GOP surprisingly offers support, bringing the so-called Hastert rule into play.
GUN CONTROL – The perennial issue is unlikely to cause much of a stir, but legislation is circulating to curb the “straw” purchasing of firearms where an individual purchases a gun for another individual who either is prohibited from owning a firearm or doesn’t want the purchase traced back to him or her.
Proponents, like Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), maintain straw purchasing and gun trafficking contribute significantly to the proliferation of guns throughout the nation across the southern border into Mexico. There currently is no criminal statute specifically prohibiting straw purchasing – prosecutors instead are forced to rely on laws that prohibit an individual from making false statements in connection with the purchase of a firearm. Those penalties, proponents maintain, are often too low or do not serve as effective tools for law enforcement.
The measure has thus far failed to gain the Republican support necessary to break a filibuster, which requires 60 votes. Even if that goal were achieved, it’s unlikely House Republicans would provide their endorsement. The same can be said for just about any pending gun-control legislation.
MINIMUM WAGE – Democrats are expected to make a major push to increase the $7.25 per hour minimum wage. Obama called for the increase in his 2012 State of the Union address but the entreaty was ignored by House Republicans.
But legislation that would raise the minimum wage to about $10, which polls well with both Democrat and Republican voters, may force the GOP hand. Democrats already are laying plans to make it a major congressional campaign issue if the GOP declines to consider it.
Increasing the minimum wage to $10 would place it at the level that existed in the 1960s and 1970s accounting for inflation. Republicans argue the jump will harm small businesses, but existing data is inconclusive.

Big Cases to Watch in 2014 at the Supreme Court

By Ken Klukowski
...The Court has not yet handed down decisions in any of the major cases heard this Term, so 2014 will contain all of those judgments. So far the big cases the Supreme Court has heard are:

On Oct. 8 the Court heard McCutcheon v. FEC, a follow-up to the 2010 Citizens United case. Federal law limits the amount of money that a person can give to candidates and political action committees. In McCutcheon, the Supreme Court will decide whether aggregate limits—limiting the total contribution a citizen can give over two years to everyone combined—violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

On Oct. 15, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, asking whether Michigan violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by amending the Michigan Constitution to prohibit racial preferences in programs such as college admissions.

Also on Oct. 15, in DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman, the Court will decide if it violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause for American state courts to claim jurisdiction over a foreign corporation when the company’s only connection with the U.S. is that a subsidiary of that corporation provides services in the American state where the court is located.

On Nov. 5, in Bond v. U.S., the justices heard arguments on whether Congress can pass federal laws to fulfill a treaty when those laws would normally be unconstitutional if Congress attempted to do the same thing through ordinary laws. While this case involved a woman's poisoning her husband’s mistress, it has implications for many issues, including gun rights and parental rights.

On Nov. 6, the Supreme Court will consider in Town of Greece v. Galloway whether invocations at sessions of policymaking bodies—called “legislative prayer”—are unconstitutional if the court should decide those prayers endorse religion (such as the prayer givers mentioning Jesus Christ, or if a majority of the volunteer prayer givers are Christian). This case also asks the Court to consider whether its overall test on finding Establishment Clause violations for the past forty years needs to change. If the Court takes the extra step, this could become one of the most important religious liberty Supreme Court cases in American history. (Disclosure: I represent Members of Congress in this litigation supporting the prayer givers.)

The Court is also scheduled to hear arguments in a number of important cases in the first few months of 2014:

On Jan. 13, 2014, in NLRB v. Noel Canning, the Supreme Court will decide whether President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board without Senate approval, during days when a single senator was holding a nominal session of the Senate to prevent those appointments, are unconstitutional, and therefore that all NLRB actions over the past two years are illegal and carry no force of law.

On Jan. 15 in McCullen v. Coakley, the justices will decide whether a Massachusetts law creating a buffer zone around abortion clinics, in which no one can approach a pregnant woman to offer her information or encouragement not to proceed with an abortion, violates the First Amendment.

On Jan. 22 in Abramski v. U.S., the Court will consider whether a police officer can be convicted of a federal felony due to how he filled out a form issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to purchase a firearm for his uncle, when the form is broadly and poorly written, and the policeman was advised to fill out the form in that manner.

On Feb. 24 in Chamber of Commerce v. EPA, the Supreme Court will consider whether the EPA has gone too far in claiming authority to issue regulations on so-called greenhouse gases from nonmoving sources in an unprecedented assertion of federal power.

There are also several cases for which the Court has agreed to hear the case, but has not yet set a date. Of those, one is sure to garner national headlines:

Obamacare will also be back at the Supreme Court this year. In Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius, the Court will examine the HHS Mandate issued by Kathleen Sebelius requiring employers to provide abortion-related products and services. The Court will consider whether this regulation violates either the First Amendment of the Constitution or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when applied to Christian-run businesses who morally object to abortion.

The Court hears about 80 cases each year, so this list focuses on the newsworthy cases that have caught the public’s attention. In coming weeks the Court will consider whether to take a religious liberty case on a Christian photographer who was penalized with a fine for declining to photograph a homosexual commitment ceremony, two major Second Amendment cases brought by the National Rifle Association, and cases on several other issues.
So 2014 is shaping up as an important year at the Court.