April jobs report: 288,000 jobs added; U-3 falls to 6.3 percent
By Erika Johnson....this month, another 806,000 people dropped out of the labor force, leaving the participation rate right around its new-normal low of 62.8 percent. That means that just about 92,594,000 Americans are not in the labor force right now. Sure, the U-3 unemployment rate has dropped, but the employment-population ratio hasn’t really budged at all:
The civilian labor force dropped by 806,000 in April, following an increase of 503,000 in March. The labor force participation rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 62.8 percent in April. The participation rate has shown no clear trend in recent months and currently is the same as it was this past October. The employment-population ratio showed no change over the month (58.9 percent) and has changed little over the year. (See table A-1.)Read: The net number of employed Americans actually fell by 73,000. Yes, this job report is an improvement over a lot of the trends we’ve been seeing in the past few years, but that’s hardly a metric worth celebrating — we’re still nowhere near our pre-recession unemployment or labor force participation rates. Stay tuned for the White House’s ritual spin-doctoring/endzone dancing.
The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was little changed at 7.5 million in April. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time work. (See table A-8.)
In April, 2.2 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, down slightly from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.)
Secretary of Labor Tom Perez dismissed today’s reported drop in the labor participation rate this morning on CNBC.
According to the Department of Labor the economy created 288,000 jobs in the month of April, but the labor participation rate dropped 0.4 percentage points back to a historical low of 62.8 percent.
Host David Faber put it to Perez directly, noting the labor participation rate drop is not due to people retiring given the participation rate for individuals 55 and older actually increased. “The civilian labor force dropped by 806,000 in April. The participation rate down by 0.4 percentage points, lowest it’s been since 1978. I mean come on, what is going on here?” he asked.
Perez deflected, characterizing the rate drop as a mere fluctuation possibly due to seasonal workers not yet entering the labor market. Otherwise, the Labor Secretary touted the 288,000 job figure but offered no further explanation. “I’m going to be watching this number carefully next month,” he said.
Internal Emails: State Dept. Immediately Attributed Benghazi Attacks to Terrorist Group
By Sheryl AttissonA newly-released government email indicates that within hours of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya; the State Department had already concluded with certainty that the Islamic militia terrorist group Ansar al Sharia was to blame. The private, internal communication directly contradicts the message that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated publicly over the course of the next several weeks. They often maintained that an anti-Islamic YouTube video inspired a spontaneous demonstration that escalated into violence. The email is entitled “Libya update from Beth Jones. ” Jones was then-Assistant Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton. According to the email, Jones spoke to Libya’s Ambassador at 9:45am on Sept. 12, 2012 following the attacks. “When [the Libyan Ambassador] said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him the group that conducted the attacks—Ansar Al Sharia—is affiliated with Islamic extremists,” Jones reports in the email. There is no uncertainty assigned to the assessment, which does not mention a video or a protest. The State Department provided the email to Congress in Aug. of 2013 under special conditions that it not be publicly released at that time. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sought and received permission to release it Thursday. “If the video was a cause, why did Beth Jones of the State Department tell the Libyan Ambassador that Ansar Al Sharia was responsible for the attack?” said Chaffetz.
Among those
copied on the emails: Deputy Secretary William Burns; Under Secretary for
Political Affairs Wendy Sherman; Jake Sullivan, then-Deputy Chief of Staff (now
promoted to national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden); Under
Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy; Cheryl Mills, then-Secretary Clinton’s
Chief of Staff (now on the board of directors of the global investment firm
BlackRock); and Victoria Nuland, then-State Dept. spokesperson (now promoted to
Asst. Secretary of State).
Two days after the email, documents show that Nuland raised concerns about an early draft of talking points in which the C.I.A. disclosed that it had warned of possible impending attacks. Nuland wrote that the C.I.A.’s disclosure to the public "could be abused by members of Congress to beat the State Department for not paying attention to [C.I.A.] warnings so why would we want to seed the Hill."
Two days after the email, documents show that Nuland raised concerns about an early draft of talking points in which the C.I.A. disclosed that it had warned of possible impending attacks. Nuland wrote that the C.I.A.’s disclosure to the public "could be abused by members of Congress to beat the State Department for not paying attention to [C.I.A.] warnings so why would we want to seed the Hill."
The following month, the State Department designated Ansar al Sharia as “an alias” for the terrorist group “Al-Qaeda” in the Arabian Peninsula. In Jan. of 2014, the State Department designated the Benghazi chapter of Ansar Al Sharia as a foreign terrorist organization.
Two days after the State Department told Libyan officials that Ansar al Sharia was at fault, Secretary of State Clinton instead evoked the YouTube video at the ceremonial return of the victims’ bodies
The appalling Obama foreign policy team: The case of Tommy Vietor
By Thomas Lifson
Former
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor appeared last night on
Bret Baier’s Fox News Channel program Special Report, in an attempt at
damage control, but only made things worse for the Obama Benghazi
cover-up. Two pieces of actual news were generated, but perhaps the
greatest damage was done by Vietor’s immature self-presentation,
revealing the low level of qualifications necessary for high
responsibility in the Obama White House.
First, the two pieces of actual news:
- President Obama wasn’t in the Situation Room the night of September 11, 2012, as our ambassador to Libya and three other men were being attacked, captured, and eventually killed after being dragged through the streets of Benghazi and tortured in hideous fashion.
BRET BAIER: People on the ground testified that they knew where the ambassador was, that they were military in their precision. It was not guys coming to protest. They had mortars and heavy weapons.
TOMMY VIETOR: Bret, a couple of things. I was in the Situation Room that night, okay. We didn't know where the ambassador was definitively.
BAIER: Was the president in the Situation Room?
VIETOR: No. And the fact that your network at one time reported that he watched video feed of the attack as it was ongoing is part of what I think is a pattern of inaccurate --
BAIER: Where was the president?
VIETOR: In the White House. Let me finish my initial statement. The notion that we could, you know, divine motives from a drone feed I think is wrong. And I also think this idea that the military had the capability to rescue those individuals but chose not to is I think extremely unfair to the military. And Admiral Mullen said basically the opposite.
BAIER: In the ARB report.
VIETOR: Right.
BAIER: Where was the president?
VIETOR: In the White House.
BAIER: He wasn't in the Situation Room?
VIETOR: At what point in the evening?
BAIER: Any point in the evening.
VIETOR: It's well known that when the attack was first briefed to him it was in the Oval Office and he was updated constantly. And during that briefing he told Tom Donilon and his Joint Chiefs and Sec Def to begin moving all military assets into the region.
BAIER: So when Hillary Clinton talks to him at 10:00 p.m., he's where?
VIETOR: I don't know. I don't have a tracking device on him in the residence.
BAIER: But you were in the Situation Room and he wasn't there.
VIETOR: Yes, I was in the White House.
BAIER: And the president wasn't in the Situation Room?
VIETOR: Not in the room I was in. Let's just be clear. You don't have to be in the Situation Room to monitor an intelligence situation. The PDB is in the Oval Office.
The
key word here is “monitor.” Do we expect the Commander in Chief to
monitor or to lead? This is no mere verbal distinction. We now know,
thanks to sworn testimony
yesterday by “Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell that
the State Department ‘didn’t come forward with stronger requests for
action’ in Benghazi while he served in the U.S. Africa Command’s
headquarters in Germany.” Then Secretary of State Clinton, like her
boss, was not leading, and may have also been in the passive
“monitoring” mode (at best).
- Vietor may have been the person who changed “attacks” to “demonstrations” in the talking points, in other words, going from a planned attack to a spontaneous demonstration-orientation in the story fed by the White House, ultimately to Susan Rice’s now legendary 5 show Sunday deception. He doesn’t remember, and expressed himself in way that makes some kind of history, a former senior official employing the word “Dude.”
Now, on to the real news: the grave affairs of state in the Obama administration are in the hands of incompetent, inexperienced people who are not up to the responsibilities they wield. If you are wondering how someone so callow came to such a position, read this and weep. He started as a van driver.BRET BAIER, HOST: You're a communications expert. If you're prepping an official for a Sunday show, you're probably going to prep on the biggest question of the Sunday show.
TOMMY VIETOR: Yes.
BAIER: Which probably, maybe, would have been the U.S. ambassador and three others who died.
VIETOR: That's fair. And I was among people who prepped Susan Rice. And we talked about, you know -- the protests were front and center in Ben [Rhodes]'s e-mail because there was still concern about additional violence in the region.
BAIER: Let's go to the talking points.
VIETOR: It was and there were Friday prayers in a number of countries like Pakistan and we were extremely worried.
BAIER: The 14th is the day you're talking about.
VIETOR: Yes.
BRET BAIER: According to the e-mails and the time line, the CIA circulates new talking points after they've removed the mention of al Qaeda and then at 6:21 the White House, you, add a line about the administration warning on September 10th of social media reports calling for demonstrations. True?
TOMMY VIETOR: I believe so.
BAIER: Did you also change attacks to demonstrations in the talking points?
VIETOR: Maybe. I don't really remember.
BAIER: You don't remember?
VIETOR: Dude, this was [like – omitted in the transcript but audible nonetheless] two years ago. We're still talking about the most mundane thing.
BAIER: Dude, it's what everybody is talking about.
VIETOR: We're talking about the process of editing talking points. That's what bureaucrats do all day long. Your producers edit scripts multiple times.
Save the First Amendment
Displeased with recent legal
victories in which free speech has prevailed over limitations on
political speech imposed by Congress, Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), Mark
Udall (D., Colo.), and other Senate Democrats have introduced a constitutional amendment
that would not only set aside the Supreme Court’s First Amendment
jurisprudence and invest Congress with virtually unlimited power to
regulate the political activism of private citizens, alone or in groups,
but would also give the federal government and the states the power to
shut down newspapers, television stations, and radio networks that
displease them. This is an all-out assault on the First Amendment and an
act of vandalism against the Constitution.
The
amendment is being put forward purportedly as a means of enabling
campaign-finance regulations and limiting the allegedly corrupting power
of money in politics. It is a direct response to the Supreme Court’s
free-speech rulings in Citizens United and McCutcheon,
cases that resulted from the federal government’s trying in the first
instance to ban a film critical of a presidential candidate and in the
second instance to prevent a private citizen from making small donations
— in the symbolic amount of $1,776, to be precise — to twelve
candidates he supported. Both times the Court sided with free speech,
and both times Democrats howled in outrage.
American law has long held that the right to free speech, the right to
free association, and the right to petition the government for redress
of grievances are to be read broadly, and that the exercise of those
rights necessitates a hands-off approach to the means by which they are
exercised. For example, the right to freedom of the press implies the
right to own or operate a press, and any attempt to confiscate or
control the machinery and equipment by which freedom of the press is
exercised constitutes an attack on freedom of the press itself.
In the Citizens United
dispute, those who would subjugate free speech to government power
argued that corporations do not enjoy the same free-speech rights as
individuals, and that the film in question, having been financed by a
nonprofit corporation, should not be protected by the First Amendment.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that American law does not
distinguish between media corporations and other kinds of corporations;
if Citizens United does not enjoy First Amendment protection, then
neither does the New York Times Company or Penguin Books.
The
Democrats’ proposed amendment would allow Congress to regulate not only
money expenditures on behalf of political candidates and causes but
also “in kind” contributions. Under the Democrats’ reasoning, an
editorial endorsement from the Washington Post, the daily
pronunciations of pundits on MSNBC or Fox News, or Barnes & Noble’s
deciding to energetically market a political book that catches its
attention would, as in-kind assistance to a political cause, fall under
the same regulatory shadow as the advocacy of any other group. The
Democrats say that this is not their intention, and maybe it isn’t, but
the amendment they are contemplating would enable precisely that, in
effect repealing the First Amendment.
Congress has
some power to regulate formal political campaigns, as Justice Roberts
and other First Amendment defenders have noted. The purpose of
campaign-finance laws is to prevent bribery, quid pro quo corruption.
But the limits that were struck down in McCutcheon had nothing
to do with how large a check a donor may write to a candidate; they had
to do with how many candidates a donor may write a check to, and the
Court ruled, correctly, that there was no constitutional basis for
limiting that. Citizens United was not even about donations to a
candidate, but whether private citizens could pool their money to
criticize a public figure. Free speech won that time, too, and that has
infuriated Democrats. Those who make the simpleminded argument that
money and speech are different things should consider that a press of
the sort necessary to compete with the New York Times costs
hundreds of millions of dollars and that Dan Rather’s attempts to
sabotage the election of George W. Bush were worth more in dollar terms
than anything that Charles and David Koch or George Soros have
contemplated.
Restrictions on what citizens may and
may not do to advocate a candidate or a political position are
fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment, the purpose of which is
to protect political advocacy, and with the American notion of liberty.
Such restrictions serve no purpose other than to let incumbents control
the terms on which political contests are fought. Democrats have no
principled objection to what they denounce, when convenient, as “big
money” — see their relationships with the American Federation of
Teachers or Tom Steyer, the hedge-fund billionaire who has promised to
deliver $100 million to those who support global-warming legislation.
What they object to, rather, is money moving through channels that do
not confer advantages upon Democrats. The Left is comfortably ensconced
in the unions, the public sector, the educational bureaucracies, and the
traditional media, and groups such as Citizens United and True the Vote
and thousands of others create new competition in the political
marketplace. This amendment is not about cleaning up elections — it’s
about the Democrats’ seeking to lock their critics out of the public
square.
A constitutional amendment is a perfectly legitimate means
of shaping public policy, and a number of them have caught
conservatives’ attention over the years. The question here is not the
idea of a constitutional amendment but the content of this proposed
amendment, which would place virtually all political activism — and most
political speech of any consequence — under federal regulation. It is a
cynical and dangerous attack on the First Amendment, and should be met
not only with resistance but with contempt — for the amendment itself,
and for the sort of power-mad men who would propose it.The IRS’s Heavy Hand
The owner of a Michigan supermarket gets swindled by the federal agency.
By George F Will... The IRS, a tentacle of a government that spent $3.5 trillion in 2013, tried to steal more than $35,000 from Terry and Sandy that year.Sandy, a mother of four, has a master’s degree in urban planning but has worked in the store off and on since she was twelve. She remembers, “They just walked into the store” and announced that they had emptied the store’s bank account. The IRS agents believed, or pretended to believe, that Terry and Sandy were or conceivably could be — which is sufficient for the IRS — conducting a criminal enterprise when not selling groceries.
What pattern of behavior supposedly aroused the suspicions of a federal government that is ignorant of how small businesses function? Terry and Sandy regularly make deposits of less than $10,000 in the bank across the street. Federal law, aimed primarily at money laundering by drug dealers, requires banks to report cash deposits of more than $10,000. It also makes it illegal to
“structure” deposits to evade such reporting.
Because 35 percent of Schott’s Supermarket’s receipts are in cash, Terry and Sandy make frequent trips to the bank to avoid tempting actual criminals by having large sums at the store. Besides, their insurance policy covers no cash loss in excess of $10,000.
In 2010 and 2012, IRS agents visited the store and examined Terry’s and Sandy’s conduct. In 2012, the IRS notified them that it identified “no violations” of banking laws. But on January 22, 2013, Terry and Sandy discovered that the IRS had obtained a secret warrant and emptied the store’s bank account. Sandy says that if the IRS had acted “the day before, there would have been only about $2,000 in the account.” Should we trust that today’s IRS was just lucky in its timing?
The IRS used “civil forfeiture,” the power to seize property suspected of being produced by, or involved with, crime. The IRS could have dispelled its suspicions of Terry and Sandy, if it actually had any, by simply asking them about the reasons — prudence, and the insurance limits — for their banking practices. It had, however, a reason not to ask obvious questions before proceeding.
The civil-forfeiture law — if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law — is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Sandy remembers her father exclaiming, “Aren’t we in the United States? We did nothing wrong!” They did something right in discovering the Institute for Justice’s activities against civil-forfeiture abuse. IJ, a libertarian defender of property rights and other American premises, says that what was done to Terry is done routinely across the nation — indeed, it was done almost simultaneously to the owner of a gas station near Schott’s Supermarket who deposited his cash receipts whenever he could get to the bank, typically every few days.
Civil forfeiture proceeds on the guilty-until-proven-innocent principle, forcing property owners of limited means to hire lawyers and engage in protracted proceedings against a government with limitless resources, just to prove their innocence. Says IJ:
To make matters worse, forfeiture law treats property owners like random bystanders and requires them to intervene in the lawsuit filed by the government against their property just to get it back. That is why civil forfeiture cases have such unusual names, such as United States v. $35,651.11 in U.S. Currency — the case involving Terry and Sandy.In what it probably considered an act of unmerited mercy, the IRS offered to return 20 percent of Terry’s money. Such extortion — pocketing other people’s money — often succeeds when the IRS bullies bewildered people not represented by IJ, which forced the government to return all of Terry’s and the gas-station owner’s money.
IJ’s countersuit seeks an injunction to prevent such IRS thefts and extortions. Meanwhile, earnest moralists might consider the possibility that Americans’ distrust of government is insufficient.
The Department of Veterans Affairs purged more than 1.5 million medical orders without ensuring patients received medical care, the Washington Examiner reports:
Since May 2013, veterans’ medical centers nationwide have been under pressure to clear out 2 million backlogged orders for patient care or services.The VA is currently embroiled in scandal after news investigations revealed dozens of veterans, including 40 at a Phoenix VA hospital, died from delays in treatment.
They were given wide latitude to cancel unfilled appointments more than 90 days old. By April 2014, the backlog of what the agency calls “unresolved consults” was down to about 450,000.
What happened to other 1.5 million appointments is something that no one, including top officials at the veterans’ agency, can answer.
A review by the Government Accountability Office of the process VA used to close old consult orders found that poor documentation in patient files and the lack of independent verification made it impossible to know whether patients got care they needed before their medical orders were canceled.
The total number of veterans who have died from delayed treatment is unknown.
The VA released a fact-sheet in April showing 23 veterans had died nationwide from delayed gastrointestinal cancer screenings.
An investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found the VA has paid out $200 million for nearly 1,000 wrongful deaths since the 9/11 attacks.
Porky's II: The Earmarkers Strike Back
Restoring earmarks in today's Congress would be like opening a bar tab for a bunch of recovering alcoholics.
By Senator Tom CoburnRemember the $223 million in federal funds earmarked in 2005 for the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska? The project stalled but the public outrage it sparked led to a 2011 decision by Congress to end earmarking. Well, it looks like the bridge-to-nowhere crowd is ready to get the scaffolding out again, with lobbyists and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle calling for a return to earmarks and pork-barrel politics.
The powerful House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) has called the ban a "bad idea." Two Republican candidates in Mississippi—Sen. Thad Cochran and House candidate Gene Taylor —are making a return to pork part of their platform. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) recently tried to dismiss the bipartisan ban as a fringe, right-wing idea that has led to gridlock. "It was a tea party reform," Sen. Durbin told reporters in Springfield, Ill., on April 14 after a speech to Teamsters. "They came in and eliminated it and what they did is take the glue out of a federal transportation bill. That was the glue that held everybody together."
Mr. Durbin said he longs for the day "when we get back to the point where members of Congress are sitting down with a common goal—let's pass this bill, let's make sure there is enough money in this bill, let's find the sources of revenue necessary for this bill—you know, it creates a much better and more positive feeling."
The "glue" is pork and the "positive feeling" that Mr. Durbin is referring to is the joy of spending other people's money. For politicians, this sensation is highly addictive. It's why I called earmarks the gateway drug to Washington's spending addiction after fighting my own party's earmarks in the 1990s.
The porkers' core argument—that Congress needs earmarks to pass good bills that wouldn't pass otherwise—is ludicrous. Pork crowds out higher priority needs. On transportation bills, for instance, the Transportation Department's Inspector General told us in 2007 that the presence of earmarks meant members' pet projects were funded ahead of more important projects such as repairing structurally deficient bridges, which now number 63,000 or 10% of our nation's bridges. There is a higher chance the bridge you cross today on your way to work could collapse thanks in part to Congress's legacy of perverse priorities.
Members like to say they know their district's needs best but they are most skilled at putting their political needs first. Plus, we already have an institution dedicated to local projects. It is called local government. Transportation pork, in particular, proved that the good congressman or congresswoman isn't the one who sends money back to the state but the one who keeps money from leaving the state in the first place.
Rather than passing good bills, politicians with pork on their minds most often pass bills that aren't ready for prime time. The last major piece of legislation whose passage was greased with pork was the Affordable Care Act, a bill even ardent supporters like former Democratic Sen. Max Baucus admit was a poorly constructed "train wreck."
History shows that earmarks did in fact function as a gateway drug to higher spending. According to the Congressional Research Service, the number of earmarks quadrupled to nearly 16,000 in 2006 from more than 4,000 in 1994, which inspired lobbyist Jack Abramoff to call the appropriations committees "earmark-favor factories." Not surprisingly, federal spending skyrocketed during this period of positive pork feelings, to $2.66 trillion in 2006 from $1.46 trillion in 1994. After the enactment of the earmark moratorium, spending actually decreased to $3.45 trillion in 2013 from $3.46 trillion in 2010.
In the post earmark-favor-factory world, my fellow members of Congress are far from fully reformed: The ban has been bent and even broken. But we're at least debating bigger issues than where to place swimming pools and parking garages.
Many members also now say earmark excesses can be policed and they just want to exercise the power of the purse. But Congress doesn't need pork to do its job of setting priorities. Congress's power of the purse is the most underutilized power in Washington not because of the earmark ban, but because Congress is unwilling to do the hard work of passing appropriations bills, drafting clear legislation that tells bureaucrats what to do, and then conducting oversight over the programs it creates.
Bringing back earmarks now would hardly change that. We haven't passed our annual spending bills in eight years, long before we gave up pork, and we're unlikely to return to regular order before the midterm elections. With U.S. debt at $17 trillion and counting, restoring earmarks in today's Congress would be like opening a bar tab for a bunch of recovering alcoholics.
Congress isn't functioning properly, and the answer isn't new pork, but new politicians. There is no spending or policy challenge we face that can't be solved by electing principled people with at least a minimum level of competence, and by elevating leaders who know how to compromise without paying someone off. Statements from earmark enthusiasts prove this point. If members have to be bribed into doing the right thing—and pork is more of a "glue" than, say, our oath to the Constitution—we are in very deep trouble indeed.
That
"positive feeling" Mr. Durbin spoke of is truly a product of pork and
Washington's misguided belief that parochialism protects incumbents. As
long as that sentiment unites Congress, the American people and
tough-minded reformers would be wise to unite and keep the ban on
earmarks.
Caution: Senators at Work
By Amy Payne
Obamacare is wreaking havoc on the economy; entitlement spending is
swallowing the federal budget; America’s military readiness is in
shambles; and a handful of senators are working hard to make sure the
government stays in the housing finance business.Priorities, right?
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored entities (GSEs) that dominate the American housing market, were supposed to help people get homes and stabilize the market. They have failed at these goals. Now, some members of Congress are claiming they want to reform the system—but they’re basically just trying to rename it.
Right now, Sens. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) are trying to gain a few more votes to propel their not-really-reforming bill to the Senate floor.
Heritage experts Norbert Michel and John Ligon have analyzed this and other Senate proposals, and they warn that these “bills would not help people buy homes; they would only protect investors and special interests at taxpayers’ expense.”
Meanwhile, the politicking behind the scenes is fierce. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) told The New York Times that his fellow senators had better steer clear of one man: “If they’re thinking of Jeb Hensarling and his no-government role while we negotiate this, nothing happens.”
A “no-government role”? Sounds like a great idea. Naturally, Senate liberals aren’t too interested.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) is sponsoring the PATH Act, a very different approach in the House that would get the government out of housing finance. He calls the current system of government intrusion in the housing market “unsustainable, unconscionable, and unfair.”
Hensarling told The Foundry that it doesn’t make sense to continue government-sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—which “represent the single largest bailout in America’s history, almost $200 billion coming out of the pockets of working men and women in America.”
It’s uncertain whether the Johnson-Crapo proposal will make it to the Senate floor for a full vote this year; committee votes in the next week or so could determine its fate. But when it comes to housing finance, this is one area where the government needs to get out and move on.
Heritage experts have concluded:
The federal housing policies related to the GSEs have proved costly not only to the federal taxpayer, but also to financial markets and the overall economy. It is time federal policymakers accept that this institutional model has failed and that they should move toward a U.S. mortgage market without Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.After all, we can think of a few other things our senators could do.
Happy May Day, Workers: Unions Will Take Your Dues Now and Give Them to Politicians
By Amy PayneDonors like the Koch brothers make the news a lot, but did you know unions are five of the top 10 groups giving political donations so far in the 2014 election cycle?
Among these five, more than $19.3 million in members’ dues has flowed to candidates, political parties and outside political groups.
When it comes to candidates and political parties, the National Education Association has given 89 percent to Democrats. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has given 100 percent to Democrats. The AFL-CIO has given 81 percent to Democrats, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has given 97 percent to Democrats.
Of course, Americans are free to give to candidates and causes they support. But for unionized workers, dues come out of their paychecks and go to political causes—and they aren’t consulted on where that money will go.
In the 2012 election cycle, a surprising report revealed that “Organized labor spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.”
Heritage labor expert James Sherk says that this system stays in place only because unions have power over their dues-paying members.
Polls show that the vast majority of union members think their union spends too much on politics and that they don’t like their union’s political priorities. It isn’t hard to see why, with such enormous spending and virtually all of it going to one side of the political spectrum. This wouldn’t happen if unions had to get their members’ permission before spending their dues on political campaigns.
Blatant: 32 Year Old Woman on Why She Abuses Welfare, Doesn’t Work, and Happily Takes Your Money
A woman named Lucy called in to a Texas radio station as they were discussing welfare abuse. What happened would surprise anyone. Not that this happens – just how proud this woman is of it.Lucy proceeds to laugh at taxpayers like they are suckers taking bait and proceeds to detail her marijuana usage and laziness. She admits that her parents and most likely her children will also take advantage of living this lazy, no-work life.
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