Poll: 23% of Americans View Boehner Favorably; 22% View McConnell Favorably

CNSNews.com) – A new Gallup poll on Congress and its leaders shows that only 23% of Americans view House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) favorably, and only 22% view his Senate counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) favorably.

Gallup further reports that Boehner’s ranking is similar to that of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in October 2010, when only 26% of Americans viewed her favorably. Also, for then-Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in October 2014, he was viewed favorably by only 21% of Americans.

When looking specifically at Republicans, Gallup found that only 37% had a favorable view of Boehner, and only 34% had a favorable view of McConnell.

Boehner has been the Speaker of the House of Representatives since January 2011. McConnell became the Senate Majority Leader in January of this year.

Via: CNS News

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150 Days: Treasury Says Debt Has Been Frozen at $18,112,975,000,000

                      The U.S. Treasury building in October 2013 (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

(CNSNews.com) - The portion of the federal debt that is subject to a legal limit set by Congress closed Monday, August 10, at $18,112,975,000,000, according to the latest Daily Treasury Statement, which was published at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

That, according to the Treasury's statements, makes 150 straight days the debt subject to the limit has been frozen at $18,112,975,000,000.

$18,112,975,000,000 is about $25 million below the current legal debt limit of $18,113,000,080,959.35.

On July 30, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent a letter to the leaders of Congress informing them that he was extending a “debt issuance suspension period” through October 30.

In practice, that means that unless Congress enacts new legislation to increase the limit on the federal debt before then, the Treasury will continue for at least the next eleven weeks to issue Daily Treasury Statements that show the federal debt subject to the limit beginning and ending each day frozen just below that limit.

The Daily Treasury Statement for March 13 was the first to show the debt subject to the limit closing the day at $18,112,975,000,000. Every Daily Treasury Statement since then has reported the same thing: the debt closing the day at $18,112,975,000,000.

Every Daily Treasury Statement since Monday, March 16, has also reported the debt beginning and ending each day at $18,112,975,000,000.

Table III-C of the Daily Treasury Statement for Aug. 10, 2015--shown here in a screen capture--says that the federal debt subject to a legal limit set by Congress began the month of August at 18,112,975,000,000 and that it began the day of Aug. 10 at 18,112,975,000,000 and that it closed the day of Aug. 10 at 18,112,975,000,000.

Table III-C on the Daily Treasury Statement for August 10 says the debt began the month of August at $18,112,975,000,000, began the day of August 10 at $18,112,975,000,000, and closed the day of August 10 at $18,112,975,000,000.

On March 13, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew sent an initial letter to House Speaker John Boehner and other congressional leaders informing them that he was planning to declare a “debt issuance suspension period.”

“Beginning on Monday, March 16, the outstanding debt of the United States will be at the statutory limit,” Lew said in that letter. “In anticipation of reaching that date, Treasury has suspended until further notice the issue of State and Local Government Series securities, which count against the debt limit.”

On July 29, Lew sent another letter to the leaders of Congress informing them: “I expect to extend the debt issuance suspension period through October 30.”

Lew explained that he believed the Treasury would be able to continue using “extraordinary measures” to keep the debt from exceeding the limit through at least the end of October.

“The effective duration of the extraordinary measures is subject to considerable uncertainty due to a variety of factors, including the unpredictability of September tax receipts and the normal challenges of forecasting the payments and receipts of the U.S. government months into the future,” Lew told the congressional leaders.

“Given this unavoidable uncertainty, Treasury is not able to provide a specific estimate of how long the extraordinary measures will last,” Lew said. “Nonetheless, we believe that the measures will not be exhausted before late October, and it is likely that they will last for at least a brief additional period of time.”

The next day, July 30, Lew did in fact send a notice to the congressional leaders saying: “I have determined that a ‘debt issuance suspension,’ previously determined to last until July 30, 2015, will continue through October 30, 2015.”

In his March 13 letter, Lew explained some steps the Treasury would take during the debt issuance suspension period.

“Because Congress has not yet acted to raise the debt limit,” Lew said in that letter, “the Treasury Department will have to employ further extraordinary measures to continue to finance the government on a temporary basis. Therefore, beginning on March 16, I plan to declare a ‘debt issuance suspension period’ with respect to investment of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and also suspend the daily reinvestment of Treasury securities held by the Government Securities Investment Fund and the Federal Employees’ Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.”

Lew informed Boehner that these same actions had been taken “during previous debt limit impasses.”

For example, as CNSNews.com reported, when Secretary Lew declared a debt issuance suspension period in 2013, the Treasury reported the debt subject to the limit was frozen at $16,699,396,000,000 for 150 days, running from mid-May to mid-October of that year.

The Treasury has also posted Frequently Asked Question sheets that explain the actions the Treasury takes during a “debt issuance suspension period” and their statutory basis. The Congressional Research Service has also explained it.

“Under current law, if the Secretary of the Treasury determines that the issuance of obligations of the United States may not be made without exceeding the debt limit, a ‘debt issuance suspension period’ may be determined,” the Congressional Research Service said in a report published on March 27. “This determination gives the Treasury the authority to suspend investments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Trust Fund, Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund, and the Government Securities Investment Fund (G-Fund) of the Federal Thrift Savings Plan.

“In addition,” said CRS, “this gives Treasury the authority to prematurely redeem securities held by the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Trust Fund and Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund.”

"The total federal debt consists of debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt," the CRS said inanother report published in 2011. "Debt owed to the public represents borrowing from entities other than the federal government, and includes borrowing from state and local governments, the Federal Reserve System, and foreign central banks, as well as private investors in the United States.

"Intragovernmental debt," said CRS, "consists in debt owed by one part of the federal government to another, which are mostly held in trust funds."

The net effect of the Treasury’s actions is that although the publicly held debt of the government continues to fluctuate--as the Treasury redeems maturing debt held by the public and issues new debt held by the public—the overall debt subject to the limit set by Congress closes each business day at $18,112,975,000,000.

Back on March 13, the debt held by the public was $13,083,880,000,000 and the intragovernmental debt was $5,068,578,000,000 according to the Daily Treasury Statement. By the close of business on August 10, also according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the debt held by the public had increased by $37,043,000,000 to $13,120,923,000,000, and the intragovernmental debt had decreased by $38,260,000,000 to $5,030,318,000,000.

But on every business day from March 13 through August 10 the Treasury reported that the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress closed the day at $18,112,975,000,000.

Via: CNS News

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U.S. House and Senate Each Said They Had Only 45 Employees--Then Signed Up 12,359 for Insurance on Obamacare 'Small-Business' Exchange

 (CNSNews.com) – Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives certified that they had only 45 employees each in order to sign up for the District of Columbia’s Small Business Exchange. But 12,359 - or 86 percent of the exchange's enrollees - are members of Congress, congressional staff members, and their spouses and dependents, according to an appeal filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals by Judicial Watch.

The public interest law firm announced Monday that it is appealing the February dismissal of its lawsuit challenging congressional participation in the Obamacare exchange even though the D.C. Exchange Act limits enrollment to small companies with 50 or fewer employees.

“Congress obviously has far more than 50 employees,” Judicial Watch attorney Michael Bekesha pointed out in his opening brief. “It has thousands of employees.”

Congress enrolled in the small business exchange when its previous coverage under the Federal Employee Health Benefits plan was terminated by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and congressional employees stood to lose thousands of dollars in “employer contributions” if they enrolled in the District’s individual exchange.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives both certified that they “employ 50 or fewer full time equivalent employees.”

In October 2013, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a final rule that provides an “employer contribution” covering about three-quarters of the premiums of congressional employees enrolled in the small business exchange starting Jan. 1, 2014.

The OPM rule “allowed at least 12,359 congressional employees and their spouses and dependents to obtain health insurance through the Small Business Exchange…These 12,359 participants represent an astonishing 86% of the Small Business Exchange’s total enrollment,” the appeal states.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit last October on behalf of Kirby Vining, a D.C. resident since 1986, who objected to the expenditure of municipal funds to insure congressional employees in an exchange that was established specifically for small employers in the District.

“Congress authored the law [ACA], and is going to rather questionable lengths to avoid compliance with the law it drafted,” Vining said.

D.C. resident Kirby Vining. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)

Although the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority conceded that D.C. law limits participation in the exchange to small employers, it argued in court that “the local statute must yield to the extent the federal statute or regulation applies.”

In its motion to dismiss the case, the authority also stated that the exchange “has been funded exclusively by federal grants awarded to the District to establish its Exchange, and more recently, an assessment imposed on health carriers doing business in the District.”

In dismissing the lawsuit, D.C. Superior Court Judge Herbert Dixon ruled that Vining had no standing to challenge the OPM rule because he “has not demonstrated a reasonable inference that municipal taxpayer funds have been appropriated to defendant exchange authority to establish a cognizable injury to maintain standing to bring his underlying complaint.”

However, in a budget report submitted to Congress, the Exchange Authority’s actual budget for Fiscal Year 2013 ($10.9 million) and FY 2014 ($66.1 million) was identified as " ‘municipal monies’ as originating from the District’s General Fund. No monies are identified as Federal Funds, Private Revenue, or Intra-District Funds,” according to the appeal.

“In Fiscal Year 2015, the Exchange Authority’s budget was reclassified from the General Fund to a newly created fund, separate and distinct from ‘Federal Funds’,” it continued.

Dixon also ruled that the OPM rule preempts the D.C. Exchange Act, noting that “allowing members of Congress and their staff to participate in the District’s small business health options program is authorized by federal regulations.”

But Judicial Watch argues in its appeal that the D.C. law cannot be preempted because it is “completely consistent and entirely compatible” with the federal law and in fact its “sole purpose is to implement various provisions of ACA.”

“In reality, the court ruled that a determination by a federal bureaucrat – in this instance, the director of OPM – trumps the 50-employee limit of the Exchange Act, at least with respect to Congress,” the group’s appeal brief stated. “No lawful regulation – much less a regulation that purports to delegate such authority to an agency head – can do that, and the Court cites no legal authority whatsoever for their astonishing conclusion that it can.”

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said that allowing Congress to enroll in an exchange meant for small businesses is both “unlawful and unethical.”

“It is an abuse of District taxpayers to use D.C. funds to subsidize illegal health insurance for Congress,” Fitton said in a statement.  “It is unlawful and unethical for District officials to use local dollars to participate in Congress’s Obamacare fraud. 

“The highest court in the District of Columbia must affirm the right of District taxpayers to protect their monies from being misappropriated by corrupt District officials.”

Via: CNS News

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[VIDEO] Fiorina: 'I Will Not Replace a Single' Retiring Federal Worker

(CNSNews.com) - "We have never succeeded in shrinking the size of government," Republican Carly Fiorina told "Fox News Sunday." She said she would do it.

"We have a bunch of baby boomers who are going to retire out of the federal government over the next five to six years. I will not replace a single one," she promised. 

"And yes, we need to actually get about the business of reducing the size, the power, the cost, complexity and corruption of this federal government."

Host Chris Wallace played a video clip of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) criticizing Fiorina for nearly driving Hewlett-Packard, a Fortune 500 company, "into the ground." Schultz noted that Fiorina "fired 30,000 people when she was CEO."

"You know, if you end up as Republican nominee, the Democrats are going to put that in every ad -- she fired 30,000 people," host Chris Wallace told Fiorina. "It's exactly the kind of thing, Ms. Fiorina, that sunk Mitt Romney."

Fiorina said she's "flattered" that the head of the DNC would come after me because it must mean she's "gaining traction."

"But here's the facts: I led Hewlett-Packard through a very difficult time, the dotcom bust post-9/11, the worst technology recession in 25 years. I would remind Debbie Wasserman Schultz that it has taken the NASDAQ 15 years to recover.

Sometimes in tough times, tough calls are necessary. However, we also took a company from $44 billion to almost $90 million. We quadrupled its growth rate, quadrupled its cash flow, tripled its innovation to 11 patents a day, and went from lagging behind to leading in every product category in every market segment.

And yes, I was fired at the end of that, in a boardroom, which I've been very open about. And I was fired because when you challenge the status quo, which is what leadership is about, you make enemies.

Steve Jobs was fired. Oprah Winfrey was fired. Walt Disney was fired. Mike Bloomberg was fired. I feel like I'm in good company. And we need somebody to challenge status quo of Washington, D.C. and get something done."

Wallace predicted that Democrats will find "that poor, unfortunate person" who was fired, and suffered, because of Fiorina's management.

She said there's nothing harder for a chief executive to do than to tell an employee, "we don't have a job for you."

"It's also true that the vast majority of Americans know that in tough times sometimes tough decisions have to be made. And what they're frustrated by is the federal government never makes a tough decision."

Via: CNS News

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Lifting the Curtain on the Abortion Industry – A Practitioner's Perspective

Human baby. (AP Photo)Another video bombshell has been lobbed at the Planned Parenthood juggernaut by the Center for Medical Progress.  It’s a story of David vs. Goliath, plainly, but this latest attack has certainly caused significant damage that will be hard for the wealthy foundation to shrug off.

Melissa Farrell, director of medical research of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has done permanent injury to something that the entire abortion industry relies on: the idea that what is being removed in an abortion is a “clump of cells.”

For years now, the magical science of ultrasound has been working hard at putting that concept on the ash heap of history.  We physicians have always known that a fetus is a fascinatingly intriguing little human, and it took ultrasound to open up that knowledge to the general public.  There is no need for a months-long intense course on fetal development.  A glimpse of the black and white moving images of little hands waving and toes wiggling instill a conviction of personhood immediately.

The doctors and technicians who are featured in the videos, working in their macabre “research” labs know this too, of course.  The exclamation of Dr. Ginde, a Colorado abortionist, as she stands over a petri dish of fetal parts: “Another boy!” is going to stick in my mind for a long time.  It’s particularly awful coming from a fellow physician.  We like to think that our vocation is especially safe from ethical indecencies, but obviously that’s not true.  The deadness of the women’s consciences can almost be felt, as they talk about pricing their grisly work by body part harvested, and how convenient it is when a woman delivers an intact baby during the abortion process.

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, talks a good game.  To hear her tell it, abortion is the last thing anyone at her clinics wants to offer a scared and desperate young woman.  Her providers are sensitive, caring, even lovingly concerned.  They do what they do because they are engaged in a heroic battle to serve womankind with Pap smears, birth control, and STD tests, that even after Obamacare and all its mandates, women are still having trouble “accessing.”   Oh, and almost as an afterthought, “safe and legal abortion.”

I guess we know now that the sensitivity and humanity quotient in those clinics is a lot lower than Ms. Richards claims.  We also know that no one who works at Planned Parenthood, from Cecile Richards on down to the lowliest receptionist, believes that abortion has to do with the removal of “tissue” or “cells.”  They can’t believe it, because they are looking at the ultrasounds, carrying the petri dishes, calling for pickup of intact body parts, and otherwise going about their morbid business.

Polls show that before these videos surfaced, about two-thirds of Americans would ban abortion after the first trimester. It will be interesting to see how those polls change.  Lifting the curtain on the big business of abortion and watching the artless coarseness of its practitioners will have its effect on the public.  I’m sure the public will show that their moral sensitivity is significantly healthier than Richards’ and her supporters’.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie is a Senior Policy Advisor for The Catholic Association.  She writes and speaks widely, in both Spanish and English, about Catholicism, religious freedom, and the intersection of faith and science.  As a Hispanic, she brings a special focus on social issues that impact the growing Latino population, such as the state of the family and the real needs of the poor and marginalized.  As a physician, she is able to address complex subjects relating to government health policy and its true impact on the people it purports to help.

Via: CNS News

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Record 93,770,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Matches 38-Year Low

(CNSNews.com) - A record 93,770,000 Americans were not in the American labor force last month, and the labor force participation rate remained at 62.6 percent, exactly where it was in June -- a 38-year low, the Labor Department reported on Friday.

In 1975, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping such records, 58,627,000 Americans were not in the labor force, and the number has grown steadily since then, breaking the 80-million mark at the end of George W. Bush's presidency; and the 90-million mark in July 2013, during Barack Obama's second term. The number of Americans not in the labor force has continued to rise since then.

According to the Congressional Budget Office's 2015 long-term outlook, the number of working Americans is expected to increase more slowly in coming decades, as more workers exit the labor force, many of them retiring baby-boomers; and fewer workers enter it -- given declining birth rates and a levelling-off of women in the labor force.

In July, according to BLS, the nation’s civilian noninstitutional population, consisting of all people 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 250,876,000. Of those, 157,106,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 157,106,000 who participated in the labor force equaled only 62.6 percent of the 250,876,000 civilian noninstitutional population -- the same as it was in June. Not since October 1977, when the participation rate dropped to 62.4, has the percentage been this low.

Other notes from Friday's jobs report:

-- The economy added an estimated 215,000 jobs in July, in line with economists' expectations, but not enough to change the nation's civilian unemploymet rate, which remained at 5.3 percent.

-- Among the major demographic groups, the unemployment rate for adult men (4.8 percent), adult women (4.9 percent), whites (4.6 percent), blacks (9.1 percent), Asians (4.0 percent), and Hispanics(6.8 percent) showed little or no change.

-- 6,325,000  million people were employed part time for economic reasons (involuntary part-time workers) in July, These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part-time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

-- The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 2,180,000 in July (up from 2,121,000 in June). These individuals accounted for 26.9 percent of the unemployed.

Via: CNS News

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Enough with the Softball Questions; It's Time We Start Really Questioning Cecile Richards

After watching Andrea Mitchell’s softball interview with Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, I was hoping Andrea Mitchell, or anyone, would ask her the following questions:

With more than 300,000 abortions per year and only about 1,800 adoption referrals per year, does Planned Parenthood provide equal counseling regarding both options for women?  Which option provides more revenue and donations for Planned Parenthood?  Is this what Cecile Richards means when she says “the facts are on our side”?

Many couples endure long waiting lists to adopt an adopted child and will assist birth mothers.  How is this addressed with pregnant women at Planned Parenthood?  Does this fulfill Cecile Richards’ statement that Planned Parenthood “helps women plan their family”?

Does harvesting fetal tissue or organs make the abortion less safe or create more discomfort by virtue of possibly increased time in doing the harvesting procedure or different harvesting techniques?

When fetal tissue or organs are harvested with consent, can the consent be given by minors without parental, guardian or judge approval?  Can a minor alone agree to a potentially riskier abortion procedure that involves harvesting organs?

Do the companies purchasing the fetal tissue and organs from Planned Parenthood make financial donations to Planned Parenthood?

Senator Claire McCaskill stated on the “Morning Joe” show that they “have already cleared Planned Parenthood in an investigation in Indiana.”  Were they cleared on all the issues I have raised here?

Via: CNS News

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[VIDEO] Obama Addresses (GOP) Critics of Clean Power Plan: 'If You Care About Low-Income Minority Communities...'

(CNSNews.com) - "No challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a changing climate," President Obama said Monday in a speech announcing his plan to achieve a 32-percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by the year 2030.

He spent about a third of his speech refuting critics and "cynics who say it cannot be done."

And he managed to sneak in a plug for Obamacare while he was at it:

"Today, an African American child is more than twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma. A Latino child is 40 percent more likely to die from asthma. So if you care about low-income minority communities, start protecting the air that they breathe, and stop trying to rob them of health care.

"And you could also expand Medicaid in your states, by the way," the president said, prompting laughter.

The Democrats' Affordable Care Act required the states to expand their Medicaid programs to cover people at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. But two years later, in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court said the decision to expand Medicaid programs must be left to the individual states; the federal government could not compel such expansion. To date, 20 states still have not expanded their Medicaid programs.

Although President Obama did not name the critics of his Clean Power Plan on Monday, he clearly was addressing Republicans.

"We've hear the same stale arguments before," he said. "Every time America has made progress, it's been despite these kinds of claims. Whenever America sets clear rules and smarter standards for our air, our water, our children's health, we get the same scary stories about killing jobs and businesses and freedom."

Obama then told a story about arriving in Los Angeles for college as an 18-year-old, in late August.

"I was moving from Hawaii. And I got to the campus, and I decided I had a lot of pent-up energy, and I wanted to take a run, and after about five minutes, suddenly, I had this weird feeling like I couldn't breathe. And the reason was, back in 1979, Los Angeles still was so full of smog that there were days where people who were vulnerable just could not go outside, and they were fairly frequent."

He got personal again at the end of his speech:

"I don't want my grandkids not to be able to swim in Hawaii or not to be able to climb a mountain and see glacier because we didn't do something about it. I don't want millions of people's lives disrupted and this world more dangerous because we didn't do something about it. That'd be shameful of us.

"This is our moment to get this right and leave something better for our kids. Let's make most of that opportunity."

At Monday's White House briefing, spokesman Josh Earnest said the Clean Power Plan will prompt states and individual utilities to "ramp up their investments in efficiency, ramp up their investments in renewable energy, which is cheaper to produce than energy that's produced by coal, and making those kinds of investments will lead to savings in the utility bills of customers down the line, and that is what we're focused on, both in terms of saving consumers money but also a whole set of benefits that are associated with shifting to renewable energy or the use of less energy."

President Obama refuted critics who "claim that this plan will cost you money, even though this plan, the analysis shows, will ultimately save the average American nearly $85 a year on their energy bills."

Via: CNS News

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[MUST READ] Obama Cronyism + Your Personal Data = Trouble by Michelle Malkin

It's the most far-reaching scandal in Washington that no one wants to talk about: Tens of millions of federal employees had their personal information hacked as a result of Obama administration incompetence and political favoritism.

Ethnic community organizer-turned-Office of Personnel Management head Katherine Archuleta recklessly eschewed basic cyber security in favor of politically correct "diversity" initiatives during her disastrous crony tenure. This Beltway business-as-usual created an irresistible opportunity for hackers to reach out and grab massive amounts of sensitive data — compromising everyone from rank-and-file government employees to CIA spies.

Could it get worse? You betcha.

Amid increasing concerns about these massive government computer breaches, the Defense Department is expected to announce the winner of a lucrative high-stakes contract to overhaul the military's electronic health records system this week.

The leading finalist among three top contenders is Epic Systems, a Wisconsin-based health care software company founded and led by top Obama billionaire donor Judy Faulkner. Thanks in significant part to President Obama's $19 billion stimulus subsidy program for health data vendors, Epic is now the dominant EMR player in the U.S. health IT market.

According to Becker's Hospital Review, CVS Caremark's retail clinic chain, MinuteClinic, is now adopting Epic's system, and "when the transition is complete, about 51 percent of Americans will have an Epic record." Other major clients include Kaiser Permanente of Oakland, Calif., Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, Arlington-based Texas Health Resources, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, and Duke University Health System in Raleigh, N.C.

As I've reported previously, Epic employees donated nearly $1 million to political parties and candidates between 1995 and 2012 — 82 percent of it to Democrats. The company's top 10 PAC recipients are all Democratic or left-wing outfits, from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (nearly $230,000) to the DNC Services Corporation (nearly $175,000) and the America's Families First Action Fund Democratic super-PAC ($150,000).

Faulkner received a plum appointment to a federal health IT policy panel in 2011. Brandon Glenn of Medical Economics noted that "it's not a coincidence" that Epic's sales "have been skyrocketing in recent years, up to $1.2 billion in 2011, double what they were four years prior."

Stunningly, Epic "has the edge" on the gargantuan Pentagon medical records contract, The Washington Post reported on Monday. This favored status comes despite myriad complaints about the interoperability, usability and security of Epic's closed-end proprietary software. Just last week, the UCLA Health system run by Epic suffered a cyber attack affecting up to 4.5 million personal and medical records, including Social Security numbers, Medicare and health plan identifiers, birthdays, and physical addresses. The university's CareConnect system spans four hospitals and 150 offices across Southern California.

The university's top doctors and medical staff market their informatics expertise and consulting services to other Epic customers "to ensure the successful implementation and optimization of your Epic EHR." Will they be sharing their experience having to mop up the post-cyber attack mess involving their Epic infrastructure?

UCLA Health acknowledged that the hack forced it to "employ more cybersecurity experts on its internal security team, and to hire an outside cybersecurity firm to guard its network," according to CNN.

Now another Obama crony is poised to cash in on her cozy ties and take over the mega-overhaul of millions of Pentagon and Veterans Affairs medical records to the tune of at least $11 billion.

Can you say "Epic fail"?

Via: CNS News

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[VIDEO] Pelosi: ‘No, No,’ Release of 4 U.S. Hostages Held by Iran Should Not Be Part of Nuke Deal

(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the four American hostages being held in Iran should not have been released as a pre-condition to the Iran nuclear deal.

At a Capitol Hill press conference, CNSNews.com asked Rep. Pelosi, “Do you think the four American hostages being held in Iran should have been released as a pre-condition to any deal made about Iran’s nuclear program?”

Pelosi answered: “No, no. It would have been good. But it’s just, no, this is a nuclear deal. This is a nuclear agreement. And I think that we have to--I appreciate the fact that since we have a nuclear negotiation and now we have a nuclear agreement that a much brighter light is being shone on the prisoners of conscience in Iran.”

 “Again, I just took a trip in the spring with my colleagues on the subject of trade and we brought up these issues with the government of Vietnam, we brought up these issues with the administration about what was happening in Malaysia in terms of trafficking,” said Rep. Pelosi.  

“So, again,” she said, “any issue that shines a brighter light enables us to say: Are we consistent with what we believe? Or is it changed depending on our economic and commercial relationships with the country.”

“Security to protect and defend--that’s our first responsibility,” said Pelosi.  “Who we are as a nation, that we respect the dignity and worth of every person and that we want those prisoners released and the more attention that is paid to it the better.”

Pelosi continued, “The worst, most cruel and excruciating pain that can be inflicted on a prisoner of conscience -- and again I’ve been working on these issues on China, as you know, since I arrived here -- is that they tell the prisoners ‘nobody remembers you’re here, they don’t know why you’re here. You’re wasting your time, you might as well confess,’ or convert or whatever it is they want them to do. And this will shine a very bright light and I’m very optimistic.”

“I know that the administration has this as a very high priority,” said the Democratic leader.  “There’s so many prisoners of conscience throughout the world in so many countries that we do have dealings with. Hopefully this will  serve as a model, a bridge to  a better understanding of who we are as a nation and why that is important to us.”    

President Obama answered questions yesterday as to why the four American hostages were not part of the Iran nuclear agreement. He responded that the issue of the detained Americans and that of the nuclear agreement were “not connected.”

Via: CNS News

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$2,446,920,000,000: Federal Taxes Set Record Through June; $16,451 Per U.S. Worker—Feds Still Run $313B Deficit

(CNSNews.com) - The federal government raked in a record of approximately $2,446,920,000,000 in tax revenues through the first nine months of fiscal 2015 (Oct. 1, 2014 through the end of June), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.

That equaled approximately $16,451 for every person in the country who had either a full-time or part-time job in June.

It is also up about $178,156,270,000 in constant 2015 dollars from the $2,268,763,730,000 in revenue (in inflation-adjusted 2015 dollars) that the Treasury raked in during the first nine months of fiscal 2014.

Despite the record tax revenues of $2,446,920,000,000 in the first nine months of this fiscal year, the government spent $2,760,301,000,000 during those nine months, and, thus, ran up a deficit of $313,381,000,000 during the period.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total seasonally adjusted employment in the United States in June (including both full and part-time workers) was 148,739,000. That means that the federal tax haul so far this fiscal year has equaled $16,451 for every person in the United States with a job.

In 2012, President Barack Obama struck a deal with Republicans in Congress to enact legislation that increased taxes. That included increasing the top income tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, increasing the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent, and phasing out personal exemptions and deductions starting at an annual income level of $250,000.

An additional 3.8 percent tax on dividends, interests, capital gains and royalties--that was embedded in the Obamacare law--also took effect in 2013.

The largest share of this year’s record-setting October-through-June tax haul came from the individual income tax. That yielded the Treasury $1,167,500,000,000. Payroll taxes for “social insurance and retirement receipts” took in another $771,048,000,000. The corporate income tax brought in $255,453,000,000.

The business and economic reporting of CNSNews.com is funded in part with a gift made in memory of Dr. Keith C. Wold.

Via: CNS News

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Three Great Progressive Lies

Conservative leader Morton Blackwell keeps a picture of Leonardo’s model of a bicycle on the wall of his Leadership Institute. It’s his site gag—and it’s a sight gag.

Leonardo’s bike is a reminder that the great conservative philosophical insight—Ideas Have Consequences—is true only if people act upon it. You can sketch a bicycle and perhaps even build a working model. But we know it took four hundred years for people to start riding bicycles.

Progressives don’t ever wait that long. They start acting upon their ideas immediately. The only trouble is: the ideas they believe in are not true. Among the lies they believe, here are three of the most prominent:

Progressive Lie Number One: We do not know when human life begins. Justice Harry Blackmun wrote this in his infamous Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973. That was a lie when he wrote it. We all knew that human life begins at conception. We had known this incontrovertible scientific truth since the 1850s. That was the reason the states were urged to bring their homicide codes into conformity with science’s indisputable findings.

Justice Blackmun lied about all of this. TIME Magazine’s columnist Joe Klein was honest enough to admit this truth. He noted that the pro-life movement (he didn’t call it that, of course) had “gotten a major boost from science, ironically, as sonograms have made it impossible to deny that from a very early stage, that thing in the womb is a human life.”

Fifty-seven million innocent human lives have been taken in this country as a result of this liberal lie.

Progressive Lie Number Two: Sexual intimacy between two men is equal to the union of man and woman. The 7.2 billion human beings who live today are each the fruit of the union of a man and a woman. Zero human lives have issued from the sexual intimacy of man and man. Is there marriage equality? Yes, marriage is for every race and nation, for every class and people. But each marriage, which has always been about procreation and child-rearing as well as complementarity of the sexes, is possible only for a man and a woman.

Progressive Lie Number Three: With enough cream, you can tame a tiger. Since 1989, our State Department has been feeding cream in the form of U.S. foreign aid to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). State Department liberals hope they can change that man-eating tiger’s stripes.

Resolving the conflict would remove a major source of instability in the Middle East. (AP Photo)

The PLO has never ceased to be a terrorist outfit. All the monies that the UN, the European Union, and the long-suffering U.S. taxpayers have been dunned to pay out have served only to strengthen this gang of mass murderers. All formulas for a “Two-State Solution” to the perennially turbulent Mideast that are based on a peace settlement between a legitimate, democratic, and free Israel and a bloody regime of killers in the PLO are failing. They are a house built on sand. They should fail. Ditto, Iran.

So it is not surprising that our foreign and domestic policies are in turmoil. They are each premised on untruth. We strive to base our principles on truth. We do not always succeed, but we do believe we can know the truth. And the truth will set us free.

Via: CNS News

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A Coming Era of Civil Disobedience?

Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking. What else was our revolution but a rebellion to overthrow the centuries-old rule and law of king and Parliament, and establish our own?

The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the Capitol. Calling the Commandments "religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths," the court said the monument must go.

Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation to let voters cut out of their constitution the specific article the justices invoked. Some legislators want the justices impeached.

Fallin's action seems a harbinger of what is to come in America — an era of civil disobedience like the 1960s, where court orders are defied and laws ignored in the name of conscience and a higher law.

Only this time, the rebellion is likely to arise from the right.

Certainly, Americans are no strangers to lawbreaking. What else was our revolution but a rebellion to overthrow the centuries-old rule and law of king and Parliament, and establish our own?

U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been defied, and those who defied them lionized by modernity. Thomas Jefferson freed all imprisoned under the sedition act, including those convicted in court trials presided over by Supreme Court justices. Jefferson then declared the law dead.

Some Americans want to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, who, defying the Dred Scott decision and fugitive slave acts, led slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

New England abolitionists backed the anti-slavery fanatic John Brown, who conducted the raid on Harpers Ferry that got him hanged but helped to precipitate a Civil War. That war was fought over whether 11 Southern states had the same right to break free of Mr. Lincoln's Union as the 13 colonies did to break free of George III's England.

Millions of Americans, with untroubled consciences, defied the Volstead Act, imbibed alcohol and brought an end to Prohibition.

In the civil rights era, defying laws mandating segregation and ignoring court orders banning demonstrations became badges of honor.

Rosa Parks is a heroine because she refused to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus, despite the laws segregating public transit that relegated blacks to the "back of the bus."

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Dr. King, defending civil disobedience, cited Augustine — "an unjust law is no law at all" — and Aquinas who defined an unjust law as "a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."

Said King, "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

But who decides what is an "unjust law"?

If, for example, one believes that abortion is the killing of an unborn child and same-sex marriage is an abomination that violates "eternal law and natural law," do those who believe this not have a moral right if not a "moral responsibility to disobey such laws"?

Via: CNS News

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