IRS Approval for Many Conservative Groups Still Stalled

It's business as usual at the Internal Revenue Service, where officials tell USA Today 
that little has changed since Congress investigated the agency for targeting tea party groups for unnecessary delays.

Forty percent of the conservative groups caught up in the backlog remain in limbo, and new applications pending since May 2012 have not been considered.

Editor’s Note: New 'Obamacare Survival Guide' Reveals Dangers Ahead for Your Healthcare

The Cincinnati office that handles tax-exempt status groups still faces a backlog, however some officials believe there has been a change in culture and the process improved since division director Lois Lerner and IRS Commissioner Steven Miller resigned. 
"I'm quite sure they're not going to go after tea party groups again," said Paul Streckfus, editor of a trade journal focused on tax-exempt issues.
"The larger question is, is the system working better than it did? And the answer, as far as I can tell, is it's not," Streckfus said.

Congress began investigating the agency six months ago after it was revealed that 500 conservative and tea party groups waited years for approval, while some presented evidence that federal authorities demanded private and intrusive information about the groups.

Danny Werfel, the new IRS chief, has since banned the "Be on the Look Out," or BOLO lists of certain words like "patriot" or "tea party" that were used to target right-leaning groups.

Marcus Owens, a Washington-based tax attorney and former director of the IRS' exempt organizations division, said applications "don't seem to be moving at all."

Via: Newsmax

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America's anger epidemic: why?

NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) -
Some are describing this as "America's anger epidemic." And there are a few reasons: uncertainty in the job market and the economy, working long hours -- on average about one month more now than they did in the 1970s and with less vacation.
So if it seems like Americans are angrier these days it's because we are.

What has you seeing red? Maybe it's the traffic or the ups and downs of the stock market. For one guy seen on a viral video, he threw a tantrum over a city street trombone player. I guess he didn't like the tune.

And of course, there are the celebrity meltdowns, like Alec Baldwin's epic fail last week when he blew up at Fox 5 reporter Linda Schmidt.

Singer Chris Brown was also just ordered to spend three months in rehab after reading he threw a rock through his own mother's car window.

Dr. Sudeepta Varma, a psychiatrist, said it is not all a coincidence. Americans really are angrier now than they've ever been before.

A recent study from the USA Today found 60 percent of Americans report feeling angry or irritable. That is up from 50 percent when a similar poll was taken in 2011.

Via: My Fox NY

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Undermining His Legacy

States Are Critical Of Obama’s Political ObamaCare “Fix”

LAST WEEK, FACING MOUNTING CRITICISM, OBAMA PROPOSED A WIDELY PANNED FIX FOR OBAMACARE

Last Week, Obama Unveiled A So-Called Fix For People Losing Their Health Plans Due To ObamaCare – The Plan Was “Widely Panned.” “President Barack Obama’s announcement of a proposed fix to people losing their health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act was widely panned by the editorial boards of the nation’s biggest newspapers, with even the usually supportive New York Times saying it raises ‘troubling questions.’” (Tal Kopan, “Editorial Pages Pan President Obama’s Plan,” Politico, 11/15/13)

USA Today Editorial: “The President’s Plan Is Less A Solution Than It Is A Punt.” “But political necessity doesn’t guarantee good policy, and the president’s plan is less a solution than it is a punt. Obama announced that the administration would allow canceled plans to be renewed for at least a year, which will probably ease the complaints of more than 4 million people in the individual market who’ve received cancellation notices since the ObamaCare online marketplaces opened on Oct. 1. But there will be a dangerous rebound effect.” (Editorial, “Obama Prescribes Ugly Fix For ObamaCare,” USA Today , 11/15/13)

• USA Today Editorial: “The Other Big Problem With Obama’s Plan Is That A Lot Of People Still Might Not Be Able To Keep Policies They Like. Insurers Don’t Have To Renew The Expiring Policies, And State Insurance Commissions Don’t Have To Approve Them.” (Editorial, “Obama Prescribes Ugly Fix For ObamaCare,” USA Today , 11/15/13)

Obama’s One-Year Extension Undermines The “Central Goal Of The Law.” “But it also invited unintended consequences, showing how easily the law’s complicated framework can start to come loose. (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, “Obama Struggles To Save His Cherished Health Law,” The Associated Press , 11/16/13)

Insurance Commissioners Are Warning That The Fix Will Fracture The Insurance Market And Increase Premiums. “State insurance commissioners warned that the president’s solution would undermine a central goal of the law, the creation of one big insurance pool in each state for people who don’t have access to coverage on their jobs. Fracturing that market could lead to higher future premiums for people buying coverage through the law’s new insurance exchanges, which offer government-subsidized private insurance.” (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, “Obama Struggles To Save His Cherished Health Law,”The Associated Press , 11/16/13)

Via: GOP.com

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Small-business owners scramble to avoid cost hikes related to 'Obamacare'

Thousands of small businesses around the U.S. are racing to renew their health insurance policies Dec. 1 to beat large premium increases their brokers say will hit them Jan. 1 when the Affordable Care Act takes full effect.

Some health insurance brokers also say 2014 may be the last year many of the companies even offer health insurance.

Insurance brokers from several states told USA Today that 60% to 80% of their small-business clients — those with 50 employees or fewer — are renewing their policies early to skirt the law. Companies with more than 50 employees aren't allowed to adjust their renewal dates.

Many companies are still waiting to hear what rates they'll be facing in 2014, as state insurance commissioners are backlogged with tasks related to compliance with the health-care law, known as Obamacare.

The National Federation of Independent Business estimates 42% of the at least 7 million small businesses with 50 or fewer employees offer health insurance. On Friday, the group released a survey in which 64% of 921 small-business owners and operators reported they pay more for insurance premiums per employee in 2013 than they did in 2012.

Beginning this past summer, insurance companies warned brokers and companies that rates could rise dramatically because of the ACA, and some of these agents say they are seeing increases of 30% to even 100% in premiums, especially for businesses that have young workforces. That's because companies will no longer be able to charge older people more than three times they do younger ones. In some states, there is no limit on how much more they can charge older employees than younger ones, and it can be five times more in some states.

Via: The Town Talk

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WHO IS THE MYSTERIOUS OBAMACARE GIRL FEATURED ON THE WEBSITE’S HOME PAGE?

You have probably seen her face before, but do you know who that brunette girl is smiling back at you when you log onto healthcare.gov?

Odds are you don’t, but you aren’t alone.

Multiple media outlets, including USA Today and Fox News, have scoured the Internet and looked through stock photo agencies’ catalogs, social media and even through photographs of Democratic operatives — but the mysterious girl has yet to be found.

–Have a tip? Scroll to the bottom of this page and leave it in our tip box–

(Image Source: Healthcare.gov)

The woman, who media outlets are desperately trying to identify, has become the face of the glitch-ridden healthcare.gov website.

CNN even devoted an entire segment to her, asking for information about who she may be.

Via: The Blaze

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USA Today Reporter: Healthcare.gov May Need to Be Completely Overhauled

The Morning Joe panel interviewed USA Today reporter Kelly Kennedy about her damning article on the healthcare.gov Monday morning.

Kennedy said experts contend the glitches are the result of the Obamacare website being built on 10 year-old technology that may need to be completely overhauled.

Host Joe Scarborough ribbed his liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski, noting the irony that the firm hired by the U.S. to launch the Obamacare website was fired by the province of Ontario in Canada:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Wow, Mika. I mean, so what we’re talking here Mika — the Canadians fired a Canadian firm that the United States hired to run the biggest governmental launch in a generation. Huh.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: You know, it’s interesting –

KATY KAY: Speechless.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Everybody missed that. They were so busy — I don’t know. I guess they were looking somewhere else. I don’t know.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Yeah whatever.

Via: WFB

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CNN All But Ignores Big New Report on IRS Scandal

CNN has all but ignored a new report that according to IRS documents, the agency gave extra scrutiny to 162 political groups – 80 percent of them conservative – that were seeking tax-exempt status.

A USA Today report stated that the IRS "flagged" groups based on "'anti-Obama rhetoric', inflammatory language and 'emotional' statements." CNN briefly mentioned the bombshell report once, on Wednesday's Early Start at 5:08 a.m. ET. The network has ignored the report since, moving to join the networks in their blackout.

"More than 80% of the organizations on the 2011 'political advocacy case' list were conservative," USA Today reported, noting that "at least 11 liberal groups" were on the list "as of November 2011."

This is just the latest development in the ongoing IRS scandal. The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on Wednesday on the matter, but CNN didn't cover that at all.

The Hill reported that "Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee stressed that new information showed that the IRS flagged mostly conservative groups for extra surveillance, even after those groups received their tax-exempt status."

That same report added that "Separately on Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released a memo suggesting that the IRS fell prey to President Obama’s concerns about the Citizens United case, feeding the agency’s harsher treatment of Tea Party groups." CNN made no mention of this either.

Below is a transcript of CNN's report, which aired on Early Start on September 18 at 5:08 a.m. EDT:

JOHN BERMAN: Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political organizations seeking tax-exempt status for anti-Obama rhetoric, inflammatory language and emotional statements. USA Today got its hands on internal 2011 documents that describe the extra scrutiny. USA Today reports that 162 groups were listed by name. The work of 21 of them was characterized as propaganda. More than 80 percent of the organizations on that list are deemed conservative.

Via: Newsbusters

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The 'War on Women' Backfires

One of the intriguing aspects of this election is how the Democrats' shameless and clueless appeal to women is ending with the vaporization of the historic "gender gap" among voters.

The Lady Parts Convention
From the prancing Code Pink vulvas outside the convention venue to the choice of speakers, there was no doubt that the Democrat Convention was aimed at securing the women's vote. Indeed, Balkanizing women and minority voters was then as significant a part of the Obama strategy as securing the electoral votes of Ohio is now to them.

The thinking here apparently was that by highlighting a thirty-year-old law student whining that others should pay her contraceptive costs, emphasizing an unfettered right to abortion, and equal pay for equal work (a convenient code for further feathering trial lawyers nests with dubious claims for parity) and highlighting fluffy issues beloved of the ill-informed, Obama would lock up the women's votes. The Republican "War on Women" was the theme of a convention designed around obscuring the fact that the Democratic standard-bearer had no record to run on, no plan for a second term, and shared the ticket with a crazy person afflicted with logorrhea.

Reality Bites
This week, as Susan Fields observes, it is clear that strategy failed so badly that the long running gap between male and female voters has been practically erased.

The Gallup Poll now shows Mitt Romney trailing the president by only a point among women who are likely to vote in 12 swing states. This follows a Pew Research Center poll taken after the first presidential debate showing that President Obama's 18-point lead among women had shrunk to a tie, 47 percent to 47 percent.

"In every poll, we've seen a major surge among women in favorability for Romney," Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told USA Today after the first debate. These polls find women increasingly concerned with the deficit and debt, just like men. The social issues continue to be more important to women than to men, but these issues no longer dominate the discussion. [snip] In the second debate, Romney looked deeper into the dark side of Obama accounting, finding that 3.5 million more women are living in poverty than before he took charge of the economy. Women understand that an economy with 7.8 percent unemployment, when half of college graduates can't find good jobs, is not good for anyone.

I don't disagree with Fields' assessment that the terrible Obama economy and its effect on women have a lot to do with the shift, but I suggest that there's a great deal more to it.

Bad times tend to focus the mind and wise up all voters, including women. Maybe we really aren't voting for the head of a national PTA, Johnny Appleseed, or for our choice of "American Idol." Perhaps it would be a good idea to elect someone who does understand economics and business.

Via: American Thinker

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Every Green Energy Failure Is News

USA Today (10/17/12) ran a story about a battery manufacturer filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. But the story might as well have been a press release from the Mitt Romney campaign.

"Another Blow for Green Energy" read the headline. Wendy Koch's piece led off with this:

An electric vehicle battery maker that was awarded $249 million in federal stimulus funds filed for Chapter 11 reorganization on Tuesday, giving GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney potential ammunition to attack President Obama's green-energy subsidies.

It's a short article, but it's hard to avoid the central theme: This is good news for the Romney campaign. Koch writes:

Its Chapter 11 filing will likely spur further GOP criticism, which escalated once solar panel manufacturer Solyndra filed for Chapter 11 protection in September 2011 after receiving more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees.

In the first presidential debate October 3, Romney called four aid recipients "losers," including Solyndra, Fisker, EV car maker Tesla Motors and auto battery manufacturer Ener1.

"You don't just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers," Romney told Obama in a sharp exchange.

On Tuesday, Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul called A123's bankruptcy "yet another failure for the president's disastrous strategy of gambling away billions of taxpayer dollars on a strategy of government-led growth that simply does not work."

If it's important to note the campaign ramifications of this story, then perhaps readers should know that Romney claimed that about half of the companies receiving green energy loan guarantees have gone out of business. That is, as you might expect, completely false.

Via: Fair

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz pushes women to vote Obama as Romney narrows gap

The Obama campaign continued its effort to attract women voters during a Monday conference call with reporters, with Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz charging that Republican nominee Mitt Romney would be “a president who wants to essentially force us to refight battles that we thought were won long ago, and essentially either make us or keep us as second class citizens.”

“Women’s health and economic security depend on President Obama winning the White House. And because women make up 55 percent of the electorate, women will decide this election,” Wasserman Schultz said.

After the first presidential debate in Denver, Colo., Romney made strides in narrowing the polling gap among women voters.

“In every poll, we’ve seen a major surge among women in favorability for Romney” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told USA TODAY, regarding a Monday USA TODAY/Gallup Poll that showed likely women voters giving Romney a bump in swing states following the debate. “Women went into the debate actively disliking Romney, and they came out thinking he might understand their lives and might be able to get something done for them.”

An October Pew Survey found that where Obama had an 18-point lead among women last month, following the president’s poor debate performance, the candidates are now tied among likely women voters (47 percent to 47 percent). The USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Monday found Obama leading Romney overall by 9 points among registered women voters, but narrowing the gap to give Romney the edge in swing states.

Via: The Daily Caller

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USA TODAY: Red States' Income Growing Faster Than Blue States'

Income is growing much faster in Republican-leaning "red states" than in Democratic-tilting "blue states" or the pivotal swing states that will decide the 2012 presidential election, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Personal income in 23 red states has risen 4.6% since the recession began in December 2007, after adjusting for inflation. Income is up just 0.5% in 15 blue states and Washington, D.C., during that time. In the dozen swing states identified by USA TODAY that could vote either way Nov. 6, income has inched ahead 1.4% in 4 ½ years.

The big drivers of red state income growth: energy and government benefit payments such as food stamps.

By contrast, Democratic blue states are more affluent but were hit harder by the downturn. Connecticut, dependent on the financial industry, suffered the largest income drop except swing-state Nevada. Yet Connecticut residents still make $10,000 a year more on average than people in fast-growing North Dakota.

When averaged nationally, the robust gains in red states and meager gains in blue states produced a national growth rate remarkably similar to that in the swing states.

USA TODAY analyzed income data released this week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis to compare how red, blue and swing states have fared through June 30. The difference in income gains is partly because blue states are richer and more populated than red states — 42% of the nation's income vs. 30% in red states. Also, the economic recovery since the recession officially ended in June 2009 has been distributed unequally around the country.

North Dakota, a red state, tops the nation in income growth thanks to an oil boom. Other major energy states — Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas — are solidly Republican, polls show. Poor, southern red states depend heavily on government transfers for income and benefited from increases in Medicaid and other federal programs.

Via: USA Today

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Obama Admin: Hey, You Know What We Need? More People Receiving Government Handouts…

More Americans rely on their families for assistance than the government, so federal officials have undertaken an effort to help people to apply for federal assistance.

“Given that only 15 percent of you turn to government assistance in tough times, we want to make sure you know about benefits that could help you,” USA.gov announced today. The ”government made easy’ website has created a “help for difficult financial times” page for people to learn more about the programs.

The government got that statistic from a poll asking Americans what helps them the most during tough times. Here are the results:

• Savings 44%
• Family 21%
• Credit cards/loans 20%
• Government assistance 15%

“Government assistance comes in different forms—from unemployment checks and food assistance to credit counseling and medical treatment,” USA.gov reminded readers.

This leg of the financial assistance push has ended. “Although our campaign to highlight Help for Difficult Financial Times has ended, we know that your struggles may continue,” said USA.gov today. “We will keep updating the tools and information we provide to help you get back on your feet.

Via: Washington Examiner

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