The ObamaCare Bomb Is About to Explode …

WASHINGTON TIMES EDITORIAL - A mere three weeks remain before the Obamacare exchanges open for business. The likely result will be the closing doors on Main Street, as shopkeepers and entrepreneurs shut down, unable to make ends meet. It’s clear that the wounded economy can’t cope with the exploding costs ahead.

Ohio announced that premiums would rise in the individual market by an average of 88 percent next year. Premiums will rise 72 percent in Indiana, 125 percent in Wisconsin. Even California, with its relatively robust individual market, is bracing for increases of 66 percent.

The Obamacare train wreck bearing down on us is about far more than higher costs. A study by University of Chicago economist Casey B. Mulligan documents the perverse Obamacare incentives that encourage Americans to become much less productive. He estimates that the legislation acts as a payroll tax increase for about half the working, non-elderly population earning an average weekly wage. Obamacare will turn those who work hard into losers, declaring part-timers the winners.

A typical family of four with an income of up to $94,200 will get a generous subsidy for health insurance if the head of the house drops out of full-time work and becomes a part-timer. It’s an implicit payroll tax increase of almost 5 percent. The net result is a reduction in productivity throughout the economy.

Imposing a large new tax will persuade many that long hours are for suckers. Many will decide that it isn’t worth the effort and drop out of the work force. Why work full-time to see the money taxed away? Better to work fewer hours and keep the same after-tax income.

Obamacare imposes additional pressure on bosses to move employees to part-time status to avoid large penalties by the IRS. Businesses and some public-sector employers have begun slashing their employees’ hours already.

Via: Washington Times

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[VIDEO] TED CRUZ MAKES THE CASE AGAINST ATTACKING SYRIA

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) appeared on ABC’s “This Week” to make the case against military action in Syria.  He began by citing two major arguments against President Obama’s proposed intervention: “One, because I think the Administration is proceeding with the wrong objective; and two, because they have no viable plan for success.”

Cruz said the proposed attack would not have the objective of “defending U.S. national security,” protecting American lives, or defending our allies.  Instead, it has been explicitly framed as a military intervention to defend “amorphous international norms,” which Cruz does not see as a proper role for the U.S. military.

He suggested some other ways the United States could express disapproval of Assad’s gruesome tactics, such as threatening to cut U.S. aid to Iraq unless the Iraqis stop allowing Iranian supply flights to pass through their airspace en route to Syria.  Cruz also advised forcing a U.N. Security Council vote to condemn the Assad regime, in the full knowledge that Russia and China would veto the motion, and respond with various measures to punish and isolate those nations for standing with the Syrian dictator.  Itdoes seem foolish to allow Russia to effectively veto U.N. condemnation of Syria with the mere threat of a veto.

Via: Human Events

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Senior Democratic Whip says Congressional Black Caucus does not support Obama on Syria

Congressional Black Caucus members hesitate to support President Obama's call for a military strike on Syria because of their constituents ongoing disappointment with his economic policies with respect to the African American community, according to a senior House Democratic Whip.

"There are a few who are supportive of having a targeted strike, and there are many more members who are indifferent, and then there are others who are outright against against the strike," Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., told WTLC AM's Amos Brown on Wednesday when asked to describe the mood of the CBC.

"I'm not convinced that military action in the manner sought by the administration is in America's best interest," the CBC member also said, explaining that he would prefer that regional allies put pressure on Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's regime.

Carson attributed Obama's difficulty in rallying CBC votes to frustration with his domestic agenda as it pertains to the black community.

"You know the congressional black caucus has pushed over the past several years for targeted dollars going to the African American community going to summer jobs programs; targeted dollars from the federal government in terms of helping to empower small businesses, women-owned businesses, and minority-owned business; targeted dollars that will help bolster our economy; targeted dollars that will help improve the health of our public school systems," Carson said.

The sentiment is not a new one. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., admitted that the CBC was "getting tired" of Obama's failure to deliver economic benefits for the black community.

"The unemployment is unconscionable," she said during a CBC town hall in Detroit in 2011. "We don't know what the strategy is. We don't know why on this trip that he's in the United States now, he's not in any black community. We don't know that."

Waters eventually praised the jobs proposal Obama outlined in September of 2011 — "as a matter of fact we can see our hand print all over this proposal," she said — but the stimulus package never passed into law.

"And so, we're still fighting that fight while we're facing spending millions more dollars in drone attacks and even boots on the ground — we've not gotten there yet, but it's a proposition that causes a lot of emotion, as you can imagine," Carson continued.

Via: Washington Examiner

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UPDATED: Lengthy Senate report details EPA FOIA abuses

Environmental Protection Agency officials have from the beginning of President Obama's tenure in the Oval Office "pursued a path of obfuscation, operating in the shadows, and out of the sunlight," according to a Senate report.

The report by Republican members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee provides a detailed description of violations of the Freedom of Information Act and other federal laws and regulations meant to encourage transparency and accountability in the government.

"The agency established an alias identity to hide the actions of the former administrator; has purposefully been unresponsive to FOIA request, oftentimes redacting information the public has a right to know; and mismanaged its electronic records system such that federal records have been jeopardized," the report said.

"Moreover, EPA’s leadership abandoned the historic model of a specialized public servant who seeks to fairly administer the law and has instead embraced a number of controversial tactics to advance a secretive agenda," the report said.

In addition to multiple abuses of the FOIA, the Senate report claims EPA officials have sought to cover up such activities when challenged by congressional oversight officials.

"As Congress has raised questions about EPA’s lack of transparency, the agency has steadfastly ignored its constitutional obligation to subject itself to congressional oversight, apparently in an effort to prevent the public from knowing what is going on behind closed doors," the report said.

The "alias identity" referred to by the report was the official government email account for "Richard Windsor" that was used by former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

Jackson is scheduled to testify Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is investigating the misuse of government email accounts by Jackson in conducting official business, as well as use of personal email accounts by her and other federal executives.

Via: Washington Examiner

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California: Subdue, Contain, Deplete

California’s teachers’ unions are at a crossroads over how to handle their “charter school problem.” Roughly 15 percent of the state’s nearly 1,100 charter schools are unionized, but the effort to organize the independent public schools remains costly, time-consuming, and fraught with uncertainty. The schools themselves are popular with parents and many legislators. Though Governor Jerry Brown is a big fan of charters, he’s also friendly with the unions, and nobody knows for certain what he’ll sign or veto next. Perhaps the best that charter opponents could hope for at this point is to constrain charter schools’ growth at the margins by imposing new regulatory burdens.

To that end, Assembly Bill 917 may be part of the unions’ long-awaited solution. Gardena Democrat Steven Bradford’s bill would amend the state’s education code to require that at least half of unionized teachersand nonteaching staff at a school considering conversion to charter status sign a petition in order to make the switch. Existing law requires only that 50 percent of teachers or parents sign a petition, either for a new charter or a charter conversion. The California Charter Schools Association endorsed the new bill, claiming it would give “greater flexibility to charter school petitioners.” Yet one of the bill’s prime movers is the Service Employees International Union, whose affiliates represent non-teaching school employees—bus drivers, kitchen staff, janitors, and so forth. The SEIU’s support for AB 917 suggests an objective other than “flexibility” for charters.

Bradford’s bill is hardly the first union-backed measure aimed at constraining charter growth, and others have been far more hostile. In 2011, the California Teachers Association sponsored AB 1172, which would have let a chartering authority—usually the local school district—deny a charter petition if officials made a “written factual finding that the charter school would have a negative fiscal impact on the school district.” But the bill, vague on what “negative fiscal impact” meant, died in committee. Existing law offers plenty of well-defined reasons to deny a petition already.

Via: California Political Review

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The Latest Evidence of Voter Fraud — and Discrimination

Obama-administration officials and their liberal camp-followers who routinely claim there is no reason to worry about election integrity because vote fraud is nonexistent suffered some embarrassing setbacks last week. 

Federal law requires states to clean up their voter rolls.  In 2009, the Obama Justice Department dismissed, with no explanation, a lawsuit filed by the Bush administration asking Missouri for such a clean-up. It has since taken no action against any other state or jurisdiction since it has an unofficial policy of not enforcing this requirement. But private parties are starting to force changes. 

In Mississippi last Wednesday, the American Civil Rights Union won a significant victory for election integrity when a federal judge approved a consent decree in which Walthall County agreed to finally clean up its bloated voter-registration list. The county has more registered voters than the Census says it has eligible voters. The ACRU sued the county (which went for Romney in 2012) under Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which requires election officials to maintain accurate voter rolls through a regular program that removes ineligible voters.

Walthall County will have to remove felons, noncitizens, decedents, and voters who have moved away from its registration list.  As part of the consent decree, the county agreed to start checking its voter list against other state and federal records maintained by the Mississippi DMV, the state departments of vital records and corrections, the local court and local tax authority,  the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. The county must also notify local and federal law-enforcement officials when it finds individuals who registered or voted illegally, such as felons and noncitizens. The ACRU has a second suit still pending against Jefferson Davis County, Miss. (which went for Obama in 2012).

Via: National Review Online

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Samantha Power and the Liberal Internationalists Meet the Real World

It was not long ago when United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power could do no wrong in the eyes of the internationalist left. Leaving aside the intolerable sin of having called Hillary Clinton a “monster” during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries – a transgression for which she spent some months repenting — the lettered internationalist has finally secured her dream job: guiding American foreign affairs as President Barack Obama’s chief diplomat in the United Nations. But Power’s journey is a tragic one. Her story has become a parable, teaching a whole new generation to be careful what they wish for. 

Today, the internationalist scholar and famous champion for the supremacy of multilateral institutions is learning that the challenges of governing appear far less complex when filtered through the narrow windows adorning Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Not long ago, Power championed humanitarian interventionism as a means of curtailing bloodshed and preventing genocides. She advocated for broad consensus building via international institutions and fretted that America’s unilateral actions in Iraq undermined the mission’s purpose. Today, opposed by the recalcitrant voices in Beijing and Moscow in the U.N., Power is pushing her own morally questionable and legally ambiguous war. In the process, she is learning about the intellectual limitations of “smart power.”

“How do you make American words mean something again?” Power once asked her students. “How do we prevent our stories from sounding like fairy tales?”

It was a good question. One in which her intellectual brethren were eager to answer. In 2009, with Obama’s ascension to high office, they got their chance.

The author of the 2002 book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, long ago became a beacon of promise for the intellectual left incensed by President George W. Bush’s dismissal of the relevance of multilateral diplomatic institutions. Though not a dove, (as a champion of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, Power was a leading voice in the White House convincing Obama to intervene in the nascent Libyan civil war in 2011), Power could have aptly been described as a globalist.

As a champion of intervention, Power appeared to welcome the 2003 invasion of Iraq. However, she was vexed by the lack of international authorization for that invasion and reconstruction which would be conducted by Bush’s nearly 50-nation strong “coalition of the willing.”

Via: Mediaite

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Priorities: President's Dog Gets More Airtime than Move to Defund ObamaCare

According to the three networks, the serious effort by conservatives to defund ObamaCare isn't worth as much coverage as the addition of a new dog to the President's family. In just a 24-hour period, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening and morning shows devoted six minutes and 23 seconds to the debut of the puppy "Sunny." In contrast, those same shows have granted a scant two minutes and 26 seconds over a two-month period (July 9 through September 8) to the move by conservative senators such as Mike Lee and Ted Cruz to strip funding from the increasingly-unpopular ObamaCare.

The networks didn't bother to stack the deck with segments heavily opposed to the "Defund It" push, promoted by influential conservative organizations and some GOP lawmakers. Instead, they chose to deprive the campaign of nearly all publicity, omitting it from their normal political coverage. ABC was the worst offender, with the network offering a mere eight second reference to the defund effort.

However, on August 19 and 20, the hosts of World News and Good Morning America discussed the Obamas acquisition of Sunny the Portugese Water Dog for 174 seconds. This is a disparity of 20 to one – an accomplishment even more amazing considering that it was July 9 when Senator Lee first began pushing to defund ObamaCare.

The sole ABC mention of the conservative plan came on the August 18 Good Morning America. George Stephanopoulos told GMA Sunday host Bianna Golodryga: "...If [congressional Republicans] shut down the government, say, over their cause to de-fund Obamacare, they will relegate themselves to minority status for generations."

NBC allowed slightly more coverage, 52 seconds worth. On August 9, Chuck Todd simply repeated White House talking points. Recounting an Obama news conference, he hyped, "[The President] said this about Republicans threatening government shutdown: 'The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent thirty million people from getting health care is a bad idea.'"

The key players in the effort, people like Lee and Cruz, also didn't get much attention. Since July 9, CBS included one clip of Lee and one of Cruz. NBC allowed just one snippet of Cruz. ABC's morning and evening shows had

Via: Newsbusters

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The Congressional Record of Unintended Consequences

With its sorry record, can Congress act prudently? 

Just because Congress may approve a military strike on Syria does not mean it is a wise public policy. A Congress with a 14% approval rating, based on an August Gallup poll, cannot be doing everything right. Look at its record — especially the unintended consequences of what it has authorized.

Congress has presided explicitly or implicitly over military decisions that have cost the country dearly in lives and capital for over a decade. And neither Congress nor the Administration have owned up to the unintended consequences. The toppling of Saddam Hussein meant removal of the last symbol of secular Arab nationalism, an offset to Islamist fundamentalism, and it emboldened Shiite Iran to eye alignment with the majority Shiite sect in Iraq and become more assertive against the West. Further, the dismissal of thousands of Iraqi Baathist Party members and security forces by the American authority in Baghdad meant pandemonium after the capital was secured. There were limited competent resources to run the finance, electricity, transport, and other ministries. No one bargained for the massive American operating support required — and where was Congressional oversight?

The invasion of Afghanistan also authorized by Congress resulted in an unintended U.S. presence of almost twelve years and still counting — long after Mullah Omar was sent into hiding. Moreover, the counterinsurgency model sold to the American people is yielding limited security benefits, with the specter of a resurgent al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban after the U.S. and NATO withdrawal in 2014 — when there will likely be some stability in a few population centers, with the interior still controlled by warring tribes hostile to the West. The competing and more limited counter-terrorism model, originally espoused by Vice President Joe Biden, will be the protocol after 2014 — it already is in Yemen, Somalia and other hot spots where insertion teams, precision strikes, drone attacks, and other “stand-off” methods are expected to do the job.

Via: American Spectator

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POLL: 71% OF AMERICANS OPPOSE SYRIA STRIKE

A new CNN poll finds that 71% of Americans oppose military action in Syria. Even if Congress were to authorize a strike, a clear majority, 55%, would still oppose military action in Syria. Although an overwhelming majority think it is likely Bashar Assad used chemical weapons, 69% don't think it is a matter of US national security. 

The results speak to the terrible job the Obama Administration has done in trying to sell the public on the need for military action. On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, 85% of Americans supported military action, if that action had the support of the United Nations. Even without UN support, 54% of Americans supported an invasion of Iraq. While most Americans grew to oppose the Iraq War after years of a turbulent occupation of the country, President Bush did a far better job of swaying public opinion than Barack Obama has achieved. 

The issue is a particular risk for members of Congress. Before the Iraq War, more Americans said they would be more likely to support a lawmaker who voted to authorize military action than voted to oppose. Today, just 11% say they would support a lawmaker who voted for military action in Syria. Almost three times as many, 31%, say they would definitely oppose an elected official who supports action in Syria. 

President Obama has been cocooned by the media. His reelection against an inept Romney campaign led him to the false notion that he has a personal mandate with the American public. He mistakenly believes that the public will, preternaturally, rally behind his position. 

Syria should be his own, private wake-up call. 

Via: Breitbart

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Foxes in the henhouse: Napolitano gurus probed for meddling in Secret Service sex scandal

A Senate panel is investigating whether former Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano’s close allies pushed the department’s inspector general to tread lightly in its investigation of the prostitution scandal involving the U.S. Secret Service.

Government sources familiar with the probe say Senate investigators are looking into John Sandweg, the secretary’s former general counsel whom she recently promoted to acting chief of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and her former chief of staff, Noah Kroloff, who, shortly after the 2012 prostitution scandal subsided, formed a private consulting firm with Mark Sullivan, who retired in March as head of the Secret Service.

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The sources say the Senate panel received information that suggests Mr. Sandweg pressured Homeland Security Inspector General Charles Edwards to slow-walk his final report until after the November presidential election.

The investigation was spurred by whistleblower accusations that Mr. Edwards was “susceptible to political pressure” in issuing a favorable investigative report on the Secret Service, according to a June 27 letter to him from the panel, and that his investigators “changed and withheld” information that would have been damaging to the service.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat and chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on contracting oversight, and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the panel’s ranking Republican, initiated the probe in May after receiving whistleblower complaints.

Via: Washington Times

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Congress scheduled to cast first Syria vote on Wednesday 09/11

Congress is scheduled to cast its first vote on Wednesday on the question of whether to authorize military intervention in Syria. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said that senators should plan to vote "sometime" on Wednesday on a motion to proceed to the Syria resolution, a procedural vote that will offer an early glimpse at whether President Barack Obama has the necessary votes in the upper chamber to support his request for authorization to strike Syria. 

The vote will follow Obama's prime-time address to the nation on Tuesday evening, as well as the president's visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon to huddle privately with Senate Democrats. (Reid said that Obama had also offered to meet privately with Republican senators.)

In remarks on the Senate floor, Reid, the Senate's top Democrat, exhorted colleagues to support the resolution.

"America's willingness to stand for what's right should not end at our borders," the majority leader said.

Reid even invoked a line from Dante's "Inferno:" “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

Via: NBC News

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