CNN Caught Juicing Headline

CNN story shows economists favor Romney -- but headline stresses they do so 'reluctantly'

Even the good news for Mitt Romney come wrapped in a bad news ribbon. 

A recent CNNMoney story reported that the Republican presidential nominee, despite trailing in a number of swing state polls, is the overwhelming choice among economists surveyed. They picked him, according to CNNMoney, by a 3-to-1 margin. However, CNNMoney made sure to stress in the headline that they did so "reluctantly." 

The article was part of a CNNMoney survey in which nine of 17 economists picked the Republican presidential nominee when asked whose election would help the economy grow more.

Only three picked President Obama, and the remaining five made no pick, “with several suggesting neither (candidate) would provide much of a lift to the sagging economy." 

The headline, though, sounded like it was a downer for the GOP nominee: "Economists reluctantly pick Romney." 

“Would CNNMoney have reported that economists ‘reluctantly’ picked President Obama by a 3-to-1 margin?” the website NewsBusters asked in a story Tuesday pointing out the headline. 

CNN was contacted about the headline early Tuesday afternoon but has yet to respond.

The first two economists quoted in the story were less than flattering for Romney, saying “he doesn’t understand how to govern” but that his policies compared against Obama’s would be “less bad for the economy.”

The most supportive economist comment for Romney is the final quote in the story.

Allen Sinai of Decision Economics said Romney's calls for “cutting growth of government outlays, lowering tax rates and closing loopholes, less regulatory uncertainty ... smaller government and entitlement reform all must be tackled."

Via: Fox News

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Obama Moving Gitmo Terrorists into Illinois?

AP File

Lawmakers claim administration opening door to Gitmo transfer with Illinois prison buy

The Obama administration plans to buy an Illinois prison that at one point was considered for housing Guantanamo prisoners, in a move Republican lawmakers claimed would open the door for ultimately carrying out that plan.

Administration officials, though, denied that they were looking for a new home for Guantanamo inmates. They insisted the decision to buy Thomson Correctional Center, an under-used state prison 150 miles west of Chicago, was a move to alleviate overcrowding and create jobs in the process.

"This is about public safety and 50 percent overcrowding in high-security prisons," one Justice Department official said.
Officials insisted Guantanamo detainees would not be coming to Illinois.

But Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf, among the lawmakers who opposed the federal purchase of the prison, claimed Tuesday that the Obama administration could still carry out its plan -- perhaps by moving prisoners from another federal prison to Thomson, and then using that prison to house Guantanamo detainees.

"The president says his goal is to shut down Guantanamo Bay and move the prisoners here," Wolf told Fox News, accusing the administration of circumventing Congress. "This gives him a great opportunity to do it, particularly right after the election."

Wolf chairs a key House subcommittee overseeing the sale. He was referring to Obama's pledge immediately after taking office that he would shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp -- a pledge that stands as one of the president's most glaring unfulfilled promises to his base.

The move to transfer prisoners stateside, though, was met with a fierce backlash among some lawmakers who worried it would pose a security risk.

The Obama administration and Federal Bureau of Prisons is now going ahead with the $165 million purchase of the Illinois prison, though strictly as a move to ease overcrowding, they say. The move was first announced by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn.

Via: Fox News

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NFL Political Donations Favor GOP

Political donors connected to the National Football League have donated more money to Republicans than Democrats according to a recent tally from the Sunlight Foundation.

According to the report, team employees, including players, owners and staff, have donated over $1.5 million for this election cycle. But Republicans received nearly three times as much from donors associated with football teams as did Democrats.

Eleven of the NFL team owners favor Romney, according to FEC campaign records – compiled by Business Insider’s Walter Hickey in September. These donors have donated directly to Romney’s campaign or through the Republican National Committee.

Chief among the Romney supporters is Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross who has donated $100,000 to the pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, $20,800 to the Republican National Committee, $5,000 to Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC and $2,500 to Mitt Romney.

New York Jets owner Woody Johnson has donated $58,200 to the Republican National Committee this year, $2,500 to Mitt Romney and $5,000 to Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC. Johnson is one of the Romney campaign’s finance co-chairs.

Members of the Bidwell family, owners of the Arizona Cardinals, have donated over $154,000 to the Republican National Committee and $4,500 to Romney.

Via: The Examiner

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Poll: 86 percent of Americans say government spending has not helped them

President Obama’s solutions to economic problems invariably involve more spending, but 86 percent of likely  say that government spending has not helped them, according to a new poll.

“On the question of whether federal government spending has improved the overall economy, 74 percent say it has not helped, with 52 percent responding that it has actually hurt the economy,” The Public Notice announced yesterday after questioning 1,005 likely voters.  “When asked how federal government spending has impacted personal financial situations, 86 percent of those surveyed say it has not helped, with 35 percent responding that it hurt.”

The Tarrance Group, the Republican-leaning firm that conducted the poll, added in its memo that “this pessimism over the impact of government spending is consistent throughout many key demographic groups that are frequently mentioned as ‘target’ voters in the upcoming Presidential election.”

Federal debt hit $16 trillion this year. Obama blames George W. Bush for the deficit, but The Washington Examiner’s Phil Klein argued last week that this reflects a “responsibility deficit” on the part of the president.

“[When Obama was inaugurated], the CBO projected deficits of $1.2 trillion in 2009 and $703 billion in 2010, for a total two-year deficit of about $1.9 trillion,” Klein explained. “The Obama administration went on to run deficits of $1.55 trillion in 2009 and $1.37 trillion in 2010, for a total of more than $2.9 trillion. In other words, in just his first two years, when Obama had a Democratic Congress that gave him virtually everything he wanted, deficits were $1 trillion higher than what the CBO was projecting when he was inaugurated.”

Via: Washington Examniner

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Chicago Sun-Times: Emperor Obama Has No Clothes

The conventional wisdom is that Wednesday night’s presidential debate is a huge opportunity for Republican nominee Mitt Romney. The emperor-has-no-clothes reality is that the political forum would be meaningless if President Barack Obama could stand on the stage and boast his administration had ushered in an era of low unemployment, surging economic growth, reasonable gas prices and rising prosperity for the American family.

None of that is remotely plausible. The jobless rate has been north of 8 percent for 43 months. Median family income fell more during the Obama recovery than during the recession. Economic growth is slowing: The economy grew at only a 1.3 percent rate in the second quarter, raising fears the nation may be drifting back toward recession.

In addition, Obama’s big foreign-policy accomplishment, the killing of Osama bin Laden, lost some luster in the killing of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya and the assaults on U.S. embassies across the Muslim world. A scandal is brewing over revelations suggesting lax security for Stevens and over the administration’s initial, repeated denials that Stevens was killed in a terrorist attack in what increasingly looks like an effort to protect Obama’s campaign theme that he has degraded al-Qaida. Al-Qaida links to the Benghazi murders are no longer deniable; the terrorist group is a growing menace in the Middle East and North Africa, and al-Qaida in Iraq, all but wiped out by President George W. Bush’s surge, has made a deadly comeback.

Such developments may explain a new Rasmussen Reports poll finding that only 29 percent of likely voters believe the United States is stronger than it was four years ago and 49 percent say it’s weaker.

Still, the overriding issue remains the economy generally — and specifically, jobs — unrestrained government spending, the deficit, energy prices and development and the miserable state of family pocketbooks.

Obama’s defense, as proclaimed by Bill Clinton in his Democratic convention speech, is that the economic collapse was just too big for Obama or any president to handle in one term. Obama has seized this theme, claiming Washington can’t be changed from the inside.

Via: Chicago Sun-Times

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Tricare Prime Fees Increase Up to 17 Percent Today

U.S. armed services retirees and their families will now pay higher annual fees for the Tricare Prime health benefits system beginning Oct. 1, 2012. The fee increases range from 3.6 percent and 17 percent (for most), reports the Navy Times:

Military retirees who enrolled in the system on or after Oct. 1, 2011, and all new beneficiaries will pay $269.28 a year for an individual, up from $260, and $538.56 for a family, up from $520.

Those who were in Prime before Oct. 1, 2011, will see their annual fees increase from to $269.28 from $230 for individuals and to $538.56 from $460 for families. [...]

The Obama administration had pressed for heftier increases in its proposed fiscal 2013 defense budget along with new enrollment fees for Tricare Standard, Extra and Tricare For Life, the health benefit for Medicare-eligible retirees and their families.

The proposal was struck down by the House and Senate Armed Services committees on a bipartisan basis.

The Obama administration originally pushed for significantly higher premiumsfor Tricare enrollees in their fiscal year 2013 budget, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon earlier this year. In July, the administration threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill, in part, because it did not include higher Tricare fees.

Via: WFB

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Video surfaces of Obama in 2007 suggesting racism slowed aid to post-Katrina New Orleans

It's the Obama speech on race you probably haven't heard.

In June 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama told a mostly black audience of ministers that the country's leaders "don't care about" New Orleans residents, suggesting the city was neglected in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina because of institutional racism, according to a an unedited video uncovered by The Daily Caller.

In the address, delivered during the upswing of the Democratic presidential primary season, candidate Obama specifically criticizes in outspoken terms the decision not to waive a federal law known as the Stafford Act that requires communities hit by disasters to match 10 percent of federal aid.

“When 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act. … And that was the right thing to do,” he tells the crowd at Hampton University in Virginia. “When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, 'Look at this devastation. We don't expect you to come up with your own money. Here, here's the money to rebuild. We're not going wait for you to scratch it together, because you're part of the American family.' "

Obama, echoing rapper Kanye West's infamous anti-Bush remarks a couple years earlier, then argues that New Orleans was treated differently, suggesting the reason was that the city is mostly black.

"What's happening down in New Orleans? Where's your dollar? Where's your Stafford Act money?" Obama says. "Makes no sense. ... Tells me that somehow the people down in New Orleans they don't care about as much."

The Obama campaign didn't response to Fox News.com's request for comment Tuesday night about the Daily Caller report and the video, but the Associated Press reported that Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt dismissed the criticism as "a transparent attempt to change the subject" at a time when Mitt Romney is down in the polls.

Via: Fox News

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Heritage Expert Confounds the “Fact Checkers” on Welfare Reform

“Obama’s Palace Guard,” Mark Hemingway’s Weekly Standard cover story exposing fact-checkers for willful complicity in the gutting of welfare reform, is a must read for anyone who cares about the state of the news media—and for those who plan to watch, cover, or participate in the presidential debates.

Hemingway meticulously details the checkosphere’s studied indifference—with rare exceptions—to the plain facts. In 4,000 words, he lays bare the media fact-checkers’ almost comical avoidance of the one expert who could help them understand how the Obama Administration is dismantling “workfare”: The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, who helped write the work requirements in the 1996 welfare reform law and just published his latest paper on the outrage.

PolitiFact, Hemingway concludes, came off as more interested in consulting liberal critics of welfare reform and dismissing Rector, conservatives in Congress, and Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) for daring to suggest the left would want to undo the workfare program it opposed from the start:

PolitiFact said [Rector’s] concerns should be dismissed for no other reason than they are at odds with the Obama administration’s spin. PolitiFact didn’t even address the fact that Rector … was the source of the charge the Obama administration is gutting welfare reform or that he helped write the welfare reform law.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler gets some credit from Hemingway for awarding Bill Clinton two out of four “Pinocchios” for stretching the truth in his speech defending Obama’s move to administratively undo welfare reform.

Via: The Foundry

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FLASHBACK: JournoList plotted to kill Jeremiah Wright story in 2008

Now that The Daily Caller has uncovered and published video of President Barack Obama’s “other race speech,” liberal media figures are once again trying to quell coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright story — just like in 2008.

Records obtained by TheDC in mid-2010 showed that “at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate,” after ABC News’ Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos asked then-Sen. Obama about his controversial reverend during an April 2008 debate.

“Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage,” TheDC’s Jonathan Strong reported.

Among those who were uncovered to be part of the plan to quell Wright coverage were Richard Kim of the Nation, Michael Tomasky of the Guardian, Thomas Schaller of the Baltimore Sun, Holly Yeager of the Columbia Journalism Review, Slate magazine contributor David Greenberg, columnist Joe Conason, Chris Hayes of the Nation, and Spencer Ackerman — then of the Washington Independent.

Strong reported that Ackerman even once “urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, ‘Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.’”

Before TheDC even released this new video, the Democratic Party tried to discredit it by citing JournoList members like the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and Ben Smith — now the editor of BuzzFeed but formerly of Politico — commenting on the video before they had seen it.

Via: Daily Caller

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Obama Grades the United States: 'Incomplete'

In a recent interview with Glamour magazine, President Barack Obama gives the United States an "incomplete" grade. Obama's grade is based on how women are treated in America. 

"I think the way I’d grade the United States right now is incomplete," says Obama. "There are more opportunities for women than ever before. I think women excelling in school is now translating into greater opportunities in their professional lives. Some of the steps that we’ve taken have helped to open up additional access, but I’m not going to be satisfied until every young person who is willing to work hard and take responsibility can fulfill their dreams. I think this campaign is going to be so important because it really presents two fundamentally different visions about how we expand opportunity for all people."

Obama was asked about this because, according to the interviewer, "Back in 2008 [he] told Glamour that your mother once said, and I’ll quote, 'the best indicator of whether a country does well is how it treats its girls and its women.'"

Obama said, "Still believe it."

"So, by your mother’s standards, give me a thumbnail sketch of how America is doing," said Glamour to the president.

Via: Weekly Standard

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Poll: 'Not Falling Behind' the American Dream

Four years into the presidency of Barack Obama, a poll finds that the "American Dream" for many is now just treading water economically and not falling behind.

According to an Allstate/National Journal/Heartland Monitor Poll, “an overwhelming majority of Americans still define the U.S. as ‘the land of opportunity,’ but “nearly as many agree that getting ahead is more difficult for workers today than it was for previous generations.”

A majority of respondents said “‘because of the recent economic downturn,’ getting ahead these days in essence means not falling behind: ‘holding a job, being able to pay bills, avoid debt, and save some money for the future.” And only one-fourth of those surveyed thought they would “get ahead consistently over the next five or ten years.” 

Eighty-percent of respondents said “being free of debt” and “being able to save for a comfortable and secure retirement” were signs of getting ahead. 

The poll found 56% of respondents said they would prefer a job that “‘offers a great deal of job security but only modest pay and little opportunity for advancement’ over one that offered more opportunity ‘and the possibility of high pay but little job security.’”

In addition, 70% of those surveyed said “having a secure job that you can rely on, even through tough economic times” was a sign of getting ahead, and only 45% said they defined getting ahead as “advancing in a job and achieving greater financial success each year.”

Via: Breitbart

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The Miracle that would save America from Obama-imposed American Marxism

Falls to 77.7 million Catholics to save America from Obama imposed U.S. Marxism

There’s a promise made over an unbeknownst open mic to outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on March 26, 2012, that awaits the outcome of November 6.

“This is my last election…after my election I have more flexibility,” President Barack Obama told Medvedev, indicating a chilling confidence that he would win a second term.

Prime Minister Medvedev, his replacement President Vladimir Putin, the reelection-bound Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Obama-propped Egyptian president Muslim Brotherhood member Mohammed Morsi await the fulfillment of that not meant to be heard promise.

They are the enemy at the gate who will goad Obama on to the continuing destruction of America should the worst happen on Tuesday, Nov. 6.

We have been in the dark before but never has the dark been so dangerous as now when Marxism and radical Islam have joined forces to deliver world populations over to the One World Order-driven United Nations.

The world thought the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in the end of communism.  Few knew back then that Communism would join radical Islam to begin in earnest smothering the freedom of the West in 2008.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Docs Suggest Gov-Subsidized Solar Company Was Selling Faulty Product

Seven months after calling themselves the “anti-Solyndra,” the Colorado-based solar panel manufacturer Abound Solar announced it was filing for chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation, arguing that cheap Chinese solar panels flooding the market caused their demise.

“With over $30 billion in reported government subsidies, Chinese panel makers were able to sell below cost and put Abound out of business before we were big enough to pose a real competitive threat to China’s rapidly growing market share,” according to the prepared congressional testimony by Craig Witsoe, former CEO of Abound.

Abound Solar was given a $400 million loan guarantee by the Energy Department, and drew on about $70 million dollars of the guarantee before DOE cut them off in September 2011 — the same month the Solyndra scandal began.

After the massive failure of the solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, Energy Department loan guarantees came under increased media and congressional scrutiny. Other loan recipients felt the public pressure as well.

Internal documentation and testimony from sources within Abound show that the company was selling a faulty, underperforming product, and may have mislead lenders at one point in order to keep itself afloat.

“Our solar modules worked as long as you didn’t put them in the sun,” an internal source told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The company knew its panels were faulty prior to obtaining taxpayer dollars, according to sources, but kept pushing product out the door in order to meet Department of Energy goals required for their $400 million loan guarantee.

“The DOE hurt us more than anything,” another source told The DC News Foundation, speaking of DOE production and revenue metrics.

The faulty solar panels would routinely burn up and virtually all of the panels Abound manufactured underperformed, meaning they did not put out the promised amount of power. Sources say that Abound panels would only put out between 80 and 85 percent of the promised wattage.

These problems led to tens of thousands of panels having to be replaced, especially towards the end of the company’s life.

Burning up and underperforming

In October of 2010, the company discovered that their panels were catching fire. One source said that this problem was brought to the company’s attention during a meeting in October 2010 with some company executives present and the suggestion was made to shut down the factory in order to address the problem.

“Our lead quality engineer… blew the whistle in a manager’s monthly review meeting, and he was basically told to shut up and sit down,” said another source.

Via: The Daily Caller

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The Fannie and Freddie Fee Machine Federal government now collecting Fannie and Freddie profits

The federal government, in order to wind down mortgage giants, is collecting all profits generated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—a move some say may backfire by providing the federal government a source of revenue that Congress will be hard-pressed to let go.

The Treasury announced in August that it would take all profits from the two housing giants in “a quarterly sweep of every dollar of profit that each firm earns.”

This “quarterly sweep” is an effort to recoup money that the federal government has loaned Fannie and Freddie, starting with the 2008 bailout. The federal government took over Fannie and Freddie in September of 2008, in the middle of the housing crisis that brought down the economy. Since then, the two firms have struggled to regain profitability, only recentlymaking money on their investments.

The federal government has loaned the two firms almost $200 billion, with the expectation that they would eventually repay the money. The Treasury argues that the policy shift, along with mandatory portfolio reductions, is a step toward ensuring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will “not be allowed to retain profits, rebuild capital, and return to the market in their prior form.”

However, a former Fannie Mae official pointed to a potential problem in the “quarterly sweep”: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could become a revenue source for the government, making it very difficult politically to end the two institutions.

Edward Pinto, former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae and a housing finance expert at the American Enterprise Institute, warned that because the money will be flowing into the Treasury, “If you don’t do something quickly, Congress could get used to this.”

Congress has used Fannie and Freddie’s profits to fund their legislation in the past, Pinto said. He pointed to legislation from Congress late last year that raised fees at Fannie and Freddie for 10 years in order to fund a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut.

Via: WFP

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REPORT: JP MORGAN MAKES OVER HALF A BILLION DOLLARS OFF FOOD STAMPS

A new report by the Government Accountability Institute finds that JP Morgan has made at least $560,492,596 since 2004 processing the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards of 18 of the 24 states it has under contract for the food stamp program.

Indeed, JP Morgan’s Christopher Paton told Bloomberg News that food stamps are big business for the big bank: 

“We are the largest processor of food stamps in the country…[the EBT program] is a very important business to JP Morgan. It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale…. Right now volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years or so. The good news from JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”

While some may be glad that a private company—not a government agency—is tasked with EBT transactions, the GAI report reveals that JP Morgan does not use the same fraud detection systems commonly used by today’s credit card companies.  In fact, federal and state agencies—not EBT processors—are the ones tasked with policing food stamp fraud. 

That means EBT processors enjoy multiple pathways to profits that run counter to efficiency and strong oversight.  For example, writes GAI president Peter Schweizer:

 Any time TANF recipients withdraw their cash benefits or make balance inquiries through out-of-network ATM machines, the user may incur ATM transaction fees generally ranging from $.75 to $1.50. In addition, most states allow EBT processors to charge card replacement fees. Arizona cardholders, for example, are permitted one free replacement a year, after which a $5 per card fee is imposed. The same goes for customer service calls: After an EBT cardholder exceeds the state’s maximum number of free calls, EBT processors typically tack on a $.25 per call fee.

By making welfare inefficiency and abuse lucrative, the poverty industry has created a potentially toxic brew of corporate cronyism and government inefficiency that lets food stamp abuse enforcement slip through the bureaucratic cracks:

 According to the USDA’s website, the federal food stamp program has “over 100” inspectors to police the nearly 200,000 retailers nationwide that accept EBT cards. For its part, the state of Florida has 63 positions allocated to police over 3 million EBT users. JP Morgan is currently involved in an eight-month pilot project with Florida focused on EBT fraud and abuse. The total staff? Just one JP Morgan employee and five to ten state employees, according to Florida officials.

So how did EBT processors like JP Morgan land its lucrative half-billion dollars worth of contracts? 

Via: Breitbart

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Democrats running country off road into the ditch, Just Like They Run The Country

A few weeks ago, as I sat in front of my TV watching the three ring circus, otherwise known as the Democratic National Convention, I couldn’t help but think: The democrats were running their convention much as they have tried to run the country.  They promptly ran it off the road and into a ditch.

They spent money they didn’t have.  They promised grandiose and splendid events that did not happen.  They planned a bodacious speaking event in a humongous area which would seat upwards of seventy thousand persons, only to realize they were not going to have enough people interested in what their candidate for President had to say to come anywhere near to filling up that stadium.

To TRY to save face, they announced the event would be moved to a much smaller venue which would seat only twenty thousand persons. That’s about a third of the crowd they had promised the media would be in fawning attendance to listen rapturously to their Messiah—Barack Hussein Obama. 

Of course, they spent money as if there were no tomorrow and—quickly ran out of funds.

They railed against Big Business and Corporate America while standing on a stage in a convention hall that had been paid for by one of the largest corporations in America.  Talk about hypocrisy! 

They removed any mention of God from their party platform and then refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel only to be forced to return that language on “orders,” we are told, from President Obama.

Those who presented speeches seemed to all hail from the far left of their party, which indicated they had written off the independent voters and were hell-bent on trying to overcome the GOP with only their base consisting of minority and special interest groups.

And they lied ... a LOT!  Even when the truth was shown and heard over and over on video tape and on audio tape.  They lied when they did not have to lie.

In an article by Alan Caruba entitled: “The DNC’s Orgy of Lies and Hypocrisy”  Mr. Caruba said:  “So far there is little to be believed in the course of the Democratic Party convention. It is a great concoction of half-truths, distortions, and outright lies. The hypocrisy fills the convention hall like the musk of a dead, decaying animal corpse.” 

Via: Canada Free Press

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CHURCHES USING 'SOULS TO POLLS' TO RALLY VOTE

It's not just the collection plate that's getting passed around this fall at hundreds of mainly African-American and Latino churches in presidential battleground states and across the nation.

Exhorting congregations to register to vote, church leaders are distributing registration cards in the middle of services, and many are pledging caravans of "souls to the polls" to deliver the vote.

The stepped-up effort in many states is a response by activists worried that new election rules, from tougher photo identification requirements to fewer days of early voting, are unfairly targeting minority voters _ specifically, African-Americans who tend to vote heavily for Democrats. Some leaders compare their registration and get-out-the-vote efforts to the racial struggle that led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

"In light of all this, we are saying just let our people vote," said the Rev. Dawn Riley Duval, social justice minister at the Shorter Community A.M.E. Church in Denver. "The people are being oppressed by these measures. It has ignited a sense of urgency and collective power that we can take by engaging in the process."

In key swing states such as Florida and Ohio, proponents of the new election rules deny they are aimed at suppressing the minority vote in hopes of helping Republicans win more races. Reasons for their enactment vary between rooting out fraud and purging ineligible voters to streamlining the voting process.

But to some African-American leaders like the Rev. F.E. Perry, a Cleveland-based bishop in Ohio's Church of God in Christ, it's as if the 1960s barriers to black civil rights have returned all over again.

"We've come too far to sit idly by and watch that happen," Perry said. "We want to get souls to the polls. Whatever it takes to get them there, that's what we're going to do."

Via Breitbart

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Households Face $3,446 Tax Increase From Fiscal Cliff

U.S. households are facing an average tax increase of $3,446 in 2013 if Congress doesn’t avert the so- called fiscal cliff, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said in a study released today.

The top 1 percent of households face some of the largest tax increases in 2013 and would see their after-tax incomes fall by 10.5 percent if Congress does nothing. That would translate to an average tax increase of $120,537 for that group.

A typical middle-income household earning between about $40,000 and $60,000 would face a tax increase of about $2,000.

After the Nov. 6 election, Congress is scheduled to return to Washington to debate the automatic spending cuts and tax increases starting in January unless lawmakers act. For calendar year 2013, taxes would increase by $536 billion, or about 20 percent.
“This is a very large tax increase,” Donald Marron, the center’s director, told reporters in Washington today.

If Congress does nothing, tax rates on income, capital gains, dividends and estates would increase, and the alternative minimum tax would spread to 21.7 million households, up from 4 million this year.

The top statutory tax rate on ordinary income would reach 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent, and the top rate on capital gains would be 23.8 percent, up from 15 percent. A 2 percentage point payroll tax cut is set to expire at the end of 2012.

Expired Provisions

The estimated $536 billion tax increase doesn’t include provisions that expired at the end of 2011, including miscellaneous corporate tax breaks. The provision that prevents the alternative minimum tax from expanding also expired last year.

Lawmakers agree they should continue the income tax cuts for most households. Republicans want to keep all of the income and estate tax cuts for 2013 and begin overhauling the tax code. Democrats, including President Barack Obama, want to let most of the tax cuts lapse for the top 2 percent of households, or income exceeding $200,000 for individuals and income above $250,000 for married couples
.
The political stalemate over what to do about those top rates has prevented agreement on everything else.

Each piece of the fiscal cliff has varying effects on people at different income levels. Low-income households have the most at stake in expiring expansions of the child tax credit and earned income tax credit. Middle-income households are affected most by the payroll tax and income tax.

Via: Newsmax

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Opinion: Why ObamaCare Has Doctors Depressed And Discouraged

Wednesday night the first presidential debate will take place in Denver. The focus will be on domestic policy. But it’s a safe bet, while you’ll likely hear about ObamaCare, you won’t hear about the doctors on the front lines of medicine in the United States today. President Obama has said he likes the term ObamaCare because it signifies that "Obama cares," but if he does, why has he failed to consider life here in the medical trenches, where me and my fellow physicians are discouraged and concerned about how we will care for you and your family in this brave new world of health insurance expansion.

You may remember the famous ad that took aim at Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (now the GOP’s vice presidential nominee) and his proposed privatizing of Medicare -- that showed the congressman pushing an elderly woman off a cliff. The hard truth is that it is we doctors who are going off the cliff, not granny.

President Obama and Congress should have checked with the country’s physicians before passing a law that relies on our efforts to handle health insurance expansion to more than 30 million more people.

A new on-line survey by the non-profit The Physicians Foundation, one of the largest doctors surveys ever performed, confirms that over two thirds of physicians are pessimistic about the future of medicine, over 84 percent feel that our profession is in decline, and a majority would not recommend it as a career for their children. (The survey was sent to over 600,000 doctors and over 14,000 responded).

If you ask my three children you will find that neither my wife or I (also a physician) are recommending a medical career to them despite the fact that we still manage to find ways to enjoy what we do.

We are overburdened, underpaid, ill equipped to handle what we already have on our plates let alone the expected expansion under ObamaCare.

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Survey after survey from Deloitte, Sermo.com, the Doctor-Patient Medical Association, and Investors Business Daily have all previously shown that doctors are not happy with the direction of medicine and that it is impacting how we practice. 

Over the past two years I’ve taken my own informal survey as have my patients and patients all across the country. 

Doctors everywhere are complaining. We are overburdened, underpaid, ill equipped to handle what we already have on our plates let alone the expected expansion under ObamaCare. Technology provides us with more complex tests and treatments that we are paid less for administering to an increasing volume of patients.

Via:  Fox News

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