CFPB's data-mining on consumer credit cards challenged in heated House hearing

ITS NOT WHAT IT APPEARS TO BE!

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials are seeking to monitor four out of every five U.S. consumer credit card transactions this year — up to 42 billion transactions – through a controversial data-mining program, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.

A CFPB strategic planning document for fiscal years 2013-17 describes the “markets monitoring” program through which officials aim to monitor 80 percent of all credit card transactions in 2013.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 1.16 billion consumer credit cards were in use in 2012 for an estimated 52.6 billion transactions. If CFPB officials reach their stated "performance goal," they would collect data on 42 billion transactions made with 933 million credit cards used by American consumers.

In addition, CFPB officials hope to monitor up to 95 percent of all mortgage transactions, according to the planning document.

This is one step closer to a Big Brother form of government where they know everything about us,” said Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.

At a Wednesday hearing before the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, CFPB Director Richard Cordray defended the data-mining practice and said his agency is monitoring credit card usage at 110 banks, including Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Discover and American Express.

In a related development, Rep. Spencer Bachus, Hensarling’s predecessor on the House Financial Services Committee, told the Examiner he believes CFPB violated at least two federal laws by using the impartial U.S. Trustee Program to gather bankruptcy data as part of the data-mining campaign.

The Examiner reported Monday that bankruptcy experts are concerned that CFPB is undermining the trustee program's independence and impartiality. The trustee program is the federal government’s main administrative agency for handling bankruptcy cases.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Amanpour Explodes at CNN Syria Panel: Stop Spewing ‘False Moral Equivalence!’

CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour flipped out on the AC360 Later Syria panel Thursday night, calling out the “false moral equivalence” of anti-interventionists. She clashed with blogger Andrew Sullivan over the emotion in the case, shouting down her fellow panelists to get a word in edgewise.

After Anderson Cooper and Sullivan brought up the need to separate the emotion from the policy, Amanpour sighed and said, “I can barely contain myself at this point.” She proceeded to go on a rant about the “false moral equivalence” in arguing against going in.

“How many more times do we have to say that weapons of mass destruction were used, and as bad as it is to decapitate somebody, it is by no means equal. We can’t use this false moral equivalence about what’s going on right now. They tried to do it in the second World War, they tried to do it in Bosnia, they tried to do it in Rwanda, and they’re trying to do it now. There is no moral equivalence.”

When the others tried to jump in, Amanpour shouted, “Wait just a second!” She firmly argued that Obama simply cannot allow Assad to get away with using chemical weapons, noting how Bill Clinton is still apologizing for Rwanda. Sullivan jumped in to say, “This is not reason, this is emotion.” Amanpour fired back, “It’s not emotion. This is history coming out.”

They clashed over whether turning away from such terrible crimes is sometimes in America’s national interests, while Charles Blow accused Amanpour of painting a “false choice” about not caring about dead kids and not wanting to bomb Syria. She cried, “Nobody’s saying that! You’re playing rhetorical games!”

Watch the video below, via CNN:

Via: Mediaite.com

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Liberals in Retreat in Colorado and Across the Globe

Three elections across the globe deliver an unpleasant shock to liberal ideologues.



Three elections in the last week have challenged long-held liberal premises about how elections are fought and what the public wants. It’s worth examining those results in such widely separated places as Australia, Norway, and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

In Colorado, liberals are already in denial about the fact that two Democratic state senators were recalled from office in districts Barack Obama carried by some 20 percentage points only ten months ago. The recalls were organized by citizens upset with the lawmakers’ votes in favor of a gun-control measure. The two senators also helped pass bills perceived as being against the interests of rural areas and helped push through a fraud-prone election law that shifted the Centennial State to all-mail voting.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Democratic National Committee’s chairwoman, said the results simply reflected “voter suppression, pure and simple.” Matt Vespa of Red State scoffed at her flimsy explanation: More Democrats and independents signed the two recall petitions than did Republicans, he noted, which “only further discredits DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s insane claim that her side lost due to voter suppression.”

Liberals are also claiming that the black arts of the National Rifle Association skewed the results. But the gun-rights group came very late to support the recalls, and the Denver Post reports that pro-gun-control groups spent some $3 million versus only $540,000 by recall supporters.

Grover Norquist, a board member of the National Rifle Association, claims once again that liberals mistook “position for passion” on an issue. In the wake of the Newtown massacre of last December, the Left believed public opinion had finally turned in favor of gun control; in support of this view, they cited surveys showing overwhelming support for background checks and limits on ammunition magazines. As Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast wrote, “You cannot oppose the will of 90 percent of the public and expect no consequences.”

Via: National Review Online
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OBAMACARE FORCES INDIANA UNIVERSITY TO CUT JOBS

Indiana University is firing 50 maintenance and custodial workers and shifting them to a temp agency to avoid incurring Obamacare costs.

WRTV Indiana says Indiana University already spends $215 million on healthcare annually. 

"We don't want to cut hours for folks, but we have a responsibility to not spend more on healthcare than absolutely necessary," said Indiana University spokesperson Mark Land. "That's what's made this so challenging for us. We're kind of caught on both sides of it."

Graduate students are being limited to under 30 hours a week so as not to trigger the Obamacare 30-hour threshold that forces employers to provide comprehensive health insurance or face fines up to $3,000 per worker.

Several key facets of the Affordable Care Act will kick off in 18 days.

Via: Breitbart

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Heritage Foundation gets tough: Think tank puts punch behind its conservative ideas

The Heritage Foundation has decided it is better to be feared than loved.

The conservative think tank conducted private market research on Capitol Hill between 2008 and 2009, asking respondents whether they were ever worried about being on the wrong side of Heritage’s position.

“Overwhelmingly, nobody cared,” said Tim Chapman, now the chief operating officer of Heritage Action, the organization’s three-year-old advocacy arm.

To combat this, the think tank created Heritage Action to knock some skulls around. But by doing so, Heritage upset the traditionally cozy relationship the Heritage Foundation had with congressional Republicans.

It was along this strategic arc – a conscious decision to be more combative – that the think tank chose Sen. Jim DeMint, 62, a polarizing, conservative firebrand, to lead it.

But DeMint wasn’t the board’s original choice for the post of president.

Heritage’s Board of Trustees initially had doubts about whether choosing a politician would be the right move for a think tank that had for decades been led by a former Hill staffer with a Ph.D., outgoing president Ed Feulner.

“There was a great debate over whether Jim DeMint was the right guy, because he was political. The Heritage Foundation is not political,” one board member told the Washington Examiner.

In the first half of 2012, Heritage offered the presidency to Larry Arnn, the president of conservative Hillsdale College and a member of the board. After considering it, Arnn declined the job, deciding instead to remain in academia.

Arnn did not respond to requests for comment.

The search to replace Feulner took the better part of three years, during which 18 candidates were interviewed. Academics, “two or three” politicians, staff from other think tanks, and even media figures were considered for the position, Heritage Executive Vice President Philip Truluck said.

Via: Washington Examiner

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CONGRESS MUST RECAPTURE ITS LOST WAR POWERS

“It was a damn near-run thing,” said the Duke of Wellington.

The Iron Duke was speaking of Waterloo.

And for the United States, it was a damn near-run thing that we are not now in a major war — with an enraged Arab and Muslim world viewing sickening videos of dead and dying Syrian women and children from U.S. missile strikes.

Next time, we may not be so lucky. Next time, we may not have Vladimir Putin to pull our chestnuts out of the fire, as he did by seizing on yet another gaffe by John Kerry and converting it into a Russian plan to have Syria identify and surrender its chemical weapons.

Putin pulled President Obama back off the ledge. He saved Obama from having either to ignominiously climb down from his “Assad must go!” and “red line” bluster — or act on his ultimata and plunge us into a war the American people and U.S. military do not want to fight.

Putin was acting in Russia’s interests. But in preventing a U.S.-Syrian war, Putin’s interests and ours are one.

Russia does not want a confrontation over U.S. missiles falling on its Syrian ally. Do we? Russia does not want a wider Mideast war, which is what a U.S. strike would bring, with Russia and Iran racing to support and re-equip their stricken Syrian ally. Do we want that wider war?

Via: Human Events

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[VIDEO] Flashback: Jeff Sessions calls on Jeffrey Zients to resign if he can't back up budget number

If President Obama wanted to pick a National Economic Council nominee completely untrusted by Republicans, he could not have done any better than the man he chose, current Office of Management and Budget director Jeffrey Zients.

On Feb. 14, 2012, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., challenged Zients to resign unless he could substantiate his claim that Obama's fiscal year 2013 budget did not increase spending.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Obama Pivots From War In Syria To Reviving “War On Women” With Pro-Abortion Fanatics Planned Parenthood And EMILY’s List…

Unable to start a war in Syria, President Obama is settling on reviving the War on Women.

Obama's team, fresh off a summer bookended by the IRS scandal and an uncomfortable struggle to rally Congress around a military strike on Syria, plans to reset the domestic policy debate with a new "women's initiative."

White House power Valerie Jarrett and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will attend a kick-off event next week at the Center for American Progress, but Obama's allies previewed the the initiative in a conference call Friday.

"[T]his effort isn't behind one piece of legislation, per se, but really is about getting broad support action on the whole host of these issues — health, economic security, as well as leadership," said Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, which will host the Sept. 18 kickoff event.

Tanden hosted the call along with Planned Parenthood Action Fund's Cecile Richards, Mary Kay Henry of the Service Employees International Union, and Stephanie Schriock (who participated in the call under the auspices of American Women, but is perhaps better known as leader of EMILY'S List, a group that donates to pro-choice political candidates).

"What we're really trying to do in this initiative is to raise the voices of women to create much more public demand," Tanden also said. "If you look at these issues, they have really bipartisan support, [and] we want these issues to be ones where there's really a focus and a demand on both sides of the aisle to get things done, because — as Stephanie was pointing out — women really across the political spectrum think of these issues as ones that just really need to be addressed regardless of the politics."

Policies discussed ranged from increasing the minimum wage to the free contraception provided under Obamacare's HHS mandate.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Eric Holder, IRS officials coached tax-exempt black ministers on how to engage in political activity

Attorney General Eric Holder and IRS officials advised black ministers on how to engage in political activity during the 2012 election without violating their tax-exempt status.

Holder, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, and Peter Lorenzetti, a senior official in the scandal-plagued agency’s exempt organizations division, participated in a May 2012 training session for black ministers from the Conference of National Black Churches at the U.S. Capitol hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Holder spoke at the event.

“We’re going to, first of all, equip them with the information they need to know about what they can say and what they cannot say in the church that would violate their 501(c)(3) status with the IRS,” said then-CBC chairman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri. “In fact, we’re going to have the IRS administrator there. We’re going to have Attorney General Eric Holder there…the ACLU.”

Cleaver’s session advised black ministers on “draconian laws” including voter ID laws. Cleaver was a sharp critic during the 2012 campaign of Republican Mitt Romney’s policies.

As The Daily Caller has extensively reported, the IRS harassed conservative and tea party groups during the 2012 election cycle with improper reviews of their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt applications.

“[The CBC] had the IRS members there specifically to advise them on how far to go campaigning without violating their tax-exempt status,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told The Daily Caller.

“I viewed the meeting as highly problematic. Eric Holder heads the agency that prosecutes organizations who give false information to the government. The Justice Department coordinates with the IRS on actions taken against not-for-profits. These ministries are given not-for-profit status on the basis that they are not engaging in any political activities. Here, the Obama administration was clearly encouraging them to maximize their efforts by showing them where the lines were drawn in federal case law,” Turley said.

“It is a fundamental precept that cabinet members should not engage in political activities. The most important of those cabinet members would be the attorney general of the United States. To have the attorney general actively advising political allies of the president showed remarkably poor judgment on his part,” Turley told TheDC.

Via: Daily Caller

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Government Seeking Inclusion of ‘Social and Behavioral’ Data in Health Records

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) wants to require health care providers to include “social and behavioral” data in Electronic Health Records (EHR) and to link patient’s records to public health departments, it was announced last week.

Health care experts say the proposal raises additional privacy concerns over Americans’ personal health information, on top of worries that the Obamacare “data hub” could lead to abuse by bureaucrats andidentify theft.

The CMS currently covers 100 million people through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Hospital Insurance Program and is tasked with running Obamacare.

According to a solicitation posted by the Department of Health and Human Services on Sept. 4, the CMS is commissioning the National Academy of Sciences to study how best to add social and behavioral factors to electronic health record reporting.

The agency said adding social and behavioral data to patients’ online records will improve health care.

“Increasing EHR adoption has the potential to improve health and health care quality,” the contract’s statement of work (SOW) reads. “Parallel advances in analytic tools applied to such records are fueling new approaches to discovering determinants of population health.”

The project sets out to identify “core data standards for behavioral and social determinants of health to be included in EHRs.”

Via: WFB

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Obama's Struggles and the Republican Rebound

The latest poll data from the WSJ probably comes as a surprise to more than one insider. “The Republican Party is gaining a public-opinion edge on several key issues ahead of the 2014 elections, as Americans question President Barack Obama's leadership on Syria and worry about the country's overall direction, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows. Republicans are now rated higher than Democrats on handling the economy and foreign policy, and the GOP's lead has strengthened on several other issues, including dealing with the federal deficit and ensuring a strong national defense. On topics such as health care, Democrats have seen their long-standing advantage whittled to lows not seen in years.”

The real crux of this isn’t Republican improvement so much as it is that the American people believe Obama’s approach hasn’t worked. “The poll also reflected unease over the economy. Just 27% of Americans think the economy will improve over the next year, the lowest since July 2012, while nearly two-thirds think the country is on the wrong track. The public tilt on several issues in favor of the GOP, particularly among independents, comes as Mr. Obama's own job-approval rating has hovered around 45% for three months, a tenuous place for a president trying to build support for likely battles with Congress over possible military action in Syria, a proposed overhaul of immigration law and the budget.” The dramatic shifts on health care and the deficit have all been under Obama’s tenure.

Via: Real Clear Politics

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