LIVE UPDATES: OBAMATRADE VOTES IN THE HOUSE

Via: Breitbart.com

Obama trade push hits roadblock, key vote fails in House

DEVELOPING ... 

President Obama's trade push hit a major roadblock Friday as Democrats helped torpedo a bill considered crucial for the agenda to pass. 

In a 126-302 vote, the House killed the so-called Trade Adjustment Assistance bill -- a program that retrains workers displaced by trade. The bill was originally put on the table as a sweetener to help entice recalcitrant Democrats to back the president's overall agenda. 

But the president's own party is so opposed to that agenda, they voted down the sweetener. 

In a major defection for Obama, even House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi joined the rebellion in opposing TAA minutes before the vote. Though she supports the worker aid, she said it was the only way to "slow down the fast track." 

She predicted the main trade bill would be "stuck in the station" without TAA. 

Now, the president's entire trade plan indeed is up in the air, leaving Obama faced with a potentially humiliating defeat at the hands of his party. 

Despite the setback, the House was moving ahead immediately with the marquee item -- a bill giving Obama so-called "fast track" authority to negotiate trade deals that Congress could approve or reject, but not amend. He hoped to use the authority, already agreed to by the Senate, to complete a sweeping pact with 11 other Pacific Rim nations which would constitute the economic centerpiece of his second term. 

Via: Fox News

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Spokane NAACP Leader Falsely Portrays Herself as Black, Her Own Family Says

SPOKANE, Wash. — Controversy is swirling around one of the Spokane region’s most prominent civil rights activists, with family members saying the local leader of the NAACP has falsely portrayed herself as black for years.

Rachel Dolezal is president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, chair of the city’s Office of Police Ombudsman Commission, and an adjunct professor at Eastern Washington University.

The Spokesman-Review reported Thursday that questions have arisen about her background and her numerous complaints to police of harassment. The story was first reported by the Coeur d’Alene Press.

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Dolezal’s mother, Ruthanne, says the family’s ancestry is Czech, Swedish and German, with a touch of Native American heritage.

Dolezal has identified herself in application materials as white, black and Native American.

Police say they have found little evidence of racial harassment.

Via: Washington Times

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Sequoyah Elementary School Takes Proactive Steps to Ensure Inclusion for All

The name Sequoyah is synonymous with education and progress. Sequoyah, the great legendary Cherokee figure, worked towards these goals and preserved his native language by creating the first Cherokee alphabet, eventually propelling it to be the strongest surviving indigenous American language. In the spirit of his name, the Sequoyah Elementary School also takes great strides towards education and progress. In working to make a more open and accepting environment for its students, the school is creating a more productive learning environment.

On Tuesday morning, upon invitation by school officials, Adam Soltani and Veronica Laizure of the Council on American Islamic Relations Oklahoma Chapter held a diversity-training program for the school’s educational staff. In this diversity-training program, the two CAIR officials made presentations outlining some of the basics of the Islamic faith and the challenges faced by Muslim Students, and they answered questions in an environment which was truly open and inviting.

Veronica, CAIR Oklahoma’s Civil Rights Director, gave an outline of some of the basic tenets of Islam and showed the teachers how these would affect their students in their school. Her topics ranged from the significance and procedure of prayer and proper religious attire, to the meaning and scheduling of Islamic holy days. She and Adam also answered questions on how these religious matters would affect the students in during the school day and how to have an open, comfortable dialogue with Muslim families to facilitate a productive environment.

Executive Director Adam Soltani gave the next presentation on how “Islamic Extremism” is perceived in the public and in the media. He also inspired an insightful discussion on how miscommunication and misunderstanding can cause problems for the overwhelming majority of Muslims who do not prescribe to this extremist ideology. These problems can be especially harmful to young students, which can affect the way that society continues to develop in the future as a whole.

The diversity-training program at Sequoyah Elementary School was a positive step forward in the cause of making our community more inclusive and open for all. From my own perspective, as a white-American-born-Muslim convert, I often find myself living in the midst of a common identity crisis among Muslim converts: that of living in two different worlds at the same time. This identity crisis is often exacerbated by feelings of abandonment and isolation because of personal choices, and it often results in an individual feeling as if they must abandon everything about one of these identities in order to be accepted in one of these worlds. Educational events like this go a long way as to help encourage inclusiveness in our society and ensure that these worlds do not become mutually exclusive.

Setting aside all personal feelings and opinions towards Islam, in this event, a group of adults got together and learned about Islam in order to achieve this common goal of creating an open and inclusive educational environment for the children of the community.

No matter what our beliefs are, we can all agree that our public schools need to be as open and inclusive as possible to create a more positive and productive learning environment; we can all agree that the education and protection of the children is more important than personal dogma. We hope that other schools and organizations will follow Sequoyah Elementary’s example.

Via: Cair Oklahoma
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WHISTLEBLOWER: Senior State Department Officials Under Hillary Clinton Quashed Investigations into Alleged Misconduct

AP

The Washington Examiner has followed up on a previous report exposing the Clinton State Department’s efforts to cover up alleged misconduct with new details about some of the “most egregious” examples of investigations thwarted by agency staff, and the frustration felt by investigators:

The eight cases mentioned in the memo included an incident in which at least five members of Clinton’s security detail allegedly solicited prostitutes in a number of countries while on official travel, including on trips to Russia and Colombia. A diplomatic security guard was permitted to continue overseeing Clinton’s security operations at a Moscow hotel after allegedly soliciting prostitutes “despite obvious counterintelligence questions,” the memo said.

A top official in the bureau of diplomatic security “reportedly told [an investigator] to shut down the four investigations” into the accused security guards, three of whom received one-day suspensions before being transferred to other assignments.

Another case involved a regional security officer in Lebanon who was alleged to have sexually assaulted local embassy staff, and who had a “long history of misconduct allegations” at his other posting in North Africa and the Middle East. Officials looking into the matter were given just three days to investigate, after a State Department official described the inquiry as a “witch hunt.” An inspector general’s report published in 2014 noted that investigators “encountered resistance” from senior State Department officials, who exhibited “undue influence and favoritism” in the case.

Perhaps the most egregious of the episodes involved “an ambassador in Belgium” who in May 2011 was accused of “ditch[ing] his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children,” according to an inspector general’s memo. A subsequent review found

a number of flaws in the subsequent probe of the Belgian ambassador.

“[Diplomatic security] assigned an agent from its internal investigations unit to conduct a preliminary inquiry. However, two days later, the agent was directed to stop further inquiry because of a decision by senior department officials to treat the matter as a ‘management issue,’” the Linick report said.

“The ambassador was recalled to Washington and, in June 2011, met with the undersecretary of state for management and the then chief of staff and counselor to the secretary of state. At the meeting, the ambassador denied the allegations and was then permitted to return to post,” the report continued. “The department took no further action affecting the ambassador.”

Patrick Kennedy, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, told the inspector general’s office that he declined to pursue the Belgian matter further because “solicitation of a prostitute … was not a crime in the host country.”

Before becoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton successfully defended a child rapist she (most likely) believed to be guilty.

Via: WFB

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Obama makes last-ditch plea to Dems ahead of showdown vote on trade

President Obama went to Capitol Hill Friday morning to make a final plea to congressional Democrats for his trade agenda, ahead of a showdown vote in the House. 

The president met with House Democratic leaders ahead of a caucus meeting. While it is extremely rare for a president to make a visit like this before a big vote, the last-minute lobbying comes after the president also made a surprise appearance at the annual congressional baseball game between Democrats and Republicans the night before. His personal involvement underscores how fragile the effort is -- Fox News is told the effort is still short on the votes -- and how important he sees it to his second-term legacy. 

The night before, a bizarre scene unfolded as the crowd crammed inside Nationals Park lurched into a chant about the legislation. 

“TPA! TPA! TPA!” chanted Republican congressional aides seated near the first base dugout when Obama stepped onto the field at the top of the fourth inning.  

This wasn’t quite the drunken, Bronx throng at Yankee Stadium cantillating “Reg-GIE! Reg-GIE! Reg-GIE!” after Reggie Jackson swatted three consecutive home runs in Game Six of the 1977 World Series. This was gamesmanship, Washington-style. A game in which most congressional Republicans find themselves backing the Democratic president’s efforts to pass Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), a framework for a big trade deal the administration hopes to advance later this year.

Via: Fox News

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HHS Chief: Congress Must Fix Obamacare If Supreme Court Unravels Law

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell said Wednesday if the Supreme Court unravels federal subsidies in the Affordable Care Act it will be up to Congress and the states to come up with a new plan.

Burwell said the Obama administration would do “everything” it can to communicate with states should the court decide against the government in the King v. Burwell case.

The Supreme Court will decide King v. Burwell later this month, weighing whether enrollees in the health care program may purchase subsidies through the federal exchange—or just those using state-run exchanges.

“The critical decisions will sit with the Congress and states and governors to determine if those [federal] subsidies are available,” Burwell told the House Ways and Means Committee in a contentious hearing.

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. Get us in your inbox.

The plaintiffs in the case argue the Affordable Care Act’s current wording only allows the purchase of federal subsidies in state exchanges.

“We believe we are implementing the law as it was written, as it was intended,” Burwell said.

Dan Holler, the communications director for Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of The Heritage Foundation, refuted Burwell’s assertion, pointing to Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s acknowledgment that the goal of state exchanges was to “coerce states.”

“The Obama administration routinely ignores the law as drafted and intended,” Holler said.

If the Supreme Court rules against the government, Burwell said President Obama would sign alternative legislation solely if it improves “affordability, quality and access.”

House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said regardless of what the Supreme Court decides it is clear the president’s health care law is “busted” and that “no quick fix can change this fact.”

Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., sternly fired back.

“What’s busted is not ACA, but your attacks on it,” he said. “Endless attacks and never coming up with a single comprehensive alternative all these years. So you are armchair critics while millions have insurance who never had it before.”

Via: The Daily Signal

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[OPINION] The Unaffordable Care Act Works Like Hell

It Performs Exactly As Designed

Michael Tanner of National Review Online points out some of the awesome positives we see with Glorious Obamacare!

Obamacare generates piles of relative surplus value without requiring any innovation.

Already we’ve seen requests for increases for individual plans as high as 64.8 percent in Texas, 61 percent in Pennsylvania, 51.6 percent in New Mexico, 36.3 percent in Tennessee, 30.4 percent in Maryland, 25 percent in Oregon, and 19.9 percent in Washington. Those increases would come on top of premium increases last year that were 24.4 percent above what they would have been without Obamacare, according to a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

This is, admittedly mitigated by the sort of economic competition that Obamacare sought to eliminate.Hospitals, ambulance providers and physicians have all sought out ways of carving this surplus away from the insurance companies. Numerous other parasites have latched on to the insurance companies for their share of the bounty. Karl Denninger describes the process below.

Pull out your car insurance bill and the declarations page. You will find a line there called “Medical Payments” (it may be called “PIP” or similar in some states) which is state-mandated coverage. The price of that coverage is five times what it should be and for drivers with lower liability limits it’s frequently the most expensive part of their policy. In addition, your Bodily Injury coverage cost is jacked, typically by at least twice, due to this same racket. It doesn’t end with auto insurance either; Workman’s Compensation, which is required of businesses once they hire their first employee, is also a multiple of real cost for the same reason and this reflects back into the price of everything you buy from a hamburger to a gallon of gasoline.

Obamacare limits the extent to which insurance companies are ever made to pay back out.

At the same time, deductibles for the cheapest Obamacare plans now average about $5,180 for individuals and $10,500 for families.

Obamacare eliminates policies from the market that compete against the overpriced, shoddy plans insurers make the most money off of offering.

The ACA sets minimum standards for what a plan has to include. What this does is effectively shut competition out of the market. It forces people who would not pay into the racket to pay into it or get fined for not being insured. It makes people buy far more insurance than they need to subsidize other customers that can’t afford the benevolent care they receive from the Unaffordable Care Act. It becomes a wealth transfer vehicle that taxes the young and healthy for as long as they are crazy enough to remain young and healthy.

So The Unaffordable Care Act works like Hell. It robs the bank without exposing the perpetrators to hostile gunfire from the security firm. It works the way Billy Tauzin, Kaiser Permanente and numerous other healthcare industry apparatchiks wrote it to work. Thus, it comes as no surprise they find the potential outcome of King v. Burwell so potentially unpleasant.

Regulating the USG the way our healthcare industry does is all well and good, but it doesn’t do any good if a bribe proof, unaccountable entity shuts off their money reservoir. You can’t buy people who don’t have to run for office. They don’t work for you the way Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 64% and Barack Obama willingly do. If these SCOTUS Justices decide to become do-gooders and break up the racket, it would mess up something that the politicians and the healthcare companies see as a beautiful thing. The American People are not so enamored, but two out of three isn’t bad. It wasn’t written for the people, so it’s silly to expect it to work for them. Which is fine, because it isn’t like the government works for the people anymore either. It’s not like they did all the hard work of writing themselves an Unaffordable Care Act.

Via: Red State

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[VIDEO] Police Shut Down Lemonade Stand Run By Two Little Girls for Operating Without a Permit

- Zoey and Andria Green, seven and eight, were running store by their home

- Girls had lemonade for sale at 50 cents a cup and popcorn for $1

- They wanted to raise money to for water park trip on Father's Day

- Chief of police in Overton, Texas, told them they needed a permit

Police shut down a 50-cents-a-go lemonade stand being run by two sisters because they didn't have an official city permit.

Via: Fox Nation

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[VIDEO] If SCOTUS guts subsidies, voters want Congress to fix Obamacare

As the Supreme Court prepares to unveil its decision on King v. Burwell, which could gut health care subsidies to millions of Americans on the exchanges–a point that some in the media say could harm Republicans. Hence, why some on the Hill are saying they might temporarily extend those subsidies if the Court nixes them. King is similar to another case–Halbig V. Burwell–that virtually argued the same thing:

Whether the Internal Revenue Service may permissibly promulgate regulations to extend tax-credit subsidies to coverage purchased through exchanges established by the federal government under Section 1321 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Last summer, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley and the Washington Examiner’sPhilip Klein outlined the background for the case–and the consequences if the Court rules that the IRS does not have the authority to extend the subsidies. 

Via Turley:

The Halbig case challenges the massive federal subsidies in the form of tax credits made available to people with financial need who enroll in the program. In crafting the act, Congress created incentives for states to set up health insurance exchanges and disincentives for them to opt out. The law, for example, made the subsidies available only to those enrolled in insurance plans through exchanges “established by the state.”

But despite that carrot — and to the great surprise of the administration — some 34 states opted not to establish their own exchanges, leaving it to the federal government to do so. This left the White House with a dilemma: If only those enrollees in states that created exchanges were eligible for subsidies, a huge pool of people would be unable to afford coverage, and the entire program would be in danger of collapse.

Indeed, the Halbig plaintiffs — individuals and small businesses in six states that didn’t establish state exchanges — objected that, without the tax credits, they could have claimed exemption from the individual mandate penalty because they would be deemed unable to pay for the coverage. If the courts agree with them, the costs would go up in all 34 states that didn’t establish state exchanges, and the resulting exemptions could lead to a mass exodus from Obamacare.

The administration attempted to solve the problem by simply declaring that even residents of states without their own exchanges were eligible for subsidies, even though the law seemed to specifically say they were not. The administration argues that although the statute’s language does limit subsidies to residents of places with exchanges “established by the state,” that wording actually referred to any exchange, including those established by the federal government.

Via: Hot Air

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Opinion: GOP targets Latinos’ ability to vote

Even as a diverse coalition of Americans unite around the principle that voting rights are an essential American principle that needs to be protected, the Republican Party remains firmly committed to doing the opposite. Their continued push for policies that make it more difficult for people to vote disproportionately affects minority and young voters.

Republicans – including leading Presidential candidates – have for years been pushing initiatives that make it harder to vote. Jeb Bush supports states’ efforts to enact voter ID laws, and as governor, he restricted early voting and infamously purged 12,000 eligible voters before the 2000 presidential election. Marco Rubio asked, “What’s the big deal?” with voter ID laws. Scott Walker enacted what has been described as “one of the most restrictive voter ID laws in the country.”

Voter ID laws systematically target Latinos’ and other minorities’ ability to vote. In 2012, measures to restrict voting could have affected over 10 million Latino voters. A Brennan Center for Justice study reported, “In Colorado, Florida, and Virginia, the number of eligible Latino citizens that could be affected by these barriers exceeds the margin of victory in each of those states during the 2008 presidential election.”

And it’s no accident that these laws disproportionately affect Latinos. A separate study from last year found “a solid link between legislator support for voter ID laws and bias toward Latino voters, as measured in their responses to constituent e-mails.” And yet another study that was released earlier this year found that even in states without voter ID laws, Latinos were targeted: “Election officials themselves also appear to be biased against minority voters, and Latinos in particular. For example, poll workers are more likely to ask minority voters to show identification, including in states without voter identification laws.”

Some Republicans have explicitly made known their intentions of suppressing Latino and African-American voters in order to win elections. Over 30 years ago, ALEC-founder and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation Paul Weyrich spoke plainly:  “I don’t want everybody to vote…As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” Republican after Republican has continued in his footsteps: An Ohio GOP County Chair stated he supports limits on early voting because, “I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban – read African-American – voter-turnout machine.” Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzaibelieved voter ID laws would “allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.” Former GOP Precinct Chair Don Yeltonused the “n” word as he tried to deny that a voter ID law in North Carolina was racist (and he explained that “the law is going to kick the Democrats in the butt”). Conservative activist and notoriouslyanti-immigrant Phyllis Schlafly said, “The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama’s ground game.” Schlafly’s Eagle Forum endorsed Marco Rubio in his run for Senate (here’s a lovely picture of the two of them) and applauded Scott Walker for his opposition to legal immigration.

Via: Fox News Latino

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Labor Department Employee Looked At Porn For HOURS Every Day

A Department of Labor (DOL) official looked at porn for hours every single day and wasn’t fired for months.

The Daily Caller first reported that a DOL “Grade 14 employee” — who made between $107,325 and $139,523 per year on the taxpayer dime — was caught looking at pornography at work on his official government computer.

Now new information has emerged on the porn-watcher and his obsessive, libidinous habits.

The Daily Mail obtained redacted copies of DOL inspector general reports through a Freedom of Information Act request that detail the employee’s self-confessed porn addiction.

The worker “downloaded a voluminous amount of adult pornographic movies and images,” according to the reports.

He also “entered the name of actress Alyssa Milano on [his] computer and pornographic sites appeared.”

His porn-watching was all-consuming. The employee “visited pornographic sites for several hours a day.”

His habits were first noticed by a colleague in August 2014, but the employee was not fired for another four months.

DOL could have vetted the porn addict before he ever started getting taxpayer money. According to the reports, the employee was fired from a previous job for “accessing sites with women wearing little clothing.”

Alyssa Milano, 42, was a regular on the television series “Who’s The Boss” before appearing nude in films, according to the Daily Mail report.

It is unclear whether the employee ever pursued his work habit to completion.

Via: Daily Caller

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OPM Hackers Stole Data on Every Federal Employee

June 11, 2015 The hackers that infiltrated the Office of Personnel Management last year swiped the personal information of every federal employee working in government, a number potentially far greater than the 4 million previously reported, according to a labor union of government workers.

In a letter sent to OPM director Katherine Archuleta and obtained by National Journal, American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox wrote that the hackers stole social security numbers, birthdays, addresses, military records, job and pay histories and various insurance information, in addition to age, gender and race data.

"Based on the sketchy data OPM has provided, we believe that the Central Personnel Data File was the targeted database, and that the hackers are now in possession of personnel data for every federal employee, every federal retiree, and up to one million former federal employees," Cox wrote in a letter dated Thursday.

"We believe that Social Security numbers were not encrypted, a cybersecurity failure that is absolutely indefensible and outrageous," he added.

Cox said that the 18 months of credit monitoring and $1 million in liability insurance that OPM has offered affected employees is "entirely inadequate, either as compensation or protection from harm."

Last week federal officials announced that data of as many as 4 million former and current federal employees had been exposed. The breach occurred in December and was detected in April, officials said, and many have attributed the intrusion to China. The size of that hack was already considered one of the largest and most devastating on record. After the breach was announced, OPM signed a $20 million contract with a private cybersecurity company to provide identity-fraud protection services for affected employees.

(RELATED: Syrian Electronic Army Claims Hack of Army Website) 

Officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Earlier on Thursday, the Senate rejected a push by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow a cybersecurity measure to be added as an amendment to an ongoing debate over the National Defense Authorization Act. McConnell had tried to use news of the OPM hack to jam the bipartisan measure through, but Democrats—including some of the bill's supporters—argued that such important legislation was deserving of fuller debate.

Via: NJ

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