[VIDEO] Oregon launches program to tax drivers by the mile

David Hastings is a rare American. This long-time hybrid car owner from Oregon wants to pay higher taxes for roads and bridges and says the current 30 cents per gallon state gas tax barely affects him.

"I've been free-loading on the highways for 20 years driving electric cars or hybrid cars, getting at least 40 miles to the gallon. So I haven't been paying my share," Hastings said.

Now, Hastings will pay more thanks to OReGO -- the first pay-by-the-mile program in the U.S. 

Oregon’s Department of Transportation has been working on it for 15 years as a way to eventually replace the gas tax, which has been flat due to an influx of high mileage vehicles and people driving less.

Right now the program is voluntary and being capped at 5,000 participants, but an ODOT official told Fox News the ultimate goal is to make it mandatory and change the way states pay for roads -- forever.

"We're trying to make up for a growing deficit, really, because inflation's eating away at our ability to buy asphalt and rebar and the things we need to maintain the roads," said Tom Fuller of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

According to a national usage fee alliance, 28 states are in various stages of following down the same road. However, there are also privacy concerns. Two of the three OReGO systems track and store a car’s every move.

"To put a GPS monitor in everybody's car, the government already knows too much about us as it is," Jeff Kruse, a Republican lawmaker told Fox News.

Via: Fox News

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[VIDEO] Supreme Court May Have Saved Obamacare, but It Doomed Young Americans’ Health Care Options

Six Americans in black robes have, yet again, saved the Affordable Care Act (ACA) from a major crisis, but the most important part of this story for young people is their atrocious ruling will cause significant problems for the nation’s youngest and healthiest citizens.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in the highly anticipated case King v. Burwell, pictures of young Americans celebrating at rallies in Washington, DC flooded the Internet and newspapers across the country. Nothing could be more ironic. Since the ACA was first implemented in 2013, prices for all health care insurance consumers have skyrocketed, but price increases have been particularly shocking for people between 18 and 35 years old.

According to a study by HealthPocket, Inc., the average pre-Obamacare premium cost in 2013 for women 23 years old increased by nearly 45 percent in 2014. Women age 30 saw price increases topping 35 percent.

While cost increases for women under age 31 were higher than the increases experienced by men (22.7 percent) and women age 63 (37.5 percent), their price increases were significantly lower than young men. Prices increased by 78.2 percent for men 23 years old and by 73.4 percent for men age 30.

If young Americans’ health care costs composed a significant portion of U.S. health care spending, these price increases might make some sense, but young people, especially young men, are the healthiest demographic in the nation. As John Graham pointed out in his article in Forbes, an analysis by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners says health care costs for 63-year-olds is five times greater than spending on 22-year-olds.

President Barack Obama’s frequent call for all people to “pay their fair share” apparently doesn’t apply to middle-aged and older Americans.

Via: Human Events

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THE VIRTUE OF MANDATORY VACCINATION: Celebrities are not medical experts, not even Jim Carrey Almighty.

On Tuesday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that makes California the third state to eliminate “personal belief” exemptions from vaccine requirements for children to attend schools, either public or private.

Starting with the 2016 school year (and with one important exception noted below), all children except those with medical circumstances that would render vaccination unsafe must be vaccinated against ten specific illnesses in order to enroll in a California school. Those who insist on not vaccinating must home-school or find other “independent study” methods of education. The requirement applies to public and private schools, child day care centers (including homes that provide family day care services), and nursery schools. According to the Los Angeles Times, “the new law could affect more than 80,000 California students who annually claim personal belief exemptions.”

Actor/comedian Jim Carrey isn’t happy about the new law, about which more in a moment. Note to Jim: Jenny McCarthy is married; you’re not going to be able to sleep with her again (though I don’t blame you for thinking about it). So please, stop pandering to Jenny’s insanity by buying into her claim, which is not just ignorant but extremely harmful, that vaccinating children is dangerous. (McCarthy believes that a vaccine caused her son’s autism, from which he has largely recovered. Some have questioned whether he was ever autistic, a suggestion the former Playboy Playmate of the Year aggressively rejects.)

Despite trying to revise her own history, McCarthy has — in part thanks to being promoted by Oprah Winfrey — for nearly a decade been the face (and body?) of the anti-vaccine movement. In 2007, she told CNN that “moms and pregnant women” were asking her advice on vaccinating children. Her response: “I don’t know what to tell them, because I am surely not going to tell anyone to vaccinate. But if I had another child, there’s no way in hell.”

The number of unvaccinated children has been rising rapidly in recent years, particularly among upper-middle class white suburbanites. Although several conservative religious communities avoid vaccines, bastions of liberalism such as Boulder, Colorado (the nearest city to my home), have some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates. In fact, Colorado has the lowest kindergarten vaccine rate in the country (82 percent for MMR as compared to a 95 percent national average); Mississippi has the highest rate.

Via: The Spectator

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Schools Implant IUDs in Girls as Young as 6th Grade Without Their Parents Knowing

Earlier this month, LifeNews.com reported on a high school in Seattle, Washington that is now implanting intrauterine devices (IUD), as well as other forms of birth control and doing so without parental knowledge or permission.

The IUD is known as a long acting reversible contraception, and may even act as an abortifacient. So, a young teen in Seattle can’t get a coke at her high school, but she can have a device implanted into her uterus, which can unknowingly kill her unborn child immediately after conception. Or, if she uses another method, she can increase her chances of health risks for herself, especially if using a new method.

The high school, Chief Sealth International, a public school, began offering the devices in 2010, made possible by a Medicaid program known as Take Charge and a non-profit, Neighborcare. Students can receive the device or other method free of cost and without their parent’s insurance. And while it’s lauded that the contraception is confidential, how can it be beneficial for a parent-child relationship when the parents don’t even know the devices or medication their daughter is using?

As it turns out, Chief Sealth isn’t the only school in Seattle doing this. As CNS News reports, more schools are fitting young girls — as young as 6th grade — with the devices and doing so without their parents knowing.

Middle and high school students can’t get a Coca-Cola or a candy bar at 13 Seattle public schools, but they can get a taxpayer-funded intrauterine device (IUD) implanted without their parents’ consent.

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School-based health clinics in at least 13 Seattle-area public high schools and middle schools offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs), including IUDs and hormonal implants, to students in sixth-grade and above at no cost, according to Washington State officials.

LARCs are associated with serious side effects, such as uterine perforation and infection. IUDs, specifically, can also act as abortifacients by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg.

The state and federally funded contraceptive services are made possible by Take Charge, a Washington State Medicaid program which provides free birth control to adults who are uninsured, lack contraceptive coverage, have an income at or below 260 percent of the Federal Poverty Level — or, in this case, to teens who don’t want their parents to know they’re on birth control.

In an email exchange with the Washington State Health Care Authority and CNSNews.com, a Take Charge spokesperson acknowledged that underage students are eligible for a “full array of covered family planning services” at school-based clinics if their parents meet the program’s requirements.

Take Charge added that “a student who does not want their parents to know they are seeking reproductive health services is allowed to apply for Take Charge using their own income, and if they are insured under their parents’ plan, the insurance would not be billed.”

When asked if a sixth grader could get an IUD implanted without parental consent, Take Charge told CNSNews.com: “We encourage all Take Charge providers to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) in their clinics. A young person does not need parental consent to obtain a LARC or any other contraceptive method…If the young person is not choosing abstinence, she would be able to select a LARC and have it inserted without parental consent.”

Parents, if you have children in these schools, you need to investigate and complain immediately. And all parents ought to take a look at the health policies of their young daughters’ schools to find out if a similar program is in place where you live.

Via: Life News

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Fanning the flames of another black church arson hoax by Michelle Malkin

America is still reeling from the horrific Charleston, S.C., massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that claimed the lives of nine innocent people.

The last thing the community and our country need are hysterical journalists compounding the pain with inflammatory reporting on an unsubstantiated “epidemic” of black church arsons.

On Monday, a Baltimore Sun lead editorial decried “a series of mysterious fires at African-American churches across the South” in the wake of the Charleston murders. The newspaper cited a “pattern” of attacks, including what it claimed was an “uptick in attacks on 37 black churches in the South” in the 1990s that “prompted President Bill Clinton to set up a church-arson investigative task force.”

The Sun neglected to mention that Clinton had falsely claimed at the time that he had “vivid and painful memories of black churches being burned in my own state when I was a child”— an assertion immediately debunked by theArkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Sun also neglected to mention that the manufactured media coverage that launched the 1990s black church arson juggernaut, fueled by former USA Today reporter Gary Fields’ 61 fear-mongering stories, fell apart under scrutiny. Fields’ own employer was forced to admit that “analysis of the 64 fires since 1995 shows only four can be conclusively shown to be racially motivated.”

Reminder: Several of the hyped hate crimes against black churches had been committed by black suspects; a significant number of the black churches were, in fact, white churches; and the complex motives behind the crimes included mental illness, vandalism and concealment of theft.

Once again, falsified history is repeating itself.

The NAACP, which capitalized on the Clinton-era race hustle, is now pushing the new arson epidemic narrative. The organization remains shamelessly undaunted after fueling the fake NAACP “bombing” in Colorado Springs earlier this year. The group’s CEO, Cornell Brooks, tweeted the incendiary“#WhoIsBurningBlackChurches” hashtag on Tuesday and disclosed that he is “informing churches, reviewing legislation, pushing media awareness and deciding legal options.”

Via: Michelle Malkin

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[VIDEO] Chris Matthews: Hillary Clinton is ‘More of a Conservative...Traditional Politician’

AND HE CAN SAY THIS WITH A STRAIGHT FACE???

On the July 1 edition of Hardball on MSNBC, Chris Matthews brought former Democratic senator and presidential candidate Gary Hart to the program to discuss his book and today’s politics. Matthews asked Hart about “the ideological direction of the party right now” and added that Bernie Sanders is bringing a kind of 1960s message to Democratic politics. The Hardball host then transitioned to discuss Hillary Clinton, making a dubious observation: “Hillary Clinton [is] more of a conservative in a sense of more of a traditional politician from the center, center.”  

Matthews asked Hart how he would like to see this battle in the Democratic Party shake out. The former Colorado Democrat replied: "Today, I think Senator Sanders is rallying a base – a part of the Democratic base that has not been appealed to because of the so-called centrism that’s been going on and off in the Democratic Party. I've never quite understood what that was, but avoidance, I think, of controversial positions.  Hart added that he thinks “there is a chance for a generational change here.” After Matthews questioned Hart on who he’d support in the Democratic primaries in 2016, the former presidential candidate named Martin O’Malley (D-MD) as his favorite candidate.  Also wanting to get a word in about Donald Trump, Hart largely dismissed the billionaire as a product of high name ID. He noted that, right now, “all you hear about” is the media covering Trump. Hart elaborated: “[T]he polls...often reflect name recognition. You stop somebody on the street, you give them 10 or 15 names, half of those people will pick a name they've heard of. And who have they heard of recently but Donald Trump?”

Via: Newsbusters

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[VIDEO] State Silences Bakers Who Refused to Make Cake for Lesbian Couple, Fines Them $135K

Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian finalized a preliminary ruling today ordering Aaron and Melissa Klein, the bakers who refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, to pay $135,000 in emotional damages to the couple they denied service.

“This case is not about a wedding cake or a marriage,” Avakian wrote. “It is about a business’s refusal to serve someone because of their sexual orientation. Under Oregon law, that is illegal.”

In the ruling, Avakian placed an effective gag order on the Kleins, ordering them to “cease and desist” from speaking publicly about not wanting to bake cakes for same-sex weddings based on their Christian beliefs.

“This effectively strips us of all our first amendment rights,” the Kleins, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, which has since closed, wrote on their Facebook page. “According to the state of Oregon we neither have freedom of religion or freedom of speech.”

The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate.

Administrative Law Judge Alan McCullough, who is employed by the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and was appointed by Avakian, threw out the argument in the “proposed order” he issued back in April.

But today, Avakian, who was in charge of making the final ruling in the case—and is also an elected politician—reversed that decision.

Via: Daily Signal

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CDC Official Calls Obama Worst President, Amateur, Marxist After Influx of Illegal Alien Minors

Following the influx of illegal immigrant minors from Central America, an official at the federal agency charged with protecting public health describes Barack Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had,” an “amateur” and “Marxist,” according to internal emails obtained by Judicial Watch.

JW got the records as part of an investigation into the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) activation of anEmergency Operations Center (EOC) to deal with the barrage of illegal alien minors last summer. Tens of thousands of Central Americans came into the United States through the Mexican border and contagious diseases—many considered to be eradicated in the U.S.—became a tremendous concern. The CDC, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), responded by opening an emergency facility designed to monitor and coordinate response activities to eminent public health threats.

This special emergency division was created after the 2001 terrorist attacks and has responded to more than 50 public health threats, including hurricanes, food borne disease outbreaks, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the Haiti cholera outbreak. Scientists from across the CDC are brought together to analyze, validate, and efficiently exchange information during a public health emergency and connect with response partners. The EOC also coordinates the deployment of CDC staff and the procurement and management of all equipment and supplies that agency responders may need during their deployment.

It’s a major and costly operation that can stick American taxpayers with a huge tab. That’s why JW launched a probe when the Obama administration took in the illegal immigrants, initially coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), with open arms last summer. JW has sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for planning records involving the border crisis as well as information relating to the solicitation of “on-demand escort services” for the 65,000 UACs that remain in the U.S. Last year JW also reported that the illegal immigrant minors have brought in serious diseases, including swine flu, dengue fever, possibly Ebola virus and tuberculosis.

The CDC records obtained by JW this week include email exchanges between agency officials directly involved in the activation of the EOC to handle the health threats created by the influx of illegal alien minors last summer. In an email dated June 9, 2014, CDC Logistics Management Specialist George Roark wrote to CDC Public Health Advisor William Adams that “no country in the world would allow” the influx. Adams replies that “in ten years or less, they’ll all be voting…Commander’s intent…” Roark fires back by describing Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had…he truly is ‘the amateur’ but a Marxist too.”

Via: Judicial Watch

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AVERAGE 128 UNACCOMPANIED ILLEGAL MINORS DETAINED AT BORDER DAILY IN MAY

Each day some 128 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) were detained illegally entering the U.S. during the month of May, according to CNS News.

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data obtained by CNS for the month of July show that 3,965 children were detained in May— representing the single month with the highest level of UAC apprehensions this fiscal year.

The level of UAC illegal immigration to the U.S. is lower than the record highs of last year, but still much higher than years prior. As of June 1, Border Patrol had apprehended nearly 23,000 UACs at the Southwest border.

In response to last year’s massive influx of UACs the Obama administration moved forward with a campaign to dissuade — largely Central Americans — from attempting the dangerous journey north.

Included in the campaign was a program to fly qualifying children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to the U.S. as as refugees or parolees, in a program that has raised many serious questions.

“In effect, the President’s answer to the ongoing run on the border is to order government officials to transport many of those same individuals from Central America into the U.S. with lawful paperwork and guaranteed access to federal benefits,” 

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)

80%

 said of the program earlier this year.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, as of April 23, 2015, the Refugee/Parole Program for Central American Minors (CAM) had received 565 applications with 439 applications for El Salvador, 114  for Honduras, and 12 for Guatemala.

Via: Breitbart

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[VIDEO] Hillary Clinton: How much longer can she hide the truth?

In the course of my work at Fox News, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge, our chief intelligence correspondent, and Pamela Browne, our senior executive producer, I read the transcripts of an interview Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.

What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.

Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.

In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to them is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.

Hillary Clinton lied to Congress, gave arms to terrorists and destroyed her emails. How much longer can she hide the truth?

Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.

Via: Fox News

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AEI: Obama White House Pays Women 15.8 Percent Less Than Men

The Obama White House pays its female staffers 15.8 percent less on average than its male staffers, according to an analysis by American Enterprise Institute. 

AEI economics scholar Mark J. Perry looked at the salaries of all White House employees, which are publicly available, and averaged out those who were male and female.

Female staffers earned on average $65,650 a year to male staffers' $78,000, Perry found.

Special: Prepare for Obamacare Nightmare in 2016

"Therefore, female staffers in the Obama White House currently earn 84.2% of the median salary for male staffers, or 84.2 cents for every $1 men earn, and there is a 15.8% gender pay gap at the White House," Perry wrote. "That pay gap is slightly smaller than the 17.9% gender pay gap at the White House last year, but is still almost two times the average gender pay gap for Washington, DC of 9.2% according to the most recent data from the Department of Labor."

Still, Perry noted, President Barack Obama makes presidential proclamations annually for National Equal Pay Day. This year, Obama marked April 14 as the date at which a woman must work into 2015 to earn the same as a man earned by Dec. 31, 2014.

"On average, full-time working women earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by men, and women of color face an even greater disparity," Obama said at this year's proclamation. "I call upon all Americans to recognize the full value of women's skills and their significant contributions to the labor force, acknowledge the injustice of wage inequality, and join efforts to achieve equal pay."

Women working at the White House have to work only until March 14 to achieve parity with men, Perry said, but still might want to complain.

Perry said that Obama and gender activists constantly lecture the public on gender pay gap disparities being the result of discrimination. If that is true, he said, the Obama White House is being hypocritical on the issue.

"President Obama can’t have it both ways," Perry said, "either: a) there are gender pay differences throughout the economy and in any organization including at the White House, which can be explained by factors other than gender discrimination including age, years of continuous work experience, education, differences in positions, hours worked, marital status, number of children, workplace environment and safety, industry differences, etc., or b) any gender pay gap in aggregate, unadjusted salaries automatically exposes gender discrimination — including the White House — and Obama needs to explain why he is 'waging a war on his women staffers' by paying them less than men on average."

Via: Newsmax

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CA’s Remarkable and Powerful Gay and Lesbian Political Leadership – What is Next From Them?

 For some years Californian’s have given gay and lesbian politicians extraordinary leadership opportunities and power in the state. The power these politicians possess in state government is from stronger positions and relatively larger numbers than that of many other minority groups, including Asian elected officials, in a state where Asians comprise 14% of the population, and they arguably possess more political power than African-American politicians, whose affinity group represents close to 7% of the state population. California’s gay and lesbian elected officials have wielded this power even as those same California voters disapproved gay marriage at the ballot, as in 2008, when just over 52% of voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage.  (The same voters gave Barack Obama over 61% of their votes in the same election.) But times are changing, and California’s highly influential gay and lesbian elected officials, who have been so successful on civil rights issues for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and have worked so hard on issues like same-sex marriage, have surely played a role in the remarkable changes in California public opinion since 2008.  According to a September 2013 Public Policy Institute of California poll (taken well before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision approving same sex marriage as a Constitutional right), a record high 61% of Californians and 64% of likely voters favored allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry, and in apparent remorse for the 2008 vote on Proposition 8, solid majorities of Californians (59%) and likely voters (63%) approved of the U.S. Supreme Court’s earlier decision to let stand a lower court ruling that put a “stay” on Proposition 8′s ban on same-sex marriage in California. One might guess that public opinion in California in favor of same-sex marriage is even more popular today than in PPIC’s last survey.

Who are these notably powerful gay and lesbian leaders? They are almost all liberal Democrats, and have served in responsible leadership positions (some retired only because of term limits) in the last decade and include current Assembly Speaker (the state assembly’s most important position) Toni Atkins of San Diego, the state’s first out lesbian Speaker, and her immediate predecessor John Perez of Los Angeles, the state’s first out gay Assembly Speaker.  Included also are former State Senator Sheila Kuehl from Santa Monica, now serving in the significant position of Los Angeles County Supervisor, current State Senator Mark Leno of San Francisco, the State Senate’s first out gay State Senator and a possible successor for Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional seat,  former State Senator Carole Migden of San Francisco, along with retired State Senator Christine Kehoe of San Diego and retired Assembly member Jackie Goldberg of Los Angeles. Congressman Mark Takano of Riverside is an out gay, as is San Diego County Supervisor Dave Roberts. They are all Democrats and are joined by many more gay and lesbian elected officials throughout the state in other state and local offices.

Via: California Political Review

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Sheriff’s Association Head Mocks Obama’s Call For ‘Soft Look’ Cop Uniforms

BALTIMORE — National Sheriffs’ Association President Danny Glick took offense to President Obama’s recommendation that American law enforcement wear “soft look” uniforms during large protests.

“The respect factor between law enforcement and this administration has eroded to the point that it has been recommended by them that we need to ‘soften our uniforms’ to be more acceptable to the public we serve,” Glick said during his speech to sheriffs attending the association’s annual summer conference Thursday night. He brought out a tan Kevlar vest with a fuzzy boa attached to the straps of the vest and a red target on the back.

“So here is the ‘softer uniform’ they’ve requested,” he said, displaying the modified vest. “This administration thinks this is what will work to solve the issues they have deemed important when in truth this is what they’ve done to us.”

Glick is the sheriff in Laramie, Wyo.

A White House panel released a report in March calling for officers to implement “a layered response to mass demonstrations that prioritize de-escalation and a guardian mindset.”

“These policies could include plans to minimize confrontation by using ‘soft look’ uniforms, having

officers remove riot gear as soon as practical, and maintaining open postures,” the task force wrote.

“I would present to you that this administration is looking through a glass rather than in a mirror when they are pointing a finger at sheriffs and law enforcement in general to blame for the issues confronting them today,” he said. The administration has “interjected a very dangerous addition into our profession — politics.”

Glick later told The Daily Caller, “If you want to have an important dialogue, invite us to the table, we’re willing to sit down, just like I said — anywhere have a discussion. If it’s an argument, fine, but we would prefer to come to a consensus where everybody benefits rather than just inflammatory statements being made.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Nancy Pelosi’s Life As a 0.1 Percenter

Nancy Pelosi may be one of the most liberal members of the U.S. House, where she runs the Democratic caucus, railing against income inequality and the avarice of the 1 percent. But she also happens to be one of the body’s wealthiest members: In Washington, she lives in a multimillion-dollar Georgetown condo; she owns a 16-acre vineyard in Napa Valley and a 3,700 square-foot house in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights, according to her May 2015 financial disclosure statements.

Her May 2015 financial-disclosure statements,showing income that places her in the top one-tenth of the 1 percent of Americans, may surprise some in light of the concern she’s expressed about income equality and the distribution of wealth.

“We’re talking about addressing the disparity in our country of income, where the wealthy people continue to get wealthier,” Pelosi said in 2010 at a United Steelworkers’ event. “That disparity is not just about wages alone,” she added. “That disparity is about ownership and equity. It’s all about fairness in our country.” But even as she’s publicly bemoaned the rich getting richer, Pelosi’s fortune has grown. RELATED: With Harry Reid Gone, Why Is Nancy Pelosi Hanging On?

 Though financial-disclosure forms list only ranges of assets and liabilities, Pelosi listed between $42.4 million and $199.5 million in assets in 2013, which was enough for Bloomberg Business to deem her the richest member of House leadership from either party. By 2014, she and her husband, investment banker Paul Pelosi, were doing even better: She reported between $43.4 million and $202 million in assets. (Pelosi’s husband, in fact, has done so well that he tried the quixotic hobby of investing in an alternative to the National Football League, losing between $100,000 and $1 million in 2014.)

Via: National Review

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