RING IN THE NEW YEAR WITH YOUR NEW HEALTHCARE TAXES

Most of the new healthcare taxes will fall on high income earners, but the middle class and medical device industry will also take a hit.

Directly impacting taxpayers is the Medicare tax hike on high income wage earners, higher taxes on investment income, lower contributions to flexible spending accounts and a higher threshold for deducting medical expenses from income tax. 

The Affordable Health Care Act is funded through the Medicare taxes of high income earners. These taxes hit individuals earning over $200,000, and joint filers earning more than $250,000.  Medicare taxes will go up by .9% for these folks and they will be hit with an additional 3.8% on unearned income.

Also hit will be folks who earn a greater share of their income from investments. Even if their regular income isn't high enough for the additional taxes, their investment income would be hit with an additional 4% tax. The consequence will most likely be less investment.

The cost of the Affordable Healthcare Act will not just hit the "rich." Two new taxes will affect the middle-class. Taxpayers used to be able to deduct health care expenses that total more than 7.5% of their income. Starting in 2013, that threshold will rise to 10%. This deduction is most often utilized by lower income earners with high medical bills.

According to Lindsey Buchholz of the H&R Block Tax Institute, about 10 million taxpayers deduct around $80 billion in health care expenses a year.

The second of the two middle class taxes is a limit on flexible spending accounts. Previously there was no limit to what an individual could contribute in pre-tax dollars, but now contributions will be limited to $2500.  These two provisions are expected to raise $40 billion of the next 2 years.

The medical device tax, and addition 2.9% tax on medical devices, is expected to raise $29 Billion over the next ten years.  Unlike other taxes that can be passed on to the consumer, Medicare is the largest purchaser of medical devices; Medicare doesn't function in a free market where companies are able to pass the costs on to consumers. The industry will have no choice but to absorb the costs by cutting the work force or reducing their output.

Happy New Year!

Via: Breitbart

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Lawmakers huddle as options dwindle for tackling fiscal crisis

President Obama and congressional leaders were facing a rapidly shrinking set of options for averting the fiscal crisis as they met Friday afternoon, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warning they are "running out of time." 

Just a few weeks ago, lawmakers had high hopes for a "grand bargain" that would narrow the deficit, overhaul the tax code and set the country on a course to curb its entitlement spending -- all while averting massive tax hikes and spending cuts set to hit Jan. 1. 

Having squandered that time, lawmakers -- and taxpayers -- will now be lucky if they can just avert the tax hikes.

Obama and the top four congressional leaders were meeting Friday afternoon at the White House, along with Vice President Biden and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. At the meeting, Obama was expected to pitch a "Plan C" that's essentially a version of the scaled-back proposal he floated a week ago before leaving for Hawaii. 

Under the proposal, lawmakers would extend the current tax rates for the "middle class." What income level defines middle class remains up for debate -- Obama had previously pushed for tax hikes on families making over $250,000 and later upped that threshold to $400,000. House Speaker John Boehner, in a proposal that died in the House last week, called for tax hikes only on those making over $1 million. 

Beyond the tax rate issue, Obama wants to extend long-term jobless benefits for 2 million people set to lose them at the end of the year, and perhaps agree to some spending cuts that could short-circuit the automatic spending cuts scheduled to hit the Pentagon next month. 

Via: Fox News

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Obama Orders Raise for Biden, Members of Congress, Federal Workers

President Barack Obama issued an executive order to end the pay freeze on federal employees, in effect giving some federal workers a raise. One federal worker now to receive a pay increase is Vice President Joe Biden.

According to disclosure forms, Biden made a cool $225,521 last year. After the pay increase, he'll now make $231,900 per year

.

Members of Congress, from the House and Senate, also will receive a little bump, as their annual salary will go from $174,000 to 174,900. Leadership in Congress, including the speaker of the House, will likewise get an increase.

Here's the list of new wages, as attached to President Obama's executive order:

"A new executive order has been issued providing for a new pay schedule beginning 'on the first day of the first applicable pay period beginning after March 27, 2013,'" reports FedSmith.com. "The pay raise will generally be about 1/2 of 1%."

Jeryl Bier points to an example of the pay increase for average government executives:

Via: Weekly Standard

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Hey, let’s elect a new Speaker from outside the House

Ed’s headline in the Greenroom for this piece (written by the co-author of “The Republicans Are the Problem”) tells you all you need to know about what an unserious bit of trolling it is, but I’m oddly comforted to see it show up on WaPo’s op-ed page. It’s proof positive that even the most celebrated newspapers aren’t immune from having to scrounge for content in the news desert between Christmas and New Year’s. Coming tomorrow, presumably: “Let’s repeal term limits for Obama.”

Still, it’s worth writing about for two reasons. One: Conservative dissatisfaction with Boehner is real. We may well end up with a new Speaker on January 3. No harm in thinking about alternatives. Two: It’s a useful prism through which to consider the leadership void in the GOP right now.

What if Boehner doesn’t survive? Go to Article I, Section 2: The Constitution does not say that the speaker of the House has to be a member of the House. In fact, the House can choose anybody a majority wants to fill the post. Every speaker has been a representative from the majority party. But these days, the old pattern clearly is not working…

The best way out of this mess would be to find someone from outside the House to transcend the differences and alter the dysfunctional dynamic we are all enduring. Ideally, that individual would transcend politics and party — but after David Petraeus’s stumble, we don’t have many such candidates. It would have to be a partisan Republican.

One option would be Jon Huntsman. By any reasonable standard, he is a conservative Republican: As governor of Utah, he supported smaller government, lower taxes and balanced budgets, and he opted consistently for market-based solutions. As a presidential candidate, he supported positions that were in the wheelhouse of Ronald Reagan. But a Speaker Huntsman would look beyond party and provide a different kind of leadership. He would drive a hard bargain with the president but would aim for a broad majority from the center out, not from the right fringe in. He could not force legislation onto the floor, but he would have immense moral suasion.

Another option would be Mitch Daniels, the longtime governor of Indiana and a favorite on the right. Daniels has shown a remarkable ability to work with Democrats and Republicans, and he is a genuine fiscal conservative — meaning he does not worship at the shrine of tax cuts if they deepen deficits, and he would look for the kind of balanced approach to the fiscal problem put forward by Simpson-Bowles, ­Rivlin-Domenici and the Gang of Six.

Via: Hot Air
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Will 'Fiscal Cliff' Accelerate Millionaire Deaths?

Pigeon Productions SA | Riser | Getty Images

Because the "fiscal cliff" will not stop for death, it looks as if death's carriage may make a "kindly" stop to pick up some American millionaires this year, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson.

In 2010, after a year in which the estate tax was zeroed out altogether, Congress passed a law that set the estate tax at 35 percent and exempted all estates under $5 million, adjusted for inflation. That law expires in January 2013 when the exemption will fall to $1 million and the tax will rise to 55 percent.

Many families are faced with a stark proposition. If the life of an elderly wealthy family member extends into 2013, the tax bills will be substantially higher. An estate that could bequest $3 million this year will leave just $1.9 million after taxes next year. Shifting a death from January to December could produce $1.1 million in tax savings.

It may seem incredible to contemplate pulling the plug on grandma to save tax dollars. While we know that investors will sell stocks to avoid rising capital gains taxes, accelerating the death of a loved one seems at least a bit morbid—perhaps even evil. Will people really make life and death decisions based on taxes? Do we don our green eye shades when it comes to something this serious?

Via: CNBC

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House, Senate Leaders Frozen On Fiscal Talks

The rhetoric heated up Thursday as time on the clock wound down for a fiscal crisis deal, with lawmakers trickling back into Washington and no plan of action in place for averting the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to hit next week. 

President Obama returned Thursday afternoon from vacation in Hawaii, as the Senate gaveled into session for unrelated business. House leaders announced that members will return late Sunday – but that leaves just one full day to act on any legislation before the deadline passes.

Rumors were flying Thursday afternoon about last-ditch efforts to craft some sort of a scaled-back package that can shield most Americans from the more than $500 billion in tax hikes scheduled to take effect Jan. 1.

But with hope fading, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said on the floor that “it looks like” the nation is going to miss the deadline.

Reid also put all the blame on House Speaker John Boehner, likening him to a dictator and claiming he was putting his speakership before the good of the country.   

"John Boehner seems to care more about keeping his speakership than about keeping the nation on firm financial footing," Reid said. "He's waiting until Jan. 3 to get re-elected as speaker before he gets serious with negotiations because he has so many people ... that won't follow what he wants."

Via: Fox News

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Another Leftist Rag Bites The Dust: The Last Print Issue Of Newsweek…

IT DID NOT HAPPEN SOON ENOUGH. TIME MAGAZINE IS NEXT!!!

Via: Daily Beast

Obama Golfs with Buddy Busted for Soliciting Prostitute

President Barack Obama is in Hawaii for Christmas. Right now, he's golfing with White House chef Sam Kass, staffer Marvin Nicholson, and friends Mike Ramos and Bobby Titcomb, according to the White House pool report.

Titcomb was arrested in Honolulu last year for soliciting a prostitute.

As ABC reported at the time of Titcomb's arrest:

One of President Barack Obama's oldest friends has been arrested in Honolulu on suspicion of soliciting a prostitute.

Robert "Bobby" Titcomb was one of four men arrested in an undercover prostitution sting operation Monday evening and later released on $500 bail, according to Honolulu police.

Titcomb, 49, attended Punahou School with Obama in their hometown of Honolulu in the 1970s. The president graduated in 1979, a year before Titcomb.

Since their time together in school they have remained close. Titcomb has visited the White House on numerous occasions to see the president, most recently during Obama's August birthday when he was included in a round of golf with Obama's closest friends at the links of Andrews Air Force Base. Afterwards Titcomb, among other friends, joined the president for a barbeque at the White House.

The fivesome is golfing at at the Kaneohe Clipper course at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

The Obamas are in Hawaii for Christmas.

Via: Weekly Standard

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WSJ: Obama Threatened Boehner With Using Inauguration, SOTU Address To Blame GOP

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 21: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement on fiscal cliff at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House December 21, 2012 in Washington, DC. Obama called on congressional leaders to work out a solution on the fiscal cliff over the Christmas break. He also said "becaues we didn't get this done, I will see you next week." (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

President Obama has threatened House Speaker John Boehner that if no deal is struck on the “fiscal cliff,” he will use his Inaugural address and State of the Union speech next month to blame Republicans,according to the Wall Street Journal.

In the Journal’s behind the scenes account of how fiscal cliff talks between Obama and Boehner hit a wall, what comes across is that the president is emboldened by his reelection and eager to extract more concessions from Boehner than he was willing to accept during last summer’s debt limit talks.

This excerpt from the piece is revealing:

Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn’t reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech to tell the country the Republicans were at fault.

At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, “I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?”

“You get nothing,” the president said. “I get that for free.”

Via: Washington Examiner

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Advertising Guru Sells Hamptons Estate: ‘I don’t Want My Money Going To Obama’

He got taxed out of town.

Legendary advertising guru Jerry Della Femina is the latest Hamptons fat cat to unload his East End spread at the precipice of the dreaded fiscal cliff, The Post has learned.

The flamboyant Madison Avenue guru has sold his 8,500-square-foot estate — the host of many legendary Hamptons bashes — for $25 million, and blames his flight squarely on President Obama’s fiscal policies.

“I want the proceeds of this sale to go to my kids and my grandkids,” said the man behind iconic ad campaigns for Meow Mix and Absolut Vodka. “I don’t want my money going to Obama, and that’s what’s going to happen in the New Year. That’s why I sold right now, that’s why I wanted to get this done.”

Doug Kuntz

TAXING DECISION: A Hamptons party at the oceanfront mansion of Jerry Della Femina in happier times — before Obama’s “class warfare.”

The listing broker for the East Hampton oceanfront property, Corcoran’s Susan Breitenbach, declined to comment on the megabucks deal.

Sources said that the buyers are a New York based family.

Della Femina’s buzzer-beating sale is just one of many big-ticket closings sweeping the Hamptons as affluent homeowners seek to move their blue-chip digs before taking a capital-gains beating in the coming year.

A fall off the fiscal cliff could trigger a 40 percent rise in taxes on short-term investments and a 5 percent spike in taxes on long-term capital gains.

Della Femina said that brokers are in the midst of a frenzied sell-off as the fiscal cliff approaches.

“I’m basically the loser in Obama’s class warfare,” he fumed. “That’s what this boils down to. If Romney was elected, we would have had our parties in East Hampton this year.”

Via: New York Post

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EPA cries ‘uncle’ in face of lawsuit, withdraws threat against W.Va. chicken farmer

The Environmental Protection Agency is backing off from a controversial lawsuit that brought farming groups out of the woodwork to defend a West Virginia farmer against charges that chicken droppings violated the Clean Water Act because rains could carry them into a stream located two football fields away.

The case mobilized agriculture organizations against what they saw as bureaucratic bullying that could impact thousands of other farmers. Green groups saw it as an opportunity to give the EPA tighter control over what they have derisively called “factory farms.”

The EPA said in November 2011 that Lois Alt and her husband needed a Clean Water Act discharge permit because rainwater on their farm could come into contact with dust, feathers or small amounts of chicken manure that strayed out of the large barns where they raise their flocks. Rainwater at Eight Is Enough Farms empties into Mudlick Run, a stream 200 yards away from the edge of the property.

The agency had warned the Alts that they could be fined up to $37,500 — per day — if they failed to apply for the permit, and another $37,500 per day if the government moved to enforce the Clean Water Act against them. But in a Dec. 13 letter, the EPA told their attorney it had withdrawn last year’s order entirely.

Alt told the agency in February that she intended to ignore the order. She sued the federal government in June, insisting that the threat was “arbitrary, capricious, not in accordance with the law, and in excess of the EPA’s jurisdiction and authority.”

The EPA’s threat was an attempt to define rainwater on livestock farms as a pollution “point source” under the Clean Water Act if it comes into contact with animal waste.

While the Clean Water Act considers animal barns themselves pollution point sources in some cases — if manure spills and seeps into rivers, lakes or streams, for instance — a sweeping 1972 amendment to the law specifically said point sources do “not include agricultural stormwater discharges.”

Via: Daily Caller

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The ‘Reagan 13’ give Americans Something to Believe In

In the astroturfed Christmas Card Version of Obama’s 20-day Hawaiian holiday, (Michelle and daughters already there, but starting for Barry this weekend) the mental vision strived for is the regime and its staffers running happily, like the Moon-doggies of old, into the surf.

With Axelrod doing the astroturfing,  who needs Hollywood, and if Gidget can go Hawaiian, why not a lugubrious Valerie or Michelle?

The astroturf version of the Obamas’ $4 million holiday in Hawaii is set to demoralize and depress the proletariat.  It vividly underlines how the rich and powerful get to spend long, care free days kissed by the sun, while the left behind average citizenry of the winter-bound Northeast get to spend theirs slogging through the slush.

The Obamas and their traveling road show can, and do, holiday whenever they want. The real reason for ‘Obama’s Vacation From Four Years of Vacation’ is a strategy session to savor driving the last nails into the coffin lid of “the home of the brave”.

If Obama was power drunk before his reelection, imagine his euphoric mental state as he heads out for Hawaii today.


Confident with the four years the November 6 election grants him, Obama is planning an airtight new world for what he sees as his hapless, can’t-do-anything-to-stop-him constituents.

In the coming new world shaped by the Marxism-obsessed Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod et al, there will be no room for competition.  It goes without saying that there’s never any room for competition in anti-Free Market, Marxist set ups.Confident with the four years the November 6 election grants him, Obama is planning an airtight new world for what he sees as his hapless, can’t-do-anything-to-stop-him constituents.

In the coming new world shaped by the Marxism-obsessed Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod et al, there will be no room for competition.  It goes without saying that there’s never any room for competition in anti-Free Market, Marxist set ups.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Reagan’s House Heroes Stop Plan B

Call it a Reykjavik Moment.

An Air Traffic Controllers Moment.

Both of which were Reagan Moments.

Moments in American history when, under extreme pressure, Ronald Reagan simply refused to buckle. Against all the chorus shouted from the media and congressional bleachers — that he had failed by walking out on a bad deal with Gorbachev or recklessly fired striking air traffic controllers who were striking against federal law — Ronald Reagan never blinked.

And the fact that he didn’t blink made America — and the world — an infinitely better place.

Thursday night 13 conservative House Republicans defeated the Rule for the vote on Speaker Boehner’s highly controversial “Plan B.”

Those conservatives, by name (an asterisk denoting those who will not be returning to Congress next year) are:

Justin Amash of MI
Paul Broun of GA
Trent Franks of AZ
Louie Gohmert of TX
Tim Huelskamp of KS
Walter Jones of NC
Jim Jordan of OH
Andy Harris of MD
Jeff Landry of LA*
Thomas Massie of KY
Ron Paul of TX*
Jean Schmidt of OH*
Joe Walsh of IL*

Let’s not forget here that in terms of pressure, a great deal of it was coming from the GOP House Leadership. Congressmen Amash, Huelskamp, and Jones were removed from their committee assignments for not cooperating with the Leadership.

And make no mistake….the talk radio stars jumped on this, each in their own way. Rush was there. Hannity was there. Levin was there.

Then there was the great Brent Bozell from For America (as reported at Breitbart) pounding away just Wednesday at a Capitol Hill presser saying:

I’m going to make a prediction, right here and now, and write it down – and call me on it. If the Republicans support this tax increase, they will lose control of the House in the 2014 elections,” Bozell said.

Via: The American Spectator

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‘Democratic’ and ‘Anti-Business’ Are Becoming Synonymous

Forbes’s recently released list of “The Best States for Businesses and Careers” provides further evidence of the Democratic party’s striking erosion as a party of economic growth and prosperity.  Based on their votes in the most recent presidential election, all but three of Forbes’s top-10 states are Republican-leaning, while all but two of its bottom-10 states are Democratic-leaning. 

The top-10 states on Forbes’s list — Utah, Virginia, North Dakota, North Carolina, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Iowa — voted for Mitt Romney by an average margin of 14 percentage points.  Meanwhile, the bottom-10 states on Forbes’s list — California, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Maine — voted for President Obama by an average margin of 13 points.  That’s a 27-point swing from Romney to Obama as we move from the top-10 states to the bottom-10 states.

Forbes rated the states based on six factors: “business costs,” “labor supply,” “regulatory environment,” “economic climate,” “growth prospects,” and “quality of life.”  Forbes rated 62 percent of Obama’s states as being below average and 63 percent of Romney’s states as being above average.  Obama won only 33 percent of Forbes’s top-15 states but 73 percent of its bottom-15 states.

Via: Weekly Standard

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Court Rebukes Obama Administration’s “Trust Us” Revision of the HHS Mandate

The influential D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a short procedural order rebuking the Obama Administration in a lawsuit that was filed by Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College. The two religiously affiliated organizations had challenged the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) anti-conscience mandate that requires them to fund health care plans for their employees that provide abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization, or else pay substantial penalties.

As discussed in a Heritage Legal Memorandum, the plaintiffs have very strong claims that the mandate violates their rights under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Following the uproar that ensued after the mandate was issued, the government announced a one-year, temporary enforcement suspension against some religious employers. The Obama Administration misleadingly labeled this move a “safe harbor.” The Administration then announced its intention to develop and propose changes to the HHS mandate that would provide contraceptive coverage without cost-sharing to covered individuals while at the same time accommodating the religious objections of nonprofit organizations like the plaintiffs.

In light of this non-binding promise to make some hypothetical policy changes that would supposedly assuage objectors’ concerns, some lower courts dismissed this and other similar lawsuits as being premature. But the D.C. Circuit has now indicated that it is prepared to hold the government’s feet to the fire, so to speak.

Via: The Foundry

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The Cost of Spending: Can deficit-reduction plans make a dent?

The report from President Obama's highly touted deficit-reduction commission came out two years and 18 days ago. 

On that brisk December morning, Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad painted a dire picture if lawmakers didn't move quickly.

"If we fail to act now, our country could find itself in a circumstance in which we have to take draconian action, at the worst possible time in the middle of a crisis. I pray to God that we have the wisdom to act before that point," he said. 

The two commission co-chairmen couldn't agree more. "This baby ain't going away," co-chairman Alan Simpson said.

But so far, Congress has not been able to pass a plan that achieves what their proposal would -- a $4 trillion deficit reduction within 10 years. And it's unclear if they ever will. 

In the current talks over the looming fiscal crisis, the deal on the table is considerably smaller -- and yet President Obama said Wednesday that Republicans should be pleased with the spending cuts they'd be getting him to sign onto.

"Take the deal," he said. "You know, they will be able to claim that they have worked with me over the last two years to reduce the deficit more than any other deficit reduction package; that we will have stabilized it for 10 years. That is a significant achievement for them. They should be proud of it." 

But clearly, they're not.

Last week, Republicans warned about "kicking the can down the road" and "doing all the gimmicks that have been done in the past." 

Via: Fox News

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Leader Reid rules out Senate vote on 'Plan B'

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday the Senate will not vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) "Plan B" to extend tax rates for family income below $1 million.

The Democratic leader blasted Boehner for wasting time on "fiscal cliff" legislation that will not see floor time in the upper chamber.

“We are not taking up any of the things that they’re working on over there now,” Reid told reporters. “It’s very, very, very unfortunate the Republicans have wasted an entire week on a number of pointless political stunts.” 

“The bill has no future, if they don’t know it now, tell them what I said,” he added.

Reid said Boehner should schedule a House vote on the Senate-passed bill to extend the Bush-era tax rates for family income below $250,000.  

“The Senate bill is the only one that will be signed into law. We could protect middle-class families tomorrow,” Reid said. “The Speaker refuses to bring our bill to the floor because it would pass.”

Republicans argue the Senate-passed bill is not a solution to the stalemate because it would allow tax rates on inheritances and dividend income to rise dramatically.

Democratic leaders say the GOP plan will not see the light of day in the upper chamber because it raises taxes on middle-class families, does not extend the college tuition tax credit, the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit and includes an “unrealistic proposal” for the estate tax. 

Boehner’s plan would keep the top estate tax rate at 35 percent. It is scheduled to rise to 55 percent without congressional action.

Via: The Hill

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CONSERVATIVES SHOULD NOT SURRENDER

In a December 13 Wall Street Journal op-ed, Peter Berekowitz, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, argued that big government and the sexual revolution are here to stay. He urged conservatives to get used to it and to content themselves with shaping those realities.

A similar argument was pressed upon Britons in the 19^th century when socialism was in its ascendancy. To that, James Fitzjames Stephen responded: “The waters are out and no human force can turn them back, but I do not see why as we go with the stream we need sing Hallelujah to the river god.”

But Stephen and other conservatives of that period did not surrender to the waters. They offered a powerful alternative vision of ordered liberty. That vision and political theory is as potent today as it was more than a century ago.

There is no doubt that the welfare state will be difficult to dismantle. In fact, we are now struggling just to reduce its rate of growth. Yet, it will never be contained without the forceful articulation of the alternative conservative vision.

It is imperative that conservatives challenge the very legitimacy of the welfare state and show that its burdens, both financial and psychological, will inevitably destroy the American Republic. This necessarily means an engagement with progressives over political ideology. Theirs is fundamentally flawed. The conservative vision is the only hope for preserving a governing system that produced a nation that was truly the envy of the rest of the world.

Not all political concepts can coexist. Conservatism and big government cannot coexist. The ideology of American Progressivism, as practiced by the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress, is eroding the foundations of our constitutional system and national economy. That threat will not be defeated by efforts to shape and moderate the progressive ideology. Only a direct challenge holds the promise of achieving what is necessary to save the nation.

Via: Breitbart

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Hillary’s Benghazi Report (ARB) Blames Amb. Christopher Stevens (Part 3)

Click here for The Fix is in—Part I and Part II

When government officials like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton self- investigate themselves in ‘internal’ ‘independent’ reviews the truth is always covered up and buried. While you were sleeping on Tuesday night the Obama-Clinton regime did just that when they released a 39-page, unclassified report, an Accountability Review Board (ARB), on the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans: Ambassador Christopher Stevens, former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith, a computer expert.

Straight out of the Clinton era cover-up playbook, everyone except Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, disgraced, philandering ex-CIA director David Petraeus (the mastermind of the failed, deadly COIN policy in Afghanistan), and Defense Chief Leon Panetta, are blamed including the deceased. In this case—Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

On page 6 and 34 of ARB, Hillary’s handpicked ARB Board, chaired by Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering with Admiral Michael Mullen as Vice Chairman determined:

“The Board found that Ambassador Stevens made the decision to travel to Benghazi independently of Washington, per standard practice. Timing for his trip was driven in part by commitments in Tripoli, as well as a staffing gap between principal officers in Benghazi. Plans for the Ambassador’s trip provided for minimal close protection security support and were not shared thoroughly with the Embassy’s country team, who were not fully aware of planned movements off compound. The Ambassador did not see a direct threat of an attack of this nature and scale on the U.S. Mission in the overall negative trendline of security incidents from spring to summer 2012. His status as the leading U.S. government advocate on Libya policy, and his expertise on Benghazi in particular, caused Washington to give unusual deference to his judgments.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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OPINION: Why Boehner's Plan B Is Conservatives' Best Hope

After President Obama was re-elected on Nov. 6, Americans faced a reality on Nov. 7: Taxes are going up. The only question facing conservatives now is how much of that tax hike they can prevent while also preserving as much of the hard-fought spending cuts they won in 2011.

Here are the facts: If nothing happens by Jan. 1, taxes will automatically rise by about $4.6 trillion over 10 years. Every working American would be hit. However, thanks to the August 2011 debt-limit deal, spending is also set to be cut by $1.2 trillion. Conservatives often forget about this little piece of leverage.

Obama's top priority is to raise taxes as high as he possibly can. A $1.3 trillion tax hike was his latest offer. But undoing the $1.2 trillion spending cut in the debt-limit deal is also important to him. His latest offer not only rescinds the scheduled spending cut, but it also calls for $80 billion in new stimulus spending. Obama did also offer to cut Social Security by $120 billion over 10 years and make $800 billion more in other unspecified spending cuts, but he has flat out refused to entertain any serious entitlement reform proposals.

Boehner's last offer to Obama wasn't much better. It only raised taxes by $1 trillion and undid the $1.2 trillion spending cut from the debt-limit deal. Boehner did call for a new $1 trillion spending cut to replace the sequester, but no meaningful structural entitlement reforms were included.

Via: Washington Examiner

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Shootings up 49% in November in Gun-Free Zone of Chicago

Thelma Smith was visiting her mother's South Side home Friday night to talk about a birthday party in memory of her son, Samuel Clay, 25, who was shot and killed in April.

After several shots rang out on the next block, Smith rushed over and discovered to her horror that another son, William Lee Martin, 30, had been slain.

The father of six became the latest sad statistic as a violent November came to an end. Shootings jumped to 192 for the month, up 49 percent from 129 a year earlier, according to Police Department records.

That meant shootings were up more than 11 percent in the first 11 months of 2012 compared with a year earlier. Through October, shootings had risen about 81/2 percent.

And four fatal shootings on Friday alone pushed the homicide total for the month to 38, just above 37 in November 2011. For the first 11 months of 2012, homicides have risen to 480, a 21 percent increase from 398 a year earlier. If trends continue, Chicago will likely exceed 500 homicides for the first time since 2008.

The violence has earned Chicago unflattering national attention since the first three months of the year, when homicides skyrocketed amid unseasonably warm weather. The rate of increase has eased since then.

Robert Tracy, chief of the department's crime-control strategies, noted that the same trend has occurred with shootings after spiking by 40 percent in the early part of the year. He credited the department's use of "gang audits" — in which specialized units share gang intelligence with beat officers — and other strategies with helping bring that percentage down.

"I think we've done a very good job with that," Tracy said. "(But) any murder or any shooting is unacceptable."

As for the sharp rise in shootings in November, criminologists said that could merely be part of the random ebb and flow of crime statistics. Still, the increase is worth noting, said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of criminal justice and psychology at Loyola University Chicago.

"Last year's total was markedly low, so we would expect an uptick this year simply because statistics fluctuate in the direction in which they have more room to move," he said. "However, this is a substantial increase from one year to the next."

Via: Chicago Trbiune

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Surprise, Surprise: Report Finds Homeland Security Wasting Money

In his oversight report, “Safety at Any Price: Assessing the Impact of Homeland Security Spending in U.S. Cities,” Senator Tom Coburn (R–OK) highlights several examples of cities using homeland security grants for ill-advised expenses. Senator Coburn’s report is an important one and a must read for the media and policymakers.

My hometown of Columbus, Ohio, is singled out for wasting terrorism funds on an underwater robot. In case you didn’t know, Columbus isn’t known for its large bodies of water, and not one tunnel in Central Ohio goes underneath water, so who knows what terrorist threat Mayor Michael Coleman sees in our shallow rivers.

Coburn, however, gets a couple of vital things wrong that would have made his report even more powerful. First, contrary to his report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not fail “to issue preparedness goals, intended to shape the use of [Urban Areas Securities Initiative] funds, until last year—nine years after the program was created.” Secondly, DHS did not fail to establish “defined performance metrics to assess the effectiveness of federal expenditures made to date.”

As I detail in my 2009 book Homeland Security and Federalism: Protecting America from Outside the Beltway, DHS released the Initial National Preparedness Goal in April 2005, with the National Preparedness Guidelines (the successor document to the Initial National Preparedness Goal) in September 2007. The most recent National Preparedness Goal issued in September 2011 is just a warmed-over version of the older documents. The fact that these earlier documents existed makes Coburn’s points all the more troubling.

Via: The Foundry

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