Conservative Happenings

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

700 IRS CONTRACT WORKERS OWE $5.4M IN BACK TAXES

Nearly 700 employees of Internal Revenue Service contractors owe $5.4 million in back taxes, said a report Wednesday by the agency's inspector general.

More than half of those workers are supposed to be ineligible to do work for the IRS because they are not enrolled in installment plans to pay the taxes they owe.

Unlike other federal agencies, the IRS requires employees and those who work on agency contracts to comply with federal tax laws. That means they have to file returns on time and either pay all the taxes they owe or enroll in a payment plan.

"Because many contractor employees have access to sensitive IRS systems and facilities, the IRS should address tax noncompliance for these employees in a similar manner as it would for its own employees," said J. Russell George, Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

The IRS does a good job of checking compliance when contract workers first start their jobs, the report said. But the agency should do a better job of monitoring whether workers continue to follow tax laws afterward.

The report said the IRS vigorously checks tax compliance among the agency's 90,000 employees. Contract workers should be held to the same standard, the report said.

"The IRS takes tax compliance for taxpayers and those who work for the IRS very seriously," the IRS said in a statement. "For an IRS employee, failure to timely pay one's full federal tax liability is considered misconduct, which may result in discipline or removal."

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading.....

Schumer’s Dangerous Idea

Last Sunday on Meet the Press, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York announced he will propose legislation to permanently take control of the debt limit away from Congress and give it to the president. It’s a dictator’s dream come true. The framers of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress alone power to borrow, tax, and decide how public revenues are spent. They wanted to prevent a president from spending excessively and saddling the public with huge debts. That’s what the despotic kings of Europe had done.

Article 1 Sect. 8 states that “Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes…to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general welfare of the United States; To borrow Money on the credit of the United States.” Schumer’s proposal stuffs the Constitution in the waste basket. It would allow the president to raise the debt ceiling, subject only to a two-thirds vote of disapproval by both houses of Congress. That’s no more constitutional than allowing the president to impose whatever taxes he wants, unless two-thirds of both houses disapprove.

The bargain rushed through Congress last week to reopen the government ceded control over the debt limit to the president until February 7. That temporary concession itself violated the Constitution, though Washington politicians ignored that fact as they hurried to make a deal. Schumer would make this unconstitutional arrangement permanent.

Via: The American Spectator

WATCH: Leno Monologue ABUSES ObamaCare

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff

During his opening monologue Tuesday night NBC host Jay Leno discussed the lengthy and frustrating process that Americans face in signing up for Obamacare.

Via: Fox News

[VIDEO] Beckel: WH ‘Bludgeoned’ Me For Suggesting Obamacare Delay

Bob Beckel, a liberal co-host of Fox News’ The Five, said he received an angry phone call from the White House after suggesting on the air that the administration enact a six-month to one-year delay of Obamacare’s individual mandate due to the problems afflicting the online exchanges.

“I got a call from somebody at the White House who absolutely bludgeoned me over it,” Beckel said Tuesday. According to Beckel, a former campaign manager for Walter Mondale, he told the unnamed White House staffer that the dysfunctional website is frustrating potential customers and dissuading them from returning to the website.

Via: NRO

Liberal Radio Host: Ben Carson is GOP’s ‘Black Racial Hit Man’

During a segment on Al Sharpton’s radio show, author and regular co-host Earl Ofari Hutchinson identified GOP rising star Ben Carson as a “black racial hit man” for conservative views, a figure who can make pointed and controversial statements with less fear of reprisal than a white conservative.

“Let’s put a black face, two or three would be better, a black face on all the dirt, all the muck, all the grime, just everything we can think of negative that the GOP has made their stock and trade the last few years,” Hutchinson said. “Let’s put some black faces, maybe some Latino faces, but especially black faces out there, because we know how African Americans think about—and rightly so—the GOP.”

“Now, I think Ben Carson fits into the plan,” he continued. “You take someone who, on the surface, has a compelling life story. Many people know that. They’ve read his book, they heard him lecture over time. They know his tremendous accomplishments as a medical professional, overcoming many odds. So, he’s almost tailor-made to be the stalking horse, to say stupid things, to say dumb things, but more importantly, to say very, very pointed things. In other words, he’s almost—no, not almost, he is the black racial hit man.”

Carson recently made headlines when he compared Obamacare to slavery, which drew scores of criticism but was also followed by a second-place finish in the Values Voter Summit straw poll.

RELATED: Roland Martin Confronts Ben Carson Over Obamacare ‘Worst Thing Since Slavery’ Comments

“Essentially he can say things that a lot of white GOPers, conservatives, don’t feel comfortable saying, because if they say it they’ll be branded racist,” Carson said. “So we leave it to the Ben Carsons, theHerman Cains, the Clarence Thomases, the rare times he opens his mouth, for them to say these kinds of things, knowing that you might pause—hoping, anyway, that you might pause for a minute before branding them stupid, dumb, and most importantly, bigoted. So I think Carson fits into that.”

Listen to the whole clip below:

Via: Mediaite.com

From Shutdown to Amnesty

My fear is that having stuck it to the establishment with a defund strategy that, unfortunately, could never work, House Republicans will now turn around and do the establishment’s bidding on so-called comprehensive immigration reform.

1) The Republican leadership is going to feel pressure to do some sort of bi-partisan pivot in a misbegotten attempt to repair the party’s image, which at least for now is uniformly in the toilet in every poll.

2) The political judgment of the groups and members who favored the shutdown strategy and most strongly oppose amnesty is going to be highly suspect after defunding didn’t work. This will give them less influence in the immigration fight than they would have had otherwise.

3) The supporters of defunding in the House could use a few dozen members to drive the rest of the caucus. The dynamic will be different on immigration. Because Democrats all opposed any fiscal measure offered by the Republican leadership, the votes of those few dozen members were essential to passing anything. On immigration, Democrats could well support incremental immigration measures to get to a conference with the Senate, meaning a few dozen Republican votes against don’t mean anything anymore.

If the upshot of all this is that Obamacare is not defunded, the Republican party’s standing is diminished and we get a disastrous immigration bill, it will depressing indeed.

Via: NRO

With His Premiums More Than Doubling, This Dad Would “Rather File Bankruptcy” Than Deal with Obamacare

Ben, Charla, Chaz, Zane, and Jenna Neptun

Ben Neptun and his wife Charla are “furious” their family’s health insurance premium will be raised from $419 to $899 per month because of Obamacare.

“We will absolutely go in a hole with this change,” Ben said.

Ben, 36, and Charla, 34, are both home health nurses in Mobile, Alabama. They each make about $23 an hour and have spent the last year learning how to budget and recover from debt acquired in previous marriages. With a blended family of five—a 15-year-old, a 2-year-old, and a 10-month-old—Ben said “there’s no room for several hundred dollars extra per month” in their budget.

The Neptun family buys their insurance directly from Blue Cross Blue Shield and spends about $2,000 a year on health care for the family, not including the monthly premium. So when Ben received a letter from Blue Cross explaining health insurance rates were increasing to comply with the new Obamacare regulations, he was angry. The new regulations in Obamacare force healthy families like his to “spend a boatload for nothing,” he explained.

“We’re healthy, non-obese, non-smokers, and on no medication,” Ben said. “I should not have to pay more.”

Ben said if he is forced to spend $500 more per month on insurance, then that’s $500 less that’s going into his family’s basic needs like groceries, savings, and his children’s college funds. He’d “rather file bankruptcy and do without health insurance” because “the fines are less.”

Via: The Foundry

Red Flags? Company behind ObamaCare site has checkered past

While the company behind the dysfunctional HealthCare.gov was virtually unknown to the American public until this month, critics say the Obama administration should have known this multi-billion-dollar firm had a checkered history with other government contracts.

In projects stretching from Canada to Hawaii, parent company CGI Group and its subsidiaries ran into complaints about its performance. And this was while, and in some cases before, CGI Federal was paid millions, along with other contractors, to create the ObamaCare website.

"The morning I heard CGI was behind [Healthcare.gov], I said, my God, no wonder that thing doesn't work," said James Bagnola, a Texas-based corporate consultant who was hired by the Hawaii Department of Taxation (DOTAX) in 2008.

CGI Technologies and Solutions, Inc., another subsidiary, had been responsible for overhauling the IT systems for the Hawaii tax department, and then, developing its new delinquent tax collection services. Not only was the software and implementation problematic, but the second contract, signed in 2009, paid CGI millions for work it did not complete, according to a state audit completed in 2010 on the matter.

Via: Fox News

Report: U.S. Spent $3.7 Trillion on Welfare Over Last 5 Years

New research from the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee shows that over the last 5 years, the U.S. has spent about $3.7 trillion on welfare. Here's a chart, showing that spending versus transportation, education, and NASA spending:

"We have just concluded the 5th fiscal year since President Obama took office. During those five years, the federal government has spent a total $3.7 trillion on approximately 80 different means-tested poverty and welfare programs. The common feature of means-tested assistance programs is that they are graduated based on a person’s income and, in contrast to programs like Social Security or Medicare, they are a free benefit and not paid into by the recipient," says the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee.

"The enormous sum spent on means-tested assistance is nearly five times greater than the combined amount spent on NASA, education, and all federal transportation projects over that time. ($3.7 trillion is not even the entire amount spent on federal poverty support, as states contribute more than $200 billion each year to this federal nexus—primarily in the form of free low-income health care.)

Via: Weekly Standard

Government War On Conservatives Still On

The government’s war on conservatives hasn’t stopped. On Saturday, Christine O’Donnell revealed a second onslaught from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in addition to the illegal accessing and abuse of her income tax records by the Internal Revenue Service. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is investigating the IRS on that. News recently broke that the IRS targeted Dr. Ben Carson, for the first time, immediately after he criticized Barack Obama.

O’Donnell revealed on Saturday morning that the FEC is demanding payment of tribute (my words) to settle false accusations invented by a George Soros front group. Perhaps such shakedowns are an FEC money source like country speed traps.

For example, in 1996, in the U.S. Senate race in Illinois, the FEC demanded that Republican Al Salvi pay $200,000 in fines to settle Democrat complaints filed against him. The same, now-infamous Lois Lerner worked at the FEC before carrying her partisan witch hunt over to the IRS.

The FEC kept lowering its demands for money from Salvi, coupled with frightening threats. The FEC dropped its ransom demand to $100,000, then to $40,000. Finally, Lois Lerner offered to drop the case if Salvi pledged never to run for office again. Nearly four years and a hundred thousand dollars in legal fees later, Federal judge George Lindbergh threw the case out, shocking FEC attorney Lerner (who argued the case in court). “We never lose!” Lerner said to Salvi afterwards. But four years of scandal destroyed Salvi’s political career.

Now remember this is about you, dear reader. If government bureaucrats can do this to Christine O’Donnell, who can get on TV when she wants, are you safe? What protection do you have? We need to remember that these events impact and should concern all of us, not just one woman. Place yourself in this story.

Via: Canada Free Press

Obama's Circle of Appeasers

On July 6, 1939 the British Foreign Office heard from the British Military Attaché in Berlin that Hitler's Finance Minister Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk had advised a visiting British General: "Take Winston Churchill into the Cabinet. Churchill is the only Englishman Hitler is afraid of. He does not take Prime Minster Chamberlain or Halifax seriously, but he places Churchill in the same category as Roosevelt. The mere fact of giving him a leading Ministerial post would convince Hitler that we really meant to stand up to him."

In 2013, there is no Churchill anywhere except Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the lone prophet who is warning the world not to be fooled and misled by the new conciliatory tone of the new Iranian president Hasan Rouhani while his regime continues developing its nuclear weapons program.

There is no Roosevelt in the White House. Roosevelt did not try to meet, talk to, or negotiate with Hitler or any of his lieutenants.

Sadly, President Obama has tried repeatedly to meet and shake the hand of one of the lieutenants of the true dictator of Iran, Ali Khamenei. While Obama proudly described his 15-minute phone call with Iranian president Rouhani as an historical breakthrough which has the potential to resolve the nuclear issue through negotiations and form a new relationship with Iran, Rouhani described the phone call as the culmination of a desperate and humiliating U.S. pursuit of the Iranian president.

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading.....

Study: Average Premiums for Young Women to Increase 193%

Healthy young women will see their premiums rise by an average of almost 200 percent under Obamacare, with increases occurring in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to a new study.

Earlier this month, the American Action Forum released an analysisthat found the average 30-year-old male nonsmoker would see his premiums rise 260 percent.

Using the same metrics, the organization found that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would be just as harsh on women trying to purchase bronze level plans, the cheapest insurance available in the marketplace.

“All 50 states and the District of Columbia saw insurance rate increases, with 42 of those states experiencing triple digit percentage increases in premiums for the lowest-priced coverage,” the study said. “Pre-ACA premiums for a 30-year-old nonsmoking woman average $74.49 monthly, while post-ACA premiums average $188.72 per month, a $114.23, or 153 percent, increase.”

Overall, states averaged a 193 percent increase in premiums for 30-year-old female nonsmokers.

The American Action Forum, a center-right policy institute led by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office, compared premiums across the country in 2013 to rates under the federally and state run exchanges in the heath insurance marketplace.

Similar to their previous study, the organization found that even with subsidies, young women would likely forego health insurance since the penalty for being uninsured is much cheaper than the premiums in the marketplace.

Via: WFB

[VIDEO] HealthCare.gov pricing feature can be off the mark Reports CBS

IS THIS RIGHT?? CBS IS REPORTING A PROBLEM WITH OBAMACARE????

(CBS News) CBS News has uncovered a serious pricing problem with HealthCare.gov. It stems from the Obama administration's efforts to improve its health care website. A new online feature can dramatically underestimate the cost of insurance.

The administration announced it would provide a new "shop and browse" feature Sunday, but it's not giving consumers the real picture. In some cases, people could end up paying double of what they see on the website, CBS News' Jan Crawford reported Wednesday on "CBS This Morning."

Special Section: Obamacare Kicks Off
Marco Rubio: Postponing Obamacare mandate a "prudent approach"
How long can Obamacare survive with website woes?

As President Obama promises to fix HealthCare.gov, his administration is touting what it calls "improvements" in design, specifically a feature that allows you to "See Plans Now." White House press secretary Jay Carney has said, "Americans across the country can type in their zip code and shop and browse."

But CBS News has learned the new "shop and browse" feature often comes with the wrong price tags.

(Watch at left Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' recent comments on the website's problems)

Industry analysts, such as Jonathan Wu, point to how the website lumps people only into two broad categories: "49 or under" and "50 or older."

Wu said it's "incredibly misleading for people that are trying to get a sense of what they're paying."

Via: CBS News

REPORT: STATE EXCHANGE ENROLLMENTS MOSTLY MEDICAID, NOT PRIVATE INSURANCE PLANS

Defenders of President Obama’s signature health reform legislation claim the states that put effort into establishing their own exchanges, mostly Democrat-led, are signing people up successfully for ObamaCare. A new report, however, indicates that most of the individuals signing up in these state-run exchanges are enrolling into Medicaid.

Rachana Dixit at InsideHealthPolicy wrote Tuesday that enrollment into Medicaid in many of the state-run exchanges is “significantly outpacing the number of people that so far have enrolled into qualified health plans.” Medicaid enrollment numbers, Dixit observed, have reached tens of thousands in states such as Maryland, Washington, and Oregon.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had projected that seven million people would enroll in the ObamaCare exchanges in 2014 while eight million would enroll in Medicaid. If Health and Human Services (HHS) hopes to get seven million enrolled by the end of March, about a third of them need to be healthy, young enrollees who will foot the bill for the higher risk patients who will need more health care services.

Dixit wrote that, in light of the significant problems the ObamaCare rollout has experienced, consultants tracking the exchanges are now wondering whether enough young and healthy enrollees will actually sign up to make ObamaCare work.

For example, Maryland’s state-run exchange - Maryland Health Connection - states 82,473 residents as of September had enrolled in Medicaid for coverage beginning January 1st, yet, between October 1st and 17th, there were 2,393 enrollments into the qualified health insurance plans.

Via: Breitbart

White House national security official fired for critical tweets

A White House national security official has been fired after he was revealed to be the man behind an anonymous Twitter account critical of the Obama administration.

A senior administration official confirmed to Fox News that Jofi Joseph, a director in the nuclear non-proliferation section of the White House's national security section, was fired last week after he was discovered as being the man behind the "@netsecwonk" Twitter account. Joseph's firing was first reported by The Daily Beast.

Joseph admitted he was responsible for the account in an email to Politico Monday evening, writing, "What started out as an intended parody account of DC culture developed over time into a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments. I bear complete responsibility for this affair and I sincerely apologize to everyone I insulted."

The account had been active since February 2011 and had been used to criticize the administration's policies and occasionally the personal qualities of its top officials.

For example, according to Tweets saved by the Daily Beast before the "@natsecwonk" account was shutdown last week, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett was referred to as a "vacuous cipher."

Via: Fox News Political

Saudi Arabia severs diplomatic ties with US over response to conflict in Syria

'Major change': Prince Bandar Bin Sultan said the kingdom will make a

Saudi Arabia is an important ally to the U.S. as it provides a secure source of oil
Saudi diplomats now promise a 'major shift' in relations with the U.S. over inaction in the conflict in Syria
Secretary of State John Kerry says he is committed to keeping a good relationship with the Saudis

Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years.

Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a 'major shift' in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had

'The shift away from the U.S. is a major one,' the source close to Saudi policy said. 'Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent.'

It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.

The growing breach between the United States and Saudi Arabia was also on display in Washington, where another senior Saudi prince criticized Obama's Middle East policies, accusing him of 'dithering' on Syria and Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Via: UK Daily Mail

Continue Reading....

Sebelius: I'm Not Signing Up for Obamacare

(CNSNews.com) - In an interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta Tuesday night, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she won't be enrolling in the problem-plagued health insurance system that she was charged to implement.

"I have created an account on the site. I have not tried signing up, because I have insurance," she told Gupta.

But Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says government officials like Sebelius should be required to live under the same laws they impose on everyone else.

Paul is now plugging a constitutional amendment that states, "Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress." The amendment also contains two provisions that apply that same principle to the Executive Branch and Judicial Branch of the federal government.

Appearing on Fox News Tuesday evening, Paul told Sean Hannity he thinks this is an amendment "that really everybody ought to be able to agree to."

"There have been a lot of times in our history -- originally, congressional members were exempt from Social Security. That's not true now because people got mad about it. But really, the law should be applied equally to everyone," Paul said. "I think that's a basic precept of the law. So I really think maybe we'll get some bipartisanship on this and maybe we'll get it passed."

Via: CNS News

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Popular Posts