Fourteen of America’s 25 Biggest Campaign Donors Are Unions

Yesterday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid went on a rant on the Senate floor about the Koch brothers. Reid seems to believe that the fraternal billionaires are buying America with their campaign contributions, saying “whoever has the most money gets the most free speech” — implying, I suppose, that Charles and David Koch, as some of the richest men in the world, control the most political speech. However, as the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott noted a few weeks ago, the biggest donors in America may not be what you’d expect.

I reproduced this chart that shows the top 25 donors to political campaigns between 1989 and 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics:

Mr. Reid may be interested to know the following:

• The top campaign donor of the last 25 years is ActBlue, an online political-action committee dedicated to raising funds for Democrats. ActBlue’s political contributions, which total close to $100 million, are even more impressive when one realizes that it was only launched in 2004. That’s $100 million in ten years.
• Fourteen labor unions were among the top 25 political campaign contributors.
• Three public-sector unions were among the 14 labor groups: the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of Teachers. Their combined contributions amount to $150 million, or 15 percent of the top 25’s approximately $1 billion in donations since 1989.
• Public- and private-sector unions contributed 55.6 percent — $552 million — of the top 25’s contributions.
• Large private companies contributed $441 million in campaign contributions. Among them were banks and insurance firms such as JPMorgan Chase, trade associations such as the National Association of Realtors and the American Medical Association, and technology and telecommunications companies such as AT&T and Microsoft.

Via: NRO

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Issa, Cummings clash at hearing after ex-IRS official Lerner takes 5th

A House hearing on the IRS targeting scandal rapidly broke down into a heated and deeply personal argument between a top Democrat and Republican, moments after former IRS official Lois Lerner once again invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to testify. 

Lerner, who last year refused to answer questions about her role in singling out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status, was called back before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday. Though Republicans argue she waived her Fifth Amendment right by giving a statement during the last hearing, Lerner continued to invoke that right on Wednesday. 

"On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully exercise my Fifth Amendment right and decline to answer that question," she said in response to several questions. 

But ranking Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., got into a heated argument with Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., after Issa tried to adjourn the hearing. 

Issa at first stood up and prepared to leave as Cummings said he wanted to ask a "procedural question." In seconds, tensions flared. 

"Mr. Chairman, you cannot run a committee like this," Cummings appealed. 

Cummings' microphone was then turned off, and then flipped back on again. Issa sat down momentarily, but then abruptly told Lerner she was "released" and said: "We're adjourned, close it down."

Via: Fox News

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History not on Democrats’ side in this mid-term election

Democrats in Missouri and Kansas have great hopes of picking up seats in this year’s mid-term elections.

     

The chart says it all

Read But history suggests otherwise, and it suggests that in unmistakable terms.

In fact, Tim Storey, a political expert for the National Conference of State Legislatures says this:

“Since 1902, the party in the White House lost seats in legislatures in 26 of the 28 mid-term elections. The only exceptions being in 1934 when Democrats gained 1108 seats and in 2002 when Republicans netted 177 seats in the post 9/11 election.”

Click on the link for a chart that lays it all out. But Democrats, be forewarned: It’ll depress you.

Via: Kansas City Star

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Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/26/4849015/history-not-on-democrats-side.html#storylink=cpy

     

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/26/4849015/history-not-on-democrats-side.html#storylink=cpy

EPA starts process that could restrict Pebble Mine

JUNEAU, Alaska — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it is taking the first steps toward restricting or even prohibiting development of a massive gold-and-copper prospect near the headwaters of a premier sockeye salmon fishery in southwest Alaska — though no final decision has been made.

While the rarely used EPA process is underway, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot approve a permit for the proposed Pebble Mine project.

The announcement Friday follows release of an EPA report in January that found large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay watershed posed significant risk to salmon and could adversely affect Alaska Natives in the region, whose culture is built around salmon.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy made clear Friday that no final decisions have been made. While McCarthy said scientific and other data has provided “ample reason” for EPA to believe a mine of the size and scope of Pebble “would have significant and irreversible negative impacts on the Bristol Bay watershed and its salmon-bearing waters,” she said EPA is open to receiving more information.

Mine opponents have been urging EPA to take steps to protect the region and hailed Friday’s announcement as significant. Supporters of Pebble Mine fear that EPA will move to block the project even before it gets to the permitting phase.

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which is working to advance the mine project, called the EPA process a “major overreach.” In a statement, Collier said EPA’s actions to date “have gone well outside of its normal practice, have been biased throughout, and have been unduly influenced by environmental advocacy organizations.”

Via: Washington Post

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Is Common Core the One Policy the Public Won’t Let Obama Administration Get Away With?

Some conservatives might get frustrated with the lack of public outrage over the Obama administration’s executive overreach, but there has been no apathy when it comes to pushing a federal takeover of education, conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly wrote.

Karima Hawkins of Jackson, foreground, holds a sign against Common Core, the State Standards Initiative that established a single set of educational standards for kindergarten through 12th grade in English language arts and mathematics, at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014. Opponents of Common Core hope to convince legislators into ending the initiative. Lawmakers return to the Capitol for a three-month session this year. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

“Many people said ho-hum when President Barack Obama threatened to change any law with his pen or phone, and even use that power to personally alter Obamacare and the welfare law, and to ‘legislate’ the Dream Act that Congress refused to pass,” Schlafly wrote for the Christian Post. “But Americans are rising up by the tens of thousands to stop Common Core, which is the current attempt to compel all U.S. children to be taught the same material and not other things parents might think important.”

Common Core is a set of K-12 math and English standards that were adopted by 45 states. Developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, the standards are backed by the Obama administration.

Schlafly pointed out that the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the 1970 General Education Provisions Act and the 1979 law establishing the U.S. Department of Education all prohibit a national curriculum.

Hamstrung by the letter of the law, Schlafly said that President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are using Common Core to go around that.

“Despite all those emphatic words, Obama’s Department of Education, headed by an alumnus of the Chicago Democratic machine and other leftists, seeks to mold the minds of all our children into supporters of big government,” she wrote. “Their vehicle to accomplish this is Common Core, which is artfully designed to impose de facto national uniformity while complying with all explicit federal prohibitions.”

“The mechanism of control is the tests all students must take, which will be written by the people who created Common Core,” Schlafly continued. “If students haven’t studied a curriculum “aligned” with Common Core, they will have a hard time passing the tests required for a high school diploma and entry into college.”

She added that once the standards are adopted, they can’t be changed at the state level and that two national groups, the NGA and CCSO have ownership of the standards.

Via: The Blaze

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When will America end cash-for-visas racket?

by Michelle Malkin
Creators SyndicateCopyright 2014

This may be the first and last time I ever write these words: America, follow Canada.
Our neighbors to the north finally have wised up to the international cash-for-visas scam. Last week, the country ended its foreign investor program that put residency up for sale to the highest bidder. We should have done the same a long time ago.

Canada’s Immigrant Investor Program granted permanent residency to wealthy foreigners who forked over 800,000 Canadian dollars for a five-year, zero-interest loan to one of the country’s provinces. The scheme turned out to be a magnet for tens of thousands of millionaires from Hong Kong and China. But as the Canadian Ministry of Finance concluded in its annual budget report this year, the program “undervalued Canadian permanent residence” and showed “little evidence that immigrant investors as a class are maintaining ties to Canada or making a positive economic contribution to the country.”

In several provinces, the foreign investor racket was riddled from top to bottom with fraud. Whistleblowers in the Prince Edward Island immigration office exposed rampant bribery among bureaucrats and consultants, who helped their clients jump the queue. The government failed to monitor immigrant investors or verify the promised economic benefits of the “investments.” The program didn’t just fast-track supposed business people with dubious business backgrounds, but also their entire extended families, who walled themselves in segregated neighborhoods.

Ads in Dubai bragged that investors didn’t even need to live in the country to take advantage of the citizenship-for-sale deal — and that their dependents could avail themselves of full health care and education benefits.

Fifteen years ago, an independent auditor hired by the Canadian government warned that he had “found that in many cases there was no investment at all or that the amount of that investment was grossly inflated.” The auditor nailed the expedient commodification of citizenship: “Canadians gave up something of real value — a visa or passport — and received very little in return.” He concluded: “A lot of people made a lot of money, mostly lawyers and immigration consultants who set up these bogus investments. It’s a massive sham. The middlemen made hundreds of millions of dollars.”

I’ve been issuing the very same warnings about America’s EB-5 immigrant investor visa program, created under an obscure section of the 1990 Immigration Act, for more than a decade. The details of the U.S. program vary, but the facade is the same: trading residency on the cheap for the shady promise of economic development. Just as in Canada, the U.S. racket’s alleged economic benefits are largely hype.

Via: Michelle Malkin

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The Ten Most Abusive Obama Executive Actions

President Obama has made liberal use of "executive action" throughout his presidency, and pledged to make even more use of executive action in this year's State of the Union speech. He seems to think that because Republicans don't want to implement his agenda, he can go around Congress.

The Heritage Foundation is out with a new report on President Obama's executive actions, titled "An Executive Unbound," finding that "abusive, unlawful, even potentially unconstitutional unilateral action has been a hallmark of the Obama Administration." They've also compiled a list of the top ten abusive executive actions taken by the President.

1. Amending Obamacare’s employer mandate, providing an unauthorized subsidy to congressional staff, and encouraging state insurance commissioners not to enforce certain requirements.
2 Inventing labor law “exemptions” in violation of the WARN Act so that workers would not receive notice of impending layoffs days before the 2012 election.
3. Waiving the mandatory work requirement under the 1996 comprehensive welfare reform law, which required able-bodied adults to work, prepare for work, or look for work in order to receive benefits under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.
4. Ignoring a statutory deadline and refusing to consider an application related to nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain, which activists sought to block for years.
5. Circumventing the Senate’s duty to provide advice and consent on appointments and instead making “recess” appointments in violation of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution when the Senate was actually in session.
6. Deciding not to defend the constitutionality of the federal definition of marriage in court.
7. Implementing Common Core national standards through strings-attached waivers from the No Child Left Behind Act.
8. Intimidating Florida to stop its voter roll cleanup, which included removing ineligible voters such as noncitizens, before the 2012 election.
9. Imposing the DREAM Act by executive fiat under the guise of “prosecutorial discretion.”
10. Refusing to enforce federal drug laws in states that have legalized marijuana.

Heritage's entire report is an excellent read - and these are ten of the most egregious actions of the Obama Administration.

Via: Townhall

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The Hotline's Senate Race Rankings: Republicans in Command

The 2014 Senate landscape continues to look challenging for Democrats. Republicans can take back the chamber after eight years of Democratic control with a net gain of six seats, and the seven seats most likely to flip are held by Democrats in states President Obama lost in 2012.

The most important change since we looked at the Senate map three months ago is the glut of outside spending, particularly against Democratic incumbents in the majority-making seats of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Alaska. The nonprofit, conservative group Americans for Prosperity has dumped tens of millions into those states, beating up incumbents who now have--at best--50/50 chances of retaining their seats.

Republicans are well positioned to win a Senate majority in 2014. A favorable map, combined with a positive national environment driven by disapproval of the health care law, have put Democrats on the defensive.

The rankings are best considered in tiers. The first two seats are very likely to flip, while in seats 3 and 4 Republicans are favored to take over. In seats 5 through 7, Democratic incumbents in red states are deeply vulnerable, and if Republicans win the top four, they need only two of the three seats in this tier to control the Senate.

Seats 8 to 12 are also close to 50/50 races. Colorado debuts in this tier after the top recruit, Rep. Cory Gardner, decided to run. In seats 13 to 15, the Democratic incumbent is likely to retain control of the seat, although the races bear watching--and Republicans don't need seats 13 to 15 to wrestle control of the majority.

Via: National Journal

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Costs of ObamaCare bungles start to add up, with Maryland first at about $30.5M

Maryland could end up spending as much as $30.5 million as a result of a glitch in its ObamaCare website, as the Obama administration steps in to help states with problematic exchanges.

Because of Maryland’s defective exchange, the state cannot determine whether customers remain eligible for Medicaid, according to a report by state budget analysts released Thursday.

As a result, the state has agreed with the federal government to a six-month delay in determining eligibility, meaning that payments will continue to be made to customers who are not eligible until the system is fixed. The delay will cost the state $17.8 million in fiscal 2014 and $12.7 million in fiscal 2015, the analysts estimated.

On Friday, the Obama administration said it would suspend some Affordable Care Act rules to help the 14 states with their own ObamaCare sites, particularly Maryland, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Oregon, which have had the most problems.

The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plan, completed a day earlier, states the federal government will help pay for “qualified” health-insurance plans for customers in those states who because of “exceptional circumstances” had to buy plans outside of ObamaCare exchanges, as reported first by The Washington Post.

Via: Fox News Politics

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Frustrated States Fight Federal Overreach

States frustrated by federal overreach have been taking action to nullify laws coming from Washington, D.C. — but the efforts may prove futile given long-standing court precedents dictating that states can't overturn federal law. 

The federal actions under fire range from Obamacare and gun control laws to a controversial detention measure contained in a defense authorization bill.

Editor’s Note: New 'Obamacare Survival Guide' Reveals Dangers Ahead for Your Healthcare

In one example, the South Carolina House passed the "Freedom of Health Care Protection Act" to exempt state residents from Obamacare requirements. The bill went to the state Senate in mid-February. 

If approved and signed by the Republican governor, the law would prohibit state dollars from going toward implementation of the federal healthcare reform. 

West Virginia in January considered a bill in its House of Delegates to void key facets of Obamacare. And in 2011, Idaho mulled legislation to declare the healthcare reform "void and of no effect" in the state. Arizona, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia are among the other dozen or so states that have considered similar opt-out bills.

Obamacare is not the only perceived federal overreach. Missouri's Senate in February passed a bill to nullify federal gun control laws and imprison any federal agent who tries to enforce them in the state. 

The bill, which has backing in the state House, was brought forward last year after President Barack Obama took to the national stage seeking an expanded background-checks law as well as a ban on assault weapons.

Missouri's bill likely won't pass the governor's desk — Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon has vowed to veto it — but lawmakers pressured by pro-Second Amendment constituents decided to try the nullification route anyway.

"I am proud to say that we have passed arguably one of the strongest Second Amendment protections in the country,” the bill's sponsor, state Sen. Brian Nieves, told The Associated Press.

Kansas passed its own nullification gun law a few months earlier, via its "Second Amendment Protection Act" asserting that guns that are made and owned in Kansas, including semi-automatics, are not subject to federal firearms regulations and that federal agents who try to enforce their laws can be penalized. 


Via: Newsmax
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7 OBAMACARE NUMBERS THAT HAVE DEMOCRATS PANICKING

As the seemingly endless deluge of negative Obamacare developments continue to mount up, theNational Journal’s “Hotline” reported on Thursday that “disapproval of the health care law” has “put Democrats on the defensive” heading into the November midterm elections. 

Here are seven Obamacare figures that have Democratic insiders sweating. 

1.  56% of uninsured Americans do not like Obamacare.

The Kaiser Family Foundation’s recent polling data reveal that 56% of uninsured Americans--the very people whom Obamacare purports to help--do not like Obamacare.

2.  According to the Obama administration’s own figures, Obamacare will spike premiums on 11 million small business employees.

A new report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services concluded that two-thirds of small businesses that offer health insurance will pay higher premiums due to Obamacare. That, reports the Washington Post, means 11 million workers can expect their premiums to jump because of Obamacare. Worse for Democrats, because many employers renewed their pre-Obamacare health plans before the end of 2013, many of these rate spikes will be timed to hit beginning in the second part of 2014 right before the November 4 midterm elections.

3.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says Obamacare will kill 2.5 million jobs over the next 10 years.

By creating disincentives to work, the CBO says Obamacare will result in a “decline in the number of full-time equivalent workers of about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024.”

4.  Obamacare will cost taxpayers between $1.8 and $2.6 trillion over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reported that Obamacare will cost American taxpayers $1.798 trillion. The Senate GOP Budget Committee says those figures are based on overly optimistic economic assumptions and scores the real cost at $2.6 trillion.

5.  According to the New York Times, 800,000 Obamacare enrollees failed to pay their first premium.

Even as the Obama administration attempts to put a happy face on its low four million enrollees—a figure far removed from its seven million goal--the New York Times says at least 20% of all the people who applied for Obamacare never paid their first month’s premium, thereby rendering them still uninsured.

6.  Just 11% of Obamacare customers were previously uninsured.

The purported purpose of Obamacare was to increase health care coverage of uninsured Americans. However, as the Wall Street Journal reported, a McKinsey & Co. study last month found that “only 11% of consumers who bought new coverage under the law were previously uninsured.”

7.  Obama reassured Americans at least 36 times that if they liked their health care plan, they could keep their health care plan.

President Barack Obama’s now-infamous promise, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” was named Politifact’s “Lie of the Year.” Obama stated the claim at least 36 times, and several Democrats running in tight races parroted the president’s comments before millions of Americans saw their health insurance plans canceled due to Obamacare. Political ads have already begun hitting voters showcasing Democratic candidates repeating Obama’s ill-fated promise.

Via: Breitbart

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