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News/Politics 12-12-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Well maybe we don’t have a deal……

From RollCall  “Unsure whether they have the votes to pass a trillion-dollar federal spending package, House GOP leaders on Thursday afternoon delayed a final vote on the “cromnibus.”

They did so with mere hours to go until the government is set to run out of funding, and just before the House was scheduled to vote.

GOP leaders called a recess to floor proceedings, with a GOP leadership aide confirming “no conference meeting [is] planned at this time.” The aide said “leadership teams are still talking to their respective members,” and noted, “We still plan to vote this afternoon.”

It’s not clear, however, what they will be voting on.

If Republicans can’t surmount the impasse, they could decide to proceed with swiftly moving a short-term continuing resolution through the chamber, which the Senate could also pass before 11:59 p.m., when current funding expires.”

So will Elizabeth Warren now call herself a “hostage taker” or an “economic terrorist” like she did to Republicans during the last shutdown, or is that only when Republicans do it?

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2. Now about Boehner’s prior spending deals….

From CNSNews  “The federal debt has increased by $3.8 trillion in the 3.8 years that have passed since House Speaker John Boehner cut his first spending deal with Senate Democrats and President Obama.

That works out to $32,938.38 for every household in the United States—including those taking federal welfare benefits—and $42,783.20 for every full-time year-round private-sector worker in the United States.

In fact, the $42,783.20 that the federal government has borrowed per full-time year-round private-sector worker since Boehner cut his first federal spending deal exceeds the $41,916 that according to the Census Bureau was median annual earnings of full-time year-round private-sector wage and salary workers in 2013.”

That should answer Bob’s question from yesterday about per taxpayer costs.

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3. Here’s a “phony scandal” update. All evidence continues to point to White House involvement.

From Forbes  “Sadly, the 18 month investigation into the IRS targeting of conservative groups isn’t over, and it may be worse than anyone thought. A federal judge has broken loose more emails that the DOJ had surely hoped would never surface. The picture it reveals isn’t pretty. The documents prove that Lois Lerner met with DOJ’s Election Crimes Division a month before the 2010 elections.

It has to be embarrassing to the DOJ, which may not be the most impartial one to be investigating the IRS. In fact, the DOJ withheld over 800 pages of Lerner documents citing “taxpayer privacy” and “deliberative privilege.” Yet these internal DOJ documents show Ms. Lerner was talking to DOJ officials about prosecuting tax-exempt entities (yes, criminally!) two years before the IRS conceded there was inappropriate targeting.

Ms. Lerner met with top officials from the DOJ’s Election Crimes Branch in October of 2010. Although Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the DOJ (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice, No. 14-cv-01239), the DOJ coughed up dirt only on court order. Even then, the DOJ handed over only two pages of heavily redacted emails.”

“What’s more, the DOJ withheld 832 pages in their entirety. They revealed that Mr. Obama’s DOJ called an October 8, 2010 meeting with the IRS “concerning 501(c)(4) issues.” 

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4. 70% of respondents want Congress to keep digging.

From FoxNews  “Call it a “kumbaya” question, as majorities of Democrats (60 percent), independents (75 percent) and Republicans (78 percent) support lawmakers continuing to dig. 

The new poll also asked why the White House is refusing to release thousands of pages of documents related to the IRS targeting.  By nearly three-to-one people think it’s because the administration wants to keep its role in the scandal secret (63 percent) rather than to keep taxpayer information confidential (22 percent). 

Even Democrats are more likely to say the Obama White House is withholding documents to hide its involvement (45 percent) rather than to protect taxpayers (35 percent).  Another 20 percent is unsure.”

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5. Yet another backdoor to citizenship for illegal immigrants?

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “President Obama’s recently unveiled immigration scheme creates a new path for illegal immigrants and those who overstay their visas to become legal citizens nearly instantly, according to Utah Sen. Mike Lee.

Taking to the Senate floor Thursday to reveal the backdoor he said Obama is opening to millions more illegals beyond the parents of children here legally, the Republican said, “This is the danger of unilateral executive action.””

“It would also provide a way for those here illegally to be waived into America without any punishment.

Lee said that the Obama plan would provide “advance parole” to illegals, putting them on the fast track to a green card and citizenship. That status has been difficult to get in the past.

Now, however, he said that the president plans to ease the 3-10 year waiting period for those who leave then try to reenter legally by granting provisional waivers for entry. What’s more, in some cases illegals will be allowed to stay in the United States while waiting for those provisional waivers.”

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News/Politics 12-11-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. So what’s in that spending bill? Here’s a good summary.

From TheWashingtonPost  “The $1.01 trillion spending bill unveiled late Tuesday will keep most of the federal government funded through next September — and it’s packed with hundreds of policy instructions, known on Capitol Hill as “riders,” that will upset or excite Democrats, Republicans and various special interest groups.

So, what’s in the bill? We’ve sifted through the legislation, consulted supporting documents from Democratic and Republican aides, and called out some of the more notable and controversial elements below. (If you want to review detailed reports on all 12 parts of the spending bill, click here.)”

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2. The CIA is firing back.

From TheHill  “Current and former heads of U.S. spy agencies are criticizing a Senate report’s claim that the CIA tortured detainees and misled the public about its “enhanced interrogation” techniques.”

“George Tenet, who was CIA director through much of the Bush administration, said the report is “biased, inaccurate, and destructive” and said it “does damage to U.S. national security, to the men and women of the Central Intelligence Agency, and most of all to the truth.” “It is indeed a dark day for congressional oversight,” Tenet added.”

“A number of former officials with “hundreds of years of combined service” launched a website to push back on the report, which they described as “marred by errors of facts and interpretation and is completely at odds with the reality that the leaders and officers of the Central Intelligence Agency lived through.”

“It represents the single worst example of congressional oversight in our many years of government service,” they said.”

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3. So she doesn’t like being spied on, huh? Now you know how the rest of us feel Diane.

From CNN  “The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the CIA of secretly removing classified documents from her staff’s computers in the middle of an oversight investigation, while another lawmaker said Congress should “declare war” on the spy agency if it’s true.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein said CIA Director John Brennan told her in January that agency personnel searched the computers last year because they believed the panel’s investigators might have gained access to materials on an internal review they were not authorized to see.

“The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the internal review or how we obtained it,” Feinstein said in blistering remarks on the Senate floor. “Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computer.”

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4. More proof the Obama admin is targeting legal businesses it doesn’t like. Just imagine the outrage from Democrats if Republicans did this.

From TheDailySignal  “Senior officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation actively sought to crack down on legal businesses that the Obama administration – or the officials themselves – deemed morally objectionable, a new congressional report finds.

Released today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the 20-page investigative report details how the FDIC worked closely with the Justice Department to implement Operation Choke Point, a secretive program that seeks to cut off the financial lifeblood of payday lenders and other industries the administration doesn’t like.”

“Emails unearthed by investigators show regulatory officials scheming to influence banks’ decisions on who to do business with by labeling certain industries “reputational risks,” ensuring banks “get the message” about the businesses the regulators don’t like, and pressuring banks to cut credit or close those accounts, effectively driving enterprises out of business.”

“It’s appalling that our government is working around the law to vindictively attack businesses they find objectionable,” Issa, chairman of the Oversight Committee, said in a press release. Issa added:

Internal FDIC documents confirm that Operation Choke Point is an extraordinary abuse of government power. In the most egregious cases, federal bureaucrats injected personal moral judgments into the regulatory process. Such practices are totally inconsistent with basic principles of good government, transparency and the rule of law.”

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News/Politics 12-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. About that CIA torture report……..

From HotAir  “Is the report from the Democratic majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee on post-9/11 interrogations a “badge of honor,” as Joe Biden put it — or an attempt to scapegoat the CIA for doing what it was asked to do? NBC’s Richard Engel told Ronan Farrow that it’s much more the latter, allowing the political leadership in the Bush administration and Congress off the hook. It also curiously doesn’t address the interrogation programs in the military, which leaves the CIA “held out to dry,” as Engel’s sources tell him:

“So many people knew what was going on. This wasn’t a program that was over one or two weeks in a couple of dark sites,” Engel told MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow. “Everybody knew about it.”

Engel said that some of those implicated told him that they were being used as scapegoats by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by outgoing Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.).

“The CIA was asked to do this; was given authorizations to do this. And now many people involved are saying to me privately, ‘Now we’re being held out to dry. You asked us to do this, and now the world is coming down on top of it,” Engel said.

If you’re wondering why CIA officers are telling Engel that Senate Democrats left them twisting in the wind, you can read their explanation on the website they’ve set up to rebut the SSCI majority report. Bearing in mind that they have their own motivations, the CIA argues that the report flatly disregards both testimony and evidence that would at the very least mitigate against the conclusions reached in the report:

Astonishingly, the SSCI Majority staff interviewed no CIA officers responsible for establishing, implementing, or evaluating the program’s effectiveness. Let us repeat, no one at the CIA was interviewed.”

So yet another “investigation” where no one talked to the witnesses/victims/perps. Just like the with the IRS and Benghazi “investigations”.

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2. At least one group is benefitting financially from Obama’s amnesty plan.

From CapitolCityProject  “The Department of Health and Human Services dished out over $182 million to one organization in order to house unaccompanied illegal alien children over the span of four months, according to documents released on December 3. The taxpayer funds ended up covering the likes of free laptops, big screen TVs, and pregnancy tests. In 2014 alone, the group was awarded well over $280 million in federal grant money and surpasses $460 million when factoring in 2013. This is just one group in a sprawling network of those sheltering illegal alien children.

The December 3 documents, obtained by Judicial Watch, show BCFS, formerly known as Baptist Children and Family Services, was paid $182,129,786 in order to provide “basic shelter care” for 2,400 “unaccompanied alien children” (UAC) during a four month span.The budget included charges of $104,215,608 for the 1,200 UAC’s at a Fort Sill, Oklahoma center and another $77,914,178 for the 1,200 UACs at the Lackland Air Force Base shelter located in San Antonio, Texas. From June 12 to October 18, these figures equate to $86,846.34 for every illegal alien child housed at Ft. Sill and $64,928 per illegal alien child from May 18 to September 18 at the Lackland Air Force Base location. On top of this, $2,648,800 was given as compensation to members of the BCFS “Incident Management Team” — or $88,293 per person.

Other expenses at the Ft. Sill facility included hotel accommodations running a tab of $6,765,000, food costs of $75 per day for 3 meals and 2 snacks for each illegal alien child provided by a local catering service totaling $18,198,000, and $1,120,400 worth of medical supplies. Additionally, board games, soccer balls, basketballs, jump ropes, bracelet making kits, yarn, puzzles, arts and crafts, decks of cards, and eye-hand coordination game sets were provided at the cost of $180,000. Educational items — including tempera paint, paint markers, paint brushes, easel brushes, art paper and multicultural crayons — were $180,000. The children were also provided laptops for $200,000 and cell phones costing $160,000.”

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3. Don’t worry, your private health and other personal info is safe with them. 🙄

From TheWeeklyStandard  “Along with the primary goal of expanding the availability of health insurance, the Affordable Care Act aims to make the use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) universal. This plan actually began with the 2009 stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), which included the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Doctors and other health providers have been offered incentives to convert patient information and health histories to a compatible and transferable electronic format, and as of June 2014, 75 percent of eligible doctors and 92 percent of eligible hospitals had received payments under the program.

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which details the efforts of some 35 departments and agencies of the federal government and their roles in the plan to “advance the collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research.”

“Each step of the plan includes three-year and six-year goals, and the various goals, depending on their focus, require the involvement of department and agencies as disparate as the Department of Defense, the Federal Trade Commission, and NASA, in addition to the expected participation of entities such as HHS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Indian Health Service. The report includes a comprehensive list of all departments and agencies involved:”

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4. They have a deal. Well, it’s a deal for everyone but the taxpayers who have to foot the trillion dollar bill that comes with it.

From MSNNews  “Congressional leaders unveiled a massive $1.01 trillion spending bill Tuesday night that will keep most of the federal government funded through September.

The legislation is expected to pass in the coming days and will allow the new Republican-controlled Congress to clear the decks of lingering spending issues, while setting the stage for a prolonged fight with President Obama over immigration policy. 

At 1,603 pages, the legislation provides money to fight the rise of the Islamic State and $5.4 billion to fight the threat of Ebola. But there is no additional money for the Affordable Care Act and there are modest spending cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency and Internal Revenue Service, two perennial GOP targets. Still, Democrats won bigger budgets for enforcement at agencies created after the 2008 economic collapse.

House leaders said they will introduce a stopgap bill to give the House and Senate more time to pass the final bill and avoid a government shutdown Thursday night. Extending current funding for just a few days has happened before, but doing so again this year would provide an embarrassing climax to one of the most fruitless congressional sessions in history.”

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News/Politics 12-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Eric Holder thinks all cops are racists, they just don’t know it. I think he’s projecting again.

From TheNYPost  “Following the Eric Garner verdict, New York cops can look forward to having their heads examined for “unconscious bias” by federal thought police unleashed by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The NYPD can expect to undergo the same kind of “de-biasing” training that Holder put departments in Seattle, New Orleans, St. Louis and several other cities through while investigating them for alleged civil rights violations.

Federal trainers teach cops not only to think twice about stopping or questioning suspects of color, but also to ignore signs of criminal behavior and threat indicators they’ve gleaned from years of street experience. That puts their own lives in danger — and risks the safety of residents.

The Justice Department’s unprecedented shift from prosecuting intentional discrimination to investigating unconscious or “implicit” bias began long before Ferguson, Mo. It’s part of a “racial justice” movement launched by the Obama administration to “reform” the criminal justice system.”

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2. This is what happens when the Dept. Of Justice becomes the Dept. of “Social Justice”.

From NationalReview  “When Department of Justice officials arrived in Ferguson, Mo., one day after the death of Michael Brown, it wasn’t just to conduct an investigation on potential civil-rights violations. In fact, officials from one Justice Department office were conducting meetings with Ferguson residents to educate them on subjects such as “white privilege.”

The DOJ’s Community Relations Service arrived in Ferguson purportedly to lessen the tension between protesters and city officials. But sources who attended the DOJ’s private gatherings with Ferguson residents tell NRO that the Justice Department also sought to educate and question the community about the issues of white privilege and racism. The political nature of the Justice Department’s intervention in Ferguson may not be exclusive to its interactions with residents; it also might have affected its ongoing investigations into the Ferguson Police Department and officer Darren Wilson. 

As investigators combed through Ferguson, DOJ’s Community Relations Service began holding the town-hall meetings, which excluded press and everyone from out of town. Ferguson resident Audrey Watson, 47, attended one of the meetings. She says federal officials organized the attendees into small groups and asked questions such as “What stereotypes exist in our community?” “How does white privilege impact race relations in our community?” and “Is there a need for personal commitment to race relations?”

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3. Don’t see the need for such interventions by the DoJ yet? Well it’s probably because you’re racist too.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Most white Americans demonstrate bias against blacks, even if they’re not aware of or able to control it. It’s a surprisingly little-discussed factor in the anguishing debates over race and law enforcement that followed the shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers. Such implicit biases — which, if they were to influence split-second law enforcement decisions, could have life or death consequences — are measured by psychological tests, most prominently the computerized Implicit Association Test, which has been taken by over two million people online at the website Project Implicit.

Based on this data, it appears that whites in some states may exhibit higher levels of implicit bias than those in other states. The following map, courtesy of Project Implicit, shows the states with the highest level of implicit bias (high number, red) and lowest level of implicit bias (low number, blue). Gray represents states with a middle amount of implicit bias; Michigan is the median state. Overall, the map reflects the scores of 1.51 million individuals, ranging from a high of 99,660 test takers from California to a low of 1,722 test takers from Hawaii.

A cautionary note: The people who have taken the IAT at the Project Implicit website are not a random sample of Americans, either nationally or on a state-by-state basis. Rather, they’re people who, for some reason, chose to take an online test measuring their implicit biases — which may actually mean they are less biased than average. (After all, at least they wanted to know how biased they are.) 

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4. Pass the popcorn. Then again, he probably takes the 5th.

From TownHall  “MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber will testify on Capitol Hill Tuesday about his role in selling the 2010 healthcare law to “stupid American voters” through deception and non-transparency. The hearing will be held by the House Oversight Committee and Gruber will have to field questions from Chairman Darrell Issa and angry lawmakers about the legislation.

Gruber became infamous just a few weeks ago after a Philadelphia financial consultant and citizen blogger started pulling and publishing multiple video clips of him at various events discussing Obamacare. During those events, Gruber admitted the redistribution of wealth in the legislation was purposely covered up along with the fact that Obamacare is indeed a tax. 

Meanwhile, the White House has distanced itself from Gruber in the wake of his controversial comments and Health and Human Services sent a letter to Issa last week asking that officials from the Department, who will also testify tomorrow, be seated separately from Gruber. More from The Hill: 

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is asking lawmakers not to seat ObamaCare consultant Jonathan Gruber next to Medicare’s top official when the two testify on Capitol Hill next week. “

They found a nicer seat for him under this bus over here……

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5. Good. Now let’s hope the judge does his job.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The states challenging President Obama’s deportation amnesty have already won the first round in court after the case landed in the lap of Judge Andrew S. Hanen, a Bush appointee who issued a scorching rebuke to the Department of Homeland Security last year, accusing it of refusing to follow border security laws.

It could hardly have been a worse outcome for Mr. Obama, who, in order to preserve his policy, will now have to convince a judge who is on record calling his previous, less-extensive non-deportation policies “dangerous and unconscionable.”

Led by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, the 20 states challenging the new policy filed their case in Brownsville. It could have gone to one of two judges — the other a Clinton appointee — but it landed in the lap of Judge Hanen last week, putting Mr. Obama on the defensive early.”

“Analysts on both sides of the issue said Mr. Obama’s opponents were fortunate to draw Judge Hanen, who has already shown a deep distrust of Homeland Security officials, questioning both their policies and their legal arguments.”

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by

News/Politics 12-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. What’s really going on with Holder’s “civil rights” crusade against police depts. It’s a long piece, but worth the time.

From NationalReview  “Holder and his constitutional-scholar boss are not banging the civil-rights drum because they believe these are prosecutable cases. It is just a pretext for unleashing Justice Department community organizers on state and municipal police departments.

The government cannot win a standalone loser of a civil-rights prosecution by crying, “Disparate impact!” Individual cases that have been demagogued by the racial-grievance industry become high profile. Once public attention is riveted, the legal and logical flaws become obvious. When people start looking long and hard, the “institutionalized racism” canard is exposed. For guys like Sharpton, that’s bad for business.

But the Justice Department civil-rights investigations Holder is fond of announcing are not like public trials. They occur out of the public eye, where feverish Justice Department claims are not aired and scrutinized. More significant, they happen with the air of extortion created by the nearly $28 billion in funding Congress keeps giving Justice every year, no matter how many congressional investigations it obstructs, how many false statements its officials make, and how much it politicizes law enforcement. The investigations are taxpayer-funded jihads that states, cities, and towns know they lack the resources to fight off.

Here is how the game works. Holder streams in behind a tragedy that Sharpton and Obama have demagogued. He announces a civil-rights investigation. Eventually, he backs down from the threat of an indictment in the individual case, never conceding that the supporting evidence was not there, usually citing some strawman injustice that has nothing to do with the matter at hand — in Florida, for example, it was “stand your ground” gun laws that purportedly needed reforming. But, the attorney general is pleased to add, the original civil-rights probe of the non-crime has metastasized into a thoroughgoing civil-rights probe of the state or local police department’s training, practices, and . . . drumroll . . . institutional racism.

You never get to see what that investigation turns up. States and their subdivisions know they cannot afford to go toe-to-toe with the Beltway behemoth. Big cities, moreover, are governed by Democrats sympathetic to the Obama/Holder race obsessions — they’re happy to have the feds come in and hamstring police with “social justice” guidelines that would be a hard sell politically. So the Justice Department makes the locals an offer they can’t refuse: A consent decree that makes the Treaty of Versailles look like a slap on the wrist. This device is the license by which the Obama administration is remaking state law enforcement in its own image.”

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2. ObamaCare is impacting the primary care doctor shortage.

From YahooNews  “The Papas were among the 6.7 million people who gained insurance through the Affordable Care Act last year, flooding a primary care system that is struggling to keep up with demand.

A survey this year by The Physicians Foundation found that 81 percent of doctors describe themselves as either over-extended or at full capacity, and 44 percent said they planned to cut back on the number of patients they see, retire, work part-time or close their practice to new patients.

At the same time, insurance companies have routinely limited the number of doctors and providers on their plans as a way to cut costs. The result has further restricted some patients’ ability to get appointments quickly.

One purpose of the new health law was connecting patients, many of whom never had insurance before, with primary care doctors to prevent them from landing in the emergency room when they are sicker and their care is more expensive. Yet nearly 1 in 5 Americans lives in a region designated as having a shortage of primary care physicians, and the number of doctors entering the field isn’t expected to keep pace with demand.

The Association of American Medical Colleges projects the shortage will grow to about 66,000 in little more than a decade as fewer residency slots are available and as more medical students choose higher-paying specialty areas.”

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3. How the nation is failing today’s troops and veterans, and how morale is worsening because of it.

From MilitaryTimes  “A Military Times survey of 2,300 active-duty troops found morale indicators on the decline in nearly every aspect of military life. Troops report significantly lower overall job satisfaction, diminished respect for their superiors, and a declining interest in re-enlistment now compared to just five years ago.

Today’s service members say they feel underpaid, under-equipped and under-appreciated, the survey data show. After 13 years of war, the all-volunteer military is entering an era fraught with uncertainty and a growing sense that the force has been left adrift.

One trend to emerge from the annual Military Times survey is “that the mission mattered more to the military than to the civilian,” said Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University who studies the military. “For the civilian world, it might have been easier to psychologically move on and say, ‘Well, we are cutting our losses.’ But the military feels very differently. Those losses have names and faces attached to [them].”

“According to the Military Times survey, active-duty troops reported a stunning drop in how they rated their overall quality of life: Just 56 percent call it good or excellent, down from 91 percent in 2009. The survey, conducted in July and August, found that 73 percent of troops would recommend a military career to others, down from 85 percent in 2009. And troops reported a significant decline in their desire to re-enlist, with 63 percent citing an intention to do so, compared with 72 percent a few years ago.”

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4. Something to keep in mind as Obama continues his amnesty push.

From CNSNews  “Aliens illegally holding jobs in the United States outnumber all unemployed people who are not in management, professional or related occupations as well as all unemployed who are 25 and older and who do not have a college degree, according to an estimate of “unauthorized workers” published by the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration and employment data published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS only counts as “unemployed” people who have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks.

“We estimate that the number of unauthorized workers grew from 4.8 million in 2000 to 8.0 million in 2007, the peak of the last business cycle,” the Office of the Chief Actuary of Social Security said in an analysis published in April 2013.

“The economy then fell into a recession and the estimated number of unauthorized workers declined to 7.0 million in 2010,” said the Chief Actuary. “We project that the economy will recover and that the number of unauthorized workers will rise to 9.6 million in 2020.” “Unauthorized workers” are aliens living in the United States who do not have a legal right to work here.”

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News/Politics 12-5-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Has the Red Cross been misleading donors about where their dollars are going?

From MSN/NPR  “The American Red Cross regularly touts how responsible it is with donors’ money. “We’re very proud of the fact that 91 cents of every dollar that’s donated goes to our services,” Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern said in a speech in Baltimore last year. “That’s world class, obviously.””

“The problem with that number: It isn’t true.”

“The Red Cross declined repeated requests to say the actual percentage of donor dollars going to humanitarian services. But the charity’s own financial statements show that overhead expenses are significantly more than what McGovern and other Red Cross officials have claimed.”

“In recent years, the Red Cross’ fundraising expenses alone have been as high as 26 cents of every donated dollar, nearly three times the nine cents in overhead claimed by McGovern. In the past five years, fundraising expenses have averaged 17 cents per donated dollar.

But even that understates matters. Once donated dollars are in Red Cross hands, the charity spends additional money on “management and general” expenses, which includes things like back office accounting. That means the portion of donated dollars going to overhead is even higher.”

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2. Utah is set to seize millions of acres of it’s land back from the federal govt.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “In three weeks, Utah intends to seize control of 31.2 million acres of its own land now under the control of the federal government. At least, that’s the plan.

In an unprecedented challenge to federal dominance of Western state lands, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert in 2012 signed the “Transfer of Public Lands Act,” which demands that Washington relinquish its hold on the land, which represents more than half of the state’s 54.3 million acres, by Dec. 31.

So far, however, the federal government hasn’t given any indication that it plans to cooperate. Still, state Rep. Ken Ivory, who sponsored the legislation, isn’t deterred.”

““That’s what you do any time you’re negotiating with a partner. You set a date,” said Mr. Ivory. “Unfortunately, our federal partner has decided they don’t want to negotiate in good faith. So we’ll move forward with the four-step plan that the governor laid out.”

“With the 2012 law, Utah placed itself on the cutting edge of the heated debate over public lands in the West. The federal government controls more than 50 percent of the land west of Kansas — in Utah’s case, it’s 64.5 percent, a situation that has increasingly resulted in tensions across the Rocky Mountain West.”

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3. I hope Boehner and his friends at the Chamber of Commerce realize that this isn’t sufficient. It’s meaningless and does nothing to stop Obama’s plan. You were put their to do a job, now do it.

From HotAir  “This was the bill proposed by conservative Ted Yoho that would, if also passed by the Senate and signed by Obama, block Obama’s authority to remake immigration policy on his own. I … thought we had a Constitution that does that, but I guess we don’t anymore. Obviously, a bill like this isn’t going to get past a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president, which means this was an empty gesture designed to show grassroots righties that the leadership shares their concerns about O’s power grab even if they’re not prepared to play hardball to stop it.

The burning question: With House tea partiers complaining that the bill was meaningless and ineffectual, could Boehner still find a majority to pass it? Yup, as it turns out. Although he needed a little Democratic help to cross the 218 threshold.

Three Democrats voted yes while seven Republicans voted no and another three Republicans voted “present.” The roll isn’t out yet so we’re not sure who those 10 GOPers are but I’ll update as soon as it’s available. The White House, incidentally, has already all but promised to veto this bill. If Boehner had wanted to make Obama choke on it, he could have followed the Lee/Cruz plan by inserting this as a rider to a spending bill that would fund the entire government for a few months. That way, Reid and Obama would have a stark choice of either approving the money with this condition attached or else blocking it and bracing for the resulting shutdown. Instead, by splitting Yoho’s bill off from the “cromnibus” funding bill that’ll be voted on later today (I think), Boehner made it easy for Democrats to oppose Yoho’s language without risking any standoff over government funding. The name of the game here for Republican leaders is no shutdown, no shutdown, no shutdown. The solution was an empty gesture.”

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4. Meanwhile Senate conservatives are huddling with some House members to come up with a real solution because the House leadership refuses to.

From NationalReview  “A trio of senators crossed the Capitol last night to discuss the congressional response to President Obama’s recent executive orders on immigration. The consensus: Republican leadership doesn’t want to fight Obama, so the lawmakers have to hope that grassroots activists can goad their colleagues into a more aggressive posture.

“I hope that the American people will speak up and share their views with Congress and good strong language will come out of the House,” Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) told National Review Online Thursday afternoon. 

Sessions demurred when asked about coordination with House colleagues — “all of us are curious about what they’re doing,” he said — but multiple sources tell NRO that Sessions, Senator David Vitter (R., La.), and Senator Mike Lee (R., Utah) met with a group of House members last night in the office of Arizona representative Matt Salmon. Vitter also organized a conference call with some House Republicans Wednesday afternoon. The purpose of the two encounters, which happened on the same day that Texas senator Ted Cruz met with Iowa representative Steve King, was to emphasize that “the first bill that you guys do was really our best and only chance,” according to one Senate aide; the Senate hawks won’t be able to instigate a fight if the House passes a bill that provides long-term funding for the entire government.

“There is a general belief that, despite the rhetoric from leadership after the executive order was announced, they really have no desire to do anything substantive to fight this,” one lawmaker who attended the meeting explained to NRO in a series of text messages. “Part of it is that leadership (as proxies for the Chamber [of Commerce]) wants the amnesty; Obama’s order provides a way to deliver cheap labor to the Chamber without having to vote for it. Part of it is an absolute fear of any conflict, including even a partial ‘shutdown.’”

They believe it because it’s true. If Boehner isn’t up for the job, and he doesn’t appear to be, then find someone who is.

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News/Politics 12-4-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The president king has spoken. Who needs a legislature when you can just rule by executive order.

From TheNYPost  “On Thanksgiving eve, the Obama administration dumped reams of mind-numbing ObamaCare regulations into the Federal Register — including yet more unilateral rewrites of the Affordable Care Act.

Dropping the rules as most Americans were busy preparing for the holiday made a mockery (again) of President Obama’s promise to have “the most transparent administration in history.” The stunt has even worked to keep most of the media from reporting on the rules.

Yet the changes these regulations make in the health care law are substantial.

For one, the president is redefining what health plans are “adequate” for larger employers (100-plus workers) to offer under the Affordable Care Act. He’s also “asking” insurers to pay for new benefits — while warning that, if they don’t, they may be forced to.

Under the Constitution, Obama lacks any authority to make such changes to the health law, or any law. Only Congress has that power. But he’s doing it, and not for the first time.”

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2. He’s ignoring the courts as well, because those laws and rules are for the little people.

From TheDailyCaller  “The Obama administration said that it is withholding all of the thousands of pages of documents related to the White House’s coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the IRS conservative targeting scandal.

Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, Obama’s former White House Chief of Staff, took the documents that were set to be released and now refuses to ever turn them over. His rationale? Lew cannot release information about improper disclosures of confidential taxpayer information because that would be an improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information.

The Daily Caller reported that the Treasury Department’s inspector general found nearly 2,500 pages of documents that chronicle investigations into the confidential taxpayer information that the White House exchanged with the IRS.”

So he won’t disclose the information he has and was given illegally because it contains private data. Which is exactly why he had no business seeing it in the first place. Talk about a jedi mind trick. These are not the documents you’re looking for……

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3. Someone is finally standing up to the king. But it’s sadly not Republicans in Congress.

From MyWayNews  “Texas is leading a 17-state coalition in suing over the Obama administration’s recently announced executive actions on immigration.

Many top Republicans have denounced President Barack Obama’s unilateral move designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation.

But Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott took it a step further Wednesday, filing a lawsuit in federal court in the Southern District of Texas. Texas is joined by 16 other, mostly southern and Midwestern states, including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho and Indiana.

Under Obama’s order, announced Nov. 20, protection from deportation and the right to work will be extended to an estimated 4.1 million parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and to hundreds of thousands more young people.”

“The lawsuit raises three objections: that Obama violated the “Take Care Clause” of the U.S. Constitution that limits the scope of presidential power; that the federal government violated rulemaking procedures; and that the order will “exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.”

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4. Here’s how he plans to handle the influx of illegals already here, and the many more on the way.

From Breitbart  “Incoming Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has discovered plans by President Barack Obama to open a new immigration facility to process his executive amnesty action in Northern Virginia, where the federal government has plans to hire a whopping 1,000 new immigration employees.

“It has just been discovered today that the Obama Administration is now opening a new USCIS facility in Crystal City, Virginia for the purpose of immediately implementing the President’s imperial immigration decree,” Sessions said in a statement. “They are in the process of hiring 1,000 full-time staff to quickly approve applications for the President’s illegal amnesty, which will provide work permits, photo IDs, Social Security, and Medicare to illegal immigrants—all benefits rejected by Congress. This action will mean that American workers, their sons, their daughters, their parents, will now have to compete directly for jobs, wages, and benefits with millions of illegal immigrants.”

Sessions said the creation of this facility is proof Obama doesn’t care about Americans or U.S. laws.

“This facility is a clear symbol of the President’s defiance of the American people, their laws, and their Constitution,” Sessions said. “He is hiring federal employees to carry out a directive that violates the laws Congress has passed in order to foist on the nation laws Congress has repeatedly refused to pass.”

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5. What it is it with this guy and protecting black panthers who commit criminal acts?

From TheFreeBeacon  “The communist and racist New Black Panther Party plotted to bomb St. Louis’ Gateway Arch and assassinate local law enforcement officials, but the Justice Department so far has limited its prosecution of the group to an indictment of two members on minor gun charges.

The soft treatment for activities that normally would have brought federal terrorism charges appears to be part of efforts by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to “go soft” on the racist group, according to former Justice official J. Christian Adams.

“I have always been perplexed why these guys get special treatment,” said Adams, who worked in the Justice Department Civil Rights Division and noted a similar conciliatory legal treatment of New Black Panther Party members in a 2008 case of voter intimidation by the group in Philadelphia.

Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi declined to comment on the Black Panther bomb plot and would not say whether additional charges in the case are pending.

In the earlier case against the Panthers, voter intimidation charges were dropped by the Justice Department against the Panthers, and charges were downgraded against one group member, King Shabazz, in what critics say was an effort to show official favoritism toward the group.”

There has to be charges coming, right?

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News/Politics 12-3-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Told ya it was a bad idea. Now all those US supplied weapons are in the hands of the people they’re supposed to be fighting them with.

From McClatchyDC   “Seventy-two Syrian rebel groups on Saturday announced a new coalition to battle the government of President Bashar Assad. But hopes that moderate rebels would dominate the meeting were dashed when extremists gained more of the 17 executive positions than had been expected.”

“On Friday, as the groups were meeting here, the Nusra Front stormed the bases of two moderate rebel groups in Syria’s north: the Ansar Brigades in Idlib and the Haqq Front in Hama. The two groups, both of which were receiving U.S. support through a covert CIA program, surrendered to Nusra, delivered their weapons to Ahrar al Sham and returned to their homes. Some of the leaders escaped to Turkey, fearing arrest or revenge from Nusra.

With these attacks, Nusra completed the elimination of FSA groups from Idlib and leaves just one group in Hama province receiving U.S. support. Nusra now controls all the resupply routes to Turkey.”

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2. Dark days ahead for ObamaCare. Good.

From TownHall  “The Hill’s Elise Viebeck chronicles Obamacare’s continued losing streak, major elements of which were predicted months ago.  Viebeck’s story begins with a mention of the destruction Jonathan Gruber hath wrought, then outlines four categories of forthcoming Obamacare headaches.  They include pending legal challenges, the still-simmering threat of Ebola, as well as open Enrollment 2.0 challenges (“the back-end of HealthCare.gov remains partly unfinished”), dramatically scaled-back sign-up projections, and the fallout from the administration’s bogus enrollment figures:

A Republican investigation revealed Nov. 20 that ObamaCare enrollment figures at HHS were inflated by roughly 400,000 people after the department miscounted dental plans as medical coverage. The finding was a public relations setback for Burwell and the Obama administration, bringing back partisan strife over enrollment figures that had quieted since the spring. Seeking to contain the fallout, Burwell asked managers at HHS to report suggestions for strengthening the department’s “culture of increased transparency, ownership and accountability.” Still, Tavenner is expected to receive tough questions about the mistakes when she testifies before House Oversight on Dec. 9. The blunders are also likely to cloud any future enrollment figures the administration seeks to tout for 2015.

Indeed, those “blunders” are likely to cloud the White House’s credibility even further.  Speaking of which, the editors of Nevada’s largest newspaper shredded Obamacare’s architects and champions in a Monday editorial, underscoring how rising costs for millions was an entirely intentional and cynically-hidden byproduct of the law:”

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3. Obama’s tampering with military programs to push his amnesty plan.

From CIS.org  “The latest public relations attempt by the White House to link illegal aliens with the military has just hit a major obstacle – the Pentagon has suspended an otherwise useful recruiting program while it tries to sort out how to use DACA beneficiaries in it.

As Mark Krikorian pointed out in a blog a couple of months ago the White House had decided that beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program should be eligible to participate in a highly specialized recruiting program that sought rare skills among the nation’s legal nonimmigrant alien population (such as foreign students or H-1Bs). The military wanted (even before Ebola) more people with health care training, as well as people speaking a list of 43 languages rarely encountered in the U.S., such as Cebuano (the Philippines) and Igbo (Nigeria).

Most childhood arrivals speak Spanish, not Urdu or Moro, for example, and Spanish was not on the list. Further, most DACAs do not have high school diplomas, much less specialized training in the health sciences. So no more than a handful of DACAs could possibly qualify for the specialized recruiting program.

The recruiting program, carrying the initials MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest), had signed up some 2,900 recruits before the DACA involvement. Now, according to Politico, the program has been put into deep freeze: “Army officials confirmed … that the [MAVNI] program … has been suspended while the service tries to finalize screening procedures for the immigrants who want to enlist.”

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4. Obama is promising to shut down the govt if his amnesty plan isn’t funded.

From TheDailyCaller  “White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday that President Barack Obama will block a government budget bill if the GOP denies him the funds needed to provide amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.

“Yes,” Earnest said when asked by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl if Obama would veto a government-wide budget that defunded the amnesty program.

If Obama blocks the budget to help the illegals, large sections of the federal government would shut down on Dec. 12.”

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5. I’m getting the impression that even they know she’s not qualified. But hey, she’s a bundler, soooo….

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News/Politics 12-2-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. In a not so shocking development the Obama admin grossly underestimated the cost of their new EPA regulations. Or they did know and just lied again.

From HotAir  “When Barack Obama’s EPA announced their new carbon restrictions for power plants, they were quick to try to undercut arguments from coal state politicians who predicted staggering costs which would be passed on to consumers. While their own, initial estimates were not accepted by anyone of repute, they had outlets like NPR going out and saying that compliance with the crushing regulations would actually wind up producing a net cost benefit of as much as $67B. And if that were the case, they would have a strong argument indeed. But are those figures rooted in any sort of reality?

A recent, exhaustive study of the long terms costs associated with these carbon emissions regulations argues quite the opposite. In fact, they found that, rather than saving money, these new EPA regulations will add $284 billion in costs over the next five years. So how does that matter to the wallet of the typical consumer?

Electricity prices are set to skyrocket across the board – whether looking at residential gas, electricity or heating oil. In 2020, annual residential power and gas costs would be $102 billion higher and would continue to escalate in subsequent years. Average annual household gas and power bills would increase by $680 or 35% from 2012 to 2020. Annual average electricity bills would increase approximately $340 or 27% from 2012 to 2020. Annual average home gas heating bills would increase approximately $340 or 50% from 2012 to 2020.

Economic impacts will not be divided evenly among states. The five states that would bear the greatest increases in annual residential power bills are Texas, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Rhode Island. Families in these states would experience average electricity increases of more than $660 ($566) annually beginning in 2020 compared with 2012. The states that would incur the largest total cost increases on a percentage basis are Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and North Dakota, averaging more than 115% increase in annual electricity and natural gas bills from 2012 to 2020.”

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2. The endgame of all this Ferguson nonsense?

From NationalJournal  “Late Monday night, after the House took its final votes, members of the Congressional Black Caucus took the floor to speak for about one hour about race in the wake of a grand jury’s decision last week not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

“Hands up, don’t shoot,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York began.

 Charles Rangel, the longtime New York Democrat, followed Jeffries and CBC Chairwoman Marcia Fudge of Ohio to deride America’s “cancer” and those who don’t acknowledge it. “Like anything else you love, if there’s an illness, if there’s a problem, you would want to know: What can you do to cure it? How can you make it all that our country can be?” Rangel said. “How can we say that we have a cancer until we recognize that we do, then we don’t really love the country? How can we be able to say that white and black in this country are equal and that those who work hard and live by the rules have the same opportunities as each other, when we know that we have this cancer?”

Rangel went on to address the idea of reparations for slavery, suggesting that it goes beyond money. “Some people may talk about payment for restitution for past crimes committed against human beings,” he said. “But that restitution could be the ability to say that we’re going to make certain that people of color in this country would be able to have access to the same type of education, live where they want to live, compete against anybody for the job, and not feeling that they’re inferior because people have been taught that just because they have a different complexion that they are superior.””

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3. Conservatives are working to block Obama’s amnesty plan for illegals.

From ABCNews  “Conservatives circulated draft legislation Monday aimed at blocking President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration from taking effect, as Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson prepared to offer GOP critics a full-throated defense of the new policies.”

“Republicans have vowed to stop Obama’s moves from taking effect, but how they will do so remained unclear as they returned to Capitol Hill on Monday after a weeklong Thanksgiving break. GOP leadership in the House planned to discuss options in a closed-door meeting with the rank-and-file on Tuesday morning.

The issue is tied in with the need to pass a government funding bill by Dec. 11, or risk a shutdown. Conservatives have been agitating to use any government funding bill to block Obama’s moves, and on Monday conservatives on and off Capitol Hill circulated bill language that would stipulate that no money or fees “may be used by any agency to implement, administer, enforce or carry out any of the policy changes” announced by Obama.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday Obama would veto any government spending bill that undid his executive actions on immigration.”

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4. Haters gotta hate, but they like to pretend to be journalists too.

From NationalReview  “The real haters are in the media, some of them the openly left-leaning media and some of them claiming to be mainstream. But oh, how vilely they spew their hatred.

That’s the most obvious takeaway from a perusal of this year’s “Best Notable Quotables of 2014: The Twenty-Seventh Annual Awards for the Year’s Worst Reporting,” sponsored by the indispensable Media Research Center. This is my 17th straight year as one of the 40 or so volunteer judges for the awards, and each year the media’s anti-conservative vitriol seems worse than before.

They accuse us of being “haters.” They, by contrast, are rational, fair-minded, and kindly. Really, they are. Consider, for example, the gentlemanly Chris Matthews on Hardball on October 27, speaking of the Republican nominee for Senate from North Carolina: “What’s worse: Thom Tillis, or Ebola?”

“Then again, maybe the world would be better off if leading conservatives themselves contracted a hideous virus. Here’s Alan Pyke, deputy economic policy editor for the far-left Think Progress blog in reaction to the Fox News Channel’s coverage of the unrest in Ferguson: “I hope Roger Ailes dies slow, painful, and soon. The evil that man has done to the American tapestry is unprecedented for an individual.” How nice.

But that’s okay. After all, we’re killers. That’s the contention of the increasingly unhinged Matthews (again), with regard to conservative support for voter-ID laws: “Believing they can’t convert the African-American vote, they’ve decided to slaughter it. . . . This is murder in broad daylight.””

Where’d these clowns graduate from, the Saul Alinsky school of journalism? Sheesh.

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