Obama's Anti-Energy Agenda

He threatens to cut off the fuel the economy needs.

By
• PETE DU PONt

Not surprisingly, President Obama and Speaker John Boehner have different views on energy policy, differences brought into stark contrast by their recent statements. The president sees our nation's energy policy primarily in terms of the environment, with the economy a secondary concern. His policy is grounded in a view that government regulation and subsidies can steer us to better and cleaner energy.

On Tuesday the president unveiled plans to increase regulation of coal-fired electricity plants, erect new hurdles to building the Keystone pipeline, and further the federal government's role in trying to pick winners and losers in energy sources.

Mr. Boehner calls energy "one of our best opportunities for robust and sustained growth . . . our new economic frontier, just as the Internet was in the 1990s." This debate's timing could not be more appropriate, because the right energy policy could be the catalyst needed to inject some growth into our weak economy and raise standards of living, not just in this country, but across the world.

We see significant progress across the energy spectrum. On the supply side, there are new approaches to developing and scaling up renewable energy, as well as safely and economically extracting energy from natural gas, oil and coal. This progress often happens in spite of government policy. The boom in natural gas production, stymied on federal lands, is happening on private property.

The demand side is equally encouraging. Overall world-wide demand continues to increase, but that's a sign of a successfully growing world, with more schools, hospitals and jobs, and less poverty, disease and premature death. New and more efficient technologies allow us to feed this beneficial growth more effectively. In the U.S., energy consumption per dollar of real gross domestic product has declined almost a third in the past two decades and is projected to decline another third over the next two decades.

The domestically sourced share of our energy consumption is rising, and this trend is expected to continue. Advances in extraction technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have yielded continued gains in production of oil and natural gas. We see continued efforts in cleaner coal, which is important since coal is currently used to generate around 40% of our electricity and we have enough to supply 200 years of demand.

While fossil fuels will be our primary energy sources for several decades, we need progress in renewables so they can eventually supplant today's fossil fuels. Again, we see good news. Look at just one recent issue of Popular Science, where we see more-efficient solar and wind technology and a possible nonbattery alternative for the energy storage critical for such renewables. Other promising technologies include energy from waste, fueling nuclear plants with spent nuclear fuel (instead of having to store such waste), using heat generated from industrial processes to create electricity, and drawing energy from waves and tidal movements.

All of which means the talk in recent decades about energy shortages will again be proved wrong, as all such Malthusian predictions have. Such defeatism misses the mark because it fails to account for the incredible impact of human ingenuity and man's unceasing search for something better. In short, we can see an incredibly bright energy future on the horizon.

Unless, that is, overbearing government bureaucrats and misguided environmental interest groups get in the way. Unfortunately, there is a real chance of that happening. Energy producers are faced with the delay and costs from government's slowness in granting permits and its proclivity for issuing new regulations, by environmental group court challenges, and by the left's almost surreal ability to reject any energy source that becomes viable—even windmills in their backyards. Well-intentioned subsidies for renewables reduce the chance for success, since producers learn to live off the subsidies and have less incentive to produce feasible technology. Businesses and consumers feel the impact as energy costs increase.

The policies the president announced Tuesday are more of the same. Less government control and meddling would instead unleash the technologists and risk-takers to give us more energy, a stronger economy and a safer and healthier environment.

With Obama: Affirmative Action is BACK!!!!

Obama Brings Affirmative Action Back With A Vengeance

By PAUL SPERRY
  
While the Supreme Court rolls back the Voting Rights Act of 1965, condemning it as an unnecessary vestige of the civil-rights era, President Obama is acting as if America were still in the mid-'60s.

His race-obsessed administration is bringing racial preferences and affirmative action back with a vengeance.
  
And it's doing so outside the legislative process, largely behind the scenes, through executive orders, regulations and prosecutions, effectively expanding existing civil-rights law.

Consider the following race-based policy moves, which have gone largely unreported by the major media — and unnoticed by the general public (which polls show overwhelming oppose racial quotas in college and hiring and other favoritism):

To boost minority hiring, the EEOC recently warned employers they could be considered guilty of "race discrimination if they choose law-abiding applicants over applicants with criminal convictions." The predictable result: hiring quotas for felons.

At the same time, the Labor Department is warning federal contractors to refrain from asking employees about felonies.

It's also demanding they modify their hiring policies to favor minorities.

The agency also advised that all FDIC-insured banks must develop and implement an "affirmative action program" for hiring.

The administration, moreover, has adopted an interagency "Policy Statement on Discrimination in Lending" that makes it "permissible" (and strongly advisable) for banks to apply more favorable lending terms for minority borrowers "to address past discrimination."

It has also formalized the use of a lower standard of proof — "disparate impact" liability — for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in housing and lending.

Now, just about any race-neutral policy or practice — from mortgage underwriting standards to credit scoring to criminal background checks — can be deemed racist if it tends to result in adverse outcomes for blacks or Latinos.

For the first time, disparate impact is woven through all civil-rights enforcement of the federal government.

Thanks to a flurry of disparate-impact suits, the Justice Department has forced the nation's largest home lenders — including Wells Fargo, Bank of America and SunTrust — to adopt minority-friendly lending policies and even open new branches in depressed areas with large minority populations.

Fearing prosecution, the entire mortgage industry is adopting similar policies.

In addition, the department has extracted from these and other bank defendants more than $600 million in loan set-asides and other cash payouts for yet-to-be identified "victims" of credit discrimination.

Meantime, Obama's new credit watchdog agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is subjecting car lenders to the same racial "effects test" while investigating racial bias at Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and other consumer credit reporting agencies.

(The head of CFPB's Office of Fair Lending, Patrice Ficklin, is a civil-rights activist who's helped litigate major affirmative-action cases.)

CFPB's diversity police are also cracking down on banks that turn down minority students and small-business owners for loans, or charge them higher interest rates.

The bureau's also setting up "minority inclusion" offices in all financial regulatory agencies — including the Federal Reserve — with the goal of diversifying their workforces.
The administration thinks there are too many white bank examiners.

These examiners enforce the Community Reinvestment Act, an anti-redlining measure the administration is using to threaten lenders into opening more inner-city branches and increasing their volume of minority loans.

At the same time, the Education Department is investigating some 20 school districts across the U.S. for allegedly racist disciplinary policies that have a "disparate impact" on black students. Faced with the threat of reduced federal funding, some districts already have set caps on the number of blacks suspended for violent behavior.

The department's diversity cops are also cracking down on selective high schools in New York and elsewhere for using entrance exams that have a "disparate impact" on African-American students.

Advisers helping craft its Common Core academic standards seek to eliminate ability grouping and fast-tracking for gifted and talented students, complaining such programs tend to favor whites over minorities.

HUD, for its part, is suing Westchester County, N.Y., and several other suburbs with low shares of minorities to build more low-income housing, while conducting affirmative-action marketing efforts to relocate tenants from the projects to these suburbs.

Finally, the White House is pushing an amnesty bill that promotes affirmative action in hiring by waiving the requirements — and costs — of ObamaCare for employers who hire formerly illegal immigrants.

Make no mistake: These race-based policies are directed from the president and his Cabinet, and they will only intensify over the next few years.

"The question is not does (affirmative action) end, but when does it begin?"Attorney General Eric Holder recently told his alma mater, Columbia University.

"When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?"

Though Obama now does his best to hide his preference for racial preferences, mindful of their unpopularity, in 2006 he called for "goals and timetables for minority hiring," arguing that "affirmative-action programs can open up opportunities otherwise closed to qualified minorities."

"Many Americans disagree with me on this as a matter of principle, arguing that our institutions should never take race into account, even if it is to help victims of past discrimination," he wrote in "The Audacity of Hope."

"But that shouldn't stop us."

He proposed closing the "stubborn gap that remains between the living standards of black, Latino and white workers" by "completing the unfinished business of the civil rights movement — namely, enforcing nondiscrimination laws in such basic areas as employment, housing and education."

He added: "The government, through its prosecutors and its courts, should step in to make things right."
That means getting your ethnic numbers right — or else.

The Supreme Court just concluded that such thinking is irrational and outdated.

The high bench has it right: The racism that justified the civil-rights movement simply doesn't exist today, not in the Deep South or anywhere in America.

Obama still thinks it does and therefore justifies government stepping on the scales — at work, in the bank lobby, even in the principal's office — even if it means promoting race over ability and personal responsibility.
The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Yet this president is injecting race into just about every decision made in our merit-based society.

IRS Scandal (Even More)

Poof! The IRS Scandal Returns

Posted 06/27/2013 05:50 PM ET

Scandal: Democrats thought they had safely bottled up the IRS scandal after finding the word "progressive" on a watch list. But then the inspector general blew it with inconvenient facts.

Just two days ago, Democrats were telling everyone within earshot that the entire foundation for the scandal — that IRS officials had singled out conservative groups for delays and harassment — was a hill of beans.

Why? Because they'd found a spread sheet the IRS had used to alert front line agents about things to watch out for, which included an entry for "progressive" groups.

The top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, Sander Levin, exclaimed that "this new information shows that the foundation of those investigations is flawed in a fundamental way" and demanded to know why the inspector general ignored it.

Naturally, the mainstream press took Levin's bait, and jumped on the story as evidence that the GOP was trying to turn a bureaucratic snafu into a political scandal.

But then Treasury inspector general Russell George responded to Levin, telling him that his office focused on the targeting of conservative groups because that's exactly what the IRS was doing.

George explained that while just six progressive group applications were flagged for additional scrutiny between 2010 and 2012, the IRS stopped every one of the 292 Tea Party applications submitted.

What's more, the document Levin was waving around had nothing to do with why the IRS flagged those six liberal groups. It picked them out for some other reason.

The IG also pointed out that its investigation found "multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria" to target right-wing groups. There was nothing comparable for liberal groups.

And while the IG didn't get into this, there's also no evidence those six liberal groups were treated in any way like the Tea Party groups, which had their applications held up for years while the IRS demanded to know who their donors were, what books they were reading and what was in their prayers.

So, as we said earlier this week, the IRS scandal is still alive and well. And it's just as important today as it was last week to find out why the IRS was singling out conservative groups who might have made a difference in a close presidential election. And who authorized it.

O's Crony & Keystone

Obama Donor Set To Profit From Keystone Demise

Posted 05:50 PM ET

Energy Policy: A billionaire hedge fund manager and Barack Obama donor is pushing the president to stop the pipeline that would compete with one he's invested in. That pipeline could send Canadian oil to China.

Environmental activist Tom Steyer donated as much as he could to get Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey elected to the Senate in the recent special election to fill the seat vacated by now-Secretary of State John Kerry. He wanted another senator who's opposed to completing the Keystone XL pipeline that he says would be an environmental plague on the planet.

A few days before President Obama said that Keystone XL would be built only if it could be shown to have no net effect on greenhouse gas emissions, Steyer, a major contributor to Obama's campaigns, urged the president to kill the project.

"We really cannot afford 40 to 50 years of development of a humongous oil reserve that's twice as bad — soup to nuts — as normal crude," Steyer told a gathering at the National Press Club, referring to Canada's extraction of crude from its oil sands in Alberta.

Steyer has mounted an extensive campaign to kill Keystone, yet he owes his personal fortune to a lifetime of investments in oil, gas and pipeline companies. He stands to reap another financial reward through the extensive investments his hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, has made over the last 27 years in fossil fuel companies. These include holdings that could benefit from the blocking of the Keystone pipeline.

Farallon has made millions for its investors, and left Steyer with a net worth estimated by Forbes at $1.4 billion. One of Farallon's biggest holdings is in U.S. pipeline company Kinder Morgan, which has plans to expand a major competitor to Keystone — the TransMountain pipeline.

Steyer has also lobbied against Northern Gateway, which would carry oil from Edmonton to Kitimat, British Columbia, on Canada's west coast. Curiously, he is not opposed to TransMountain, which Kinder Morgan has sought approval to expand.

If that expansion is approved, TransMountain will be the only available outlet for Alberta crude. If Keystone XL is killed, it will leave

TransMountain as the only game in town for transporting oil directly from the oil sands to export terminals, up to 900,000 barrels a day. And most of that oil will be shipped west to China.

Steyer stepped down as Farallon's CEO late last year to focus on political and environmental activism. In his newfound fervor to go "green," he says he's directed the fund to divest him of all positions in oil and coal, including Kinder Morgan. But it appears that process is painstakingly slow. Meanwhile, his holdings increase in value as Keystone remains in limbo.

Steyer would not be the first Obama donor to profit from the president's energy policies. Obama's favorite one-percenter, Warren Buffett, made a good investment when he bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe in 2010 for $26.5 billion. With the explosive development of the Bakken shale formation centered in North Dakota, its oil riches are shipped south on Buffett's railroad in dangerous tank cars.

Last year's spike in oil production from shale caused a 46% increase in petroleum shipments for Burlington. For 2013, Burlington forecast a 40% increase in crude shipments. The Keystone XL pipeline would put a hole in Buffett's bottom line.

According to the Energy Policy Research Foundation, TransCanada was "looking to expand the Keystone XL capability by offering

Bakken oil producers located in Montana and North Dakota a chance to link into the pipeline and send their crude to the Gulf Coast refineries for the first time."

As Al Gore has found out, saving the earth can also "green" your bank account.

Kerry's Obama BOONDOGLE

John Kerry's ObamaCare Boondoggle

A backroom deal he cut for Massachusetts hospitals has caused a bipartisan uproar in Congress.

A bipartisan backlash is growing against another section of President Obama's health-care law. The president can blame this latest embarrassment on none other than Secretary of State John Kerry.

Everyone remember the origins of the so-called Affordable Care Act? The Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator-Aid, and other buyoffs for the votes of key Senate Democrats?

Three years on, yet another sweetheart deal has declared itself, this one inserted by the then-senator for Massachusetts. In Congress, it's becoming known as the Bay State Boondoggle.

At issue are the dollars that Medicare pays to hospitals for the wages of doctors and staff. Before the new health law, states were each allocated a pot of money to divvy among their hospitals. The states are required to follow rules in handing out the funds, in particular a requirement that state urban hospitals must be reimbursed for wages at least at the levels of state rural hospitals.

Enter Mr. Kerry, who slipped an opaque provision into the Obama health law to require that Medicare wage reimbursements now come from a national pool of money, rather than state allocations. The Kerry kickback didn't get much notice, since it was cloaked in technicality and never specifically mentioned Massachusetts. But the senator knew exactly what he was doing.

You see, "rural" hospitals in Massachusetts are a class all their own. The Bay State has only one, a tiny facility on the tony playground of the superrich—Nantucket. Nantucket Cottage Hospital's relatively high wages set the floor for what all 81 of the state's urban hospitals must also be paid. And since these dramatically inflated Massachusetts wages are now getting sucked out of a national pool, there's little left for the rest of America. Clever Mr. Kerry.

The change has allowed Massachusetts to raise its Medicare payout by $257 million, forcing cuts to hospitals in 40 other states. The National Rural Health Association and 20 state hospital associations in January sent a panicked letter to President Obama, noting that the Massachusetts manipulation of the program would hand that state $3.5 billion over the next 10 years at the expense of Medicare beneficiaries everywhere. They quoted Mr. Obama's former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, admitting that "What Massachusetts gets comes from everybody else."

Mr. Kerry's Yankee ingenuity isn't going down well with . . . most of Congress. Even representatives from the handful of states (nine) that have benefited along with Massachusetts from the new formula realize that mergers in the hospital arena, and changing "rural" designations, mean they could be hit in the future.

Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, an ardent supporter of Mr. Obama's health law, teamed up earlier this year with Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn to introduce legislation to kill the Bay State fleecing. Sixty-eight senators voted for the amendment as part of the (nonbinding) Senate budget resolution in March. That number included 23 Democrats, among them powerhouses of the liberal caucus: New York's Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin, and Minnesota's Al Franken.

Ms. McCaskill (whose state will lose $15 million in hospital payments this year) is now demanding a binding vote, and on Monday she sent out another letter ginning up names to add to the 23 bipartisan co-sponsors she and Mr. Coburn have for stand-alone legislation.

Texas Republican Kevin Brady recently introduced a similar repeal bill in the House, where it already has 36 co-sponsors.

House Chief Deputy Whip Peter Roskam, a Republican co-sponsor, notes that his (and President Obama's) home state of Illinois has already lost $60 million. "It's a zero sum game that reinforces all of our worst fears about how the health-care law was drafted.

Backroom negotiations, secret deals, and now this long con on Medicare reimbursement rates that is already doing real damage to Illinois hospitals," he tells me.

The episode is also heaping embarrassment on the American Hospital Association, a cheerleader for the health law that is now robbing most of its members blind. Rather than endorse current boondoggle-repeal efforts—which would require it to publicly admit its mistake—the AHA is hiding behind calls for more "comprehensive reform" of the wage-payment system.

That dodge isn't likely to satisfy its cash-strapped members for long. Indeed, the fury from state hospitals is growing daily, heaping enormous pressure on members to join this latest cleanup of the president's rushed law.

If anything, this revolt is illuminating a notable trend. Whether it's the 2011 repeal of the health law's tax-reporting requirement, or the bipartisan push to repeal its medical-device tax, or this Bay State fix, the political template has looked the same. Vulnerable Democrats, under pressure from home-state constituencies, want to look willing to "fix" or "improve" parts of a wildly unpopular health law that they supported. This has provided Republicans with the opportunity to recruit them for bipartisan votes to repeal parts of the act.

That template is worth remembering as the law flails ahead into a no man's land of soaring premiums, rickety health exchanges and expensive mandates and taxes. A lot of home-state constituencies are going to be screaming. And a lot of members are going to be looking for cover.

Write to kim@wsj.com

Why The push For Immigration?????

COLD OPEN


Why are our elected leaders trying to force immigration reform on an ungrateful nation right now? Answering that question goes a long way toward understanding the merits of the current Gang of Eight bill.

Immigration has been a fixture in America since the Founding. It's ebbed and flowed, and to get a good picture of it, take a gander at this chart. You'll note that from 1900 to 1960, the number of immigrants was basically flat. It wasn't until the 1970s that immigration began to pick up steam. That's when illegal immigration, particularly from Mexico, moved to an industrial scale. Because of increasing legal and illegal immigration, the last 40 years have seen the biggest immigration boom in our nation’s history. And although immigrants are not at their historical high-water mark as a percentage of the population, they’re in the neighborhood.

All of which is why, if we were talking about reforming the immigration system in 1990—or 1995, or 2000—the conversation would make a lot of sense. Immigration was on the rise and something new and different was happening in the system.

But at this particular moment, that's not the case. Once the Great Recession hit, it combined with declining fertility rates south of our border to drive down illegal immigration. Believe it or not, for the last five years our net immigration from Mexico has been zero.

What's more, unlike in the 1990s and early 2000s, when unemployment was low and labor markets were tight, we are in a prolonged period of extremely high unemployment with a great deal of slack in the labor market. At some point America may need an influx of new workers to help power economic growth. But that time most certainly isn't now.

In other words, we're being strong-armed into "reforming" the immigration system at the exact moment when the urgency for reform is at the lowest point in two generations. There simply are no practical reasons for having this discussion right now.

Oh, but there are political reasons. For President Obama and the Democrats, the political reasons are obvious. They see the Gang of Eight package as a chance to add a group of 11 million voters to the rolls (in the form of amnestied illegal immigrants) who could swing between 60 percent and 70 percent Democratic. For Big Labor, it means adding more dues-paying members. (Even if it means lower wages for current union members; remember, unions care more about their institutional well-being than their members.) For Big Business the current bill means increasing the labor supply—which really means lowering wages. And increasing profits. It's not hard to see why the parties to this bill are pushing it so hard.

What's a mystery is why some Republicans are on board, too. Sure, lots of Democrats and liberal pundits keep saying that the only way the Republican party can avoid extinction is by passing the current bill. It's not clear why these partisans are suddenly so concerned about the GOP's welfare. But the numbers suggest that they are, as a factual matter, almost certainly incorrect.

For the sake of argument, let's pretend that passing the amnesty bill would dramatically improve Republicans' showing among Hispanic voters. Well, then, here’s a question: In 2012, would Mitt Romney have been better off winning 72 percent of the Hispanic vote —instead of the 27 percent he actually got? Or would he have done better by merely improving his share of the white vote by 4 points, from 60 percent to 64 percent?

I’m not going to spoil it for you, but the answer itself isn’t nearly as shocking as the fact that many Republicans in the Senate seem not to have considered the question in the first place. It's enough to make you doubt the entire small-r republican system. After all, if you can't trust politicians to vote in their own partisan self-interest, what can you trust them with?

(If you want even more detail on the numbers see this piece from Real Clear Politics’s Sean Trende.)

So the timing and motivations behind immigration reform are suspect. But how about the legislation itself? Let's just say that it’s about what you'd expect for a bill cobbled together by people who are on the make. This anecdote from Greg Sargent last week is telling:

The key items, according to reports and sources, are: A doubling of the size of the border patrol, to 40,000 agents. Seven hundred miles of border fence. A requirement that the security plan submitted by the Department of Homeland Security include provisions — such as those above — mandated by Congress. All of these would be "triggers" that would have to be achieved before the path to citizenship can start.

But — and this is big — the provision sought by conservatives such as John Cornyn, that 90 percent apprehension be achieved as a "hard trigger," is no longer in the deal as a precondition for citizenship. As the Times puts it: "Republicans agreed to make the 90 percent figure a goal rather than a requirement." The key is that additional Republicans beyond the gang of eight — such as Bob Corker and John Hoeven — appear prepared to accept this.

Leading immigration advocate Frank Sharry, who was briefed on the emerging deal, tells me Dems successfully beat back Republican demands for inclusion of the 90 percent "hard trigger." And so Sharry’s group, America’s Voice, can support the deal, albeit reluctantly.

"The deal is ridiculous from a policy point of view — it's excessive and wasteful," Sharry tells me. "But from a political point of view, if it brings 10 or 11 Senate Republican votes, we'll probably will be able to live with it."

As I keep saying, the people putting this mess together aren't even pretending to operate in good faith.

And as a wise man put it last week, "The Republican House was put on this earth to save us from huge pieces of comprehensive legislation like this."

Let's hope they come through.

Where Was the Tea Party? in 2012: Taken Out by IRS (Peggy Noonan)

• June 21, 2013, 5:14 PM ET

Where Was the Tea Party?

One of the great questions about the 2012 campaign has been “Where was the tea party?” They were not the fierce force they’d been in the 2010 cycle, when Republicans took back the House. Some of us think the answer to the question is: “Targeted by the IRS, buried under paperwork and unable to raise money.”

The economist Stan Veuger, on the American Enterprise Institute‘s blog, takes the question a step further.

The Democrats had been badly shaken by the Republican comeback of 2010. They feared a repeat in 2012 that would lose them the White House.

Might targeting the tea-party groups—diverting them, keeping them from forming and operating—seem a shrewd campaign strategy in the years between 2010 and 2012? Sure. Underhanded and illegal, but potentially effective.

Veuger writes: “It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his famous “shellacking” in the 2010 midterm election. Less well-known is the actual number of votes this new movement delivered—and the continuing effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been demobilized by the IRS.”

The research paper Veurger and his colleagues have put out notes that, in Veuger’s words, “the Tea Party movement’s huge success [in 2010] was not the result of a few days of work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.”

More: “The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can generate a huge number of votes—more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5-8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million.”

Think about the sheer political facts of the president’s 2012 victory. The first thing we learned, in the weeks after the voting, was that the Obama campaign was operating with a huge edge in its technological operation—its vast digital capability and sophistication. The second thing we learned, in the past month, is that while the campaign was on, the president’s fiercest foes, in the Tea Party, were being thwarted, diverted and stopped.

Technological savvy plus IRS corruption. The president’s victory now looks colder, more sordid, than it did. Which is why our editor,

James Taranto, calls him “President Asterisk.”



The controversy over the IRS's harassment of conservative groups
continues. President Obama's team continues to blame low-level
bureaucrats. Some conservatives suspect a more sinister explanation: that
the levers of government were used to attack an existential threat to the
president's 2012 reelection. The president and his party dismiss this as a
paranoid fantasy. The evidence, however, is enough to make one believe that
targeting Tea Party groups would have been an effective campaign strategy
going into the 2012 election cycle.

It is a well-known fact that the Tea Party movement dealt the president his
famous "shellacking" in the 2010 midterm election. Less well-known is the
actual number of votes this new movement delivered — and the continuing
effects these votes could have had in 2012 had the movement not been
demobilized by the IRS.

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University),
Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy
School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter
turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party


The bottom
line is that the
Tea Party
movement,
when properly
activated, can
generate a
huge number
of votes-more
votes in 2010,
in fact, than
the vote
advantage
Obama held
over Romney
in 2012.
-Stan Veuger

activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using
data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other
sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the
Republican Party some 3 million-6 million additional votes in House races.

That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates
combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively
how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in
those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been
about the conservative movement's momentum.

The Tea Party movement's huge success was not the result of a few days of
work by an elected official or two, but involved activists all over the country
who spent the year and a half leading up to the midterm elections
volunteering, organizing, donating, and rallying. Much of these grassroots
activities were centered around 501(c)4s, which according to our research
were an important component of the Tea Party movement and its rise.

The bottom line is that the Tea Party movement, when properly activated, can
generate a huge number of votes-more votes in 2010, in fact, than the vote
advantage Obama held over Romney in 2012. The data show that had the
Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and
had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they
would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5 - 8.5 million votes
compared to Obama's victory margin of 5 million.

President Obama's margin of victory in some
of the key swing states was fairly small: a
mere 75,000 votes separated the two
contenders in Florida, for example. That is
less than 25% of our estimate of what the
Tea Party's impact in Florida was in 2010.

Looking forward to 2012 in 2010
undermining the Tea Party's efforts there
must have seemed quite appealing indeed.

Unfortunately for Republicans, the IRS
slowed Tea Party growth before the 2012
election. In March 2010, the IRS decided to
single Tea Party groups out for special
treatment when applying for tax-exempt
status by flagging organizations with names
containing "Tea Party," "patriot," or "9/12."

For the next two years, the IRS approved the
applications of only four such groups,
delaying all others while subjecting the
applicants to highly intrusive, intimidating
requests for information regarding their
activities, membership, contacts, Facebook
posts, and private thoughts.

As a consequence, the founders, members,
and donors of new Tea Party groups found themselves incapable of
exercising their constitutional rights, and the Tea Party's impact was muted in the 2012 election cycle. As Toby Marie Walker, who runs the Waco Tea Party,
which filed for tax-exempt status in 2010 but didn't receive approval until two
months ago, recounted recently: "Our donors dried up. It was intimidating and
time-consuming." The Richmond Tea Party went through a similar ordeal,
and was only granted tax-exempt status in December, right after the
election--three years after its initial request. Its chairman explained the
consequences: the episode cost the Richmond Tea Party $17,000 in legal
fees and swallowed time the all-volunteer network would have devoted to
voter turnout, outreach in black and Latino neighborhoods and other events
to highlight the constitution and "the concept of liberty."

It might be purely accidental that the government targeted precisely this
biggest threat to the president. It may just be that a bureaucracy dominated
by liberals picked up on not-so-subtle dog whistles from its political
leadership. Or, it might be that direct orders were given. In any case, it
doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to note that the president's team was
competent enough to recognize the threat from the Tea Party and take it
seriously. The Obama campaign has made no secret of its efforts to
revolutionize turnout models for the most recent campaign. Its remarkable
competence turning out its own voters has been widely discussed, and it
seems quite plausible that efforts to suppress the Republican vote would
have been equally sophisticated.

We may never know to what exact extent the federal government diverted
votes from Governor Romney and thus, how much it influenced the course of
a presidential election in the world's oldest democracy. At the very least,
however, Americans of all political persuasions can be forgiven for a little
cynicism when the president has the nerve to say, as he did on May 5th in his
commencement address to graduates of the Ohio State University: "You've
grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing
more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems.

You should reject these voices." And that cynicism, that lack of trust in the
country's governing institutions, becomes harmful quite easily: when the
people are asked to have faith in the NSA's efforts to protect the nation from
terrorist threats, for example.

Stan Veuger is an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. 

Case Closed? Far From It (Peggy Noonan

Case Closed? Far From It

The FBI seems blasé about the IRS investigation, so it's crucial Congress make it a priority.

• By PEGGY NOONAN

Right now the IRS story looks stalled and confused. Congressional investigators are asking for documents—"The IRS is being a little slow," said a staffer—and interviewing workers. Pieces of testimony are being released and leaked, which has allowed one congressman, Democrat Elijah Cummings, to claim there's actually no need for an investigation, the story's over, the mystery solved.

When the scandal broke in early May, the Obama administration vowed to get to the bottom of it with an FBI investigation. Many of us were skeptical. There's a sign we were right.
 
On June 13, FBI Robert Director Robert Mueller testified before the House Judiciary Committee and was questioned by Rep. Jim

Jordan (R., Ohio) about former tax-exempt office chief Lois Lerner's claim that the targeting of conservative groups was due to the incompetence of workers in the Cincinnati office.

Jordan: "What can you tell us—I mean you started a month ago, what can you tell us about this, have you found . . . the now-infamous two rogue agents, have you discovered who those people are?"

Mueller: "Needless to say, because it is under investigation, I can't give out any of the details."

Jordan: "Can you tell me . . . how many agents, investigators you've assigned to the case?"

Mueller: "Ah, may be able to do that, but I'd have to get back to you."

Jordan: "Can you tell me who the lead investigator is?"

Mueller: "Off the top of my head, no."

Jordan: "This is the most important issue in front of the country in the last six weeks, you don't know who's heading up the case, who the lead investigator is?"

Mueller: "Ah, at this juncture, no. . . . I have not had a recent briefing on it."

Jordan: "Do you know if you've talked to any of the victims—have you talked to any of the groups who were targeted by their government—have you met with any of the tea-party folks since May 14, 2013?"

Mueller: "I don't know what the status of the interviews are by the team that's on it."

Wow. He'd probably know something about the FBI's investigation of the IRS if he cared about it, if it had some priority or importance within his agency. This week an embarrassed Mr. Mueller was ready for questions from senators. There is an investigation, he said, and "over a dozen" agents have been assigned. Well, better than nothing.

Attorneys for the best-known of the targeted groups confirm that they've heard nothing. From the American Center for Law and Justice:

"None of our clients have been contacted or interviewed by the FBI." From lawyer Cleta Mitchell: "I hear from people around the country, and no one has been contacted." All of which is strange. If the FBI were investigating a series of muggings, you'd hope they'd start by interviewing the people who'd been mugged.

Meanwhile a CNN poll shows the number of people who believe the targeting program was directed by the White House is up 10 points the past month, to 47%.

So things have gotten pretty confused, maybe because it's in the interest of a lot of people to confuse it.

Again, what is historic about this scandal, what makes it unique and uniquely dangerous, is that it is different in kind from previous IRS scandals. In the past it was always elite versus elite, power guys using the agency against other power guys. This scandal is different because it's the elite versus the people. It is an entrenched and fearsome power versus regular citizens.

The scandal broke, of course, when Lois Lerner deviously planted a question at a Washington conference. She was trying to get out ahead of a forthcoming inspector general's report that would reveal the targeting. She said that "our line people in Cincinnati who handled the applications" used "wrong" methods. Also "in some cases, cases sat around for a while." The Cincinnati workers "sent some letters out that were far too broad," in some cases even asking for contributors' names. "That's not appropriate."

Since that day, the question has been: Was the targeting of conservative groups in fact the work of incompetent staffers in Cincinnati, or were higher-ups in the Washington office of the IRS involved? Ms. Lerner said it was all Cincinnati.

But then the information cascade began. The Washington Post interviewed Cincinnati IRS workers who said everything came from the top. The Wall Street Journal reported congressional investigators had been told by the workers that they had been directed from Washington. Word came that one applicant group, after receiving lengthy and intrusive requests for additional information, including donor names, received yet another letter asking for even more information—signed by Lois Lerner.

Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, which sought tax-exempt status, recently came into possession of a copy of a 20-month-old letter from the IRS's Taxpayer Advocate Service in Houston, acknowledging that her case had been assigned to an agent in Cincinnati.

"He is waiting for a determination from their office in Washington," the advocate said. The agent was "unable to give us a timeframe" on when determination would be made.

The evidence is overwhelming that the Washington office of the IRS was involved. But who in Washington? How high did it go, how many were involved, how exactly did they operate?

Those are the questions that remain to be answered. That's what the investigations are about.

Rep. Cummings, having declared the mystery solved, this week released the entire 205-page transcript of an interview between
congressional investigators and a frontline manager in the Cincinnati office. The manager, a self-described conservative Republican, was asked: "Do you have any reason to believe that anyone in the White House was involved in the decision to screen Tea Party cases?"

The answer: "I have no reason to believe that."

There, said Mr. Cummings, case closed. But that testimony settles nothing. Nobody imagines the White House picked up a phone to tell IRS workers in Cincinnati to target their enemies. That, as they say, is not how it's done.

The frontline manager also said, in his interview, "I'll say my realm was so low down, and after the initial review of a case, which was, you know, within three days after assignment, I became less and less aware of what happened above me." He said he didn't do any targeting, but "I'm not in a position to discuss anybody else's intention but my own."

What investigators have to do now is follow the trail through the IRS in Washington, including political appointees.

Questions: Do the investigators have a list of everyone who worked in the executive office of the IRS commissioner? Have they contacted those people and asked when they learned of the targeting? What did they do when they learned? Who, if anyone, thwarted any attempts to stop it? And what about those bonuses the IRS is reportedly about to award its employees? How does that figure in?

Congress, including both its battling investigative committees, must get the answers to these questions.

The House speaker should make sure it's a priority. There's no sign the FBI will.

A version of this article appeared June 22, 2013, on page A15

A Win For Common Sense : Farm Bill's Defeat

Farm Bill's Surprise Defeat A Win For Common Sense

Posted 06/21/2013 06:33 PM ET

Legislation: Congress on Friday rejected the nearly $1 trillion farm bill by a vote of 234 to 195. So what? you ask. For one, it had never happened. For another, it shows rank-and-file politicians are getting nervous.

That the measure went down in flames is a good thing, even if the reasons each party had for opposing it were radically different.

Even calling it a "farm" bill was a misnomer. It was really a bloated welfare bill that would have kept subsidies in place for wealthy farmers while supersizing spending on food stamps.

The bill's $940 billion price tag over 10 years was shocking enough. That amounted to a 50% increase over the last farm bill, passed in 2008 during the depths of a recession and vetoed by President Bush as too big.

Equally stunning was the fact that nearly 80% of the money was to be spent for food stamps, not farming.

In short, this so-called farm bill would have turned vast numbers of American urban dwellers into semi-permanent welfare recipients.

For perspective, the farm bill would have spent $80 billion a year on food stamps, nearly twice what we spent just five years ago.

Furious Democrats wanted to spend even more.

As for the farm subsidies, it's a cruel misconception that they go to support struggling family farmers — the folks that Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp warble about at their Farm Aid concerts.

In fact, subsidies go overwhelmingly to the rich. As the Environmental Working Group recently noted, the biggest 10% of farm businesses get three-quarters of all subsidies. Talk about welfare for the rich.

Even family farmers aren't exactly the struggling poor. As Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute recently reported, average household income in the U.S. in 2011 was $69,677; the average farm household's income was $87,289 — 25% greater.

The media called the bill's loss a "surprise" and "unexpected." Well, not really. Besides those Democrats who wanted to shovel more toward welfare, 62 Republicans bucked House Speaker John Boehner to oppose the bill because of the massive boost in welfare spending, the money paid some farmers to grow nothing and the subsidies that focused on the richest farmers.

If congressional leaders can't muster enough votes for a pork-filled goody bag like the farm bill, imagine how hard it'll be on tougher votes — such as immigration legislation, the looming debt ceiling or perhaps the repeal of ObamaCare — where taxpayers will really be watching how they vote.

Eventually, a new farm bill will be passed, probably with many of the same flaws, only tweaked a bit. Too bad, but at least this vote shows politicians of both parties are starting to look over their shoulders before voting on such nonsense.

At bare minimum, food stamps don't belong in a farm bill; they should be separated and voted on for what they truly are — welfare.

Meantime, those who like smaller government and want reform of our antiquated farm policies should be cheered by this surprising outcome.

Maybe it's a harbinger of things to come.

President Obama's Second Term Hits A Wall In Berlin

President Obama's Second Term Hits A Wall In Berlin

By GEORGE F. WILL
Posted 06/21/2013 05:25 PM ET

George F. Will

The question of whether Barack Obama's second term will be a failure was answered in the affirmative before his Berlin debacle, which has recast the question, which now is: Will this term be silly, even scary in its detachment from reality?

Before Berlin, Obama set his steep downward trajectory by squandering the most precious post-election months on gun-control futilities, and by a subsequent storm of scandals that have made his unvarying project — ever bigger, more expansive, more intrusive and more coercive government — more repulsive. Then came last Wednesday's pratfall in Berlin.

There he vowed energetic measures against global warming ("the global threat of our time"). The 16-year pause of this warming was not predicted by, and is not explained by, the climate models for which, in his strange understanding of respect for science, he has forsworn skepticism.

Regarding another threat, he spoke an almost meaningless sentence that is an exquisite example of why his rhetoric cannot withstand close reading: "We may strike blows against terrorist networks, but if we ignore the instability and intolerance that fuels extremism, our own freedom will eventually be endangered."

So, "instability and intolerance" are to blame for terrorism? Instability where? Intolerance of what by whom "fuels" terrorists?

Terrorism is a tactic of destabilization. Intolerance is, for terrorists, a virtue.

It is axiomatic: Arms control is impossible until it is unimportant. This is because arms control is an arena of competition in which nations negotiate only those limits that advance their interests.


He Said That Out Loud?

Nevertheless, Obama trotted out another golden oldie in Berlin when he vowed to resuscitate the cadaver of nuclear arms control with Russia. As though Russia's arsenal is a pressing problem. And as though there is reason to think President Vladimir Putin, who calls the Soviet Union's collapse "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," is interested in reducing the arsenal that is the basis of his otherwise Third World country's claim to great power status.

Shifting his strange focus from Russia's nuclear weapons, Obama said "we can ... reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking." Were Obama given to saying such stuff off the cuff, this would be a good reason for handcuffing him to a teleprompter. But, amazingly, such stuff is put on his teleprompter and, even more amazingly, he reads it aloud.

Neither the people who wrote those words nor he who spoke them can be taken seriously. North Korea and Iran may be seeking nuclear weapons? North Korea may have such weapons. Evidently Obama still entertains doubts that Iran is seeking them.

In Northern Ireland before going to Berlin, Obama sat next to Putin, whose demeanor and body language when he is in Obama's presence radiate disdain. There Obama said: "With respect to Syria, we do have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence." Differing perspectives?


The Man's Vanity

Obama wants to reduce the violence by coaxing Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who is winning the war, to attend a conference at which he negotiates the surrender of his power. Putin wants to reduce the violence by helping — with lavish materiel assistance and by preventing diplomacy that interferes — Assad complete the destruction of his enemies.

Napoleon said: "If you start to take Vienna — take Vienna." Douglas MacArthur said that all military disasters can be explained by two words: "Too late." Regarding Syria, Obama is tentative and, if he insists on the folly of intervening, tardy. He is giving Putin a golden opportunity to humiliate the nation responsible for the "catastrophe." In a contest between a dilettante and a dictator, bet on the latter.

Obama's vanity is a wonder of the world that never loses its power to astonish, but really: Is everyone in his orbit too lost in raptures of admiration to warn him against delivering a speech soggy with banalities and bromides in a city that remembers John Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" and Ronald Reagan's "Tear down this wall"?

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting nearby, Obama began his Berlin speech: "As I've said, Angela and I don't exactly look like previous German and American leaders." He has indeed said that, too, before, at least about himself. It was mildly amusing in Berlin in 2008, but hardly a Noel Coward-like witticism worth recycling.

His look is just not that interesting. And after being pointless in Berlin, neither is he, other than for the surrealism of his second term.

President's League Of Liars Is Disabling Democracy

The President's League Of Liars Is Disabling Democracy

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Posted 06/21/2013 05:25 PM ET

 Truth is the lifeblood of democracy. Without honesty, the foundations of consensual government crumble.

If the Internal Revenue Service acts unlawfully, our voluntary system of citizens computing their own taxes implodes. Yet Lois Lerner, one of the IRS' top officials, would not answer simple questions about her agency's conduct during congressional testimony, instead pleading the Fifth Amendment.

Any taxpayer who tried that with an IRS auditor would end up fined and in court.

Almost everything that IRS officials have reported about the agency's unlawful targeting of conservative groups has proven false. IRS malfeasance was not limited only to the Cincinnati office, as alleged, but followed directives sent from higher-ups in Washington.

Top IRS official Lois Lerner confessed to the scandal only through a rigged and preplanned public query by a planted questioner, designed to pre-empt an upcoming critical inspector general's report.

There is legitimate dispute over both the number and purpose of former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman's visits to the White House and nearby executive office buildings, but he did his credibility no good by snidely remarking to Congress that he might also have visited for an Easter egg roll with his kids.

Attorney General Eric Holder — who had already been held in contempt by the House of Representatives for declining to turn over internal Justice Department documents in the prior Fast and Furious scandal — swore to Congress that he had no knowledge of any effort to go after individual reporters.

But Holder had earlier done just that, signing off on a search warrant to monitor the communications of Fox reporter James Rosen. In other words, the attorney general of the United States under oath misled — or lied to — Congress.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was recently asked by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., whether the National Security Agency collected the phone and email records of millions of ordinary Americans. Clapper said that it did not. That, too, was an untruth.

Clapper's supporters argued that Wyden should not have asked such a sensitive question in public that threatened the needed secrecy of the program. But Clapper did not demur or request a closed session, instead finding it easier to deceive, later dubbing his response as the "least untruthful" answer possible.

Washington reporters and spin doctors argue whether newly appointed National Security Adviser Susan Rice knowingly lied when she wove a yarn about a single video-maker being responsible for spontaneous violence that led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi.

Yet no one disputes that her televised fables — as well as those of both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — were untrue, and demonstrably so, at the time. Yet Rice was promoted, not censured, following her performance.

Last November, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked point-blank whether the administration had altered CIA-produced intelligence memos to fit the administration narrative of a spontaneous riot in Benghazi. Carney answered unequivocally that the administration had made only one stylistic change.

That, too, was not accurate. In fact, there were at least 12 different drafts that reflected substantial ongoing changes by the administration of the original CIA talking points.

Former EPA Director Lisa Jackson created a fake email identity — "Richard Windsor" — to conduct official business off the record.

But Jackson did not just stop with that ruse. She turned Richard Windsor into an entirely mythical persona, her own alter ego who supposedly took online tests and was given awards by the EPA — a veritable Jackson doppelganger who was certified as "a scholar of ethical behavior" by no less than the agency that the unethical Jackson oversaw.

Deception is now institutionalized in the Obama administration. It infects almost every corner of the U.S. government, eroding the trust necessary for the IRS, the Department of Justice, our security agencies, and the president's official press communiques —sabotaging the public trust required for democracy itself.

What went wrong with the Obama administration?

There is no longer a traditional adversarial media in Washington. Spouses and siblings of executives at the major television networks are embedded within the administration. Unlike with Watergate, the media now holds back, believing that any hard-hitting reporting of ongoing scandals would only weaken Obama, whose vision of America the vast majority of reporters share.

But that understood exemption only encourages more lack of candor.

There is also utopian arrogance in Washington that justifies any means necessary to achieve exalted ends of supposed fairness and egalitarianism. If one has to lie to stop the Tea Party or Fox News, then it is not quite seen by this administration as a lie.
Barack Obama swept up an entire nation in 2008 with his hope-and-change promises of a new honesty and transparency.

That dream is now in shambles, destroyed by the most untruthful cast since Richard Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, Ron Ziegler and John Dean left Washington in disgrace almost 40 years ago — after likewise subverting the very government they had pledged to serve.

© 2013 Investor's Business Daily

An End to QE? STOCK FALLllllll (Breibart News Ju 20)

In a dramatic sign that the American economy is being largely propelled by Federal Reserve pumping of the dollar, the Dow Jones Industrial Average sold off 206 points on indications by Fed Chair Ben Bernanke that by the end of 2013, the Fed could begin reining in quantitative easing. While Bernanke maintained that interest rate hikes were “far in the future,” he did indicate that the Fed’s continuous and massive bond-buying spree could taper off if the economy improves.

In a less-noticed development, Bernanke also said that the Fed would continue buying mortage-backed securities – the same type of securities whose precipitously dropping value drove the economy off a cliff in 2008. Now, the taxpayers will subsidize those mortgages again, creating a real estate bubble. “While participants continue to think that in the long run the Federal Reserve portfolio should consist predominantly of Treasury securities, a strong majority now expects that the committee will not sell agency mortgage-backed securities during the process of normalizing monetary policy,” said Bernanke.



Should the Fed rein in its bond-buying spree, interest rates will likely rise, since the easy money policies of the Fed enable banks to lend at lower rates. But the Fed also indicated that while it might slow down its buying of bonds to spur lending, the government should continue to spend lots of money, lest so-called austerity measures lead to “restraining economic growth.” If the Fed does not power that spending through buying of government bonds and continued inflation of the currency, more taxation or borrowing from foreign countries would be necessary.



The Fed now controls America’s fiscal destiny. And it has apparently run out of tricks in its bag.



Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

The New American Enemies List

The New American Enemies List

Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On June 17, 2013  

The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides.

No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in Mexico for selling lethal semi-automatic weapons to drug cartels. But so far, the only identifiable purveyor of illegal weaponry is the president’s own attorney general, whose subordinates in the Fast and Furious operation sold hundreds of guns illegally to Mexican drug lords.

Suggestions to encourage greater incarceration of the mentally unstable, to jawbone Hollywood about its profitable (and gratuitous) gun violence, to regulate extremely violent — and extremely well-selling — video games usually fall on deaf liberal ears. In short, the stereotyped camouflaged, weekend gun enthusiast is not the problem that leads to Columbine, or the nearly 532 murders last year in Chicago. But because we can’t or won’t address the causes of the latter, we go after the former. He is not the unhinged sort that shoots a Gabby Giffords ^[1] or innocents in an Aurora, Colorado, theater; but somehow is the supposed red-neck yokel that a journalist like ABC’s Brian Ross ^[2] assumes does.

If the Department of Homeland Security, as is rumored, really did wish to stockpile hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, then why did it begin such repository buying right in the middle of a hysterical national debate about limiting access to various rifles and semi-automatic weapons? Was it not to create a climate of fear and panic buying that has emptied America’s shelves of the most popular types of ammunition? If the homicide rate in Philadelphia and Chicago is any indication, murderers still have plenty of access to bullets. Those who want to target practice or shoot a varmint on their property do not.

The CIA and FBI knew of the suspicious activity of the Boston bombers, of Major Hasan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki. And they did nothing to preempt their violence. The FBI is said to be carefully avoiding monitoring mosques, although all of the above terrorists were known by many fellow Muslim worshipers to be either disturbed or extremist or both. In contrast, the NSA monitors, we are told, nearly everyone’s communications rather than focusing on Middle Eastern male Muslims, even though Middle Eastern male Muslims have been involved in the vast majority of post-9/11 terrorist plots. The NSA is the electronic version of the TSA, which feels it is noble and liberal to stop an octogenarian in a wheel chair for special frisking as proper compensation for every focused look at a West
 Bank resident or Pakistani visitor on his way into the United States.

The words “Tea Party” and “patriot” in a non-profit’s name would more likely earn a negative appraisal from the IRS than would “Islam” or “Muslim.” One wonders ^[3] how Lois Lerner’s IRS division would treat a hypothetical “Sarah Palin Foundation” versus
 “The Dr. Zawahiri Charity.”

The IRS is not worried at all about 47% of the nation who pay no federal income taxes. The vast majority of those whom it focuses on are instead the 10% who pay over 70% of all taxes. These are the would-be proverbial “fat cats” who did not build their own businesses. They are reluctant to spread their wealth. They certainly did not know either when to stop making money or when the age of profit altogether had passed. Sometime around 2009 success was deemed failure, and failure success — at least if we collate the president fat-cat rhetoric with the vast expansion in the disability, food-stamp, and unemployment-insurance rolls.

Note that the IRS is not interested in leaking to Democrat senators or former administration official rumors about George Soros’s income or the details of the tax returns of Warren Buffett, Steven Spielberg, or Bill Gates. Instead, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate bragged that he knew ^[4] (falsely as it turned out) that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes. And former high administration official Austan Goolsbee claimed ^[5] (also falsely as it turned out) that he too knew that the Koch brothers were shorting the IRS.

Note that only liberal groups like ProPublica leak information about the confidential donor lists of conservative activists, apparently given their familiar arrangement with the IRS. So far IRS chiefs are not looking at prominent Democrat politicians for tax violations, although for a time — cf. Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Hilda Solis — that might have been a fruitful profile for inquiry. (One encouraging side note: if you are a suspect white, mature, well-off, conservative, heterosexual, Christian male, you can still obtain exemption from federal suspicion by loudly announcing that you also are enthralled by Barack Obama.)

We know who was not an administration suspect in the killing of four Americans in Benghazi — hard-core, al Qaeda-related Islamic terrorists. Instead a  supposedly right-wing unhinged video-maker was the object of vitriol from the secretary of state, the UN ambassador, and the president of the United States. He currently sits in jail. The known perpetrators of the murders walk free.  In contrast, Lisa Jackson, the former EPA director, just got a fat inside job from Apple, despite creating not just a fictitious name (e.g., “Richard Windsor”) to avoid scrutiny when she communicated official business, but also an entirely made-up alter ego: “Richard Windsor” became an ideal employee lauded by the unethical EPA for his supposedly “ethical behavior.”

We also know who in the media is not a target ^[6]. Not the CBS or ABC News presidents who have siblings working in the White House. Not ABC’s Good Morning America, given that one of its stalwarts is married to Press Secretary Jay Carney ^[7]. Instead, there are two sorts of suspicious reporters ^[8] that are considered hostile ^[9] to the administration and worthy of having their communications monitored. One group are those journalists who leak information that the administration wished to preempt and leak first ^[10] or who refuse to only leak favorable classified information — the bin Laden trove, the cyber war against Iran, the drone targeting protocol — that makes the president look as if he were a competent commander in chief.

The other target, of course, is Fox News ^[11], whose staff, in a variety of ways and on a number of occasions, the Obama administration has previously attacked as in some way illegitimate.

Again, who fits these profiles that our current, vastly expanding big government does not like? If you are an operator of a coal plant that creates needed energy at a profit, then beware that the EPA is after you ^[12]. If you are a shady insider who wants tens of millions of government dollars to subsidize a money-losing wind and solar plant, you hit the jackpot. Ditto the suspect people who build guitars ^[13], loan money to Chrysler, or wish to locate a jet airliner plant in South Carolina. Profits create suspicion; failures earn subsidies ^[14].

Then there are the clingers, whom the president long ago blasted as religious zealots and gun-toting xenophobes. These are the sorts whom the attorney general calls “cowards”  (not “my people”) — the “enemies” whom the president advises Latino activists to “punish” at the polls, the sorts that the president apologizes for abroad as guilty of sundry sorts of past class, race, and gender oppression.

In contrast, who is not so worried about government surveillance or audit? The New Black Panthers who turned up at a polling station in Philadelphia to intimidate voters; the “farmers” who, according to the New York Times ^[15], filed bogus claims to cash in on the government’s ill-advised and poorly administered Pigford settlement; the Secret Service agents who routinely visited prostitutes while on duty protecting high government officials abroad; and the assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who used her office to enhance her private consulting business.

Americans wonder whom would the immigration services more likely wish to deport: the German Romeike family that was “guilty” of homeschooling their children ^[16]; Obama’s aunt Zeituni, who lied about her immigration status to illegally obtain state and federal subsidies; or Onyango Obama, who likewise is here illegally (for 21 years) and was recently charged with ramming a police car while driving intoxicated? Is the U.S. so short of DUI offenders and frauds that we must deport homeschoolers to make room for them ^[17]?
There is currently a climate of fear growing throughout the United States. Millions of Americans are terrified of the IRS, the Department of Justice, the EPA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even perhaps the FBI, CIA, and State Department.

Why?

These government agencies have never been bigger, more powerful, and more ideologically driven. Citizens fear them for understandable reasons: those who do nothing wrong, whether in filing tax forms or trying to buy a rifle, are considered suspect and deserving to be the target of either federal scrutiny or presidential slurs.  But those who do a great deal of wrong, either by illegally entering the country, disrupting polling, trafficking in weapons in Mexico, eavesdropping on American citizens, pulling tax information for partisan purposes, subverting a government agency, or lying to the public about government activity, seem exempt from punishment — and, more chillingly, sense that they are so exempt.

Ask who now is sitting in prison — a shyster video-maker who had nothing to do with the deaths of four Americans, or their five known terrorist killers lounging about in North Africa? Apparently, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula ^[18], like EPA director Lisa Jackson, was guilty of creating a fake persona. Like Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, he had a lien on his business. Like former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he had some unpaid taxes. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been visited by government investigators. Like Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, he lied to federal authorities — although they were not quite as high as those in the U.S. Congress. And unlike all of the above, he was therefore jailed.

Of all the legacies of Barack Obama, the most pernicious will be the creation of a rogue government that has cut off and terrified half the population ^[19] — and for no other reason than that they seem to represent things that Mr. Obama simply does not seem to understand.

---

Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson

Common Core–Did you know???

Common Core Curriculum:         DID YOU KNOW……………

• With the exception of a few states (Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, Virginia) your Governor agreed to Common Core before the standards were written?

• Common Core is NOT state led?

• Schools must adhere to the program word for word, with the ability to ADD only a small amount of content—but that additional content will not be on the exam?

• If you do not like what is being taught, neither you nor any official in the state will have any power to change it or anyone to call?

• No one really knows how much Common Core will cost in the future?

• The estimated extremely high cost of Common Core will rest on the backs of the taxpayers?

• Common Core will require massive upgrades in computer equipment and upgrades to current bandwidth?

• Even though the federal government said the program was voluntary, Tennessee has to adopt Common Core to be eligible for Race To The Top and President Obama has said he wants to tie federal Title 1 funding to adoption of Common Core?

• While Common Core was advertised as “internationally benchmarked” it is not?

• The federal government requires the state to maintain a database on every child from P-K to workforce and encouraged collection of over 400 data points to track everything about your child AND their family?

• The federal government by law is not allowed to maintain a national database?  They are evading this law by requiring the state to collect the data and then forward it to the federal government to be used by other agencies and private foundations?

• Common Core math teaches an experimental geometry method created by a Soviet mathematician, in the 1950’s, that was abandoned in K-12 because it failed?

• A world-renowned math expert who worked on Common Core stated that Common Core fails to meet the stated goal of improved US K-12 mathematic achievement?

• Dr. Stotsky (member of Common Core validation team) considers Common Core ELA and reading standards as “simply empty skill sets”?

• At least in grades 6-12 English teachers would be required to spend at least 50% of their time on nonfiction and informational texts such as US political documents, court decisions and scientific and technical manuals?

• English teachers would need to be retrained in order to teach children how to read technical manuals instead of works of literature?

• Dr. Milgram of Stanford University, the only mathematician on the Common Core validation team, refused to sign off on the math standards?

• A radical professor who has been a colleague of, and is a favorite of, anti-capitalist terrorist Bill Ayers is directing the creation of one set of Common Core tests?

• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a major funder? What do they know about education? They sure know how to sell computers, though.

• Bill Gates’ Microsoft and many other companies are bound to benefit handsomely from the implementation of Common Core?

• A child could answer a math question correctly but be marked wrong because he did not use the Common Core prescribed method for getting to the correct answer?

• SAT testing is being structured to conform to Common Core? This would mean the home schoolers, private school and charter schools will have to conform to Common Core as well?

• Children as young as kindergarten will eventually participate in the evaluation of a teacher’s performance?

• The testing costs under Common Core may be triple what Tennessee is currently incurring?

• Although Common Core claims to prepare all children for college, the college they talk about is a nonselective community college not a 4-year university?

• Our children may graduate reading at a 7th grade level and a Common Coreording to Dr. Milgram, by 8th grade, will be two years behind other countries in math skills?

• Children could be required to select a career path as early as middle school or even elementary school?

Call your Governor, state Representative and state Senator today!

Demand they stop implementing Common Core. 

Are We There Yet??? Like a Rolling Stone

Bob Dylan Like A Rolling Stone Lyrics

 

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but know you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

The Young Won't Buy ObamaCare

Jenkins: The Young Won't Buy ObamaCare

It makes scant financial sense for them to subsidize others' care.

• By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR

Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare.

Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require them to buy insurance policies expected to cost roughly $5,800. The law, then, isn't just asking them to pay for "the services that they are going to consume," he added. "The mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies . . . to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else."
Since he puts it that way, why would they sign up for ObamaCare, especially since the alleged penalties will be negligible and likely unenforced?

Journalism celebrates the "five Ws" but a secret of our profession is that many of us disdain the fifth W—"why"—as if accurate analysis is somehow woolly and inferior to accurate transcription of simple facts like "who," "what," "when" and "where."

Here's another example. For 30 years, journalists have been "investigating" hospital pricing, which is neither competitive nor closely related to cost, invariably throwing up their hands and saying government must fix matters. Yet any reasoned analysis shows that government policy is why we have such a byzantine payment system in the first place, in which an ever-inflating health-care bill is allocated among "payer" groups via opaque political bargaining.

Why isn't the same mess seen in other realms of the economy? In the automobile market, dealers publish prices on their websites and in ads that are always lower than the sticker prices. Why?
Independent websites like Edmunds.com, AutoTrader.com and Kelley Blue Book publish detailed pricing information for consumers and do so for free. Why?

The answer is obvious. Consumers want such information and businesses see opportunity in providing it, even for free, in order to attract eyeballs for advertising.

Such information doesn't exist in health care because consumers don't demand it, because somebody else is almost always paying for our health care. Those of us who aren't subsidized directly by Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans Administration are subsidized through the tax code to channel all our aches and pains through a third-party payment mill, disguised as employer-provided "insurance."

Not being able to analyze "why" also leads to all kinds of anomalous conclusions.

The uninsured are painted as the payer group getting the worst deal from the health-care system since they don't enjoy insurer discounts. But judging by the 6% of hospital costs written off as uncollectable, the uninsured are actually getting the best deal (in a sense). A 2011 government study found that even relatively affluent families pay just 37% of their hospital bills in full.

Medicare is portrayed as getting the best deal from the system because Medicare pays less per service. But remember how the system works. Who's to say Medicare doesn't pay less per procedure because it's being billed for many more procedures, because that's how providers are allowed to maximize their revenues from the payer known as Medicare?

In fact, plenty of evidence suggests this is exactly how Medicare operates. And Congress understands as much, hence the 25% cut in physician reimbursements it keeps threatening to impose is informed partly by expectations that physicians could maintain their incomes by charging for more services.

The media's refusal to accumulate any wisdom on the "whys" of our health-care system is also behind the willingness of so many to credit a recent moderation in health-care spending to ObamaCare, though that moderation began before ObamaCare was enacted.

The spending moderation is actually not dissimilar to that seen during the heyday of managed care in the 1990s and again during the 2000s as employers rolled out sharply higher deductibles, co-pays and health savings accounts. The moderation is not dissimilar to that seen in every economic downturn when companies chuck insured workers off their payrolls and fellow workers curb their health spending out of fear of losing their jobs.

Employers are stuck constantly trying to combat the inflationary forces that government policy fosters. That's our best explanation of why health-care inflation waxes and wanes, though never to the point of falling in real terms. And it's probably true now too.

If this big picture is news to you, blame the disrespect in which the fifth W is held by the media profession.

A version of this article appeared June 19, 2013,

Political News & Commentary

Sponsored by:

What's really behind Obama's Benghazi bunkum

By ANDREW MALCOLMPosted 09/21/2012 08:44 AM ET

You know that act of terrorism in Benghazi last week that saw four Americans killed on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 and the consulate shelled, burned and destroyed and fleeing Americans killed in a nearby safe house that turned out to be unsafe and the Obama administration, alone in the world, said it was all clearly a spontaneous reaction to an old anti-Islam YouTube video?

Remember that? They said it for days. Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, was sent out as sacrificial lamb on no less than five Sunday shows to peddle the same hooey about spontaneous Muslim anger.

Because if the attack wasn't spontaneous, then it was by definition planned.

And if it was planned, why wasn't Barack Obama, who's skipped so many daily intelligence briefings to campaign for reelection, doing his real job?

Being, oh, say, forewarned and forearmed to protect these valiant Americans serving abroad whom he later lauded as so brave? But they couldn't hear the presidential praise because they were dead far from home. Then, totally tone-deaf to tragedy, Obama dashed off to a Vegas fundraiser.

This administration was too clever by half. On Wednesday, when Obama was up in the Big Apple chatting with Dayyyy-vid Letterman and hobnobbing with Beyonce at $40K per head, the administration sent the director of the National Counterterrorism Center to Capitol Hill. There, Matthew Olsen testified that, yes, the Benghazi attack was an act of terrorism.

Here's the clever part of that. At first it appeared Olsen disagreed with the White House. But the next day Obama press secretary Jay

Carney was able to consult his notes, agree with Olsen and baldly tell reporters: "It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."

Wait! What?! Now, it's obvious and self-evident? After a week proclaiming clearly it was an organic video outrage? A week, by the way, spent by distracted media members castigating Gov. Romney for so hastily -- and now, so self-evidently -- criticizing the Obama responses. These guys don't have the, uh, balloons to admit a bungle.

(And get this: Thursday the Obama administration spent $70,000 for ads on seven Pakistani TV networks showing the Democrat explaining the U.S. had nothing to do with the anti-Islam video, thus exposing millions more to the hated video.)

Here's the strategic political context of the Carney maneuver: In a close-fought election campaign like this one the last thing an incumbent (or his mouthpiece) wants to do is say, well, yes, as a matter of fact, we blew it. We were wrong. We weren't properly prepared and then afterward, we were in full CYA mode and thought you'd fall for the video line. 


An incumbent president's strong suit always is foreign affairs and national security. He's supposed to know all kinds of secret stuff that we don't, which is OK because it's to keep us and our people safe, right? Except sadly not Amb. Chris Stevens and his colleagues because someone(s) were asleep at the switch. Who would ever anticipate violence against Americans in a lawless Muslim country jam-packed with weapons on 9/11?

Obama's poll approval on handling foreign affairs has exceeded Romney's, as expected for an incumbent. But, actually, it's not all that great. Less than half of Americans (49%) now approve of Obama's foreign affairs job performance, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC Poll.

While nearly as many (46%) disapprove.

Obama's foreign policy approval has plunged five points (or 10%) from 54% just in recent days. Americans may be inattentive much of the time, but they are not dumb. Further unraveling of Obama's cockamamie Benghazi claim and cover-up with additional evidence of mishandling the lead-in seriously jeopardizes his reelection chances.

If all Obama can claim is he let the SEALs kill Osama bin Laden while he watched and his vaunted Muslim outreach got slapped away. Iran got the bomb anyway. Qaddafi and Mubarak are gone. But al Qaeda is moving into the Libya, Syria and Egyptian power vacuums to help ensure the Arab Spring becomes a democracy-free Arab Winter.

So, there goes the president's foreign policy standing. And he's sure got no economic accomplishments to vaunt, even with a teleprompter.

Already, the Journal reports from Libya that for months hopeful Americans ignored numerous warnings of trouble in that lawless land from government and militia sources and followed shoddy security procedures. The Brits had already pulled out of Benghazi. For days the State Dept. didn't even know what its admired ambassador was doing in Benghazi.

After a classified Thursday briefing from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Susan Collins said security in Libya was "woefully
inadequate, given the security threat environment." Rep. Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, added,
"The story now has been changed. There was a planned, premeditated attack."

The State Dept. is launching an Accountability Review Board to investigate. What do you bet its findings and the FBI's will be unavailable before Nov. 6?

The Obama crowd regularly seeks to reap credit for its boss by, for instance, leaking details of the Bin Laden hit and counter-espionage operations, even when they're actually British or Saudi. Now, some apparently are seeking to discredit the ambassador's dead security team, who were former SEALs and not armed with the mortars and rocket-propelled grenade launchers that the spontaneously attacking video-protesters spontaneously produced.

SEALs are well-known as seriously tough dudes. They are beyond bodyguards. They don't get to play much golf. But here's the sort of thing they do get to do:

Leap from airplanes over one country just after midnight at 40,000 feet, wearing oxygen masks and 120-pound packs. Using GPS screens on their chest, they silently steer their chutes a couple dozen miles into an adjacent country, land in the planned field and accomplish their mission.

By dawn that day or maybe several later, if all goes well, they're hiking back out eating lizards and leaves and back at home base watching an NFL game via satellite on AFN.

On an ideal SEAL mission, no one ever knows they were there and their weapons go unused. "If I'm firing this a lot," one SEAL told me last summer, tapping the M-16 clipped to his full gear and body armor, "then I'm having a very bad day."

Those four lost Americans had a very bad day on 9/11. Maybe 11/6 will be a bad day politically for those responsible.