UK - USA DEFEATED (Thanks Obama !)

Cameron's Defeat on Syria Is Also President Obama's

The prime minister's loss in the House of Commons was the first on such a question since 1782.

By
• DANIEL JOHNSON

In the deadly poker game that the great powers are playing over Syria, the British have just folded. Thursday's vote in the House of Commons has not only damaged Prime Minister David Cameron's authority, perhaps beyond repair, but forced President Obama to face the prospect of military intervention without the support of America's staunchest ally.

No wonder officials in Washington are making no secret of their fury that for the first time in half a century the Anglo-American "special relationship" has proved unreliable. It was Mr. Cameron who had tried to play the heroic part of Margaret Thatcher by taking the lead on Syria, dragging a reluctant U.S. administration to choose sides in the civil war by arming the rebels. But when put to the test, he failed to deliver.

It is difficult to convey the historical magnitude of Mr. Cameron's defeat, narrow as it was. American presidents can continue in office even if they lose control of Congress, but British prime ministers must command a parliamentary majority at all times, especially on  

Mr. Cameron is the first prime minister to have been defeated in the House of Commons on such a question since 1782, when King George III's premier, Lord North, lost a vote of no confidence and resigned, following the British defeat at Yorktown. In British politics, careers are usually made or unmade on the floor of the House of Commons. Mr. Cameron will be fortunate to survive such a humiliation.

It was all the worse for being self-inflicted: He had recalled parliament from vacation, taking its endorsement of his policy on Syria for granted. By the time he realized that he had misjudged the country's appetite for action, it was too late: In the final vote, some 50 members of his coalition deserted him.

The gravity of Thursday's defeat, however, extends far beyond domestic politics. Just as Hitler in his bunker ranted about dividing the Allies, playing on Stalin's fears that the U.S. and Britain would make a separate peace with Germany, so Bashar Assad must hope to save himself by dividing his foes. At next week's G-20 summit in Moscow, the West will struggle to present a united front against Russia and China. The British, with whom the United States normally makes common cause, will this time stand aloof, leaving the Americans with the French and the Turks; instead of the special relationship, a ménage à trois.

Will dictators now be emboldened to use weapons of mass destruction? That depends, as always, on whether the U.S. administration has the confidence to raise the cost of their doing so. But it is always easier for any president to deter evildoers if he has allies on whom he can rely. Usually that means the British—but not this time.

What, then, has changed? In a speech on Thursday that otherwise failed to persuade, Mr. Cameron had one memorable line: The experience of Iraq, he said, had "poisoned the wells of public opinion," undermining trust in the intelligence and other evidence on which all governments must make decisions.

It will indeed be hard to rebuild that trust, on both sides of the Atlantic—even though the war crimes of the Assad regime are being committed in broad daylight. But the mistake that both Mr. Cameron and Mr. Obama are making, like their predecessors Tony Blair and George W. Bush, is to focus solely on chemical weapons.

Mr. Cameron ruled out regime change as the aim, yet it is obvious that unless he is deposed, Bashar Assad (like his father Hafez Assad before him) will continue to use the genocidal methods to destroy the rebels that have already cost well over 100,000 mainly civilian lives and displaced up to three million refugees.

The attacks now planned by the allies are thus explicitly intended to leave Mr. Assad and his regime in place, but to deter them from deploying WMD. This makes no sense. More likely, airstrikes with this limited purpose will merely embroil the West in a protracted civil war.

The lack of a clear and attainable objective in Syria was one of the main reasons why Mr. Cameron was unable to persuade many of his Conservative colleagues to support him. Another reason was suspicion that Syria's opposition groups, such as the Syrian National Council, are really Islamist front organizations, funded by the Saudis and Gulf states and infiltrated by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists. Many in the West are deeply concerned by the persecution of Christians and other minorities in Syria and across the Middle East, as evidence mounts that rebel forces have carried out ethnic and religious cleansing in the areas under their control. Clearly, any U.S.-led intervention must take precautions against the danger that one genocidal regime could be replaced by another.

How have we arrived at a point where the West, and even the Anglosphere, is not only divided, but we also have only the choice between greater and lesser evils? The ultimate responsibility must lie with the person to whom the Free World looks for leadership: the president of the United States. It is because Barack Obama has abdicated that responsibility, refusing to make a clear distinction in his policy between liberty and tyranny, that the world is now in such an ominous predicament.

Other members of the administration must of course share the blame. Is it any surprise that Joe Biden, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice and Samantha Power inspire little confidence that they have learned the right lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan? President Obama has "led from behind," which is as much as to say that he has not led at all. This abdication of leadership is apparent in the president's naïve mishandling of the disintegration of the old order in the Middle East, in his failure to anticipate or respond adequately to the wave of Islamist extremism that has imperiled Western interests in the region, and above all in his arrogant treatment of America's closest ally, Israel.

It is easy for President Obama to call on Israel to take risks for peace with the Palestinians. As Mr. Cameron has learned the hard way, his own colleagues are not prepared to risk British lives to bring peace to Syria. Nor has President Obama shown much inclination to risk American lives for Syria.

Israel, in constant danger of attack from Syria, is our best source of intelligence about what is happening there. Yet both Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron are eager that Israeli lives should be risked: not for peace, but to appease the intransigence of the Islamic world.

The British are proud of their parliament, which served as a model for so many others in the days when it stood for freedom, democracy and the rule of law. The eyes of the world were once again on Westminster this week, but what they beheld was an unedifying spectacle: a prime minister who failed to lead and a nation disinclined to follow its own best traditions. When Chamberlain resigned after the Norway debate in May 1940, there was a Churchill to replace him. If only we had a lionhearted leader waiting in the wings today.
 
Mr. Johnson is the editor of Standpoint magazine, published monthly in London (www.standpointmag.co.uk).

Affordable-Housing Zealots Hijack Mortgage Reform

It's Official: Affordable-Housing Zealots Hijack Mortgage Reform

Posted 08/30/2013 06:28 PM ET

Housing: Under pressure from civil-rights activists, federal bank regulators have killed tougher mortgage rules requiring minimum down payments and credit scores for loans bundled into securities. Here we go again.

The Fed, FDIC, SEC and three other agencies regulating Wall Street have adopted the same weak underwriting standards the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set earlier this year for loans.

The Dodd-Frank Act was supposed to require banks and other issuers of mortgage-backed securities to retain 5% of the credit risk of the bonds on their books to avoid the moral hazard that led to the financial crisis, when lenders quickly resold subprime loans to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Wall Street to offload risk. Only high-quality mortgages were supposed to be exempt.

But a week after the president met with regulators at the White House, when he reportedly expressed fears lenders might not want to lend to low-income borrowers, they proposed a broad exemption to the rule covering 98% of all mortgages.
Proponents of tighter underwriting had sought a 20% down payment rule. Now, there is no requirement.

Regulators also punted on proposed credit score metrics — even though the agencies' own studies show credit history and down payments "are significant factors in determining the probability of mortgage default."

Instead, lenders can look to "nontraditional" credit references — rental payment history or utility payments — a practice widely blamed for waves of mortgage defaults in states with lots of immigrants.

Qualifying mortgages, moreover, can count income received from child support and even "government assistance programs" against household debt to meet the new 43% debt-to-income threshold.

The ratio is the only hard metric in the mortgage rules. Yet it was loosened from an original 36% ratio, and it's still not as useful as credit scores in predicting defaults. Under the new criteria, federal data predict a whopping 23% loan default rate.

Regulators admit that such a high default rate is "not an acceptable level of risk," but justify it by arguing:

"The agencies are concerned about the prospect of imposing further constraints on mortgage credit ... (that) might disproportionately affect groups that have historically been disadvantaged in the mortgage market, such as lower-income, minority, or first-time homebuyers."

This is a major victory for the affordable-housing lobby, which before the crisis successfully pushed for similar easing. The NAACP, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Center for Responsible Lending and Urban League, among others, all fought minimum down payments and credit scores, arguing they "block" housing market access for minorities with weak credit.

In fact, low-income minority borrowers have not been locked out of the mortgage market. In 2012 alone, Fannie and Freddie underwrote close to $300 billion in low-income loans to meet goals set by the government.

And the Federal Housing Administration has backed so many subprime loans that delinquencies have threatened the agency's solvency.

Last year, moreover, the administration re-adopted a Clinton-era rule that compels lenders to bend mortgage standards for minorities with weak credit.

The Justice Department, as part of a crusade against lending discrimination, has sued banks that maintained strong standards. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has marched an army of investigators into banks to make sure their underwriting policies don't have a "disparate impact" on blacks and Latinos.

Now, by giving risky mortgages and securities an official stamp of approval (and legal protection), the administration has institutionalized the same lax underwriting practices that sparked the mortgage meltdown.

While the administration has paid lip service to tightening lending standards and preventing another crisis, behind the scenes it actually has done the opposite.

In fact, it's pushing the same reckless Clinton-era policies of lowering standards to boost minority homeownership that sparked the mortgage meltdown.

Only now, in an obscenely cynical betrayal of the public trust, the government is doing it in the name of "financial reform" and "crisis prevention."

Questions for Hillary

Questions for Hillary Clinton

By Jennifer Rubin, Updated: August 28, 2013

When Hillary Clinton gives speeches these days for a six-figure fee it is on her terms. She can pontificate on whatever she likes with nary a tough question or a skeptical listener. But she just left the State Department and her involvement with the issues now exploding on our TV and computer screens deserve scrutiny.

Don’t you think she should be asked some tough questions? Here are a few:

Should the United States have used military force when Syria allegedly first used chemical weapons? When it used chemical weapons allegedly to kill and injury thousands? [The left-wing base may not be pleased with her answer; If it is, she's in trouble on national security issues.]

Why didn’t you insist the United States act more forcefully after 50,000 civilians died? 75,000? 100,000? Do you feel any moral culpability for failing to act sooner in Syria?

When did jihadis move into Syria? Should we have acted to assist the rebels before that?

Does the United States have national security interests at issue in Syria?

Did the inability to negotiate a status of forces agreement in Iraq embolden Iran and/or unleash sectarian violence?

How did you lose track of the growing al-Qaeda presence in North Africa, and specifically in Libya?

What was your Egypt strategy? Why were so many confused about what it was?

Was it a mistake to waste so much capital on the “peace process”?

Was reset with Russia a mistake? Was it a mistake to abandon allies (Czech Republic, Poland) on missile defense sites?

What did you do to help women in Iran? In Afghanistan?

In Iraq, you accused the Bush administration of failing to provide fighting men and women with the best equipment (body armor, in that case). Did the Obama administration do the same with the sequester cuts?

Was your vote on the Iraq war a mistake?

Hillary Clinton rarely gets asked such tough but straight-forward questions. And when she does, she normally filibusters and fends off follow-up’s. In a campaign she may find that harder to do. Her perennial problem has always been that her centrist instincts don’t line up with Democratic base on foreign policy and her record is one of ineptitude and/or passivity. That’s a problem for a future commander in chief, as the Obama administration has amply demonstrated.

© The Washington Post Company

O Blows It by Iraq, Misque

Graham: U.S. needed Iraqi foothold that prez abandoned

Thursday, August 29, 2013 -- Anonymous (not verified)

Sections: 

Op-Ed

Friday, August 30, 2013

Author(s): 

Michael Graham

More than 70 years after the start of World War II, America has 100,000 troops stationed at bases in Germany and Japan. More than 50 years after the cease-fire in Korea, we have nearly 30,000 American military stationed there.

But in Iraq, where we toppled Saddam just a decade ago and oversaw three national elections, there isn’t a single American combat soldier left. A fact President Obama has repeatedly celebrated.

Now imagine the world today — the exploding Egypt, sarin-gas Syria, bombs-in-Benghazi world — if Obama had treated Iraq the way America treated Germany, Japan and Korea. Imagine the Middle East with a fully functioning U.S. military base on the border of Iran and Syria, able to project power right on Bashar Assad and the ayatollahs’ doorsteps.

Alas, we can only imagine …

Syria, as bad as it is, isn’t even close to the greatest foreign policy failure of the Obama administration. It’s a symptom of Obama’s abandonment of the region. And the high (low?) point of that policy was Obama’s decision to abandon the moderate, pro-Western citizens of Iraq to the extremists.

Obama’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq will be viewed by history as one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of all time.

Please don’t start the tired “Bush Lied, People Died” nonsense. Forget the faulty intelligence on Iraq’s WMD program. Even if you lie in bed at night sticking pins in your “W” voodoo doll, it’s irrational to ignore the pragmatic value of a U.S. military force in a U.S.-leaning Iraq in the heart of the mess that is Obama’s “Arab Spring” Middle East.

Having 10,000 trained, intelligence-gathering troops bolstering the flagging courage of timid (small “d”) democrats and rattling the nerves of despots and terrorists is a good thing — no matter how we got there.

So why are they gone? War fatigue? We had plenty of that after World War II — but we’re still in Germany. Americans didn’t exactly rally around the Korean conflict at the time, but even after that “forgotten war,” we’re spending about $7 billion a year to stay.

The costs of “Bush’s unfunded war”? An administration whose smallest annual deficit ($759 billion) is larger than the biggest one we’d ever seen before is hardly in the penny-pinching business.

No, we gave up this invaluable geo-strategic opportunity and abandoned Muslim moderates to the Islamists for the worst reason possible: Petty politics.

Because it was Bush, the war was bad. Because it was bad, the troops had to come home. Such is the juvenile “strategery” of the Smartest President Ever.

Only now, we’ve got the Obama administration going full “W,” arguing for U.S. military action against Syria without U.N. approval or — a line even Bush didn’t cross — congressional authority.

I remember when Joe Biden was throwing around the “I” word over talk like that. (“Impeachment,” although in Biden’s case it could easily be “Einstein” or “aisle.”)

As of Wednesday morning, the White House was leaking like a broken sieve that there was “no doubt” the Assad regime was responsible for the chemical weapons attack that slaughtered innocent children. And, therefore, military action was imminent.

By Thursday afternoon, we were being told that Obama “had not made a decision,” and liberal lapdogs like U.S. Sen. Liz Warren were unwilling even to say the president should make the case to Congress.

Who knows where we’ll be by the time you read this — inviting Assad to another swanky dinner with the Kerrys?

Here’s what won’t change: The limited options we have, in part because we abandoned our hard-won place in Iraq as part of an unrealistic Obama hope that the troubles of the Middle East would just go away.

Listen to Michael Graham weekdays noon to 3 p.m. on BostonHeraldRadio.com or follow him on

Obama and an Edouard Daladier Moment

Monday, August 19, 2013

Obama and an Edouard Daladier Moment

The day after the November 2008 election I had a major Édouard Daladier moment.

On that horrid Wednesday, I sat in my cluttered office at Main State in Washington, DC, in a deep, deep funk. Blinds drawn; lights out; a small TV on the far side of the office ran images of Obama’s victory celebration in Chicago the night before.

Two colleagues, one male and one female, both white, and both career State officers, walked into the office and started bubbling, “Isn’t this great!” Startled out of my near coma, I glumly asked “What’s great?” The woman looked at me as though I were from outer space, “The election! Obama’s victory.” I stammered, “Wha-what’s so great about it? He’s going to be an awful president.”

They looked at each other, and then the male officer said, “When you drove in today, didn’t you see the joy and pride in the black parking attendants in the basement? They have a real spring in their step this morning.” For one of the few times in my career, I was speechless. No withering reply. No cutting remark. No Churchillian riposte. No well-aimed stream of verbal acid shot from between my lips. Known while I was at the UN as the "Master of the Reply," I stared at him, as a fish pulled out of the depths might. Uncomprehending. Mouth moving without a sound. My pea-sized brain had failed me, yet again. I clearly had not understood that the 2008 national elections in the world’s most important country were about the happiness of parking attendants, about ensuring they had a "spring in their step."

These two cheerful condescending colleagues bounced out of my dreary office; I could hear them celebrating with others outside the door. A couple of minutes later, in walked another friend, a Republican political appointee, who shook his head and sorrowfully asked,”What do you think?” I fidgeted with my pen, undid my tie, and said, in my best Liev Schreiber growl, “We just did a Hemingway. Muzzle of a loaded shotgun in the mouth; about to pull the trigger. Or, as Édouard Daladier would have said, 'The fools! Why are they cheering?'”

Although featured on the cover of TIME at least twice, Édouard Daladier, on this side of the Atlantic, anyhow, is hardly known today; he is a figure lost in the fog of history. That is unfortunate. His valiant and ultimately doomed struggle against the homicidal fraternal twin tyrannies of Communism and Nazism deserves study; we can learn from his mistakes. Today, when the "leader" of the West is in full appeasement mode, the story of Daladier and France in the 1930s is an important one for those who would be America's allies. Unfortunately for our long-term interests, it seems that regardless of whether our allies know of Daladier, some already understandably have taken steps to avoid a fate akin to that he and France suffered.

Almost a century later, we have difficulty understanding how devastating the 1914-18 Great War proved for France. The bulk of Western Front fighting took place on French soil. Some 1.6 million Frenchmen, nearly 5% of the economically active population, had died or permanently gone missing, with another 4.3 million wounded, many of them horribly so. The French Army fought with remarkable valor, much more valor, in fact, than brains; the brave poilu deserved much better than they got from their brutally and even criminally inept senior ranks. By the time the Americans arrived, the French Army and, to a lesser extent, the British, verged on collapse. The Allies faced a revitalized German Army which had just defeated Russia, and begun transferring hundreds of thousands of troops from Russia for a new offensive in France. Thanks in large part to those Americans, the Germans were stopped, barely, and both sides agreed to an armistice. The inconclusive end to the Great War, with Germany left almost untouched, had deprived France of a sense of victory, leaving instead one of stunned exhaustion. The last thing the French electorate wanted in the years after WWI was another confrontation with Germany.

Daladier, a classic leftist politician of the era, became Prime Minister three times. French politics were rough and tumble, with alliances made and dissolved, and little attention paid to foreign policy. There was a general refusal to acknowledge that Germany was re-arming and preparing for another round. Daladier was a voice in the wilderness. He saw the threat coming from Germany and became particularly alarmed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Unlike many others of his time, and today, he understood that Communists and Nazis comprised two sides of the same totalitarian coin. Daladier became PM for the last time in April 1938. By this time, the West's appeasement policies towards Hitler were firmly set. Daladier desperately tried to convince Britain's Neville Chamberlain to take a firmer stance against Hitler. Chamberlain would have none of it, and France's parlous military state prevented Daladier from striking out on his own. Chamberlain had decided to yield to Hitler's demand for the Sudetenland, and to the effective dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Daladier argued against this, but found himself helpless to do anything but go along. To his life-long shame, Daladier became a signer of the September 1938 Munich Agreement, the now universally recognized monument to appeasement. Heading back home from Munich, Daladier assumed angry French patriots would rip him to shreds. He, instead, got a hero's welcome. Enthusiastic crowds sang his praises, prompting him to turn to an aide, and utter the famous, bitter, and prophetic words, "Ah, the fools! Why are they cheering?"

Daladier knew that war with Hitler would come, and France was not ready. He subsequently tried to develop an arms relationship with the US, seeking American weapons to plus up the poorly armed French military. The negotiations became complicated because of France's default on WWI-era loans from the US. By the time this got worked out, it was too late. The American planes France ordered ended up in Britain as France fell to the Nazis. (NOTE: A fascinating book about the rescue of Daladier and other French politicians in 1945 from an SS prison by a combined unit of US and German soldiers--yes, you read that right, US and German soldiers--is The Last Battle by Stephen Harding.)

I have written before about the Obama foreign policy (here, here, and here, for example). We are firmly in the grip of an appeaser, perhaps even worse. Other countries have begun to see that quite clearly.

In the Middle East, we have shown great weakness in the face of an Islamist totalitarian onslaught, and, in fact, many of our statements on Egypt appear to favor the murdering totalitarians of the Muslim Brotherhood. Thanks to Obama, regardless of what happens in Egypt--and I suspect the Egyptian military will hang on--the US will lose. Egypt's leaders, not wishing to repeat the Daladier experience, will drift away from us. Already we see the Saudis and others in the Gulf stepping in; don't rule out a move by Russia, as well, as our ineptness in Egypt and Syria provides Moscow wonderful opportunities to reestablish its influence in the region.

Not only in the Middle East do we see this move away from the USA. In Latin America, for example, our long-time ally Colombia has just about given up on Obama. The callous and exceptionally stupid and arrogant manner in which the misadminsitration handled the free trade agreement and its refusal to stand up to Venezuela in Honduras, has convinced the Colombians to look elsewhere. We will see others follow, including Israel which will begin to develop a policy much more independent of us than heretofore.

All this forms part of the legacy of long-term damage done by the man who brought "a spring to the step" of parking attendants in the basement of the State Department.

WLA

Special Treatment for Congress - Don't Think So!!!!

Stop privileges for government officials: Column
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 
Politicians and police don't deserve special treatment.

Story Highlights
    •    Special privileges for public servants have the effect of making them look more like public masters.
    •    Any rule giving government officials preferential treatment should have to withstand strict scrutiny.
    •    Our political class seems to have gotten a little full of itself.


All over America, government officials enjoy privileges that ordinary citizens don't. Sometimes it involves bearing arms, with special rules favoring police, politicians and even retired government employees. Sometimes it involves freedom from traffic and parking tickets, like the special non-traceable license plates enjoyed by tens of thousands of California state employees or similar immunities for Colorado legislators. Often it involves immunity from legal challenges, like the "qualified" immunity to lawsuits enjoyed by most government officials, or the even-better "absolute immunity" enjoyed by judges and prosecutors. (Both immunities -- including, suspiciously, the one for judges -- are creations of judicial action, not legislation).

Lately it seems as if these kinds of special privileges are proliferating. And it also seems to me that special privileges for "public servants" that have the effect of making them look more like, well, "public masters," are kind of un-American. Even more, I'm beginning to wonder if they might actually be unconstitutional. Surely the creation of two classes of citizens, one more equal than the others, isn't the sort of thing the Framers intended. Why didn't they put something in the Constitution to prevent it?

Well, actually, they did. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution prohibits the federal government from granting "titles of nobility," and

Article I, Section 10 extends this prohibition to the states -- one of the few provisions in the original Constitution to impose limits directly on states. Surely the Framers must have considered this prohibition pretty important.

Well, yes. But since then we've read it rather narrowly: Basically, so long as people aren't granted titles like Baron, Duke, or Sir, nobody even considers the question of titles of nobility. And, of course, the kinds of privileges I describe aren't hereditary (and though the growth of political dynasties like the Bushes and the Clintons should give people pause, it doesn't rise to the level of titles of nobility -- does it?). But in England they have Life Peerages as Barons that aren't hereditary, and the titles of nobility clause also forbids American officials from accepting knighthoods, which aren't hereditary, from foreign nations without consent of Congress. So the ban on titles of nobility can't just be a matter of word-games, or descent.

There hasn't been much judicial action on the titles of nobility clause -- they are, as described in Prof. Jay Wexler's book of the same name, among the Constitution's "odd clauses." But since we always hear that the Constitution is a "living, breathing document" that must change to adapt to the times, perhaps in this era of big government and accumulating special privileges it is time to give the ban on titles of nobility a second look.

How would I do it? I'd provide that any rule giving government officials -- whether elected, appointed, or members of the civil service -- preferential treatment compared to ordinary citizens would have to withstand "strict scrutiny." That is, I'd treat discrimination based on government employment status the same way we currently treat racial discrimination. To withstand strict scrutiny, a government action must serve a "compelling government interest," and must be narrowly tailored to serve that interest. And there must be no less restrictive means of achieving the same goal. That would be especially true where the distinctions -- special privileges relating to legal process, or the right to bear arms, for example -- parallel those enjoyed by the nobility in the Framing era.

Applying this to distinctions between government employees and citizens would undoubtedly knock down a lot of those distinctions.

But, in my opinion, that wouldn't be so bad. Frankly, our political class seems to have gotten a little full of itself.

Is this too much "living, breathing" Constitution for you? Well, okay, but it's less of a stretch than we've seen in other areas of constitutional interpretation, such as the Commerce Clause. And it addresses a real problem: The growth not only of government, but of a governing class that believes, in a very real way, that it is fundamentally above the law.

Address this my way, or some other way. But one way or another, it's likely to be addressed. At least my way doesn't involve pitchforks.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns like this, go to theopinion front page or follow us on twitter @USATopinion or Facebook.

Incompetence of O

Obama Administration: Its Incompetence Is Historic

By Michael Barone
Posted 08/26/2013

Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in.

It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members — a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra.

Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. He's been talking about dredging the port of
Charleston, for example, to accommodate the big container ships coming in when the Panama Canal is widened. The canal widening is proceeding on schedule to be completed in 2014. The target date for dredging the port of Charleston: 2024.

Then there's ObamaCare. Barack Obama has already said the administration will not enforce the employer mandate, will not verify eligibility for insurance subsidies and will not require employer-provided policies to cap employees' out-of-pocket costs. The

Constitution's requirement that the president take care to faithfully execute the laws apparently does not apply.

ObamaCare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health care law — 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy's reading of the Congressional Research Service report.

Then there's the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62% of the deadlines in that law.

All of which indicates incompetence in drafting or in implementing the legislation — likely both. We have a president who delights in delivering partisan speeches to adoring audiences but doesn't seem interested in whether his administration gets results.

But I blame someone else, someone who has been dead these last 68 years. I blame Franklin D. Roosevelt. I blame him for making big government look easy — and politically rewarding. He set an example that most of his successors — Obama is just the latest — have a hard time duplicating.

Roosevelt certainly had his defects. As his best and generally admiring biographer Conrad Black notes, he was devious, largely

ignorant of economics, cruel to subordinates, vacillating on many issues. But he had a great gift for picking the right person for the right job — if he thought the job was important. For the unimportant jobs — well, anyone politically useful would do and, if the job suddenly became important, the appointee would be sent off on some diversionary errand.

Roosevelt's knack for picking the right man (or right woman: Frances Perkins was a fine secretary of labor) is the central theme of Eric Larrabee's 1987 book, "Commander in Chief." Larrabee shows how FDR selected the unflappable George Marshall to organize a vastly expanded Army, the splenetic Ernest King to lead an aggressive Navy, the grandiloquent Douglas MacArthur to dramatize the side conflict in the South Pacific and the emollient Dwight Eisenhower to hold together fractious Allied coalition forces.
No other president has made such excellent military appointments right off the bat.

Roosevelt's knack is apparent in domestic appointments, as well. He picked social worker Harry Hopkins to run a winter work relief program in late 1933. In two weeks Hopkins had 4 million on the payroll. When spring came, Roosevelt ordered the program shut down. In two weeks, the payroll was down to zero.

After that, Roosevelt trusted Hopkins to deal with political bosses — and with top-level negotiations with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin during World War II.

Interior Secretary Harold Ickes was a stickler for detail and scourge of graft. But he spent billions bringing in big projects under budget and on time.

Roosevelt picked some good regulators, too — stock speculator Joseph Kennedy to set up the Securities and Exchange Commission,
Utah banker Marriner Eccles to run the Federal Reserve.

FDR's knack for choosing the right person for important jobs resulted from some unknowable combination of knowledge and intuition.
It also showed an overriding concern for getting results.

It's not clear that Obama shares that determination. In his defense, he has made some high-quality appointments, and Roosevelt's administrators did not face today's tangle of legalistic requirements and environmental restrictions.

But New Deal legislation tended to run dozens of pages rather than thousands. And some unworkable laws were overturned by the Supreme Court.

Roosevelt's example shines through history. But Obama's continuing stumbles show that it's a hard — and politically damaging — example to follow. Big government these days is harder than FDR made it look.

Obama's Lobby

ObamaCare's Gift To Lobbyists

Posted 08/26/2013 07:11 PM ET

Influence Peddling: Recall how Obama blustered about closing the revolving door of government and lobbyists? Well, ObamaCare has flung it wide open, as the people who wrote the law are now cashing in on their expertise.

For years, Obama complained about "the revolving door that lets lobbyists come into government freely" and use their time in government "to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people whom they serve."

Now, the Hill reports how Obama's signature law is making former government officials fabulously rich as corporate lobbyists and consultants. As the news site explains, "the voracious need for lobbying help in dealing with ObamaCare has created a price premium for lobbyists who had first-hand experience in crafting or debating the law."

Thus, ObamaCare reveals the gap between Washington and the rest of us.

In the real world, you get rich by making a better product, providing a better service, or doing things more efficiently. In Washington, you get rich by creating an unworkable, disastrously expensive "reform."

Then you hire yourself out as an expert who can explain it to businesses, or help them avoid it altogether.
ObamaCare also reveals the hypocrisy of big-government liberals who bemoan the influence of the Washington lobbyist industry. Yes, spending on lobbying shot up 128% to $3.3 billion from 1998 to 2012. But federal spending went up just as fast. 

Microsoft, for instance, did almost no lobbying until Clinton's Justice Department started attacking it. Now the software giant spends about $8 million a year on it.

Today, the Hill reports, "the health care law has generated steady work (for lobbyists), a trend that is likely to continue for years to come." Oh, goodie.

If government weren't so big and intrusive, companies wouldn't need an army of lobbyists to protect them. Instead, they'd spend those billions making better goods and services, or improving health care.

O Weighs in on Unaffordable College Tuitions - (More Govt.!)

Obama State University

The President blames colleges for the result of government subsidies.

President Obama recently concluded a five-year campus speaking tour in which he explained to students how his financing programs were making college more affordable. Then on Thursday he kicked off a new campus speaking tour to tell students that college is unaffordable, and that the financing program he has championed faces increasing defaults.

"We've got a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt," said Mr. Obama, without a trace of irony at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The same man who three years ago forced through a plan to add $1 trillion in student loans to the federal balance sheet over a decade said on Thursday, "Our economy can't afford the trillion dollars in outstanding student loan debt, much of which may not get repaid because students don't have the capacity to pay it."
 Naturally, the President blamed somebody else and demanded more authority over higher education.

Mr. Obama specifically blamed colleges and universities for charging too much. "Not enough colleges have been working to figure out
 how do we control costs, how do we cut back on costs," he said. His solution is for the federal government to rate colleges on their effectiveness and efficiency, and then to allocate federal subsidies to the schools that Washington believes are providing the best education at the lowest cost.

Particularly jarring for Mr. Obama's fans in the faculty lounge, he talked about them on Thursday in the same disrespectful manner that he normally reserves for entrepreneurs. "And I've got to tell you ahead of time, these reforms won't be popular with everybody, especially those who are making out just fine under the current system. But my main concern is not with those institutions; my main concern is the students those institutions are there to serve," said the President.

Conservative readers may be tempted to chuckle here. And we concede that this latest Obama regulatory onslaught couldn't happen to a nicer bunch than the university elite who did so much to elect him. But while shifting control of universities from lefty professors to the U.S. Department of Education may seem like a transition between six and a half-dozen, it is not.

As maddening as it can be to see how liberal academics spend the wealth created by hard-working citizens, Americans should think long and hard before allowing the federal government to dominate a system of higher education that is still by all accounts the envy of the world. If the feds are deciding what a quality education is in order to dole out billions in annual aid—in an era when most students can't afford to matriculate without some form of aid—Washington will certainly dominate. Tying aid to whatever the bureaucrats decide is the right tuition is a back-door form of price controls. Even more disturbing is the idea that a federal political authority will decide which curricula at which institutions represent a good educational value.
 
Lest taxpayers think that Mr. Obama is simply going to protect their investment in education by demanding more accountability from schools, he made it clear on Thursday that he is not driven by a desire to protect the public fisc. He also called for an expansion of his "Pay as You Earn" program, which caps student-loan payments at 10% of a borrower's discretionary income, and then forgives the balance in 10 years if the borrower pursues a Beltway-approved job in government or a nonprofit.

Mr. Obama is trodding a well-worn political path. Politicians subsidize the purchase of a good or service, prices inevitably rise in response to this pumped-up demand, and then the pols blame the provider of the good or service for responding to the incentives the politicians created. Think housing finance and medical care. Now President Obama is attacking colleges for rationally raising tuitions and padding their payrolls in response to a subsidy machine that began in 1965.

That's when the feds launched a program to make college "affordable" by offering a taxpayer guarantee on student loans. Federal grants and loans have been expanding ever since and it's no coincidence that tuition prices have been rising faster than inflation for decades.

This week the White House noted that since the academic year ending in 1983 tuition and fees at four-year public colleges have risen by 257%, while typical family incomes have advanced 16%.

The better answer is to stop the increases in grants and subsidized loans that Mr. Obama has so greatly accelerated. Let educators, students and their parents decide which courses and campus amenities provide the most educational value. As fervently as many professors abhor the idea of free people operating in a free market, they may decide it's better than federal politicians running their universities.

Scandals #1, #2 & #3

The Mask Is Ripped Off of ‘Hope and Change’
By  Jim Geraghty
 
SCANDAL ONE:
                             Dear Media: Obama’s Indignant Benghazi Response 
                             Revealed a Lot Yesterday!

Dear friends in the media.

Come on.

I mean, come on.

You and I know what’s going with the Benghazi thing. Let me share something that I first put into play during the “was Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account hacked” debate, but that comes from watching the Lewinsky scandal, the where-did –Mark-Sanford-go scandal, the why-is-David-Wu-dressed-in-a-tiger-suit scandal, and a wide variety of wrongdoing committed by politicians:

When there is evidence of scandalous or bizarre behavior on the part of a political figure, and no reasonable explanation is revealed within 24 to 48 hours, then the truth is probably as bad as everyone suspects.

Nobody withholds exculpatory information. Nobody who’s been accused of something wrong waits for “just the right moment” to unveil information that proves the charge baseless. Political figures never choose to deliberately let themselves twist in the wind. It’s not the instinctive psychological reaction to being falsely accused, it’s not what any public communications professional would recommend, and to use one of our president’s favorite justifications, it’s just common sense.

So . . .

You and I both know, in our guts, and based upon everything we’ve seen in Washington since we started our careers, that there’s no innocent explanation for the Obama administration’s actions before, during, and after the Benghazi attacks.

If there were good reasons for why the requests for additional security from staff in Libya didn’t generate any serious response in the halls of the State Department, we would have heard it by now. If there were evidence that everyone within the State Department, military, and White House were doing everything they could to rescue our guys on that awful night, we would have heard about it long ago. If there was a good reason for the “talking points” to get edited down from a false premise (a demonstration) but at least serious information (previous CIA warnings about terrorist activity) to false pabulum, we would have heard it by now; the latest lame excuse is that the fourteen edits merely reflect “bureaucratic infighting between the CIA and State.” And if there was a good reason for State Department lawyers to call up Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks and tell him not to allow the RSO, the acting Deputy Chief of Mission, and himself to be interviewed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, we would have heard that by now, too.

Come on, guys. What do we think is going on when Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff calls up the acting ambassador, and harangues him about the lack of a State Department lawyer for his conversation with Congress? Does anybody really believe it’s just her checking up to make sure protocol was followed?

You can see what’s going on here. You may not want to see it, or believe it, but you can see it. The federal government made awful, unforgivable wrong decisions about the security for its people in Benghazi. They compounded the error by failing to put together even the beginning of a rescue mission during the seven-hour assault. Perhaps those responsible for making the call had a fear of  a “Black Hawk Down” scenario, in which the rescuers find themselves needing rescue, but whatever the reasoning, the net effect was the same: our people were under fire, fighting for their lives, and nobody was coming to help. The decisions made that night make a mockery of the unofficial, but widespread motto of our armed forces: “Nobody gets left behind.”

The decisions made up until this point may or may not have involved the president or then-Secretary of State Clinton, but they sure as hell were involved in the decisions that came afterwards.  The morning after the attack, the administration tried to offer the excuse that it was a completely unforeseeable event, randomly triggered by some YouTube video. And they sought to intimidate and punish anyone who would contradict their storyline.

My friends in media, you know what is going on when you see President Obama say this:

The whole issue of talking points, frankly, throughout this process has been a sideshow.  What we have been very clear about throughout was that immediately after this event happened we were not clear who exactly had carried it out, how it had occurred, what the motivations were.

You know what this is: Stop looking at what I did, and start looking at the people accusing me of wrongdoing. We’ve seen this tactic before: “The vast right-wing conspiracy.”

We know the president’s claim that there was confusion is false, because everyone on the ground was clearly telling their bosses that this was a terror attack from the beginning. No one in Benghazi or Libya was saying this was a protest as a result of a YouTube video.

Where did that idea come from? Who within the administration decided to take accurate information and start inserting inaccurate information?

The president continues:

 It happened at the same time as we had seen attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo as a consequence of this film.  And nobody understood exactly what was taking place during the course of those first few days.

No, the folks on the ground understood what was taking place. They just said so before Congress and a lot of television cameras. Why is the president confused about this?
Obama continues:

And the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly, has a lot to do with political motivations.  We’ve had folks who have challenged Hillary Clinton’s integrity, Susan Rice’s integrity, Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering’s integrity.  It’s a given that mine gets challenged by these same folks.  They’ve used it for fundraising.

The motivations and/fundraising of those who disagree with you are irrelevant to whether or not you’re telling the truth, Mr. President.

SCANDAL TWO:
                          Hey, Why Does the IRS Have to Tell the Truth to Congress, Anyway?

NBC News points out that the IRS appears to have directly lied to Congress when asked about the targeting of conservative groups:

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS division on tax-exempt organizations, learned in June 2011 that agents had targeted groups with names including “Tea Party” and “Patriots,” according to the draft obtained by NBC News.

She “instructed that the criteria immediately be revised,” according to the draft. Ten months later, in March 2012, the IRS commissioner at the time, Douglas Shulman, testified to Congress that the IRS was not targeting tax-exempt groups based on their politics.

The IRS said over the weekend that senior executives were not aware of the targeting, but it remains unclear who knew what and when. [Then IRS Commissioner] Shulman, who left the agency last fall, has not spoken publicly about the scandal and did not answer a request for comment Monday from NBC News.

Members of Congress had sent letters to Shulman as early as June 2011 asking specifically about targeting of conservative groups, according to a House Ways and Means Committee summary obtained by NBC News.

The IRS responded at least six times but made no mention of targeting conservatives, according to the committee’s summary.

“Oh, you mean that effort to conservative groups, we thought you meant a different one.”

Remember the explanation that this was just some runaway low-level employees in one office? Yeah, that was bull: “Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.”

SCANDAL THREE: 
                    Of Course Eric Holder Is Allowed to Secretly Eavesdrop on Journalists!

You know a scandal is bad when I can point you to the Huffington Post’s summary, because it can’t collect any more outrage than I can:
Journalists reacted with shock and outrage at the news that the Justice Department had secretly obtained months of phone records of Associated Press journalists.

The AP broke the news on Monday about what it called an “unprecedented intrusion” into its operation. It said that the DOJ had obtained detailed phone records from over 20 different lines, potentially monitoring hundreds of different journalists without notifying the organization. The wire service’s president, Gary Pruitt, wrote a blistering letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, accusing the DOJ of violating the AP’s constitutional rights.

Reporters and commentators outside the AP professed themselves to be equally angered. “The Nixon comparisons write themselves,” BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith tweeted. Margaret Sullivan, the public editor for the New York Times, called the story “disturbing.” Washington Post editor Martin Baron called it “shocking.” CNN’s John King described it as “very chilling.”

Speaking to the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple, a lawyer for the AP called the DOJ’s actions “outrageous,” saying they were “a dagger to the heart of AP’s newsgathering activity.”

BuzzFeed’s Kate Nocera was perhaps more pithy, writing simply, “what in the f–k.”

You “Hope and Change” true believers were a bunch of chumps.

Thomas Sowell - Reality of Egypt

Reality Versus Mirages in Egypt

8/20/2013 12:01:00 AM - Thomas Sowell

Nothing symbolizes the Utopianism of our times like both liberals and some conservatives calling for
us to cut off aid to the Egyptian military, because of the widespread killings in what is becoming a
civil war in Egypt. Such utter lack of realism from the left is not new, but hearing some conservatives
saying the same things takes some getting used to.

President Obama's call for the Egyptians to end the violence and form an "inclusive" government,
with all factions represented, may sound good to many Americans. But there is not a snowball's
chance in hell that it will happen.

Egypt existed for thousands of years before there was a United States of America. In all those
millennia, Egypt has never had a free or democratic society. Nor is Egypt unique in that.

Of all the different nations that have existed at various times and places throughout recorded
history, it is doubtful that even ten percent were free or democratic.

Even free and democratic nations existing today took centuries to achieve freedom and democracy.

Barack Obama may have enough ego to imagine that he could accomplish, during his White House
years, what took centuries to accomplish elsewhere. But do others, including some conservatives,
need to share that delusion?

Yet Obama is only the latest in a long line of American officials, including Presidents, who have
thought that a universal human desire for freedom meant that freedom and democracy could be
exported, even to countries where they have never existed before.

However widespread the desire to be free, that is wholly different from a desire to live in a society
where others are free. Nowhere is such tolerance harder to find than in the Middle East.

Has no one noticed the on-going lethal violence between different sects of Muslims in the Middle
East, or their intolerance toward Christians and murderous hatred of Jews? Muslims in some other
parts of the world have been more tolerant, and there have been five female heads of state in Muslim
countries. But not in the Middle East.

Much is made of the fact that the United States gives financial support to the Egyptian military that
is shooting down hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Egyptians in the streets. But we have to make
our choices among the options actually available. With the Muslim Brotherhood mounting armed
attacks, what can anyone rationally expect, except shooting on both sides?

It would certainly be a lot nicer if everyone laid down their guns, and just sat down together and
worked things out peacefully. But has anyone forgotten that, for centuries, Protestants and Catholics
slaughtered each other and tried to wipe each other out? Only after the impossibility of achieving
that goal became clear did they finally give it up and decide to live and let live.

As regards Egypt, it is not at all clear that any regime that has existed after Mubarak, or that is
currently on the horizon, is better than Mubarak was. But the very idea of leaving well enough alone
is foreign to those who are looking for moral melodramas and soaring rhetoric, such as talk about
"the Arab spring."

What did we get for our money in Egypt under Mubarak? We got peace in a part of the world where
peace cannot be taken for granted -- and a part of the world from which oil provides the economic
lifeblood of Western civilization.

But we could not leave well enough alone. Now we are paying the price -- and perhaps it is only the
first installment of the price.

The idea that, when a government we find unsatisfactory is overthrown, we can expect a better
government to follow, goes back at least as far as President Woodrow Wilson. His intervention in the

First World War -- a war "to make the world safe for democracy" -- turned out to be a war whose
actual end results replaced old monarchies with new, and far worse, totalitarian governments.

Barack Obama's Middle East interventions have replaced stable and neutral despots in Egypt and
Libya with anti-Western despots and chaos. Such is the price of pursuing ideological mirages.

After contributing to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power, and the disastrous aftermath of
that, the Obama administration is now publicly lecturing Egyptian leaders, and trying to micro-
manage them from thousands of miles away. And some conservatives are joining the Quixotic
chorus, playing with fire.

King Barach - Obey the Law !!! (Says Appeals Court)

Appeals Court Orders Executive Branch To Obey The Law

By GEORGE F. WILL 

Nowadays the federal government leavens its usual quotient of incompetence with large dollops of illegality. This is eliciting robust judicial rebukes, as when, last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia instructed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop "flouting the law."

"It is no overstatement," said Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, "to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case."

For six decades the nation has been studying the challenge of safely storing nuclear waste from weapons production, Navy vessels and civilian power plants. So far, more than $15 billion has been spent developing a waste repository system (in the 1980s, a Nevada senator misnamed it a waste "suppository") deep within Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 says the NRC "shall consider" the Yucca Mountain application to become a repository, and "shall" approve or disapprove the application within three years of its submission. "Shall" means "must." The application, submitted in June 2008, has not been acted upon, and the court says:

"By its own admission, the commission has no current intention of complying with the law." Judge A. Raymond Randolph's concurring opinion said:

"Former (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko orchestrated a systematic campaign of noncompliance. Jaczko unilaterally ordered commission staff to terminate the review process in October 2010; instructed staff to remove key findings from reports evaluating the Yucca Mountain site; and ignored the will of his fellow commissioners."

Jaczko resigned last year, leaving the NRC in demoralized disarray. The New York Times reported "charges of mismanagement and verbal abuse of subordinates" and that all four of his fellow commissioners, two from each party, complained about Jaczko to the White House and told a congressional committee that (the Times reported) he "unprofessionally berated the agency's professional staff and reduced female employees to tears with his comments."

To be fair to him, he was put there to disrupt — by Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid, on whose staff he had served.

Reid seems uninterested in the metallurgy of waste containment vessels or the geology of the mountain's 40 miles of storage tunnels where the waste would be stored 1,000 feet underground on 1,000 feet of rock.

Rather, Reid, like almost all Nevadans, regards the repository as a threat to Las Vegas, a gamblers' destination that lives off tourists who are demonstrably irrational about probabilities. Reid prefers the status quo — more than 160 million Americans living within 75 miles of one or more of the 121 locations where over 70,000 tons of nuclear waste are kept.

The court, which was concerned only with the law, not the mountain, said "the president must follow statutory mandates so long as there is appropriated money available and the president has no constitutional objection to the statute." He has none, and Reid has not yet quite succeeded in starving the NRC of funding for the Yucca licensing process.

The NRC said Congress has not yet appropriated the full amount required to complete the process. The court said Congress often appropriates "on a step-by-step basis." The NRC speculated that Congress may not finish appropriating the sums necessary. The court said that allowing agencies to ignore statutory mandates based on "speculation" about future congressional decisions "would gravely upset the balance of powers between the (government's) branches and represent a major and unwarranted expansion of the executive's power at the expense of Congress."

The NRC said small appropriations indicate Congress' desire to stop the licensing process. The court responded that "Congress speaks through the laws it enacts" and "courts generally should not infer that Congress has implicitly repealed or suspended statutory mandates based simply on the amount of money Congress has appropriated."

The court noted that, "as a policy matter," the NRC may want to block the Yucca project but "Congress sets the policy, not the commission." And the court said there is no permissible executive discretion to disregard "statutory obligations that apply to the executive branch."

This episode is a snapshot of contemporary Washington — small, devious people putting their lawlessness in the service of their parochialism, and recklessly sacrificing public safety and constitutional propriety. One can only marvel at the measured patience with which the court has tried to teach the obvious to the willfully obtuse.

OCare and UPS (Goodbye Spouses)

ObamaCare's Latest Outrage

Posted 08/21/2013 06:40 PM ET

Health Reform: Thousands of UPS workers have found out what's actually in that Obama-Care package Democrats shipped out in 2010. Their company decided to drop coverage for spouses to avoid the law's added costs.

President Obama has been claiming lately that most of his signature law is already in place, and that all the fuss about delays and premium hikes is over parts of the law that don't go into effect until next year and are relevant only to the small share of uninsured.

"For the 85% to 90% of Americans who already have health insurance," he says, "they don't have to worry about anything else."

Tell that to the 15,000 UPS workers who recently learned that the shipping giant is dropping coverage for husbands and wives who can get insurance from another employer.

A chief reason for the change? The added costs ObamaCare is imposing, including the mandate that plans cover children up to age 26, its ban on lifetime spending limits, and the $65 in ObamaCare fees that will be imposed on every enrollee starting next year.

Rising medical costs, "combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost," UPS told its employees in a memo.

As Kaiser Health News reports, many of these spouses will end up on worse health plans.

This is just the beginning. While almost no large companies excluded spouses from coverage three years ago, 6% did last year, according to Mercer. And many others are making such coverage exorbitantly costly in the hope that spouses will drop it on their own.

Once the ObamaCare exchanges are open, the incentive to dump spouses will be even greater. After all, why should companies bear such costs when they know spouses can get coverage "guaranteed" — and likely subsidized by taxpayers — in one of the exchanges?

This is, of course, just the latest revelation about the ill effects ObamaCare is causing among the 85% who Obama says have nothing to worry about from the law.

Companies are already cutting part-time worker hours to get below the new 30-hour workweek rule imposed by Obama's regulators. Or they're moving full-time workers to part time to avoid the eventual employer mandate.

As IBD reported last week, four industries that employ lots of low-wage workers have seen an historic drop in the workweek, thanks to ObamaCare.

In other evidence of harm, a recent Chamber of Commerce survey found that nearly three quarters of businesses it queried say

ObamaCare will make it harder to grow their businesses, and the American Action Forum calculates that ObamaCare will impose $30 billion in compliance costs on businesses — money that will eventually come out of workers' pockets.

Despite what the president claims, there is no escape from ObamaCare's punishing effects. Don't think so? Just ask your UPS delivery man the next time he drops off a package.

Three Black Youths Gun Down White Jogger "For Fun" / Hate Crime????

Three teens accused of murder of baseball player Chris Lane identified

• Aaron Langmaid, Samantha Landy
• Herald Sun
• August 20, 2013 2:00PM 

The Oklahoma teens who face first-degree murder charges have been named as Chancey Luna, James Edwards and Michael Jones.

But their parents yesterday protested their innocence.

Jennifer Luna, whose son is suspected of firing the fatal shot, claimed her son was at home saying: "My son is not that way. My son is a good kid."

Earlier today, former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer has urged Australian tourists to boycott the US in the wake of the shooting murder of the Melbourne baseball star.

Mr Fischer said he was deeply angered by the latest tragedy and said turning our backs on America would help send a stern message about the need for tighter gun control.

Christopher Lane, 22, was randomly gunned down while jogging through the town of Duncan in Oklahoma on Friday afternoon local time.

Mr Fischer, who led Australia's gun control reforms alongside former prime minister John Howard in 1996, said choosing not to travel to the US would help build pressure on the US Congress to finally act.

"Tourists thinking of going to the USA should think twice,'' Mr Fischer said.

"This is the bitter harvest and legacy of the policies of the NRA that even blocked background checks for people buying guns at gunshows.

"People should take this into account before going to the United States.

"I am deeply angry about this because of the callous attitude of the three teenagers (but) it's a sign of the proliferation of guns on the ground in the USA.

"There is a gun for almost every American.''

Meanwhile, Lane's American girlfriend today revealed her heartbreak at losing her "best friend", and parents of the accused protested their innocence.

Sarah Harper, 23, also told the Herald Sun that she didn't know what punishment would be appropriate of the three teenagers, aged 15, 16 and 17 years, accused of Lane's murder.

It comes as Duncan Police Chief Danny Ford said he had secured the confession of the 17-year-old who summoned investigators to his jail cell and claimed he and the younger boys were bored "so they decided to kill somebody".

"He said he was the driver of the car," Chief Ford said.

"They saw Christopher jog by the house they were at, they chose him to be the target, they got in the car, drove up behind him and shot him in the back.

"He said the 16-year-old fired the shot."

The three teenagers are being held in the Stephens County Jail in Duncan.

The trio were due to appear in a local court over the shooting at 1.30pm Monday (4.30am Tuesday AEST), but it has been pushed back a day.

A spokesperson for District Attorney Jason Hicks said the charges were still being reviewed.

The mother of the 16-year-old accused of firing the single bullet from a handgun into Lane's back said she didn't believe her son was involved.

The father of the 15-year-old admitted his son had been in trouble with the law, but described him as a good boy.
Lane, who grew up in Oak Park in Melbourne's north, had only been back in the US for three days after an eight-week break in Australia with Ms Harper.

"I don't want them to have any future that Chris wasn't able to have as well," Ms Harper said of the accused teenagers today.

"It's been pretty rough. It's been hard knowing he was taken so close to home, let alone taken in the way he was. To be pointed out like that …"

Ms Harper said she and Lane had joked about America's soft gun laws before he was shot.

"He wasn't a fan of guns," she said.

She fondly described Lane as a smart, kind and curious guy who would "do anything for anybody".

Ms Harper, also a talented sportswoman, said she and Lane just "meshed together" within weeks of meeting at college in Oklahoma in August 2009.

"It was more of a personality (we had in common), not so much interests. He was intellectual, into world news, and I found that quite boring," she said.

"He really wanted to travel more. He loved the idea of seeing the world."

Two of the accused teens' parents insist they were not involved in the killing.

"That's my baby boy," said the mother of the 16-year-old accused of firing the single bullet from a handgun into the back of Mr Lane.

She doesn't believe her son was involved in the shooting, saying today he was not a member of a gang and definitely not the one who pulled the trigger.

The father of the 15-year-old accused of being in the car admitted his son had been in some previous "kid stuff" trouble with the law, but described him as a good boy who also was not part of a gang.

"I don't think so," the father replied when asked if his son could have been part of the murder.

"Because he's not the type of person. He likes to wrestle. He's into sports."

The two teens have suffered tragic lives, their parents said. The 15-year-old's mother is in jail. The 16-year-old last year dealt with the death of his stepfather and brother.

The parents of the teens sent their condolences to Lane's family in Australia and Ms Harper.

"My prayers go out to them," the father said.

"I have lost several loved ones recently myself. I feel sorry for the individuals and family."
 If convicted of first-degree murder, the boys face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The boys can be tried as adults, but the spokesperson said because they are under the age of 18 they can't face a death sentence.
Ms Harper today said the accused "will be taken care of eventually".

Ms Harper said she wasn't thinking about the killers at the moment.

"I don't really care what happens to them,'' she told the Nine Network.

"I feel that if they don't get what they deserve now in the present they will eternally.

"They're evil people and they'll be taken care of eventually.''

It comes amid claims Lane was the victim of a gang-related drive-by shooting gone wrong.
Outside the court a woman told reporters the three accused teens had a falling out with a fellow gang member.

She told Channel Nine the teens were angry when they set out and wanted her brother dead.

"I guess he has hung out with gang-affiliated people. I don't know if he's really claimed it or tried to be like them so that might be a reason why they're after him," she said.

However Chief Ford yesterday said the accused "just wanted to kill someone".

Chief Ford said the three teens had no motive other than to ''make a name for themselves'' and were on their way to another house to murder a second, unrelated victim when they were arrested.

Lane had been in the US on a baseball sports scholarship with East Central University (ECU) as the team's catcher.
He was jogging through an area of "high dollar homes" after leaving Ms Harper's home, when he was followed and shot.

Witnesses saw him stumble across the road and then go down on his knees before struggling to a drainage area at the side of the road.
'I love you so much': girlfriend's moving tribute to baseball star

A woman who came from a nearby house tried CPR while another woman who was in a car stopped and called 911.
Chris Lane RIP: Facebook tribute page

 

Fed's Ownership of Debt - Breaks $2 trillion

$2,001,093,000,000: Fed’s Ownership of U.S. Debt Breaks $2T for First Time
August 19, 2013 - 2:08 PM

By Terence P. Jeffrey


(CNSNews.com) - The Federal Reserve’s holdings of publicly traded U.S. Treasury securities—federal government debt—pushed above $2 trillion for the first time last week, hitting approximately $2,001,093,000,000 as of Aug. 14, according to the Fed’s latest weekly accounting.

The Fed’s accounting for the previous week showed that it had owned approximately $1,993,375,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities as of Aug. 7.

Back on Dec. 31, 2008, before the Fed began its strategy of “Quantitative Easing," the Fed owned only $475.9 billion in U.S. Treasury securities. Since then, the Fed’s holdings of U.S. government debt have more than quadrupled.

Launched in 2009, the Fed's Quantitative Easing (QE) efforts have attempted to stimulate the economy.

“Under QE,” explains a February 2013 Congressional Research Service report, “the Fed attempts to lower long-term Treasury and MBS [mortgage-backed security] yields directly through purchases that drive down their yields, in the hope that lower Treasury and
MBS yields will indirectly filter through to reductions in other private long-term yields. (Lower Treasury yields do not directly stimulate economic activity—they are only stimulative if other yields fall as a result.) This could occur because Treasury securities are considered a ‘benchmark’ against which other private securities are priced, so that other securities are automatically repriced when Treasuries are repriced (although the change is unlikely to be one-to-one).”

(In its latest weekly accounting, the Fed also said that as of Aug. 14, it owned approximately $1.299831 trillion in mortgage-backed securities that had been issued by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. Back on Jan. 14, 2009, the Fed owned only $5.6 billion in mortgage-backed securities.)

By law, the Fed is not permitted to buy U.S. Treasury securities directly from the Treasury. Instead it buys them in the secondary market. However, when the Fed buys U.S. government debt even on the secondary market it creates a closed circle: The Treasury pays the Fed the interest owed on that part of the federal government’s debt, and almost all of that interest--considered “profit” by the Fed--is paid back to the Treasury.

“Monetizing the deficit refers to financing the budget deficit through money creation rather than by selling bonds to private investors,” said the CRS. “Hyperinflation in foreign countries has consistently resulted from governments’ decision to monetize large deficits.

“According to this definition, the deficit has not been monetized,” said CRS. “Section 14 of the Federal Reserve Act legally forbids the Fed from buying newly issued securities directly from the Treasury, and all Treasury securities purchased by the Fed to date have been purchased on the secondary market from private investors.”

“Nonetheless," said CRS, "the effect of the Fed’s purchase of Treasury securities on the federal budget is similar to monetization whether the Fed buys the securities on the secondary market or directly from the Treasury. When the Fed holds Treasury securities, Treasury must pay interest to the Fed, just as it would pay interest to a private investor. These interest payments, after expenses, become profits of the Fed. The Fed, in turn, remits about 95 percent of its profits to the Treasury, where they are added to general revenues. In essence, the Fed has made an interest-free loan to the Treasury, because almost all of the interest paid by Treasury to the Fed is subsequently sent back to Treasury.

“The Fed could increase its profits and remittances to Treasury,” said CRS, “by printing more money to purchase more Treasury bonds (or any other asset)."

As of Aug. 15, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the total value of Treasury securities held by the public was $11,952,073,953,024.85. (The rest of the federal government’s debt is “intragovernmental” debt—n.b. money that the Treasury owes to federal trust funds, such as the Social Security trust fund.)

The $2,001,093,000,000 in Treasury securities now owned by the Fed equals 16.7 percent of the U.S. government’s debt held by the public. Another $5.6006 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities is owned by foreign entities, according to the Treasury's latest report on foreign holders of U.S. debt. The combined $7,601,693,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities owned the Fed and foreign entities equals about 64 percent of all extant U.S. Treasury securities.

After the Fed, entities on Mainland China are the largest owners of U.S. government debt, holding $1.2758 trillion as of the end of June.

What's Geography (VDH)

August 15, 2013 4:00 AM

 

Don’t Know Much About Geography
 
Today’s leaders are totally ignorant of what used to be the building blocks of learning.

                          By Victor Davis Hanson

In Sam Cooke’s classic 1959 hit “Wonderful World,” the lyrics downplayed formal learning with lines like, “Don’t know much about history . . . Don’t know much about geography.”

Over a half-century after Cooke wrote that lighthearted song, such ignorance is now all too real. Even our best and brightest — or rather our elites especially — are not too familiar with history or geography.
 Both disciplines are the building blocks of learning. Without awareness of natural and human geography, we are reduced to a self-contained void without accurate awareness of the space around us. An ignorance of history creates the same sort of self-imposed exile, leaving us ignorant of both what came before us and what is likely to follow.

In the case of geography, Harvard Law School graduate Barack Obama recently lectured, “If we don’t deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina; or Savannah, Georgia; or Jacksonville, Florida . . . ” The problem is that all the examples he cited are cities on the East Coast, not the Gulf of Mexico. If Obama does not know where these ports are, how can he deepen them?

Obama’s geographical confusion has become habitual. He once claimed that he had been to all “57 states.” He also assumed that Kentucky was closer to Arkansas than it was to his adjacent home state of Illinois.

In reference to the Falkland Islands, President Obama called them the Maldives — islands southwest of India — apparently in a botched effort to use the Argentine-preferred “Malvinas.” The two island groups may sound somewhat alike, but they are continents apart. Again, without basic geographical knowledge, the president’s commentary on the Falklands is rendered superficial.

When in the state of Hawaii, Obama announced that he was in “Asia.” He lamented that the U.S. Army’s Arabic-language translators assigned to Iraq could better be used in Afghanistan, failing to recognize that Arabic isn’t the language of Afghanistan. And he also apparently thought Austrians speak a language other than German.

The president’s geographical illiteracy is a symptom of the nation’s growing ignorance of once-essential subjects such as geography and history. The former is not taught any more as a required subject in many of our schools and colleges. The latter has often been redefined as race, class, and gender oppression so as to score melodramatic points in the present rather than to learn from the tragedy of the past.

The president in his 2009 Cairo speech credited the European Renaissance and Enlightenment to Islam’s “light of learning” — an exaggeration if not an outright untruth on both counts.

Closer to home, the president claimed in 2011 that Texas had historically been Republican — while in reality it was a mostly Jim Crow Democratic state for over a century. Republicans started consistently carrying Texas only after 1980.

Recently, Obama claimed that 20th-century Communist strongman Ho Chi Minh “was actually inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and the words of Thomas Jefferson.” That pop assertion is improbable, given that Ho systematically liquidated his opponents, slaughtered thousands in land-redistribution schemes, and brooked no dissent.

Even more ahistorical was Vice President Joe Biden’s suggestion that George W. Bush should have gone on television in 2008 to address the nation as President Roosevelt had done in 1929 — a time when there was neither a President Roosevelt nor televisions available for purchase. In 2011, a White House press kit confused Wyoming with Colorado — apparently because they’re both rectangular-shaped states out West.

Our geographically and historically challenged leaders are emblematic of disturbing trends in American education that include a similar erosion in grammar, English composition, and basic math skills.

The controversial Lois Lerner, a senior official at the IRS — an agency whose stock in trade is numbers — claimed that she was “not good at math” when she admitted that she did not know that one-fourth of 300 is 75.

In the zero-sum game of the education curriculum, each newly added therapeutic discipline eliminated an old classical one. The result is that if Americans emote more and have more politically correct thoughts on the environment, race, class, and gender, they are less able to advance their beliefs through fact-based knowledge.

Despite supposedly tough new standards and vast investments, about 56 percent of students in recent California public-school tests did not perform up to their grade levels in English. Only about half met their grade levels in math.

A degree from our most prestigious American university is no guarantee a graduate holding such a credential will know the number of states or the location of Savannah. If we wonder why the Ivy League–trained Obama seems confused about where cities, countries, and continents are, we might remember that all but one Ivy League university eliminated their geography departments years ago.

As a rule now, when our leaders allude to a place or an event in the past, just assume their references are dead wrong.

King Barach MAKES the Laws

Charles Krauthammer / On drug sentencing, Obama again shows the law is not the law

August 17, 2013 12:17 am

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WASHINGTON -- As a reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, many federal drug laws carry strict mandatory sentences. This has stirred unease in Congress and sparked a bipartisan effort to revise and relax some of the more draconian laws.

Traditionally -- meaning before Barack Obama -- that's how laws were changed: We have a problem, we hold hearings, we find some new arrangement, ratified by Congress and signed by the president.

That was then. On Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder, a liberal in a hurry, ordered all U.S. attorneys to simply stop charging nonviolent, non-gang-related drug defendants with crimes that, while fitting the offense, carry mandatory sentences. Find some lesser, non-triggering charge. How might you do that? Withhold evidence -- e.g., about the amount of dope involved.

In other words, evade the law, by deceiving the court if necessary. "If the companies that I represent in federal criminal cases" did that, said former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger, "they could be charged with a felony."

But such niceties must not stand in the way of an administration's agenda. Indeed, the very next day, it was revealed that the administration had unilaterally waived Obama-care's cap on a patient's annual out-of-pocket expenses -- a one-year exemption for selected health insurers that is nowhere permitted in the law. It was simply decreed by an obscure Labor Department regulation.

Which followed a presidentially directed 70-plus percent subsidy for the insurance premiums paid by congressmen and their personal staffs -- under a law that denies subsidies for anyone that well-off.

Which came just a month after the administration's equally lawless suspension of one of the cornerstones of Obamacare: the employer mandate.

Which followed hundreds of Obamacare waivers granted by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to selected businesses, unions and other well-lobbied, very special interests.

Nor is this kind of rule-by-decree restricted to health care. In 2012, the immigration service was ordered to cease proceedings against young illegal immigrants brought here as children. Congress had refused to pass such a law (the DREAM Act) just 18 months earlier.

Mr. Obama himself had repeatedly said that the Constitution forbade him from enacting it without Congress. But with the fast approach of an election that could hinge on the Hispanic vote, Mr. Obama did exactly that. Unilaterally.

The point is not what you think about the merits of the DREAM Act. Or of mandatory drug sentences. Or of subsidizing health care premiums for $175,000-a-year members of Congress. Or even whether you think governors should be allowed to weaken the work requirements for welfare recipients -- an authority the administration granted last year in clear violation of section 407 of the landmark Clinton-Gingrich welfare reform of 1996.

The point is whether a president, charged with faithfully executing the laws that Congress enacts, may create, ignore, suspend and/or amend the law at will. Presidents are arguably permitted to refuse to enforce laws they consider unconstitutional (the basis for so many of George W. Bush's so-called signing statements). But presidents are forbidden from doing so for reason of mere policy -- the reason for every Obama violation listed above.

Such gross executive usurpation disdains the Constitution. It mocks the separation of powers. And most consequentially, it introduces a fatal instability into law itself. If the law is not what is plainly written, but is whatever the president and his agents decide, what's left of the law?

What's the point of the whole legislative process -- of crafting various provisions through give-and-take negotiation -- if you cannot rely on the fixity of the final product, on the assurance that the provisions bargained for by both sides will be carried out?

Consider immigration reform. The essence of any deal would be legalization in return for strict border enforcement. If some such legislative compromise is struck, what confidence can anyone have in it -- if the president can unilaterally alter what he signs?

Yet this president is not only untroubled by what he's doing, but open and rather proud. As he tells cheering crowds on his never-ending campaign-style tours: I am going to do X -- and I'm not going to wait for Congress.

That's caudillo talk. That's banana republic stuff. In this country, the president is required to win the consent of Congress first.

At stake is not some constitutional curlicue. At stake is whether the laws are the law. And whether presidents get to write their own.

Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post (letters@charleskrauthammer.com).

First Published August 17, 2013 12:00 am