Obama Launches “Brother’s Keeper” Initiative

by John Hinderaker in Race and racial bias
At the White House today, President Obama announced a new program called “My Brother’s Keeper.”

President Barack Obama on Thursday launched his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, urging stronger efforts to create more opportunities for young minority men and to improve conditions that keep them impoverished and imprisoned in disproportionate numbers.

If you keep reading, however, you see that Obama doesn’t really mean “minority men,” or, as he also put it, “boys and young men of color.”

The White House listed a litany of facts showing the need for the effort: The unemployment rate for African-American men over the age of 20 was 12 percent last month, compared with 5.4 percent for white men. Hispanic men over the age of 20 faced an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent. The U.S. Census Bureau showed a poverty rate of 27.2 percent in black households and 25.6 percent for Hispanic households in 2012, compared with 12.7 percent in white and 11.7 percent in Asian households.

Chinese-Americans make more money, on the average, than white Americans, the “income gap” between Jews and Gentiles is wider than that between whites and blacks, and I believe Iranian-Americans have recently surpassed Jews as the highest income group of all. The issue here is not being a “minority.” On the contrary, if one sincerely wanted to help young African-Americans, an obvious starting point would be to ask why other Americans “of color” have done so much better. But that isn’t what the White House has in mind.

“By almost every measure the group that’s facing some of the most severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young men of color,” Obama said, ticking off statistics on fatherhood, literacy, crime and poverty.
“We assume this is an inevitable part of American life instead of the outrage that it is,” Obama said, to applause.

There is no mystery here. African-American men are disproportionately imprisoned because they commit an extraordinary number of crimes. They are disproportionately raised in poverty because their fathers usually don’t marry their mothers. Also, drugs. That is really all there is to it.
Obama’s theology is no better than his policy analysis. As many have noted, he himself has a brother–not a figurative “brother,” but an actual brother, the son of his father–living in poverty in Africa. But Obama, a wealthy man, has never done anything to help his own brother. The Associated Press helpfully explains the “brother’s keeper” reference:

The phrase “my brother’s keeper” comes from the book of Genesis in the Bible, where God asks Cain, the son of Adam and Eve, for the location of his brother Abel, who Cain had killed. In some versions, Cain replies: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Obama has quoted those Bible verses several times during his presidency, saying Americans should look out for each other.

The moral of the story of Cain and Abel is not that people “should look out for each other,” but rather, that they should not commit murder. Cain–a murderer, not a theologian–tries to change the subject when asked about his brother Abel’s whereabouts by asking, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” But God’s problem with Cain was not that he failed to “keep” Abel, but rather, that he killed him.
This story has, I think, a public policy analog. The federal government is not, in my view, anyone’s “keeper.” But it has contributed to the devastation of African-Americans in many ways: by profligate welfare policies, which more than anything else have destroyed African-American families; by enforcing affirmative action, which has created the belief that advancement can be divorced from accomplishment; by suppressing school choice; by endlessly yammering about “discrimination,” long after any significant discrimination ceased to exist, which perhaps more than anything else has poisoned the ability of African-Americans to make the sort of progress that other groups, like Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Jews, Iranian-Americans and others have made. Just as Cain had no obligation to “keep” Abel, the federal government has no obligation to “keep” African-Americans. Just as Cain should have simply left Abel alone, the federal government should stop worsening the condition of African-Americans through misguided policies.
PAUL ADDS: Given the prevalence and devastating effect of fatherless households, President Obama would have been better advised to launch a “son’s and daughter’s keeper” initiative.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/obama-launches-brothers-keeper-initiative.php#!

Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   3/04/2014

The dependency state—here to stay?

The Tea Party Patriots will have as guest speaker tonight Charlene Reid, Director of the Tehama County Social Services. On a related note, “Tehama County is losing out on $6.9 million in additional economic activity because not all individuals eligible for Cal Fresh assistance enroll in the program, according to a report released Thursday (from California Food Policy Advocates).” I get that advocates for ever-greater government transfer payment programs—income-qualified or means tested benefits—consider it a success, or “progress” if you will, to expand the reach of such programs to all who qualify.

However, if the intended recipients are the “poor,” why is 125 percent of the poverty level the cutoff? Doesn’t the higher cutoff for any benefit program make it harder for people to rationalize earning more if it means losing government handouts? Such perverse logic is inherent in, for instance, Obamacare. Shouldn’t people aspire to provide for themselves at some point? When a single mom must earn as much as $65,000 in some states to fully replace all federal and state benefits, aren’t we providing a disincentive to the traditional American principle of self-sufficiency? Depending on the government is, by definition, depending on other people’s forcibly coerced tax “contributions.”

Then, doesn’t the whole concept of $7 million of “additional economic activity” in Tehama County become economically counterproductive? It had to be taken from taxpayers, now deprived of their “additional economic activity,” or borrowed against future wage-earners, also depriving them of same. We’ve been assured by liberal politicians and big-government advocates that a dollar spent by government multiplies, apparently by economic magic, as it gets spent locally. That, however, is fallacious logic and defies common sense. That dollar, whether taken from a taxpayer or borrowed from future earners, loses the value it would have created. Benefit programs have administrative costs, or the interest cost of debt. The director and staff of any social services agency reduce—not increase—the “economic activity” produced by those programs.

Such are the quandaries I pose, writing and offering through a labor of love, my insights, facts and studied opinions. When a critic issues a broad-brush, nonspecific harangue and never actually uses anything I’ve written, I can only dismiss, with prejudice, such criticism as being irrelevant to my presenting the truth, as I see it. I could itemize dozens of topics covered over the last year, which would contain few, if any, of the items a writer says I supposedly obsessed over in this column. Another writer, were he deprived of topics such as marijuana, homelessness, global warming and never-ending broadsides at Republicans and the Tea Party, would be left with rather thin gruel for material. To each their own.

Broadcast, cable (Fox News excepted) and major print news media coverage resembles, as I see it, rather repetitive “dog bites man,” conventional, liberal-left approaches to stories. This column diverges and looks for, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” This is the only weekly column written by a local conservative in all of Northern California.

For instance, the reporting on President Obama’s “brother’s keeper” initiative contained repetitive phrases and perspectives: Obama’s “deeply personal” and “heartfelt” cause to reach out to minority men in dire circumstances received praise and warm emotional coverage. I heard not a word of curiosity over his documented indifference to his own impoverished brother in Africa living in squalor in a hut with but a few dollars of income. In an interview by filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, his brother did not share Obama’s leftist political perspective and receives not one whit of financial support from his wealthy American sibling.

In a book by Obama’s half-brother, he recounted his one visit from his rising community-organizer relative. Barack acted overly black, and dismissed the half-brother’s appreciation of classical music, like Chopin, as being too white an interest. He also receives no support from the “1 percent” president.

Then there is the larger, “elephant in the room” perspective—avoided by mainstream news media and analysts—that, through a half a century of welfare programs and policies that undermine the nuclear family, tens of millions of young black boys and men have no father in their lives. One of the single greatest predictors of any young man growing to be crime-and-drug-free, educated and gainfully employed is having a father in the home and in his life. Does no one else see, and have the willingness to point out, that Barack Obama was abandoned by both his mother and all father figures, replacing them with reported communist Frank Marshal Davis in Hawaii. Obama, unsurprisingly, now sees the government, through taxpayer-funded initiatives, as the logical replacement for the absent fathers of young, minority men.

Regarding the crisis in Ukraine, I don’t see any of the liberal, media elite rushing to apologize to either Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney, whom they ridiculed roundly for having the foresight and temerity to point to an invasion of Ukraine (Palin) by our biggest global adversary, Russia (Romney), during their national campaigns in 2008 and 2012. As I’ve said before, being a liberal means, to the left, never having to admit error, much less apologize for said errors.

Harry Reid Goes Around the Bend on Obamacare

by John Hinderaker in Obamacare, The War on the Koch Brothers
The disgraceful Harry Reid, one of America’s most corrupt politicians, a man who has mysteriously gotten rich as a public employee, is losing his grip. This has been going on for a while; remember his insane claim during the 2012 presidential campaign that Mitt Romney doesn’t pay any taxes? Today the subject was Obamacare. Reid, probably because he sees his position as majority leader slipping away on account of popular revulsion toward Obamacare, went on a hysterical rant against those who criticize the Democrats’ signature legislation:

Across the country Americans who were once denied insurance because they suffered for something like cancer or as simple as acne have been able to buy affordable health insurance they could afford and could trust. Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All are untrue, but they’re being told all over America.

Got that? Every “horror story” about Obamacare is a lie! With more than five million people already having been booted off their existing coverage by the ACA, that’s a whole lot of liars.

The leukemia patient whose insurance policy was canceled could die without her medication. Mr. President, that’s an ad being paid for by two billionaire brothers. It’s absolutely false.

Harry Reid is obsessed by the Koch brothers. He rarely speaks in public without denouncing them. The leukemia patient he is referring to is Julie Boonstra, whom I wrote about here. There is nothing false about the Americans For Prosperity ad in which she appears; she lost coverage with which she was happy, against her will, because of Obamacare, and a key medication that she relies on to stay alive is not covered by her new, high-deductible Obamacare exchange policy.

Or the woman whose insurance policy went up $700 a month, ads paid for around america by the multibillionaire Koch brothers, and the ad is false. We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lives it’s ruining. The Republicans’ stump speeches in ads paid for by all the magnates, the Koch brothers. but in those tales, turned out to be just that: tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines forming political advertisements.

Reid went on to rant hysterically against the Koch brothers for another ten minutes or so, as though it is their fault that Obamacare is a disaster. But that is par for the course. What was remarkable was Reid’s assertion that every claim to have been harmed by Obamacare is a “lie.” Of course, only a tiny proportion of the many millions who have lost their health insurance coverage or been forced to buy more expensive insurance because of the ACA have spoken out publicly. But the Senate Republicans took the trouble to compile a partial list of Americans who have spoken out, based on their personal experiences. Here it is; there are links in the original, but I have omitted them here:

ALABAMA WOMAN: ‘Facing Higher Deductibles For Almost Twice The Price’
AL Woman: ‘It’s scary. … oh no, I didn’t get to get my insurance plan … it went up!’ Casey Heaps: ‘This is not affordable at all, this is a very unaffordable care act’ Reporter: ‘That’s Gainesville medial assistant Casey Heaps.’ Heaps: ‘I don’t know what this world’s coming to. It’s scary. … oh no, I didn’t get to get my insurance plan I had. I had the one I liked, the one that worked for me, the one I could afford, but no I didn’t get to keep it, it went up!’ (WAAY-AL, 11/26/13)
AL Woman: Reporter: “Mary Elizabeth Comulada of Huntsville is still in sticker shock… the family health insurance policy she uses with her two children and her husband has been banned under the Affordable Care Act and [her insurer] offered her a different plan that complies with the act with higher deductibles for almost twice the price.” Comulada: “Then how can my premium double per month, how can our deductibles go up on every single family member and yet you’re providing me the same plan.” (WAFF-AL, 11/21/13)
AL Woman: “We were at $352 a month with our premium, our individual deductible was $1,500 for a family it was $4,000… at this point $796 a month, $6,350 deductible.” (WAAY-AL, 11/26/13)
ARIZONA WOMAN: ‘I Cannot Afford’ Obamacare
AZ Woman: “‘I cannot afford to pay $200 more per month,’ said Pedersen, 54, who added that the cheapest alternative policy she’s found with the newly established federal government exchange would more than double the $186 monthly premium she paid in 2013. ‘We’re more than halfway into November, and my insurance broker is telling me it takes up to 45 days to get on a plan. I just feel like this situation did not have to happen.’” (“After Obamacare Fix, Consumers Remain Uncertain,” USA Today, 11/17/13)
AZ Man: “My son is 1-1/2 and he has a preexisting condition. It’s a heart defect. My wife and I received a letter this week that his cardiologist group is getting dropped from our health care provider on November 1st… being forced upon them by Obamacare.” (“Victim of Obamacare Loses His Doctor,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, 10/31/13)
AZ Man: “For me and my lifestyle, doubling and more than doubling my [premium] costs is absurd. It’s insane.” Reporter: “President Obama’s Affordable Care Act isn’t so affordable… company is opting out and dropping Lee.” Lee: “It’s frustrating, it’s challenging, it makes you really question what’s really going on.” Reporter: “With no coverage, Lee says he had no other choice than to find out what was going on with Obamacare, but when he did he couldn’t believe what he was told.” Lee: “Your rate right now is $268 dollars. If you go to Obamacare it will go to $563 for the same type of care you have. … For me and my lifestyle, doubling and more than doubling my costs is absurd. It’s insane.” (KTVK-AZ, 11/13/13)
CALIFORNIA WOMAN: ‘Doctors … Can’t Treat Her Because They Won’t Take Her [Obamacare] Insurance’
CA Woman: ‘The health plan she’s paid for through the Affordable Care Act keeps sending her to doctors who say they can’t treat her because they won’t take her insurance’ REPORTER: “Beth Kramer says she’s running out of options.” PHONE: “The expected wait time is approximately one hour.” REPORTER: “And out of time. The disabled mother of two says she’s out of medication for an auto-immune disease, she’s run out of antibiotics for a painful internal infection, and the health plan she’s paid for through the Affordable Care Act keeps sending her to doctors who say they can’t treat her because they won’t take her insurance.” KRAMER: “I’m out of medication. I’m sitting here with an infection that I’m out of antibiotics [for] and symptoms are coming back and I have no idea when I can go to a doctor or where.” REPORTER: “Kramer signed up for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act through Covered California…” (KCBS-CA, 1/22/14)

(use link to read the rest of the dozen+ California stories...and the stories from the balance of the 35 states cited at Powerlineblog.com)

 http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/harry-reid-goes-around-the-bend-on-obamacare.php

February Obamacare sign-up numbers look pretty weak

February Obamacare sign-up numbers look pretty weak [With Comment By John]

by Paul Mirengoff in Obamacare

The Department of HHS is claiming that “approximately 4 million people have now signed up for a private health insurance plan through the Federal and State-based Marketplaces since October 1.” The open enrollment period will last for five more weeks.
HHS continues to provide the number of Obamacare “sign-ups” without telling us how many have paid and therefore actually have health insurance. Not everyone who signs up for Obamacare will pay for it. Some will change their mind, some will forget to pay, some will have signed up for several plans while intending, of course, to pay for only one in the end.
Based on reports from health insurers, the best estimate seems to be that approximately 20 percent of signees are not making their first monthly premium payment.
It also appears that the sign-up rate has declined. John Sexton of Breitbart writes:

The newly announced figure suggests that the pace of enrollment has slowed slightly since last month. With only a few days left in the month, February enrollment so far is only at 700,000. If you adjust for the few remaining days it looks as if February enrollment could stall out around 850,000.

According to the National Journal, about 1.8 million people enrolled in December and 1.1 million enrolled last month.
January was the first month in which the number of signees exceeded the government’s predicted number. The February predicted number is 1.27 million. It seems clear that the actual number will fall well short of this target.
Similarly, it seems clear that when enrollment closes at the end of March, the number of signees will fall well short of the 7 million Kathleen Sebelius said last year would “look like success.” Sibelius now denies that she ever considered the seven million figure a benchmark for success. She claims that this was merely “a CBO, Congressional Budget Office, prediction when the bill was first signed.”
However, as Wynton Hall of Breitbart reminds us, in September 2013, NBC News asked Sebelius what success would look like for Obamacare. She responded: “Well, I think success looks like at least seven million people having signed up by the end of March 2014.”
As they used to say, you could look it up. Or you could watch Sebelius say it: (use link)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

JOHN adds: The number of people who have signed up for insurance on the Obamacare exchanges is certainly a metric worth tracking, but the administration shouldn’t be allowed to get away with the claim that more signups equals success. The key question, it seems to me, is WHO is signing up for Obamacare. To the extent they are people who already had good insurance, but lost it because of Obamacare, the fact that they are now forced onto the exchanges isn’t a good thing, it is a bad thing. More signups by those people equals failure, not success. So I don’t think we can evaluate a single number–how many people have enrolled on the exchanges, including paying a premium–until we know how many of that number were previously uninsured, and how many already had coverage but lost it because of the ACA.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/february-obamacare-sign-up-numbers-look-pretty-weak.php

Obama eases penalties for businesses hiring illegal immigrants

40 percent decrease in fines belies rhetoricBy Stephen Dinan

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The Washington Times

                

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  Enlarge Photo
  Associated Press Illegal immigrants have been the focus of debate, but analysts ... more >

Around the WebThe Obama administration regularly cuts a break for businesses that hire illegal immigrants, reducing their fines by an average of 40 percent from what they should be, according to an audit released Tuesday that suggests the government could be doing more to go after unscrupulous employers.

According to the audit, conducted by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement cut one business's fine from $4.9 million to slightly more than $1 million — a 78 percent drop.
Investigators said the reduction is legal, but it may be undercutting the administration's goal of getting tough on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
"The knowledge that fines can be significantly reduced may diminish the effectiveness of fines as a deterrent to hiring unauthorized workers," the inspector general said.
The report was released the same day that a coalition of business groups wrote a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, asking him to pass an immigration bill this year. The business groups said they supported Mr. Boehner's list of immigration principles, which would give businesses a new supply of legal guest workers while granting legal status to most illegal immigrants already in the U.S.
While most of the attention in the immigration debate goes to illegal immigrants themselves, analysts say the problem would be much smaller if businesses would abide by employment laws.
Under President Obama, the federal government was supposed to be putting more of an emphasis on going after employers. ICE specifically announced that it would conduct more audits of the I-9 forms all businesses are required to keep demonstrating that their employees are authorized to work in the U.S.
The goal was to try to ramp up pressure on businesses to hire legal workers.
Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, said Mr. Obama has talked a good game but hasn't followed through.
"This audit confirms what I've found in reviewing ICE audit records obtained through FOIA," Ms. Vaughan said in an email. "Some field offices are conducting worksite enforcement (albeit on a tight leash) as if they actually mean to deter and punish illegal employment. Others do not take it seriously and are just going through the motions. Their goal is to rack up enough audits so that the administration can use the numbers to claim that it is vigorously enforcing the law."
The inspector general's report said ICE submitted notices totaling fines of more than $52.7 million from 2009 through 2012, but ended up charging only $31.2 million — for a 40 percent break for businesses.
It still marks a huge increase over the Bush administration, which imposed just $1.5 million in fines from 2003-2008.
Investigators said the agency is allowed to reduce fines if it seems the businesses' finances can't handle a large penalty.
Investigators said overall, ICE showed little consistency in how it applied sanctions. Some field offices gave out far more warnings and far fewer fines than other offices.
All businesses are required to store the I-9 forms submitted by employees that show their legal work status.
Analysts say the I-9 paper-based process is easy to defraud. All sides agree that an electronic system would be better — though many businesses balk at adopting electronic verification without first changing the rest of the immigration system.
In its official reply to the report, ICE didn't address the issue of reduced fines.
The agency said it has tried to be consistent overall with how it goes after employers with warnings and fines and that the differences among field offices are caused by a number of factors.
The agency said it even went back and reviewed some cases to see whether a fine or warning was the right response and that it found the initial decisions were usually correct.
The agency did agree to strive for more consistency in its reporting of information.
Businesses have been an afterthought in much of the immigration debate, which has focused on the estimated 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country and whether they should be given a pathway to citizenship.
Business groups say passing a legalization bill is important because it would give them a more certain workforce and would likely increase legal immigration channels, which would mean more workers.
"Failure to act is not an option," a coalition of 636 business organizations said in their letter to Mr. Boehner on Tuesday. "We cannot afford to be content and watch a dysfunctional immigration system work against our overall national interest. In short, immigration reform is an essential element of a jobs agenda and economic growth. It will add talent, innovation, investment, products, businesses, jobs, and dynamism to our economy."

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/25/obama-eases-penalties-for-businesses-hiring-illega/#ixzz2uR9iYpgA
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

When Failure Is Success

When Failure Is Success
For Obama’s supporters, what matters is not what he does, but what he says and represents.

ByVictor Davis Hanson

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Text

Victor Davis Hanson

Losing a job is freedom from job lock. A budget deficit larger than in any previous administration is austerity. A mean right-wing video caused the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Al-Qaeda was long ago washed up. The Muslim Brotherhood is secular. Jihad is a personal journey. Shooting people while screaming Allahu akbar! is workplace violence. Unaffordable higher premiums and deductibles are the result of an Affordable Care Act. Losing your doctor and your health-insurance plan prove you will never lose your doctor and your health-insurance plan — period! Being a constitutional lawyer means you know how to turn the IRS and the FCC on your enemies. Failure is success; lies are truth.
President Obama’s polls are creeping back up again. They do that every time the latest in the series of scandals — the IRS, AP, NSA, Benghazi, and Obamacare messes — recedes into the media memory hole. The once-outrageous IRS scandal was rebranded as psychodramatic journalists being outraged. The monitoring of AP reporters and of James Rosen is mostly “Stuff happens.” The NSA octopus was Bush’s creation. You can keep your doctor and your health plan — period — begat liberation from “job lock” and the ability to write poetry because you don’t have to work.
There will be more momentary outrages on the horizon, as a president who would fundamentally transform America continues to circumvent the Constitution to do it. The latest are the failed efforts of acting FCC director Mignon Clyburn — daughter of a Democratic stalwart, Representative James Clyburn. She dreamed about monitoring news outlets to ensure that they prove themselves correct in matters of race/class/gender thinking.

Yet after all the 24-hour outrages, and all the op-eds pointing out that a self-described constitutional-law professor has been the worst adversary of the Constitution since Richard Nixon, and after perhaps even a slide in the polls of a point or two, we will soon forget Ms. Clyburn and her idiotic attempts to diversify the news by seeking uniform expression in the media.
After all, we have forgotten EPA Director Lisa Jackson — former right-hand woman to former New Jersey governor Jon Corzine — who mysteriously disappeared from the EPA after creating a fake e-mail persona, “Richard Windsor.” The latter nonexistent crusader won an award from none other than Lisa Jackson’s EPA.
And we have forgotten Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who suddenly disappeared from the Cabinet after the FBI inquired into her Obama fundraising activities as secretary, and who is currently being sued over her mysterious freebie use of a union-owned luxury jet to hop between the coasts.
And we have forgotten Lois Lerner, who focused the IRS on tea-party groups, took the Fifth Amendment, retired, and is no longer “outrageous.”
And we have forgotten former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — of failing-to-pay-his-taxes fame — who went back through the revolving door after threatening Standard & Poor’s for downgrading the U.S. credit rating.
All these activists spoke a little too candidly about their ideology, crossed the line a bit too much in the defense of progressivism, and then receded as if they had never existed — until the next anonymous progressive hoplite in the phalanx of the hard Left steps up over the corpse into the fray and for a moment or two appears on our television screens. In response, President Obama always seems to take the attitude, What does it matter, and who cares? And so he goes along blaming either President Bush or Fox News, when not citing the conspiracy of ATM machines, earthquakes, and tsunamis that combined to thwart his populist efforts.
Who cares that fiscal discipline is now defined as raising taxes so as to borrow only $600 billion rather than borrowing $1 trillion a year for six straight years? And who cares that millions will lose their doctor, their health-care coverage, and most likely their jobs because of Obamacare?
Ditto foreign policy. Who cares that Obama issued five deadlines to Iran to cease enrichment and, when rebuffed, unilaterally dropped sanctions in favor of negotiation? Who cares that he declared a red line in Syria, and when the regime crossed it and gassed its own people, he announced that he had never issued a red line in the first place? Who cares that he issued a step-over line to President Yanukovych of Ukraine, as if anyone would not step over anything because Obama warned him not to?
Ditto also leading from behind in Libya, the flip-flopping from the radical Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood to the junta in Egypt, the reset with Putin, the friendly initiatives to the late Hugo Chávez that ignored the near collapse of Venezuela, as Latin America goes back to the late 1970s in another failed round of coerced statism.
In short, Obama will always poll around 45 percent. That core support is his lasting legacy. In a mere five years, by the vast expansion of federal spending, by the demonizing rhetoric of his partisan bully pulpit, and by executive orders and bizarre appointments, Obama has so divided the nation that he has created a permanent constituency that will never care as much about what he does as it cares about what he says and represents.
For elite rich liberals, whose money and privilege exempt them from the consequences of Obama’s policies, and their own ideology, he will always be their totem. He is iconic of their own progressivism and proof of their racial liberalism, and thus allows them to go on enjoying their privilege, without guilt and without worrying too much about how they got it or whether they might lose it.
For the vast new millions on federal disability insurance, food stamps, and other entitlements, Obama is their lifeline to government support. Who would risk losing that by worrying that the world is becoming a very dangerous place? If the IRS has to become politicized, better that it become politicized by going after right-wing tea-party types who would cut government. And if the media are to be investigated, at least the target might be Fox News, which — as the president just complained again to Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday — is a thorn in the side of the president’s progressive agenda. And if the country is going broke, at least those who will raise taxes are preferable to those who might cut government.
In short, there can be no scandals, or even good or bad news, just what Obama represents — an exemption from normal protocols of public and media scrutiny of his actual record. And so he has established two legacies. He will probably never win back a majority of inductive Americans again, and he will rarely lose his deductive base.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371784/when-failure-success-victor-davis-hanson

What Was the FCC Newsroom “Survey” Really About?

What Was the FCC Newsroom “Survey” Really About?

by John Hinderaker in Democrats, First Amendment, Obama Administration Scandals

That is the question that Byron York poses at the Examiner. His explanation:

[T]he FCC’s action may have, in fact, been something different: an attempt — still grossly unconstitutional in its method — to lay a foundation for a new government push to increase minority ownership of the nation’s media outlets.

Byron bases that conclusion on the fact that the driving force behind the FCC’s now-withdrawn newsroom initiative was Mignon Clyburn, daughter of hard-left Congressman James Clyburn, who was appointed to the FCC by Barack Obama. About Ms. Clyburn, York writes:

Mignon Clyburn…has long advocated more minority ownership in the media. But she has often reminded colleagues that to make the case for policies that would increase minority ownership, proponents need more empirical information to support their contention that more diverse ownership would be better than what exists today. For example, if a study showed that the existing media structure is not meeting the “critical information needs” of minorities and women in America, proponents could use it to buttress the case that government should enact policies to make sure more television and radio stations end up in the hands of minorities and women.

Mignon Clyburn

I think Byron is right about that. But I would take the point further: the structure of the survey that the FCC intended to carry out–or, rather, the FCC’s Democrats, since they apparently didn’t even tell the Republican members of the Commission about the survey until it was announced publicly–would have encompassed not just ownership, but, potentially more important, those who select news stories to cover, and those who deliver them on-air.
The fullest explanation of what the FCC newsroom initiative involved is this report by contractor Social Solutions International. SSI’s report is shot through with references to “demographics,” which would be explored in the various surveys that were to be undertaken. But “demographics” is a broad term that could include quite a few variables. What aspects of demographics was the FCC interested in? The term was explained in SSI’s report:

Because we are interested in neighborhood effects, we will then draw up a purposive sampling frame of neighborhoods that include principal demographic categories of interest: race and ethnicity, and income.

The SSI report makes clear that a principal focus of the FCC’s survey was to connect “demographics,” i.e. race and income, to television and radio stations’ meeting (or not meeting) the “critical information needs” of “underserved communities.” Here are a few excerpts from the report that illustrate the point:

Utilizing a sample of media providers (n= maximum of 280), we will conduct a qualitative analysis of local media services providing for CINs via in-depth interviewing, with particular emphasis on ownership characteristics, employment data, demographics on decision makers and barriers to entry.
***
Some of the information on the news media properties can be obtained by examining the respective websites. For instance, it is possible to determine the owner and, for the television stations, the identities of the on-air staff members. Using this method, we can learn the names of the top managers at the television stations and newspapers. Finding radio station news managers is not always successful using the Internet. The most reliable way to collect this information is through personal contact with news media property staff or someone familiar with the staff. However this also presents challenges. It is important to identify and talk with people who are willing to provide demographic information about their respective property’s work force.
***
Consequently two strategies must be employed:
1. Locating someone in the station who can provide demographic information; and
2. Making a formal request for the demographic information from Human Resources and/or corporate headquarters.
***
The final constructed database will contain data for all media outlets at multiple units of analysis. We anticipate that the most granular unit of analysis will be individual news stories, while higher order variables will tap into higher units of analysis. For example, for broadcast television and radio, we also will include station demographics.
***
One aspect of each media ecology we may choose to analyze is how certain factors explain the variance of provision for CINs. Depending on how provision is operationalized (continuously or categorically), we may opt to employ multiple regression or logistic regression to examine how certain factors (e.g. demographics of media outlet) explain/predict provision of certain CINs.
***
Data scoring, entry, and analysis will be conducted by our research team. The data analysis will potentially include examination of the frequencies, demographic comparisons, multi-variate modeling, and in-depth interview analysis:
Station Owners, Managers or HR
* What is the news philosophy of the station?
* Who is your target audience?
* How do you define critical information that the community needs?
* How do you ensure the community gets this critical information?
* How much does community input influence news coverage decisions?
* What are the demographics of the news management staff (HR)?
* What are the demographics of the on air staff (HR)?
* What are the demographics of the news production staff (HR)?

It seems obvious that a key purpose of the aborted FCC survey–maybe the only purpose–was to document 1) a lack of news stories relating to certain “critical information needs” of “underserved”–i.e., minority and low-income–communities, and 2) a lack of minority employees of television and radio stations among those who make decisions about what news stories to cover, who produce the news stories, and who present them on-air. The conclusion: voila! More minorities must be hired. The desired outcome of the survey would have been an FCC requirement that television and radio stations hire a quota of minority employees in these positions, or else lose their licenses to broadcast. Given that African-Americans currently vote approximately 95% Democrat, and Hispanics approximately 70% to 80% Democratic, the effect of such a mandate is obvious: fewer stories about Benghazi, Obamacare failures and government corruption, lots more sob stories about the minimum wage.
So I think Byron is on to something here, but the truth is probably even worse than he suggested. The FCC “critical information needs” initiative was, I think, an effort to institutionalize the Democratic Party in the nation’s news rooms–not just at the broadcast networks, where the Democrats are already institutionalized, but across the broad range of television and radio.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/what-was-the-fcc-newsroom-survey-really-about.php

The IRS’s latest attempt to silence conservatives

The IRS’s latest attempt to silence conservatives 
by Paul Mirengoff in First Amendment, IRS, Obama Administration Scandals

Last week, Scott and I attended the Heritage Foundation’s program on the Obama administration IRS’s assault on the First Amendment. Scott’s daughter, rising superstar Eliana Johnson, was one of the speakers. The others were Cleta Mitchell (whom Scott interviewed following the program), Bradley Smith, and Kim Strassel. Hans von Spakovsky was the moderator.

The program looked both backwards, to the IRS targeting scandal, and forwards, to the IRS’s proposed regulation regarding 501(c)(4) organizations. The two events are best understood in tandem as a concerted effort by the Obama administration to limit severely the free speech rights of those who oppose their policies.

How would the proposed IRS regulation accomplish this? To answer this question, we need to provide some background.

501(c)(4) status applies to “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare.” Donations to these groups aren’t tax deductible — unlike with 501(c)(3) charitable organizations — but the groups are exempt from paying income taxes on donations they receive from members.
Political advocacy groups are natural candidates for 501(c)(4) status. They aren’t charitable organizations, but they exist to promote social welfare as they see it. This is true whether the group is said to be on the “right” — e.g. The National Rifle Organization — or on the “left” — e.g. the Sierra Club. As Bradley Smith reminds us, in a democracy, it is offensive to contend that political participation does not promote social welfare.
Indeed, few would be advancing this obnoxious contention were it not for the fact that most 501(c)(4) organizations advance conservative causes. Labor Unions, a major source of the left’s funding of political causes, are not encompassed by 501(c)(4).
For half a century or so, IRS regulations have held that a political advocacy group maintains its 501(c)(4) status as long as “candidate-related political activity” is less than 50 percent of what it does. These groups have been able to meet this test because they are far more focused on citizen education and grassroots lobbying than on the election of particular candidates.

This is where the new proposed regulation comes into play. In order to strike at these groups — most of which are conservative — the Obama IRS proposes to redefine “candidate-related political activity” to encompass most of what 501(c)(4) organizations normally do. Thus, the IRS would include as “candidate-related political activity”:
 
* Grassroots lobbying
 * Issue advocacy
 * Voter registration
 * Candidate forums and debates
 * Voter guides
For example, if a citizens group sets up a table where volunteers register voters during a county fair, this activity must be counted as candidate-related political activity even if there is no candidate literature and no campaign activity. But this is not the case if the group is a labor union or a local chamber of commerce.

Similarly, a candidate forum or debate sponsored by a citizens group is candidate-related political activity even if all candidates are invited. All of the costs of the event and the value of the volunteer time is counted as candidate-related political activity for purposes of determining whether such activity is 50 percent or more of what it does (in which case, the group loses its tax exempt status). But again, if the group is a labor union or a local chamber of commerce, there is no such problem.

In addition, a statement by a leader, officer, or volunteer speaking on behalf of a 501(c)(4) organization that references or depicts any public official within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election is candidate-related political activity if published in the news media. Say, for example, that 30 days before the 2016 New Hampshire primary President Obama makes a Supreme Court nomination. The director of a group dedicated to nominating and confirming strict constructionist jurists criticizes Obama for making that nomination. That criticism, if reported in a newspaper, must be reported to the IRS and be treated as candidate-related political activity even though Obama himself is not a candidate.

Here’s a final example, though I could cite many more. If a conservative organization that opposes the Law of the Sea Treaty identifies Senators who are on the fence regarding their vote on the treaty and urges people to call these Senators and tell them to vote “no,” this too would be deemed candidate-related political activity under the proposed IRS regulation.

The purpose of the proposed regulation is clear — to “get in the face” of President Obama’s political opponents, as candidate Obama exhorted his supporters to do in 2008. The regulation gets in the face of conservative advocacy groups (and, by way of collateral damage, some liberal ones too) by pressuring them to curtail the activities that are most instrumental in carrying their purpose — political (but not candidate-related) advocacy.

It also gets in the face of these groups by imposing an enormous paperwork burden. Advocacy groups would have to track and record the costs of their so-called candidate-related political activity and develop a methodology for calculating and reporting the value of voluntary activities spent on such activity.

The paperwork burden would be massive. I understand, however, that the IRS takes the position that the Paperwork Reduction Act doesn’t apply to it. In this instance, of course, imposing the paperwork burden is part of the point of the proposed regulation.

The period for public comment on the IRS’s proposed regulation will close this week. Not to worry, though. The number of comments already filed is approximately 70,000. I’m told that only a proposed regulation of the internet has ever received more public comment.

We urge readers to call and write to Congress — both House and Senate — and demand action to stop the IRS regulation. The number for the U.S. Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. The good folks who work the switchboard will put you right through.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/the-irss-latest-attempt-to-silence-conservatives.php#!

Obama Says: No More Austerity!

by John Hinderaker in Federal Budget, Federal debt and deficit
President Obama’s budget for the next fiscal year is slated to be released on March 4. While the budget is not yet public, the administration leaked a description of it to the Washington Post: “With 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to era of austerity:”

President Obama’s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise proposal to tame the national debt in part by trimming Social Security benefits.
With the 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to the era of austerity that has dogged much of his presidency and to his efforts to find common ground with Republicans.

Have you noticed that we are living in an era of austerity? Federal spending in FY 2014 is projected at $3.8 trillion, the most in our history. In what way is this “austere”?

The lack of conflict is due in part to the collapse of the deficit as a political issue. While annual budget deficits remain high by historical standards, they have shrunken rapidly over the past few years as the economy recovered and Congress acted to cut spending.

When the Post says that the deficit had “collapsed as a political issue,” it is engaging in wishful thinking. The national debt has grown to more than $17 trillion. The projected deficit for the current fiscal year is $514 billion. That is indeed smaller than the out-of-control deficits of the past few years, but it is larger than any deficit that has ever been incurred when the president was anyone other than Barack Obama. This chart, from the CBO report that was released a week or two, shows deficits as a percentage of GDP. Note how the deficits run up by the Democratic Congress after it took control in 2007 worsened at the onset of the Obama administration and have dwarfed anything in our history. This profligate spending represents “austerity?”

The other striking fact about Obama’s proposed budget is that it reneges on all spending agreements that the Democrats and Republicans have agreed on, going back to the Budget Control Act of 2011:

Obama would fully pay for proposed new spending in his budget request, administration officials said, including $56 billion for what they called “Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative.” The package, which would be split between domestic programs and defense, will include fresh cash for 45 new manufacturing institutes; a “Race to the Top” for states that promote energy efficiency; new job training programs and apprenticeships; and expanded educational programs for pre­schoolers.

But wait! Democrats and Republicans agreed on discretionary spending levels that supposedly were binding for a decade to come in the Budget Control Act, which included the sequester. Just a few months ago, the Ryan-Murray compromise modified the sequester and increased discretionary spending. That bipartisan agreement was supposed to put spending debates to rest for at least the next couple of years. Now, apparently, the Obama administration intends to throw all prior agreements into the trash can, and demand still higher spending.
This illustrates a point that I have made over and over: all budget agreements that purport to achieve savings over a long period of time, usually a decade, are a farce. The savings always come in the “out years,” but the out years never arrive. Once you get past the current fiscal year, budget agreements are not worth the paper they are printed on. For Republicans to agree to more spending today in exchange for hypothetical cuts in later years is folly–those cuts will never come.
Obama’s budget promises to be fraudulent in other ways as well. No surprise there:

Officials said Obama’s budget request will include other nuggets of note. For example, it assumes that an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws will pass Congress despite deep divisions in Republican ranks. It also assumes that a sharp, but somewhat mysterious slowdown in health-care spending will continue throughout the next decade.

Bear that in mind when Obama says that he has proposed a budget that controls future deficits: deficits will be contained if Obamacare magically reduces health care spending–assuming that Obamacare even exists a year from now–and if vast numbers of new immigrants somehow contribute more to the federal coffers than they cost. None of that is going to happen. Obama’s budget, as usual, is an exercise in magical thinking.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/02/obama-says-no-more-austerity.php

It’s Time For The Right To Recognize Reality

It’s Time For The Right To Recognize Reality

Derek Hunter                   

People interested in liberty – be they conservative, libertarian, Republican, Tea Partiers or whatever – need to pull their heads out of where they currently are and let the sun once again shine on them before it’s too late.
The electorate is ripe for the picking and freedom is on the cusp of a comeback. But it just as easily could be lost for good if its supporters don’t reconcile, wise up and act like adults.
Progressive Democrats have a plan, as they always do. They want to expand government power and dependence. Government never has been bigger nor had so many Americans dependent on it to some degree or other. Liberty is losing, even though it is supported by a majority of Americans, because non-progressives too often act like teenagers throwing a temper tantrum rather than adults with an objective.
Progressives want a complete government takeover of health care. They have fought for it for decades. They had the chance to get it in 2009-10, but passed. They didn’t have a change of heart and suddenly decide not to inflict their failed Utopian Hell on the country. They knew it would be rejected, so, rather than push for a full takeover, they smartly settled for more incrementalism, and Obamacare was born.
Obamacare is a disaster, but it was designed to be. No one who voted for it saw it as the finish line. It’s a rest stop on the way to single-payer. Progressives are willing to accept half-measures that inch them toward their goals, then wait patiently for the next opportunity to push ahead. On the right, there’s none of that.
Impatience is understandable, but it’s also stupid and counterproductive.
The political right excels of late at petty infighting. Depending on who you talk to and what their personal issue is, non-progressives are a jumbled mess of pet issues, personal crusades and unhelpful grandstanding. The only thing missing is the only thing that matters – clearly articulated goals and a plan to achieve them.
There’s a lot of pie-in-the-sky talk about how to score a touchdown, but those plans generally require every play to be a 99-yard pass. That isn’t going to happen. Touchdowns aren’t scored on every play, even by the best teams. Getting to the end zone requires time and a series of plays – some short, some long – that together, over time, gets you to where you want to be.
Rather than work together on issues they agree on, set an agenda, establish common messages and outreach to the majority of Americans who agree but aren’t paying attention, the right’s factions fight over which issue is “most important” and how everyone who doesn’t agree is the problem in Washington. Meanwhile, all of their goals are becoming more difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. But they’re righteous, damn it, and that inflated sense of moral superiority and the money that blindly flows behind it sustains them. It’s a ship of captains arguing over the position of the stars while the boat sinks under their feet.
Progressives, on the other hand, get strategy. They win by playing the long con. They don’t spend time or resources arguing over who or what is “pure” enough. They ask: Does this advance the ball toward the goal line?
When was the last time you heard of a progressive group attacking a progressive politician? Has the Center for American Progress attacked Media Matters for anything? Vice-versa? Has any Senate Democrat attacked Harry Reid for ceding the advice-and-consent role of the Senate to the President? Of course not. Even vulnerable Senate Democrats who are facing near-impossible re-elections because they voted for Obamacare are muted in their criticisms. They’re for a progressive agenda, they see the long game and put their objectives before themselves.
On the other hand, we on the right see only tomorrow, if not just later tonight. They don’t recognize that an all-or-nothing attitude usually gets you nothing.
Why can’t they unify around a few big-picture goals to articulate and educate the public on and leave the disagreements for later? Because there’s no money, no power, no glory in that. The problem with being a movement based on the idea of rugged individualism is it’s made up of a bunch of rugged individuals…and their egos.
Progressives are winning – not because they have better ideas or the majority on their side. They’re winning because they will do anything – even lie, cheat and violate the Constitution – to obtain their goals. They put aside petty differences for the big picture.
Most Americans are uninformed, distracted and disinterested. That makes them prime picking for progressives who never let the facts stand in the way of their agenda, and who co-opt the language of liberty to fool them. Why not use it? No one else is.
Pro-liberty politicians are too interested in preaching to the choir to bother refuting progressives. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., gets this. He has spoken at Howard University, among other places, and he deserves credit. Steve Pearce, the New Mexico congressman, is no softie on immigration. But his majority-Hispanic district loves him because he takes the time to show up and be part of their community. This ought not be newsworthy.
Preaching to the choir drowns out reality. It engenders cheers from the fans and boos from the detractors. But it does not reach the great middle – the voters who decide elections. They encounter these questions only through the media, movies and pop culture. And it’s not the liberty message they hear from those sources. It’s those terms turned on their ear with a “dependence is good” mindset piled on top.
Pro-liberty politicians, pundits and activist groups need to learn to put aside their differences, at least for a while, forego the “Hail Mary” bomb and gain some yards. If they do, America will look a lot different. If they don’t, it’ll look a lot like now. Like it or not, you can’t change reality until you accept what it is.

http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2014/02/20/its-time-for-the-right-to-recognize-reality-n1797283

Trenton has nothing on Obama bully boys at payback time

Examiner Editorial: Trenton has nothing on Obama bully boys at payback time

By Washington Examiner   

Topics: Editorial Barack Obama Chicago New Jersey Chris Christie Standard and Poors

Opinion,Editorial,Barack Obama,Chicago,New Jersey,Chris Christie,Washington Examiner,Standard and Poors

President Obama, accompanied by outgoing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, announces the...

Closing down a bridge to punish a mayor for not endorsing Gov. Chris Christie for re-election was an unambiguous abuse of power by individuals on the governor’s staff and was rather petty to boot. This kind of bullying is hardly unique to New Jersey, though. It goes on at the federal level, too. In fact, the now-former Christie associates are amateurs compared to President Obama’s team of pin-striped tough guys.

Consider the government shutdown last fall when the president authorized the needless closing of federal parks and museums in an attempt to smear Republicans. Obama’s team got so carried away that they even tried to close state-run parks in Wisconsin that weren’t dependent on federal funds. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had to defy federal orders to keep them open.

Then there were the Tea Party groups that challenged the Obama agenda and soon found themselves targeted and harassed by the IRS. Yes, the tax official who ran the program claimed her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a congressional hearing, but don't expect any criminal charges to emerge from the IRS scandal. Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department sees no evil in it, perhaps because the government attorney in charge of the investigation is a long-time Obama donor.

Another example of "the Chicago Way" as applied in Washington emerged this week in a legal filing by Standard and Poor's, which faces federal fraud charges. An executive recounted how then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the feds would seek payback for S&P downgrading the U.S. credit rating. Recall that back in August 2011, S&P dropped its credit-worthiness rating for the U.S. from AAA to just AA+. It was a reasonable decision, given the staggering U.S. debt load and the chronic inability of Congress to agree on annual budgets.

It was also highly embarrassing to a White House then gearing up for a re-election campaign. Two days after S&P’s announcement, McGraw Hill CEO Harold McGraw got a call from a steaming-mad Geithner, who told him the rating agency had made a huge mistake. “You are accountable for that,” Geithner reportedly said, adding that “you have done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country.”

The Treasury secretary then said S&P had made other mistakes in the past and would be “looked at very carefully." McGraw said he also recalled Geithner saying "such behavior could not occur without a response from the government." It wasn't a threat. It was a preview. Last year, Holder's Justice Department filed charges against S&P, claiming it defrauded investigators by falsely rating home loans as AAA. S&P denies the charges. A Treasury spokesman told Politico that McGraw's allegation regarding Geithner was “false,” while a Justice Department official wondered why the story was only being told now, more than two years after it “purportedly happened.”

Hmm, maybe McGraw was initially afraid to talk about the threat he received from one of the most powerful people in the government — and one uniquely positioned to do immense harm to his company. After all, scaring people into silence was the whole point of Geithner's threat, wasn't it?

http://washingtonexaminer.com/examiner-editorial-trenton-has-nothing-on-obama-bully-boys-at-payback-time/article/2543036?custom_click=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter