Earth Day After Action Report

by Steven Hayward in Environment
The indefatigable Roy Spencer offers a roundup of Earth Day cartoons yesterday on his site DrRoySpencer.com, reminding us along the way that folks who drove their cars to tree-planting ceremonies undoubtedly released more CO2 than the tree will ever absorb, before inevitably dying someday and releasing most of that CO2 into the atmosphere again anyway. This one is especially good:

But this is not satire: in the “Life-Imitates-Art” Department, behold the mess at Fort Mason park in San Francisco after last year’s Earth Day festivities:
Meanwhile, enjoy some other helpings from Dr. Spencer’s stash:


Because, you know, the Internet and wireless communications don’t use any coal at all.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/earth-day-after-action-report.php

Niger Innis: Cliven Bundy 'Clumsily' Stated an Important Point

By Joe Battaglia

 

 

After a lengthy conversation, embattled Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy finally understood the racist tone of his remarks and apologized privately, according to Niger Innis, the national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality.

Bundy brought nationwide attention and support for his battle with the federal government over grazing rights when he faced down armed agents from the Bureau of Land Management as they seized several hundred of his cattle.

Many of those who came to the support of the 67-year-old fled for cover when The New York Times quoted him as saying he was "wondering" if blacks are better off now than they were under slavery.

Innis, who is running for Congress in Nevada, told J.D. Hayworth on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV that he spoke with Bundy for about an hour on Thursday and finally got him to realize the repugnant nature of his comments.

"We talked for about an hour, and it was a good give and take," Innis said. "At first, Cliven kind of stood his ground and said, 'I said what I said, and I stand by it.' I communicated to him, and this is when he really got it.

"I said, 'Cliven, the freedom of choice, the freedom to use our lands, the people of Nevada to use our land for economic development and so on and so forth against the federal government is, that freedom that you're fighting for, is the freedom that was denied to millions of African Americans. That was the greatest sin of slavery is that it denied millions of African Americans of their ability to pursue happiness.' When I said that it was almost like a light bulb went on, he apologized to me."

Story continues below video.(video at link)

Innis said he does not believe Bundy to be inherently racist but said that he "clumsily" used a bad metaphor to try and make an important point.

"What would've been better is if Cliven had said, 'Look, there are a number of blacks and Latinos and poor whites now that are involved in a real slavery, which is the slavery of government dependence,'" Innis said. "I'm up here in Tonopah, which is part of my district, and I was just talking with a local businesswoman who pointed across the street and talked to me about low-income housing or free government-subsidized housing and how the people there do not work because they don't have to.

"They may not even know that they are slaves, but there is in fact a neoslavery that exists. When you take out individual initiative, individual responsibility, and the hope that every individual is born with, to better their lives, to climb the economic ladder, to pursue happiness, that is in fact a neoslavery."

 

http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/cliven-bundy-niger-innis-racism/2014/04/25/id/567836/?promo_code=1031D-1&utm_source=www.powerlineblog.com&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1

The Conservative Case Against Obamacare: A Restatement (DP: longer but worth the read)

The Conservative Case Against Obamacare: A Restatement

Jay Cost

Since Obamacare “hit” its “enrollment” “target,” Democrats, liberals, and their friends in the press have enjoyed some old-fashioned taunting of Republicans. This would be justifiable if a.) Republicans had destroyed the website that needed fixing or b.) predicted that nobody would sign up for the program in the first place.

Neither condition holds, of course. The website was totally the design of CMS, HHS, and the White House, which are all run by Democrats. Meanwhile, as Michael Cannon argued, it is no big feat to get people to sign up for a heavily subsidized product.
All of this Democratic triumphalism makes it a good time to restate in summary form the conservative case against Obamacare.
For starters, its recent success is grossly overstated.
Eight million “enrollments” is an enormous exaggeration, so much so that you cannot in good faith say that Obamacare “beat” its expectations. In fact, last week the Congressional Budget Office stuck with its most recent prediction of 6 million enrollments:

CBO and JCT estimate that, over the course of calendar year 2014, an average of 6 million people will be covered by insurance obtained through the exchanges. The total number who will have such coverage at some points during the year is expected to be more than the average because some people will be covered for only part of the year.

The 6 million number is not, and apparently never was, the number of paid subscribers arrived at when the enrollment period ended. And why should it be? That has become a politically important number, but from a federal budgetary perspective, a coverage perspective, or an insurer financial perspective, it has no value. What really matters is the annual average.
So, is CBO’s 6 million still justifiable as an estimate? If we take the administration at face value on its monthly enrollment numbers, assume that 90 percent of initial enrollees pay their first month premium, and then a 1 percent non-payment rate thereafter, the annual average for 2014 would be about 5.5 million, and the final enrollment as of December would be about 6.6 million.
It is worth noting on this front that a study from the U.C. Berkeley Labor Center projects that 40 percent of enrollees in Covered California will leave the individual market by the end of the year, either migrating to employment based insurance or Medicaid.
Whether this estimate turns out to be true, or whether California is indicative of the rest of the nation, is beside the point, which is this: The paid enrollment prediction made by CBO and adopted last year by the White House is substantially different than the numbers promulgated by the White House. In reality, the White House has invented a statistic that has no policy relevance whatsoever, and successfully sold it to a credulous press corps frustrated by the website’s collapse and eager for good news. Additionally, as insurance industry expert Robert Laszewski has noted, it would not be all that hard for the White House to compile and release the data relevant to the actual performance of the program. That the White House has not done this, nor has any plans to do so, should tell you everything you need to know.
The most fair assessment of Obamacare, given the data constraints imposed by the president for political purposes, is that the program will probably get in the neighborhood of 6 million paid enrollments on average this year, which is what CBO predicted earlier this year, but is just 67 percent of what the budget scorekeepers predicted would happen after the Supreme Court ruling.
Conservative objection #1: Obamacare has no legitimate funding mechanism.
Sure, the Congressional Budget Office says it is “paid for,” but one must be careful to read the fine print of every CBO report. It is the very model of a good faith agency in the government, but CBO must still render its judgment based on scoring conventions that can be gamed by legislators.
Chuck Blahous of the Mercatus Center recently released a thorough review of the program's financing problems. Here is just a brief summary of what’s wrong:
a.) It cut the Medicare Part A Hospital Insurance (HI) Fund in ways that CMS thinks will be politically unsustainable. These cuts are back-ended into the later years of the CBO scoring range, a typical trick for legislators who want to use unfeasible means to pretend to keep deficits in line.
b.) It double counts money taken from the HI Fund. Because of peculiar CBO scoring conventions, money taken from Medicare Part A is not scored as borrowed money, even though it in fact is intragovernmental debt.
c.) It cuts Medicare Advantage in ways that even congressional Democrats, including those who voted for the law in the first place, pressured the White House to restore.
d.) It makes use of a “Cadillac Tax” on “high end” insurance plans, but it does not take sufficient account of the growth in health insurance costs, meaning that there will be enormous political pressure to overturn this draconian instrument. These cuts are also back-ended into the later years of the CBO scoring range.
e.) It relies on politically unsustainable mandates. The business mandate has already been delayed altogether, and the individual mandate has been significantly watered down.
f.) There are other politically unsustainable or otherwise dishonest funding mechanisms in the bill. The medical device tax will almost surely be repealed. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) program is subject to adverse selection, which is why HHS decided not to implement it. However, CLASS was written so that it would accept premiums for several years without paying benefits, which meant that CBO had to score it as helping pay for the program.
In short, the Democrats used every trick in the book to avoid actually paying for this. There was no public appetite for a program akin to Medicare, which assesses a broadly based tax to pay discrete benefits. So, they increased taxes on the wealthy, added a few other small taxes, and then got the rest of the way there by smoke and mirrors.
Conservative objection #2: Obamacare has created a socially perverse array of winners and losers.
There is no doubt that some will be made better off because of Obamacare. It closes the Medicare Part D “donut hole.” Many people will get a good deal thanks to the subsidies, despite increased costs and narrow networks. It provides coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. It allows young adults under 26 more time on their parents' insurance plans. This is why no serious conservative opponent ever declared that nobody would join Obamacare. It is why serious conservatives have put together policy alternatives that help these people.
However, the law makes losers out of a vast array of people, whose economic status usually makes them “off the table” when it comes time to fund new social welfare programs.
Consider:
a.) Seniors on fixed incomes will see their Medicare Advantage costs go up.
b.) Seniors' access to hospitals will be diminished because of cuts to the Hospital Insurance Fund.
c.) Many in the small group marketplace will see their costs go up and coverage options decrease, but will not be eligible for subsidies.
d.) Many kicked off their existing plans, especially those with sensitive medical conditions, had to experience grave uncertainty as to whether their new coverage would be sufficient. When the special exemption for old plans ends in a few years, many more will experience the same uncertainty.
e.) Many in the individual marketplace will see their costs go up and coverage options decrease, despite the subsidies (assuming they are eligible for them).
f.) Many will not find sufficient value in any of the plans, and choose instead to pay the mandate penalty and remain uninsured.
g.) Rural communities where competition is sparse and enrollment weak will see premiums increase more relative to urban areas where those conditions don’t hold.
h.) The premium support formula results in young people at a given income level subsidizing older people at the same level, despite the fact that the latter are finishing up their peak earning years and should be more able to pay.
For a comprehensive accounting of the program’s winners and losers, see this interesting analysis by Chris Conover of Duke University.
Importantly, none of these people had to be harmed. In fact, this is of a piece with the previous critique: it all has to do with hiding the true costs of the program. To do that, congressional Democrats and the president not only used a series of phony cuts and tax increases, they alsospread the burdens of the bill far and wide, so that these people are paying an implicit tax to expand coverage.
Look again at these aforementioned “losers,” and you will see that they are not, by and large, the richest 1 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent, or even 20 percent. For instance, premium subsidies disappear for an individual making $45,000 per year, or a family of four making $90,000; and prior to these thresholds, the subsidies become quite measly relative to the cost of insurance. These are middle class people whose condition in this economy is often tenuous. Medicare serves the entire elderly population, which means these cuts are going to cut across income lines. The people who find insufficient value in exchange plans, and choose instead to pay the fine, will almost assuredly be middle income people, often young. A 25-year old making $50,000 is probably not in as good a shape economically as the 60-year old in the same condition whom he subsidizes, as the former still has student loan debt and is soon to take on mortgage debt.
These people should not have been harmed for any reason, let alone reasons of political convenience.
Conservative objection #3: Obamacare restricts choices and increases costs.
Liberals have been trumpeting CBO reports that talk about insurance premiums coming down. This is misleading for two reasons. First, they are coming down relative to CBO projections made at the time the bill was passed. In real terms, premiums have been going up. Check out this analysis from the Manhattan Institute. Also, consider these estimates from the American Enterprise Institute on how young people in particular will pay more. Also, see this study from Morgan Stanley showing a dramatic spike in premiums over the last six months. And premiums, of course, are only one way to increase the burdens on consumers. Co-pays and deductibles have also gone up.
Meanwhile, lost in the media's celebration of CBO’s announcement of low premiums was the fact that premiums came in lower than expected in part because insurers cut provider networks, a reality that new enrollees are already experiencing. In California, they’ve taken to calling it “medical homelessness.”
All of this is a consequence of two policy decisions made by the Democrats. First, they chose to allow relatively sick people to pay the same price for health insurance as relatively healthy people. Those extra costs must be borne somewhere, and they are coming in the forms of higher premiums, copays, and deductibles, and narrow networks. Second, they mandated that insurers cover a vast array of health services, regardless of whether people want them. Again, that costs money, and for many people these benefits provide little or no value.
Conservative objection #4: Obamacare hurts businesses.
The only way the country becomes more prosperous is through the creation of jobs in the private sector. The government cannot create wealth. It can only redistribute it, and Obamacare burdens businesses through its vast redistributive program. There are the administrative burdens, the employer mandate, and the requirements that insurance must take a certain form.
And make no mistake: those costs will often be transmitted to the employees. Health care for part time employees is being cut by big employers. Hours are similarly being cut. Conservatives believe that, when the mandate goes into effect, it will cut the number of jobs as well as wages. All told, a recent study by the American Health Policy Institute estimated that gross compliance costs for the largest employers would be between $4,500 and $5,000 per worker.
Conservative objection #5: Obamacare is probably unsustainable ... in the long run.
Conservatives who understand how the law works were not predicting a death spiral as of last fall, when the exchanges were supposed to work. For a time, it looked like it might happen because of technical problems, but that was not the original prediction.
Instead, the expectation is that the weak mandate to purchase insurance, plus the fact that Obamacare is a bad deal for many people, would make it disproportionately attractive to older and sicker individuals, the types for whom the program is a good deal but who cannot make an insurance market prosper.
Why will this only happen in the long run? The answer has to do in part with three Obamacare programs designed to serve as a backstop for insurers: risk corridors, reinsurance, and risk adjustment. Reinsurance pays marketplace insurers for their losses per patient from a tax on everybody else's insurance. Risk corridors are supposed to transfer funds between insurers based on profit and loss margins, but leaves open the potential for government funds going directly to insurers. These two programs end after 2016, which means by that point Obamacare will have to stand on its own, without the feds guaranteeing insurer profits.
Conservatives think the weak mandate, combined with the higher costs and relatively small value for many people, means that after these backstops go away the program will struggle. Whether that results in a “death spiral,” or simply increasing costs for the federal government through ever-larger premium tax credits, is another matter. Historically speaking, the better bet is unsustainability because of evermore costs to the taxpayer. That is the core problem with Medicare: the program was designed in a way that grew costs far beyond the capacity of the funding mechanism to keep up. For this reason Medicare is set to hit a crisis point in the next decade. Conservatives think that Obamacare will suffer a similar fate, perhaps sooner.
In conclusion, any one of these objections would merit virtually uniform opposition from conservatives to Obamacare. But take them all together, and most American conservatives have arrived at the same conclusion: this law is fatally flawed, must be repealed entirely, and replaced with something that is sustainable and not overly burdensome to taxpayers, middle class families, or businesses. After all, fixing each of these problems would result in a new law that bears only the faintest resemblance to Obamacare as it is today.
Moreover, a lot of conservatives believe that liberals have the exact same opinion. While publicly applauding the expansion of coverage, some of them must understand the grave problems inherent to this law. This helps explain the sense on the right that, for liberals, this is simply a stalking horse for single payer: first, sign up new people under a federal entitlement that cannot practically be taken away, then deal with the various harms to middle class voters, burdens on businesses, and extreme cost overruns … by proposing “Medicare for all.”
The irony here is rich indeed: the very same liberals who prefer such a “repealing and replacing” of Obamacare are actually criticizing Republicans for wanting to repeal and replace with a conservative alternative.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/conservative-case-against-obamacare-restatement_787111.html?utm_source=04_23_14%20Weekly%20Standard%20Newsletter%20-%20300X250%20AD%20-%2004/23/2014&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=TWS%20Weekly%20Newsletter

Hannity: Bundy Gives Democrats Ammunition to Paint GOP As Racist

Hannity: Bundy Gives Democrats Ammunition to Paint GOP As Racist

           

By: Greg Richter and Drew MacKenzie
Cliven Bundy has given Democrats a golden opportunity to attack Republicans with his racist comments, Sean Hannity, the Nevada rancher's most visible media backer, claimed Thursday.

Bundy's views are "repugnant," Hannity said, and they give ammunition to those who try to label all Republicans racists.

Hannity's comments came as Bundy, 67, doubled down on his comments on radio. He told The Peter Schiff Show he was "wondering" if blacks are better off now than they were under slavery.

"I said I'm wondering if they're better off under government subsidy and the young women are having abortions, their young men are in jail and their older women and children are sitting out on the cement porch without nothing to do," Bundy told Schiff."I'm wondering are they happier now under this government subsidy system than they were when they were slaves and they were able to have their family structure together and chickens and doggies and the people have something to do.

"In my mind, I'm wondering are they better off being slaves in that sense or better off being slaves to the United States government in the sense of subsidy."

Hannity has given heavy coverage to Bundy on his Fox News Channel and syndicated radio shows — so much so that critics, including Jon Stewart, have accused him of backing Bundy's anti-federal government rhetoric and actions.

But Hannity has denied that, and said Thursday he was "pissed off" at Bundy's latest comments to supporters that were quoted in The New York Times.

Hannity attacked Bundy's remarks at his first opportunity. "His comments are beyond repugnant to me," he said on his radio show, Thursday. "They are beyond despicable to me. They are beyond ignorant to me."

Hannity compared Bundy to former Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, who in his 2012 race for U.S. Senate said women's bodies reject a pregnancy caused by "legitimate rape."

Bundy's comments, too, will be fuel for Democrats, Hannity said, pointing to New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel who recently said the GOP's base is "animated by racism."

"Every conservative that I know does not support racism, period," Hannity told his audience.

He said the left has its own share of racists who "get a pass." But he added that, unlike left-wing hypocrites, "I find it repugnant whoever it comes from."

Later, during an appearance on CNN, host Bill Weir asked Bundy how it felt to be be "abandoned by your friends on Fox?"

"I don't think I've been abandoned. I think maybe they just misunderstood me a little bit," Bundy replied. "But I think Fox and I, I think Hannity and I are just right on. I have no doubt he would re-support me if he understood really what's in my heart, and I think he does understand me."

Hannity joins a slew of Republican leaders who on Thursday started backing away from their support of Bundy due to his racist comments.

Nevada's Republican Sen. Dean Heller had previously claimed that Bundy's supporters were "patriots," but following Bundy's hateful remarks he's started to "backtrack," according to Rawstory.com.

Heller's spokesman, Chandler Smith, told the Times that the senator "completely disagrees with Mr. Bundy's appalling and racist statements, and condemns them in the most strenuous way."

Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian Republican from Kentucky who may make a run for the White House in 2016, had supported Bundy's cattle battle with the government.

But in a statement provided by a spokesman for Paul to Business Insider on Thursday, the senator denounced Bundy's comments. "His remarks on race are offensive and I wholeheartedly disagree with him," Paul said.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had jumped into the controversy by stating that the BLM was planning to claim thousands of acres in the Lone Star State along the Red River, and he had made it clear that he had told the agency to back off.

But his spokeswoman Laura Bean tried to distance the Republican gubernatorial candidate from Bundy by telling the liberal newspaper that the letter Abbott wrote to the BLM "was regarding a dispute in Texas and is in no way related to the dispute in Nevada."

Bundy first attacked African Americans in comments to supporters reported by the Times. "Because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. "They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.

"I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom."

The father-of-14 recalled driving past a public housing project in North Las Vegas. "I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro," he said. " In front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do."

Former GOP congressman Joe Scarborough, who has criticized Bundy before, said on his MSNBC show "Morning Joe," that conservatives who ran to support Bundy were now "exposed" in light of the Nevada rancher's remarks.

"In this case you have a lot of people in 'conservative' media that have . . . raced to this guy's defense. They must be feeling very exposed this morning," Scarborough said Thursday.

Scarborough questioned how Bundy, who hadn't paid grazing fees the federal government said he owes, was any different from people on other types of welfare. He said Bundy "wanted a free ride off the government off the rest of us."

"He's a freeloader. And, by the way, when you say everybody owns everything . . . that sounds like socialism. That's socialism," Scarborough said.

Nevada's Democratic senator, Majority Leader Harry Reid, made hay with news of Bundy's comments. " "I used to live in North Las Vegas and it is home to some of the hardest-working people I have ever met — men and women who embody the American dream by working hard every day to build a better life for themselves and their families," he said in a statement.

"By contrast, Cliven Bundy has spent decades profiting off government land while refusing to pay the same fair use fees as his fellow ranchers. Today, Bundy revealed himself to be a hateful racist. But by denigrating people who work hard and play by the rules while he mooches off public land he also revealed himself to be a hypocrite."http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Hannity-Bundy-racist-remarks/2014/04/24/id/567485/?ns_mail_uid=13795880&ns_mail_job=1566040_04252014&promo_code=aw3fmjwh

Arizona Official: Cliven Bundy's Acts Are Legal

Arizona Official: Cliven Bundy's Acts Are Legal

           

By: Joe Battaglia
The Nevada cattle rancher at the center of a land dispute with the federal government should not have to surrender his property, an Arizona official says, because he has been acting within the boundaries of the law.

Barry Weller, vice chairman of the Apache County Board of Supervisors, told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum" Monday on Newsmax TV that he thinks Cliven Bundy was right in standing up to the Bureau of Land Management, which sought to seize his ranch.

Bundy says his family has homesteaded since 1877 on the land, which the federal government says belongs to the United States. As part of a conservation effort to protect the endangered desert tortoise, the Bureau of Land Management banned cattle grazing on the land in 1989. Bundy continued to graze his cattle and refused to pay fines levied against him, calling the federal policy a land grab.

The case is similar to another in Nevada, in which Wayne Hage won a protracted battle with the federal government by successfully arguing that he had the right to graze his cows within two miles of water sources he developed.

"The Bundys and the Hages are standing on what's called their water rights and their grazing rights," which, Weller said, "were pre-existing in territorial times, long before the government took over and these states became states and these water rights are mentioned, and any federal law or policy act that comes thereafter is always stated, 'subject to pre-existing rights.'

"So, when people say they're not legally doing what they're doing, they are. They are doing what they're supposed to be doing: standing for their rights," Weller said.

Weller said Sen. Harry Reid's comments on the situation have served no purpose other than "to ratchet up the force of the federal government against the citizens."

He added the government's actions against Bundy amount to a criminal shakedown for payment.

"That was absolutely deadly force," Weller said. "I don't know that it's hitting the news out there, but [the BLM] were killing cattle, they shot his prize bull from a helicopter through the back of the neck and killed him. Several cattle were killed as they rounded them up and pulled them into the BLM pens. It's just a devastation of force."

The only solution to this problem, Weller said, is for the government to follow through on the transfer of public land that was promised to all newly created states at statehood but honored only to the states east of Colorado.

"The people who take the best care of anything are the people who own it and have it close to them," Weller said. "The federal government has no idea what they're doing with these lands from a remote place in Washington, D.C., and they are deteriorating the resources of this country.

"There are trillions and trillions of dollars of natural resources here which do not have to be mined or received in a way that is brutal to the country or to the landscape, but are in a way that will profit and take care of the debt of this country if we open them up to the public and to the states so they can be utilized."

http://www.newsmax.com/NewsWidget/Cliven-Bundy-Barry-Weller-Nevada-land/2014/04/21/id/566807/?promo_code=EB8D-1&utm_source=National_Review&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1

Texas AG to Feds: 'Come And Take' Disputed Land

By Jason Devaney

 

 

Attorney General Greg Abbott has a message for the Bureau of Land Management about disputed land along the Oklahoma-Texas border: "Come and take it."

Abbott was referring to a potential land grab of 90,000 acres that belong to Texas residents. According to Breitbart Texas, the federal government is considering taking the land, which stretches 116 miles along the Red River.

"I am about ready to go to the Red River and raise a 'Come and Take It' flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas," Abbott said.

Abbott wrote a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze about the matter, expressing his concerns about the government's interest in taking the land from Texans, who have owned it for decades.

"I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations," Abbott wrote in the letter.

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"The BLM's newly asserted claims to land along the Red River threaten to upset long-settled private property rights and undermine fundamental principles — including the rule of law — that form the foundation of our democracy. Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions. Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box."

Abbott expanded on the subject in an interview with Breitbart.

"What Barack Obama's BLM is doing is so out of bounds and so offensive that we should have quick and successful legal action if they dare attempt to tread on Texas land and take it from private property owners in this state," Abbott said.

The issue with the land dates to the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. The physical boundary between Texas and Oklahoma along the Red River can fluctuate, depending on the river itself. This has led to countless legal battles over the years between the two states and the federal government.

According to Breitbart, the Texas Farm Bureau thinks the border moves south when the river shifts in that direction. But when the flow of water shifts to the north, the organization maintains that the border stays where it is supposed to be.

The BLM has stepped in and wants to take over the land to settle the matter once and for all.

"This is the latest line of attack by the Obama administration, where it seems like they have a complete disregard for the rule of law in this country," Abbott told Breitbart. "And now they've crossed the line quite literally by coming into the state of Texas and trying to claim Texas land as federal land. And, as the attorney general of Texas, I am not going to allow this."

The situation comes on the heels of the case between the BLM and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.

The BLM says Bundy had been illegally grazing his cattle on 600,000 acres of federal land for 20 years. Bundy disagrees, saying the land belongs to the state. The BLM had started to confiscate Bundy's cattle, but returned the animals 10 days ago.

 

http://www.newsmax.com/US/Greg-Abbott-BLM-Oklahoma-land/2014/04/22/id/567136/?ns_mail_uid=13795880&ns_mail_job=1565815_04232014&promo_code=ag14nh1t

'Most transparent' White House ever rewrote the FOIA to suppress politically sensitive docs

'Most transparent' White House ever rewrote the FOIA to suppress politically sensitive docs

By Mark Tapscott |                    

 

It's Sunshine Week, so perhaps some enterprising White House reporter will ask press secretary Jay Carney why President Obama rewrote the Freedom of Information Act without telling the rest of America.
The rewrite came in an April 15, 2009, memo from then-White House Counsel Greg Craig instructing the executive branch to let White House officials review any documents sought by FOIA requestors that involved "White House equities."
That phrase is nowhere to be found in the FOIA, yet the Obama White House effectively amended the law to create a new exception to justify keeping public documents locked away from the public.

A serious breach
The Greg memo is described in detail in a new study made public today by Cause of Action, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group that monitors government transparency and accountability.
How serious an attack on the public's right to know is the Obama administration's invention of the "White House equities" exception?
"FOIA is designed to inform the public on government behavior; White House equities allow the government to withhold information from the media, and therefore the public, by having media requests forwarded for review. This not only politicizes federal agencies, it impairs fundamental First Amendment liberties," Cause of Action explains in its report.
Equities are everything
The equities exception is breathtaking in its breadth. As the Greg memo put it, any document request is covered, including "congressional committee requests, GAO requests, judicial subpoenas and FOIA requests."
And it doesn't matter what format the documents happen to be in because, according to Greg, the equities exception "applies to all documents and records, whether in oral, paper, or electronic form, that relate to communications to and from the White House, including preparations for such communications."
Forget making FOIA deadlines
The FOIA requires federal agencies to respond within 20 days of receiving a request, but the White House equities exception can make it impossible for an agency to meet that deadline.
In one case cited by Cause of Action, the response to a request from a Los Angeles Times reporter to the Department of the Interior for "communications between the White House and high-ranking Interior officials on various politically sensitive topics" was delayed at least two years by the equities review.
"Cause of Action is still waiting for documents from 16 federal agencies, with the Department of Treasury having the longest pending request of 202 business days.
"The Department of Energy is a close second at 169 business days. The requests to the Department of Defense and Department of Health and Human Services have been pending for 138 business days," the report said.
So much for "the most transparent administration in history."

http://washingtonexaminer.com/most-transparent-white-house-ever-rewrote-the-foia-to-suppress-politically-sensitive-docs/article/2545824

Premium rates soar under Obamacare

 
by Paul Mirengoff in Obamacare
Fox News reports on a recent survey of 148 insurance brokers which shows that Obamacare is sending premiums upwards at the fastest clip in decades. The survey, conducted by Morgan Stanley, shows an increase in premium costs nationally of about 12 percent. California experienced a 53 percent increase; in Florida the increase was 37 percent; Pennsylvania’s was 28 percent.
According to Fox, analysts attribute the higher costs primarily to Obamacare:

“There are certain regulations and certain requirements that had to be in there. And because of that it’s driven up the costs of these benefits,” says John DiVito of the Flexible Benefit Service Corporation, which represents hundreds of agents.

The hikes reported in the survey are for the first policies issued under ObamaCare in 2014. Next year is likely to be worse:

“They’re going to see an announcement that next year’s premium’s going to be 25 percent or maybe 50 percent higher than what they’re now paying,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
John Divito of Flexible Benefit Service Corporation says, “we’re reading studies where the rates could be 10 to 30, 40 percent higher. Again, it all depends geographically where these rates are being looked at but definitely an increase in rates.”…
Insurance executives say the same thing. Marc Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, recently told an earning conference that he anticipates 2014 spikes of 20 to 50 percent, going as high as 100 percent in some markets.

The suggestion that the Democrats’ Obamacare worries are behind them because more than 7 million people signed up for it is bunk.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/premium-rates-soar-under-obamacare.php

WASHINGTON - JUNE 19: U.S. President George W. Bush (R) presents a Presidential Medal of Freedom to Benjamin S. Carson, Sr. M.D (L), for his work withneurological disorders during an East Room ceremony June 19, 2008 at the White House in Washington, DC. The medal is the nation's highest civilian award. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Ben Carson: White House wanted apology for ‘offending’ Obama

Alex Pappas

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson says the White House wanted him to apologize for “offending” President Obama after he famously delivered a conservative message at the National Prayer Breakfast last year.
Carson, the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, recalls the events surrounding his 2013 speech in his new book, One Nation: What We Can All Do To Save America’s Future. The Daily Caller obtained an advance copy of the book, which is set for release May 20.
“He did not appear to be hostile or angry,” Carson writes of Obama, “but within a matter of minutes after the conclusion of the program, I received a call from some of the prayer breakfast organizers saying that the White House was upset and requesting that I call the president and apologize for offending him. I said that I did not think that he was offended and that I didn’t think that such a call was warranted.”
Conservatives rallied around Carson last year after his remarks, made from a podium as Obama sat just feet away. In his speech, he railed against “political correctness” and offered specific ideas for health care reform.
“Many have commented that the president appeared to be uncomfortable during my speech, but I was not paying particular attention to him or his reactions, as my comments were really directed more at the American people than the people on the dais,” Carson recalls. “At the conclusion of the program, the president approached me to shake my hand and thank me for my participation.”
Since that speech, a super PAC has been formed to encourage Carson to run for president in 2016.
In his book, Carson suggests he has no plans to run, but hints he would if he “felt called by God.”
“I have been offered support from around the country and tremendous financial resources if I decide to run for national office,” he writes in his book. “But I have not felt called to run. I suspect that there are many others who think logically and are interested in a political future who might be better candidates than myself. Nonetheless, if I felt called by God to officially enter the world of politics, I certainly would not hesitate to do so.”

 

Watch Carson’s speech:

Follow Alex on Twitter

Tags: Ben Carson, National Prayer Breakfast

http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/14/ben-carson-white-house-wanted-apology-for-offending-obama/

Did Muslim hardliners try to infiltrate and takeover TWENTY FIVE Birmingham schools?

Did Muslim hardliners try to infiltrate and takeover TWENTY FIVE Birmingham schools? Probe into 'Trojan horse' plot expands

• Plot against Birmingham schools was uncovered in document last month
• Muslim extremists allegedly plotted to overthrow moderate school leaders
• Nicknamed Operation Trojan Horse, document told how to force staff out
• Probe into alleged hardline Muslim plot now been expanded to 25 schools
• Birmingham City Council appoints special adviser to probe allegations
• Children in schools in Manchester and Bradford may be at risk of similar plot
• Ofsted inspectors are told to fail any school that appears to be involved

ByHarriet Arkell

 

Thousands of schoolchildren's education could have been threatened by a hardline Muslim plot to force out moderate school governors and heads and replace them with extremists.
It emerged today that 25 Birmingham schools are now being investigated for links to the alleged radicalisation plot, and while Birmingham City Council has refused to name the schools, some of which have upwards of 600 students, it means that vast numbers of pupils could have been at risk.
The number of schools allegedly involved rose today from 15 to 25 as Education Secretary Michael Gove is said to have told Ofsted inspectors to fail any school 'where religious conservatism is getting in the way of learning and a balanced curriculum'.
This afternoon Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg backed the investigations, saying schools should not be allowed to become 'silos of segregation'.

 

It emerged today that 25 schools in Birmingham, including Park View Academy, pictured, are being investigated by Ofsted over allegations that Muslim extremists were trying to force out moderate headteachers

Clegg: 'Faith schools shouldn't become silos of segregation'

 

As the scale of the alleged plot became apparent, Birmingham City Council appointed a new chief adviser, former head teacher Ian Kershaw, to handle at least 200 complaints received in relation to the 'Trojan Horse' alleged plot to take over primary, secondary, and community schools as well as academies in the city.
The unsigned and undated Trojan Horse letter claimed that a small but radical group of Muslims was pursuing its own agenda in the classrooms, with uncooperative headteachers and governors forced out.
It said that the plot had caused 'a great amount of organised disruption' in the city, crediting it with forcing a change of leadership at four schools.At the centre of the scandal is Birmingham’s Park View Academy, where it is alleged that £70,000 was spent on loudspeakers to call pupils to Islamic prayers.Birmingham City Council's investigation will run beside a separate inquiry by the Department for Education (DfE), and will report back on 15 schools initially next month, with a fuller report due in July.
Headteachers and governors judged to be performing 'inadequately' in terms of pushing religious views to the detriment of children's education may be immediately dismissed.
Since the appearance of the letter in March, anonymous whistle-blowers including former staff have come forward, making claims that boys and girls were segregated in classrooms and assemblies, and sex education was banned.
It was also alleged that non-Muslim staff had been bullied, and in one case it was alleged that the teachings of a firebrand Al Qaeda-linked Muslim preacher praised to pupils.

Birmingham City Council today announced the six-month appointment of Mr Kershaw, managing director of Northern Education, to handle the investigation, and the council said it was also setting up a review group made up of MPs, councillors, police and faith groups.
The council's leader, Sir Albert Bore, said the investigation was slowed by the two-tier school system, which meant that academies, which are at the centre of the allegations, were answerable not to the local authority but to the DfE, calling the situation 'frustrating in the extreme'.
And Sir Albert suggested that the alleged Muslim extremist plot may extend beyond Birmingham, saying that his authority had spoken to councils in both Manchester and Bradford.
He said: 'There are certainly issues in Bradford which have similarities with the issues being spoken about in Birmingham.'
Fresh claims have emerged in Manchester and at Bradford's Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College and Carlton Bolling College.
An Ofsted spokesman said it had not begun inspections there, but did not rule it out.
Sir Albert also said that West Midlands Police, which has reopened a fraud inquiry into one of the schools caught up in the allegations, was still looking into the authorship of the Trojan Horse document, the authenticity of which is still unclear.

 

Lindsey Clark, the headteacher of Park View, said she would act against anyone plotting against the school

MUSLIM HEAD 'BANS' SANTA

One of the schools being investigated over extremist infiltration cancelled its annual visit from Father Christmas last year.

Teacher Vicky Hubble, who organised the event at the secular Ladypool Primary School, was allegedly told to cancel it by the new Muslim headmaster, Huda Aslam.

He is said to have told her there would be no presents and ‘no mention’ of Jesus being the son of God.

According to a fellow teacher, Mr Aslam wanted to reduce festivities to little more than sing-alongs to songs such as Jingle Bells, but was forced to reinstate the Christmas assembly by Birmingham Council. However, Santa remained banned.

But a DfE official said yesterday: ‘Extreme religious conservatism often acts as an entry to later problems.
‘A child who is brought up age eight, nine, ten, believing that you should segregate the sexes and hand out Islamic textbooks is more likely to be radicalised in later life.’
David Cameron has promised ‘swift action’ to ensure schools are not used to spread terrorist ideology.
Birmingham city council froze appointments of any new school governors last week. But MPs said change should have come sooner.
Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill, which covers several of the schools, said the probe was moving at ‘glacial’ speed.
Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood said that the council has known of the claims for ‘eight years at least’ but had failed to act for fear of ‘appearing anti-Muslim’.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2604211/Now-probe-Trojan-horse-plot-expands-25-schools-claimed-infiltrated-Muslim-hardliners.html

Regulator Without Peer

By at least one measure, Obama surpasses all of his predecessors.

Anyone wondering why the U.S. economy can't seem to grow at its usual pace should examine one product category where production is booming: federal regulation.
Washington set a new record in 2013 by issuing final rules consuming 26,417 pages in the Federal Register. While plenty of government employees deserve credit for this milestone, leadership matters. And by this measure President Obama has never been surpassed in the Oval Office.
The latest rule-making tally comes from the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews, who on April 29 will publish his annual review of federal regulation in "Ten Thousand Commandments." This is important work because politicians and the media treat regulation as a largely cost-free public good. Mr. Crews knows better.
Congress may be mired in gridlock, but the federal bureaucracy is busier than ever. In 2013 the Federal Register contained 3,659 "final" rules, which means they now must be obeyed, and 2,594 proposed rules on their way to becoming orders from political headquarters.
The Federal Register finished 2013 at 79,311 pages, the fourth highest total in history. That didn't match President Obama's 2010 all-time record of 81,405 pages. But Mr. Obama can console himself by noting that of the five highest Federal Register page counts, four have occurred on his watch. The other was 79,435 pages under President George W. Bush in 2008.
And the feds aren't letting up. Mr. Crews reports that there are another 3,305 regulations moving through the pipeline on their way to being imposed. One hundred and ninety-one of those are "economically significant" rules, which are defined as having costs of at least $100 million a year. Keep in mind that the feds routinely low-ball their cost estimates so the public will continue to think regulation is free.
Drawing largely on government statistics, Mr. Crews estimates that the overall cost of regulatory compliance and its economic impact is about $1.9 trillion annually. This means that the burden of complying with federal rules costs roughly the annual GDP of Australia, Canada or Italy.
This regulatory tax makes U.S. businesses less competitive, but it also burdens every American because it is embedded in the prices of all goods and services. Mr. Crews estimates that "U.S. households 'pay' $14,974 annually in regulatory hidden tax," or 23% of the average income of $65,596.
All of this is the fruit of ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and the manifold other expansions of government that have marked the Obama years. By far their greatest and most tragic cost has been slower economic growth, which has meant fewer jobs, lower incomes and diminished economic possibilities for tens of millions of Americans.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304311204579505953682216682?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304311204579505953682216682.html

On Tax Day, RNC Sues The IRS (DP: happened last week but still...)

On Tax Day, RNC Sues The IRS

 

by Charlie Spiering

On Tax Day, the Republican National Committee announced it is suing the IRS for stonewalling Freedom of Information Act request for documents about the tax agency's politicized scrutiny of conservative and Tea Party groups.

The RNC filed the request on May 21, 2013, in an attempt to expose the documents and emails surrounding agency’s process in handling applications of non-profit organizations such as conservative and Tea Party groups.
“We’re filing this suit because the Obama administration has a responsibility to be transparent and accountable to the American people. The IRS has a legal obligation to answer our inquiry for these records,” said RNC Chairman Reince Priebus. “On Tax Day especially Americans deserve to know whether they can trust the agency to which they’re sending their taxes.
After the RNC filed the request, the IRS has requested several extensions, which has already delayed the release by 226 business days.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/04/15/On-tax-day-RNC-sues-the-IRS