Tag: Obama

“It’s all up to the voters now.”

10:31 am

“It’s all up to the voters now.”

It always has been up to the voters. Sadly, my baby-boom generation has too often turned to the courts to absolve themselves from responsibility for making tough decisions as voters. With Obamacare, that is no longer possible. If the public wants to get rid of this turkey of a law, which every poll says they do, the public had better come out to the polls in November and vote for candidates who are in favor of its repeal.

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A Modest Proposal

9:48 am

“A Modest Proposal.”

Now that the Roberts Court has affirmed that the government has the power to mandate purchases of private goods and services as long as it’s structured as a tax, I propose that we put this new-found authority in the service of an explicit Constitutional right. For far too long, too many Americans have suffered from an inequal distribution of firearms, despite the Second Amendment’s express exhortation to “keep and bear arms,” in large part because income inequality in this nation has kept the poor and working classes from having the proper protection for themselves and their loved ones. We need to end this disparity now by applying the ObamaCare model immediately.

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The bloody and corrupt scandal of Obama’s Fast-and-Furious gun-smuggling operation: a summary.

11:32 am

The bloody and corrupt scandal of Obama’s Fast-and-Furious gun-smuggling operation: a summary.

Imagine a government agency designed for the specific purpose of investigating and preventing the unlawful use, manufacture, and possession of firearms. Now imagine this agency engaging in an operation that not only goes against that purpose, but actually seeks to accomplish the opposite, by actively encouraging the sale of firearms to people whose ties to organized crime and gun violence are well known – and that this operation involves sending firearms across an international border into a country that this agency, and the government of which it is a part, purposely failed to warn, inform, or request permission from.

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Obamacare: 0-98

2:37 pm

Obamacare: 0-98

As the nation awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on President Obama’s centerpiece legislation, it’s worth reviewing the American public’s response to it across the 27 months since Obama signed it into law. Over that span, from March 2010 through a poll released this morning, Rasmussen has conducted 98 polls of likely voters. All 98 times, support for repeal has outpaced opposition to repeal. Across 98 contests, Obamacare has gone 0 and 98.

What amazes me is how completely oblivious the Democratic Party has been to these polls. Despite the public’s clear and passionate opposition to this law the Democrats have continued to act as if they believe the law will win them votes.

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Eric Holder has retracted his false claim that the Bush administration had started the program allowing guns to be smuggled illegally to Mexico.

10:51 am

More Fast-and-Furious news: Eric Holder has retracted his false claim that the Bush administration had started the program allowing guns to be smuggled illegally to Mexico.

The Justice Department has retracted a second statement made to the Senate Judiciary Committee. During a hearing last week, Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that his predecessor, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, had been briefed about gunwalking in Operation Wide Receiver. Now, the Department is retracting that statement and claiming Holder “inadvertently” made that claim to the Committee.

In other words, Holder has now admitted that he lied when he was testifying to Congress.

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President Obama today invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents demanded by a House committee investigating the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.

9:40 am

Cover up: President Obama today invoked executive privilege in order to withhold documents demanded by a House committee investigating the “Fast and Furious” gun scandal.

In related news, the union that represents Border Patrol agents called today for the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder.

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The pork of Obamacare

3:00 pm

The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), created by Obamacare, announced its first round of grants today, part of a funding program of fifty “pilot projects” totaling $30 million.

It didn’t take much research for me to conclude that, while some of this work might be useful, most of it sounds like bureaucratic claptrap. For example, consider the description Nature gives for these three grants:
» Read more

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A new poll in Nevada repeats what was found in North Carolina: Obama appears to be losing a significant percentage of the black vote.

9:34 am

A new poll in Nevada repeats what was found in North Carolina: Obama appears to be losing a significant percentage of the black vote.

Both polls could be noise. If true, however, the Democrats cannot win. Without 95% of the black vote they just do not garner enough votes from any other group to win.

And if this is true, it will also mean that the racism in the black community might finally be abating. Voting for a candidate merely because of skin color is still bigotry, no matter what the skin color. If the black community is finally gaining the ability to see past skin color it will be a very good thing.

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Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.

3:59 pm

Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.

From Clark Lindsey:

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.

As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.

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“So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”

2:21 pm

We’ve only just begun: “So come and get me if you must, Mr. President. I will not bow to your wicked regulation.”

James Dobson is not to be taken lightly. Under the Obamacare HHS contraceptive mandate, his organization, Focus on the Family, would not qualify for any exemption and would be required to pay for contraceptives and abortion drugs. And if Dobson’s organization defies the federal government here, expect very loud fireworks, as Focus is very large with a very large following.

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Congressional investigators now have documents that prove senior officials in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice approved Operation Fast and Furious, whereby the DOJ allowed guns to be purchased illegally and then smuggled back to Mexico.

2:10 pm

Congressional investigators now have documents that prove senior officials in Eric Holder’s Department of Justice approved Operation Fast and Furious, whereby Justice allowed guns to be purchased illegally and then smuggled back to Mexico.

Hey, so what that Eric Holder committed perjury before Congress? So what that people, including an American Border Patrol agent, have been murdered using these smuggled guns? So what that the Department of Justice, whose task it is to enforce the law, worked to aid Mexican drug cartels in obtaining illegal guns?

What’s the big deal? Mitt Romney was mean to someone when he was in high school forty years ago!

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More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

10:51 am

Repeal it! More colleges have announced plans to drop their student healthplans due costs imposed by Obamacare.

Lenoir-Rhyne University of Hickory, N.C., the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa—all private liberal-arts colleges—have told students they are dropping school-sponsored limited-benefit insurance plans starting in the fall. The three colleges said students’ premiums would have gone up roughly tenfold, and they said they could no longer justify making students sign up if they didn’t have their own insurance. [emphasis mine]

And if they don’t drop their healthplan?

The State University of New York at Plattsburgh said its 2011-2012 premium was $440 for a plan that covered up to $10,000 for each injury or sickness. Officials said the premium for the coming year would be $1,300 to $1,600 for a plan that meets the new requirements. The school will continue to require students to carry insurance, either through the school or not.

How’s that hope and change working out for you, students?

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An economy built to stall

8:48 pm

“An economy built to stall.”

In his first two years in office, Democrats gave Mr. Obama everything he wanted, save for cap and trade and union card-check, which would have done even more harm to job creation. They passed stimulus, ObamaCare, multiple housing bailouts, Dodd-Frank and more.

Even after Republicans took the House, they gave Mr. Obama the payroll tax holiday he demanded first for 2011 and again for 2012. Far from some new fiscal “austerity,” overall federal spending hasn’t declined. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has delivered monetary stimulus after stimulus—QE I, QE II, Operation Twist, and 42 months of near-zero interest rates with the promise of 30 months more.

Mr. Obama has had the freest run of policy of any President since LBJ. So maybe the problem is the policies.

Maybe Milton Friedman was right that “temporary, targeted” tax cuts don’t change the incentives to invest or hire because people aren’t stupid. Maybe each $1 of new federal spending doesn’t produce a “multiplier” of 1.5 times that in added output. Maybe the historic burst of regulation of the last three years has harmed business confidence and job creation. And maybe the uncertainty that comes from helter-skelter fiscal and monetary policy has dampened the animal spirits needed for a durable expansion.

As I said yesterday, though no president or Congress is entirely to blame for the state of the economy, they both can do great harm if they make decisions that interfere with the freedom of the market. And sadly, having the government interfere with the freedom of the market has been Obama’s mantra since the day he took office.

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Ninety-five federal workers have racked up $750,000 in travel expenses, while working at home.

6:28 pm

The wolves guarding the chicken house: Ninety-five federal workers have racked up $750,000 in travel expenses, while working at home.

Of 95 work-at-home employees, 12 are supervisors who received reimbursements of more than $200,000 for travel-related expenses in 2010 and 2011, the documents provided to congressional committees show. A majority of the 95 are listed at the GS-14 and GS-15-level.

By the way, this happened in the General Services Administration, the same agency that ran a four day conference in Las Vegas costing almost a million dollars.

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Florida has decided to continue to purge its election rolls of illegal and ineligible voters, in defiance of the Obama administration’s demand that it stop.

3:18 pm

Florida has decided to continue to purge its election rolls of illegal and ineligible voters, in defiance of the Obama administration’s demand that it stop.

The state is enforcing the law, as written on the books. Yet Eric Holder’s Justice Department somehow thinks that this is illegal. Maybe someone should teach Holder and his attorneys how to read.

In related news, Holder’s Justice Department is suing a Las Vegas casino because the casino followed the law in verifying that all its employees were legal residents of the United States.

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Not good: The Labor Department announced today that the U.S. economy only added 69 thousand jobs in May, the fewest in a year.

10:39 am

Not good: The Labor Department announced today that the U.S. economy only added 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year.

The unemployment rate went up slightly as well, Labor also adjusted downward the number of jobs created in the past two months to terribly comparable numbers.

While no president is ever entirely responsible for the state of the economy, Barack Obama’s policies have certainly done significant harm. High regulation, Obamacare, and a clear hostility to private enterprise in all fields except space exploration has helped produce what appears to be the longest period with a floundering economy in my lifetime.

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One entrepreneur and investor asks: Why isn’t Jon Corzine being prosecuted?

8:49 am

One entrepreneur and investor asks: Why isn’t Jon Corzine being prosecuted?

Jon Corzine stole from his customers. Until Corzine is put on trial in a court of law, no one will be able to get to the truth. He is being protected by the party in charge. The political waters are so virulent that they don’t want to see him tried. The event happened last October. Surely there is enough information available to convene a grand jury and begin indicting people. The public is being played. We are schmucks. [emphasis mine]

The party in charge is the Democrat Party. The man in charge of that party is Barack Obama. The voters should take note.

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