Tag: policy

How Obamacare discourages people from making more money, discourages businesses from hiring, and discourages everyone from becoming better than they are.

4:42 pm

How Obamacare discourages people from making more money, discourages businesses from hiring, and discourages everyone from becoming better than they are.

But we all know that the real and only reason I mention these unfortunate facts about Obamacare is because Obama is black and that I’m a racist.

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The IRS official who released the confidential tax information of conservative groups to a left-leaning news organization has been promoted.

10:04 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS official who illegally released the confidential tax information of conservative groups to a left-leaning news organization has been promoted.

Light will be replaced by Cindy Thomas, a 35-year IRS veteran who ran the Exempt Organizations office in Cincinnati throughout the 2-year period that conservative groups were targeted. “Cindy brings a strong background in EO Determinations and the history of the organization,” Corbin told employees. “And, since she is located in Cincinnati, she will provide a voice for the process and challenges faced in determinations work.” Thomas’s promotion will not be without controversy, given that, in November of last year, she signed off on the illegal release to the left-leaning ProPublica, of nine pending, confidential applications for tax exemption filed by conservative groups. One of those organizations, the Colorad-based Citizens Awareness Project, yesterday filed a federal lawsuit against the IRS over the release of its application.

Boy, Barack Obama is really hunting down those rogue IRS agents in Cincinnati and teaching them a lesson for harassing his conservative opponents.

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In its minority small business program, supposedly designed to help minorities, the federal government has instead given millions to firms owned by fictitious people.

9:15 am

In its minority small business program, supposedly designed to help minorities, the federal government has instead given millions to firms owned by fictitious people.

This article illustrates how deep and extensive the corruption is in Washington DC. Things have gotten so bad that we hardly notice a story like this, even though it involves a level of fraud and illegality involving millions of dollars that has become almost routine within the small business and minority set-aside programs of the federal government.

The programs were designed, with noble good intentions, to encourage new businesses run by minorities or women. Instead, a minority or woman sets up a fake company and then subcontracts the work out to others (even though such subcontracting is forbidden). No one in the federal government notices or cares, and the fraud escalates, until in examples like the one at the link, it becomes so egregious that someone in government feels obligated to prosecute. And even then, it appears that the woman charged is only obligated to return some cash and a car. It does not look like she will serve any prison time.

Just imagine how much other fraud and corruption continues to go on in other federal feel-good programs that no one has bothered to stop or notice. The possibilities are numbing.

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An IRS agent admitted this week in testimony to a House committee that the IRS is still harassing conservatives, three months after the targeting was revealed.

3:04 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: An IRS agent admitted this week in testimony to a House committee that the IRS is still harassing conservatives, three months after the targeting was revealed.

I am not surprised. Obama, and his Democratic cronies, want this harassment of their opponents to continue. They want to use the vast and powerful machinery of the federal government in any way possible to hinder any opposition to their power and control.

As I’ve said earlier, they are jack-booted thugs, nothing more, nothing less.

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An inspector general report has found that the 24 health co-ops formed under Obamacare are going bankrupt, even before they have opened.

9:20 am

Our government at its best: An inspector general report has found that the 24 health co-ops formed under Obamacare are going bankrupt, even before they have opened to their first customers.

And that’s not all:

Examiner Watchdog investigative reporting project focused on the co-ops began in 2012 and has since uncovered extensive evidence of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, failure to file required tax returns, inadequate capitalization and evasion of public disclosure requirements such as the federal Freedom of Information Act. A recent Examiner survey found, for example, that all but one of the 24 co-ops failed to file required tax returns, and several may invoke a highly questionable loophole allowing them to avoid doing so in the future. Even more troubling, two of the co-op loans were awarded to organizations headed by individuals with questionable backgrounds, the Examiner has learned, including an insider trading conviction and a history of child sexual abuse.

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The Obama administration has given Congress and its staff a waiver so that they will not have to pay the full cost increase imposed by Obamacare.

4:09 pm

The law is for the little people: The Obama administration has given Congress and its staff a waiver so that they will not have to pay the full cost increase imposed by Obamacare.

No waiver for anyone else, however. You gotta pay, tough luck. You ain’t an important member of the Washington elite, the royal class, the superior smarter set that makes the laws you (and not they) have to follow.

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The government is months behind in testing the security arrangements of Obamacare.

4:33 pm

O goody: The government is months behind in testing the security arrangements of Obamacare.

“They’ve removed their margin for error,” said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. “There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint.” The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance.

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New York’s “greenest” skyscraper turns out to be its biggest energy hog.

11:31 am

New York’s “greenest” skyscraper turns out to be its biggest energy hog.

Maybe the building’s problem is that it has Al Gore as one of its tenants.

Seriously, the article illustrates well “the law of unintended consequences.” You pass a law or regulation intended to do x, and discover that people instead manipulate the law or regulation to get y instead.

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My rant Thursday against politicians on the John Batchelor Show

10:43 pm

On my Thursday appearance last week on the John Batchelor Show John and I devoted the entire segment to talking about the sad state of NASA and how the partisan bickering in Congress is not only failing to deal with those problems, that bickering is intentionally disinterested in actually fixing them. As I say,

What both those parties in Congress and in the administration are really doing is faking a goal for the purpose of justifying pork to their districts, because none of the proposals they’re making — both the asteroids or the moon — are going to happen.

I intend to elaborate in writing on this subject in the next day or so. In the meantime, here is the audio of that appearance [mp3] for you all to download and enjoy.

Note that I specifically talked about the following stories during this appearance:

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Two graphs that show the depressing trends of the work force for the past twenty years.

12:40 pm

Two graphs that show the depressing trends of the work force for the past twenty years.

Both reveal that, since the crash in 2008-2009, there has been absolutely no uptick, despite the desperate repeated claims of the Obama administration. The American work force, and the economy that work force represents, has shrunk, and shows no signs of recovery.

There is a solution, but no one really wants to risk trying it in our Soviet-style society.

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New evidence strongly suggests that the IRS’s harassment of conservative groups is continuing, despite the on-going Congressional investigations.

9:39 am

New evidence strongly suggests that the IRS’s harassment of conservative groups is continuing, despite the on-going Congressional investigations.

The IRS’ infamous Cincinnati office, which handles applications from groups applying for tax-exempt nonprofit status, badgered pro-life groups for information on their protesting activities as recently as late June 2013, well after IRS investigations began on the floor of the House of Representatives and elsewhere. “We’ve had three more groups come to us that have had problems with the IRS — some very recent, some current or still pending. One of them just got their determination letter,” Peter Breen, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which represents pro-life groups targeted by the IRS, told The Daily Caller. “It’s continuing, and it needs to be addressed.”

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Of the almost 1 million jobs created in 2013, 77% are part-time.

9:16 am

Thank you Obamacare! Of the almost 1 million jobs created in 2013, 77% are part-time.

Politicians can live in a ivory tower, devising fantasy plans to remake society, but employers who wish their businesses to survive have no choice but to live in the real world. Obamacare makes hiring full time employees too expensive, so to get the help they need the employers of America are converting their staffs to part-timers.

The long term problem with this is that it will be impossible for businesses to really innovate and compete under these conditions. Moreover, the employees themselves will be poorer, either earning less or working more, while actually getting less healthcare insurance coverage.

And for this we can thank Obama and the Democratic Party. Praised be their names!

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Homeland Security has lost track of more than one million foreigners after they have entered the country.

7:39 pm

Does this make you feel safer? Homeland Security has lost track of more than one million foreigners after they have entered the country.

The government does track arrivals, but is years overdue in setting up a system to track departures — a goal set in a 1996 immigration law and reaffirmed in 2004, but which has eluded Republican and Democratic administrations. “DHS has not yet fulfilled the 2004 statutory requirement to implement a biometric exit capability, but has planning efforts under way to report to Congress in time for the fiscal year 2016 budget cycle on the costs and benefits of such a capability at airports and seaports,” GAO investigators wrote.

Homeland Security, like the TSA, is a fraud. Neither is capable of protecting us. Both are very skillful however at abusing innocent American citizens. Both should be eliminated. The country was actually safer — and freer — before they existed.

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Emails between IRS official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office show them twice colluding to illegally influence the FEC to prosecute conservative groups.

9:53 am

Working for the Democratic Party: Emails between IRS official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office show them twice colluding to illegally influence the FEC to prosecute conservative groups.

The timing of the correspondence between Lerner and the FEC suggests the FEC attorney sought information from the IRS in order to influence an upcoming vote by the six FEC commissioners. The FEC received a complaint in March 2008 from the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party alleging that the American Future Fund had violated campaign-finance law by engaging in political advocacy without registering as a political-action committee. The American Future Fund responded to that complaint in June 2008, telling the commission that it had applied for tax exemption in March of that year and was a “501(c)(4) social-welfare organization that was organized to provide Americans with a conservative and free-market viewpoint and mechanism to communicate and advocate on the issues that most interest and concern them.” According to the e-mail correspondence, a month after receiving the American Future Fund’s response, the FEC general counsel’s office — which is prohibited under law from conducting an investigation into an organization before the FEC’s six commissioners have voted to do so — contacted Lerner to investigate the agency’s tax-exempt status. [emphasis mine]

Simply put, the law states that when the FEC receives a complaint, the commission must then decide whether to initiate an investigation. Until it does so, however, it is a crime for the FEC’s general counsel to do any investigation. It is also a crime for the IRS to provide them any confidential tax information. Yet, the FEC’s general counsel did do an investigation on at least two conservative groups prior to a vote and Lois Lerner at the IRS provided them what they wanted, all illegally.

It appears that for justice to be served and for trust to be restored to these bureaucracies a lot of people need to be fired. Unfortunately, I do not expect that to happen. The Democrats clearly want to take advantage of this corrupt bureaucracy to wield power and destroy their enemies, and the Republicans are too wimpy to fight back. The result: The corruption and abuse of power will continue to happen, and it will happen with increasing aggressiveness against conservatives.

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The sad fate of Democrat women.

9:08 am

The war on women: The sad fate of Democrat women.

It’s always a little galling (not to mention hilarious) for those of us on the right to reflect that the Democratic Party — the party of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and family-destroying social programs — the party of Detroit, New Orleans, Newark, and Baltimore — the party that facilitates a black abortion rate that would bring a smile to the face of Planned Parenthood’s genocidally racist founder — has somehow managed to sell itself to African Americans as the friend of black people!

But it’s beginning to be equally galling (and equally comic) to reflect that the Democrats have also contrived to present themselves as the party of women.

This is the party whose most powerful senator left his probable mistress to drown after a car accident; the party whose most popular living president is a serial philanderer and accused rapist; the party whose most prominent woman rose to that prominence by virtue of her stand-by-your-man loyalty to a louse; and now the party of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer, two men who have humiliated their wives with truly creepy behavior and yet seek to continue their political careers regardless.

We all make mistakes and it’s not that the GOP hasn’t got its share of sexual shenanigans, but the Republican establishment doesn’t routinely make excuses for its recidivist miscreants or make icons of their victimized spouses. The Dems…? They seem to think their political agenda somehow excuses their personal behavior. I joked on the Ricochet podcast last week that the party’s new slogan should be, ”Women — We Treat You Like Dirt, But At Least You Can Kill Your Unborn Children!”

But don’t worry. The Democrats are there to protect women from Romney’s “binders full of women.”

Update: And then there’s this.

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According to a new poll, only 11% of doctors believe that the Obamacare health exchanges will be open for business on October 1, as mandated by the law.

11:24 am

Finding out what’s in it: According to a new poll, only 11% of doctors believe that the Obamacare health exchanges will be open for business on October 1, as mandated by the law.

I found this tidbit from the article, however, far more disturbing, as it describes a detail of the Obamacare exchanges that will surely cause doctors incredible financial pain, and will likely cause them to demand all payments up front:

Jackson said that doctors who don’t have an understanding of those coverage terms could be in for a nasty surprise once the new plans go into effect. That’s because under the rules of the exchange, a patient can go up to three months without paying premiums and still not get their coverage formally dropped by an insurers—but the insurer isn’t obligated to pay claims incurred during the second and third month if that person isn’t paying their premiums for that time, Jackson said. Those rules could mean that doctors end up eating the cost of the care they have already provided, or have their receivables stay unpaid for longer stretches of time. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the law is tilted to allow patients to stiff both their doctors and their insurance companies. How precious.

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An Arizona nursing student was suspended from school and called a bigot because she requested one of her classes be taught in English.

9:08 am

An Arizona nursing student was suspended from school and called a bigot because she requested one of her classes be taught in English.

The student, Terri Bennett, 50, initially complained in April to school officials because she said the Spanish-dominated discussions in her class room were preventing her from learning, Townhall reported. The college nursing program director, David Kutzler, then allegedly called her “a bigot” and an expletive, and suspended her.

She has sued. The article also notes that the Arizona constitution requires schools to use English.

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