Finding out what’s in it: The IRS scandal and the fact that Obamacare uses the IRS for enforcement now has the public increasingly frightened.
What could go wrong? No one at the IRS would ever target you and your healthcare coverage because of your politics. Such things never happen in America!
According to two Congressman, almost 500 conservative organizations were targeted for harassment by the IRS, significantly more than the IRS has admitted to.
Working for the Democratic Party: When the IRS harassed this tea party group in Toledo in 2011, demanding what books they read or discussed, they responded by sending the IRS a copy of the Constitution.
“They wanted a synopsis of all the books we read,” Bower said. “I thought, I don’t have time to write a book report. You can read them for yourselves.”
Sadly, I doubt the IRS did that.
A judge has ruled that JPL had no right to displine five scientists for sending emails at work, protesting the security measures taken by the Bush administration after 9/11.
I have no problem with this decision, and in fact I applaud it, as I think it completely inappropriate for JPL to discipline anyone for expressing their opinions about the politics of our time. I contrast this ruling however, which essentially celebrates the freedom of JPL employees to attack the policies of a Republican administration using government resources, with the case of David Coppedge, who was fired by JPL because he happened to express conservative religious opinions while working at JPL. In the case of Coppedge, the courts ruled that it was okay for JPL to fire him.
The contrast illustrates the double standard of our time. In modern America, you are always allowed to express liberal or Democratic Party values, anywhere, anytime, and with whatever resources you can take advantage of. Freedom insists that you have that right. Should you express conservative values, however, be careful. You can be punished for doing so. For some reason (political I suspect) freedom does not permit the expression of these ideas, in all circumstances.
Finding out what’s in it: Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.
Now ain’t that a surprise? The rates go up when you require insurance companies to provide more services while simultaneously requiring them to insure more sick people! Who wudda thunk it?
Actually, every Republican and conservative in the nation, as well as millions of Americans at townhall meetings in 2010, were screaming these basic facts of reality to the Democrats. They just refused to listen.
Working for the Democratic Party: There is now evidence that the IRS illegally leaked the tax records of conservative groups to their liberal opponents.
Mickey Kaus notes that this abuse did not have to be ordered by the big bosses in the Democratic Party. The people at the IRS are mostly Democrats, and will do it naturally if they simply feel that their bosses will look the other way.
Ten crazy and unconstitutional demands made by the IRS to conservative organizations in its effort to harass opponents of the Democratic Party.
All of the examples above are taken from actual IRS correspondence received by ACLJ’s 27 clients. There were many versions of the in-depth questionnaire sent to different organizations, suggesting there was more than one agent or one office involved. Though IRS officials blamed “low-level” employees in the Cincinnati office, which is the central IRS office in charge of tax exemptions, French said the abuse was far more widespread. ACLJ’s clients dealt with inquiries from IRS offices from “coast to coast.” Of ACLJ’s 27 clients, 15 finally had their status approved after 6-7 months with legal help. There are 12 groups whose status remains in limbo.
What could possibly go wrong? The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S.
Is Tim Tebow being blackballed because of his religious beliefs?
House Republicans have refused to recommend anyone to the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), labeled “the death panel” by some.
“We believe Congress should repeal IPAB, just as we believe we ought to repeal the entire health care law,” the Boehner and McConnell letter reads.
The sad, strange, and ineffective story of the Canadian Firearms Registry.
Finding out what’s in it: Head Start teachers now expect Obamacare to severely impact their work and income.
What’s not to like? Obamacare’s got everything: Complex regulation, big fines, and high cost, all rolled up in a single package that just keeps surprising us.
Today I attended an space industry conference here in Orange County, California, sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Unlike the Space Hackers conference which also occurred today and to which I was also invited, this was not a New Space get-together, but a standard aerospace event which included a lot of old time engineers from the big old-time companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Most of the talks today were engineering related. For example, one described in detail the engineering advantages of building ion engines and solar sails at the molecular level, nanotechnology to the max. Another talk, which I found astonishing and exciting, was an analysis of the orbital mechanics of getting to Mars. This analysis found that using constant acceleration as low as .01 G it would be possible to get to Mars in weeks, not years, and without the necessity of waiting for the perfect launch window. You could launch almost anytime. Though we don’t have engines that as yet can provide this much constant low acceleration, these numbers are not so high as to make it impossible. With some clever refinements, it might be possible to come up with propulsion systems capable of these constant Gs, and to do it in the near future. If so, it will open up the entire solar system to manned exploration very quickly. Not only will we be able to travel to the planets in a reasonable time, the constant Gs would overcome the medical problems caused by prolonged weightlessness.
It wasn’t these interesting engineering presentations that got my juices flowing however. Instead, it was presentation on public policy issues that completely surprised me and made me think the future of the American aerospace industry is really going in the right direction. This significant take-away was further reinforced by the audience’s reaction to my lecture in the evening.
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Finding out what’s in it: The total benefits paid by private companies declined outright in the first quarter of 2013 as employers prepare for the onset of Obamacare.
Is there nothing global warming can’t do? A dozen Democrats are calling for action on global warming because it might cause women to become hookers.
I shouldn’t be surprised by this idiocy. These are the same politicians that voted for Obamacare without even reading the bill.
The day of reckoning looms: America the fallen: Twenty-four signs that our once proud cities are turning into poverty-stricken hellholes.
It is important to note that every single one of the cities cited in this article has been under Democratic Party rule for decades. While the decline is not entirely their fault, their tax-and-spend policies combined with a passion for heavy regulation certainly share much of the blame.
Idiot: Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday he fears a “train wreck” as the Obama administration implements Obamacare.
Baucus was one of the key architects of Obamacare and voted for it, along with every other Democrat in Congress. That he is only now discovering what a bad law it is is just further proof that he should fired.
The real question is whether the voters will fire him. After the last election I have my doubts.
The competition heats up: Because its FAA test flight permit will expire on May 23, SpaceShipTwo’s first powered flight has to occur by then and be supersonic.
What is unclear to me is how the expiration of this permit could affect future flights. Does Virgin Galactic have to get a new permit to continue test flights? What about the tourist flights that are supposed to follow?
Finding out what’s in it: The nation’s largest movie chain is turning its employees into part-time workers to avoid the cost of Obamacare.
