We are NOT fans of Alex Jones here, but when he gets it spot on with the evidence he deserves the same credit as anyone else. Examine the evidence:
Category Archives: Obama
IRS: We can read your emails without a warrant
This is a direct violation of the 4th Amendment.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has claimed that agents do not need warrants to read people’s emails, text messages and other private electronic communications, according to internal agency documents.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, released the information on Wednesday.
In a 2009 handbook, the IRS said the Fourth Amendment does not protect emails because Internet users “do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications.” A 2010 presentation by the IRS Office of General Counsel reiterated the policy.
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, government officials only need a subpoena, issued without a judge’s approval, to read emails that have been opened or that are more than 180 days old.
Privacy groups such as the ACLU argue that the Fourth Amendment provides greater privacy protections than the ECPA, and that officials should need a warrant to access all emails and other private messages.
Traditionally, the courts have ruled that people have limited privacy rights over information they share with third parties. Some law enforcement groups have argued that this means they only need a subpoena to compel email providers, Internet service companies and others to turn over their customers’ sensitive content.
But in 2010, a federal appeals court ruled that police violated a man’s constitutional rights when they read his emails without a warrant.
Despite the court decision, U.S. v. Warshak, the IRS kept its email search policy unchanged in a March 2011 update to its employee manual, according to the ACLU.
Senator Rand Paul Interview On His New Economic Plan (video)
This is a must see.
Hidden Camera: Teacher Tells Students Republicans Are Racist Losers (video)
In watching this video you see almost every long debunked far left Democrat fallacy in the book, which he presents to students as fact.
Spreading his kind of racial animus is a tactic right out of the Frankfurt School of Marxism (communism). The goal, according to Frankfurt School teachings, is to spread cultural marxism via conflict theory. Pit people against each other via any difference that can be exploited; white vs black, rich vs poor, management vs labor, men vs women, urban vs suburban etc – in order to keep them fighting while the Marxists build an all powerful leviathan state in the name of “bringing people together”.
A wise man once said, “Only a fool fights in a burning house”. The left keeps people fighting while they loot the burning house.
What is seen in this video is not as unusual to see in class as one might think. When I sat in class I didn’t let teachers get away with it. I helped publish a student newspaper and made it very clear that what is said in class is game for publication. That helped professors to behave themselves, at least while I was watching.
A professor at the University of Southern California (USC) appears to have used a fall semester 2012 political science class to deliver sustained and angered attacks on Republicans, who he characterized as old, white, racist, and “losers.”
In a 15 min. video secretly captured by USC student Tyler Talgo, political science Professor Darry Sragow also appears to endorse the illegal suppression of Republican votes.
“You lose their information on the election in the mail,” he suggested when a student asked him how to keep Republicans from voting. “I mean there is lots of ways to do it [SIC].”
A teaching assistant (TA), who also appeared to work for the university, then seemed to suggest Black Panthers could be placed at polling stations to intimidate Republican voters.
Rather than rebuking the TA, Sragow appeared to confirm the suggestion.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “You can do that.”
Neither a spokesperson for USC, or professor Sragow, responded to multiple requests from Campus Reform seeking comment.
While endorsing illegal techniques Sragow also accused the GOP of suppressing Democratic votes by supporting laws requiring voter I.D.
“Republicans are trying to prevent people of color and people of lower income from voting by requiring voter I.D.” he said.
Judicial Watch Sues State Department Over Benghazi Cover-up
Good.
Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of State seeking access to “all videos and photographs” depicting the Benghazi, Libya, Consulate between September 10 and September 13, 2012, the period leading up to, during, and immediately following the deadly attack that took the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Judicial Watch filed its lawsuit on February 25, 2013 (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00242)). This is one of three Benghazi FOIA lawsuits being pursued by Judicial Watch.
Specifically, Judicial Watch seeks the following records pursuant to its December 19, 2012, FOIA request: “Any and all videos and photographs depicting U.S. Consulate facilities in Benghazi, Libya (including the Special Mission Compound and the Annex) between September 10, 2012, and September 13, 2012 that were provided to the Accountability Review Board (ARB) for Benghazi and/or to any individual member of the ARB.”
The State Department acknowledged receiving the Judicial Watch FOIA request on January 4, 2013, and was required by law to respond by February 4, 2013. As of the date of Judicial Watch’s lawsuit, the department had failed to produce any records responsive to the request, indicate when any responsive records will be produced, or demonstrated that responsive records are exempt from production.
On December 19, 2012, the Accountability Review Board (ARB) for Benghazi, convened by then-Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, released its report on the attack on the U.S. Consulate. According to ARB Chairman Ambassador Tom Pickering, the Board “reviewed thousands of documents and watched hours of video” during the course of its investigation. The Obama administration also reportedly shared Benghazi video with certain members of Congress. The State Department, however, has refused to comply with the Judicial Watch FOIA request seeking access to these materials on behalf of the American people.
“It has now been more than five months since the attack on America’s Benghazi consulate, and the American people still don’t know basic facts about what actually occurred,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Any video or photos will tell us more about Benghazi than Obama administration lies and spin. This latest stonewall shows that President Obama’s line, that his administration is the most transparent in history, is laughably false.”
Judicial Watch has a separate FOIA lawsuit seeking access to the controversial internal “speaking points” used by the Obama administration in the days following the attacks when administration officials advanced the false narrative that the attacks were inspired by a rudimentary Internet video perceived as anti-Muslim. Judicial Watch also sued the State Department for records detailing a nearly $400,000 contract awarded to a foreign firm for “Security Guards and Patrol Services” at the Benghazi Consulate prior to the deadly attack of September 11, 2012.
ATF Seeks ‘Massive’ Database of Personal Info: ‘Assets, Relatives, Associates and More’
In light of the fact that the Obama Administration is pushing for civilian gun registration, this news becomes even more disturbing. So much for the “right to privacy”.
A recent solicitation from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reveals that the agency is seeking a “massive” online database capable of pulling up individuals’ personal information, connections and associates.
On March 28, ATF posted the notice on FedBizOpps.gov, entitled “Investigative System.” The solicitation was updated on April 5 with a few minor changes.
The document says that the system will be utilized by staff “to provide rapid searches on various entities for example; names, telephone numbers, utility data and reverse phone look-ups, as a means to assist with investigations, and background research on people, assets and businesses.”
The system is described as a “massive online data repository system that contains a wide variety of data sources both historically and current that can be utilized in support of investigations and backgrounds.”
The overview of the solicitation states:
Staff will utilize “a number of internal databases as well as external sources to provide timely and relevant information and intelligence products to law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels.”
The system “provides a means to rapidly check records across the country” and is “necessary in assisting investigators, agents and analyst to find people, their assets, relatives, associates and more.”
The ATF says they will use this system to provide information to Intelligence Analysts, Special Agents, Inspectors, Financial Investigators and Law Enforcement.
The investigative system will allow ATF to “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches such as, incomplete social security numbers, address, VIN numbers, etc.”
The system will also have the ability to “link structured and unstructured data to find connection points between two or more individuals.”
90 million drop out of labor force, lowest since 1979
So what does this make the real unemployment rate, our guess is at least 19%. Yet the elite media keeps saying that the economy is improving as is the job market, none of which is true.
Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% – the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is “improving.”
People not in labor force:
Labor participation rate:
John McCain: I Don’t Understand Why GOP Would Filibuster Senate Gun Control Bill (video)
Oh really Senator? Let me explain it to you…
Well for starters it sets up civilian gun registration, which history shows not only is useless at crime fighting, but is used to disarm the citizens before a disaster. It bans certain guns, in such a way that goes directly against the Supreme Court rulings in Heller and Miller.
Combine such a list with current data mining in the government and you have a new 4th Amendment problem as well. What ever happened to the right to privacy?
Senator McCain asks “why can’t we have an open debate (and simple majority vote implied) about this?” The answer is obvious even to him:
1 – Human rights are not subject to majority vote. It says “shall not be infringed” for a reason.
2 – Politicians are not honest brokers when debating most any issue. What they are calling “universal back ground checks” is really civilian gun registration. All while they try to sell to the masses that most people go to a gun show to buy guns without a back ground check, when that simply is not the case.
While talking about “back ground checks” for mental health, the left has and continues to oppose inserting more of these records into the current national instant check system. The left also opposes mandatory evaluations for those who are dangerously mentally ill; actually arguing that people “have a right to be mentally ill”.
The left refuses to enforce the gun laws we have now against genuine criminals. Chicago has the lowest gun crime enforcement rate and the highest gun crime. That is not an accident. However, when the left has a chance to go after an honest citizen who makes a technical violation of a gun law without criminal intent he is prosecuted with zeal, unless of course he is politically well connected.
Speaking of not debating as an honest broker, in the budget battle the Democrats have redefined the term “balanced” in the budget to mean “more tax increases fewer spending cuts and more spending elsewhere” rather than a budget that does not spend more than it takes in. When politicians stoop to this level of dishonesty any debate becomes a platform and tool for the lying politician.
And to think somehow John McCain was able to become the Republican Presidential Nominee.
The Truth About “Universal Background Checks” On Gun Sales
By Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton
UPDATE – ATF Seeks ‘Massive’ Database of Personal Info: ‘Assets, Relatives, Associates and More’
UPDATE – Senate Universal Background Check Bill Designed To Land You In Prison
UPDATE – Missouri Democrat political appointees illegally hand over all CCW information of citizens in the state to the Social Security Administration and the ATF and lied about it until caught – LINK.
The Obama Administration has admitted that the only way to have what they are erroneously calling a “universal background check” is to have total gun registration. The eventual purpose for such registration schemes is confiscation.
The left says that they do not want to take away guns from citizens. Fine, if you don’t want to take them than you don’t need to know what I have.
The left has always opposed putting mental health records in the current instant background check system called NICS (a system that the NRA pioneered and the left opposed).
Just a few months before the shooting there was a bill in Connecticut that would have allowed family and police to have someone forcibly evaluated for 48 hours – the left was able to defeat the bill. The ACLU said that people have a right to be mentally ill (no kidding).
The shooters mother was trying to get her son committed against his will and the political left stopped it from happening.
In the case of James Holmes and Jarrod Loughner, they had contacts with police and the police knew they were dangerously mentally ill and they refused to call it in. All of the laws in the world are useless when the police fail to utilize them.
[Editor’s Note: In the case of Jarrod Loughner who committed the Gabby Giffords shooting, Loughner had multiple contacts with university police and the sheriff’s department. The police reports show that they knew Loughner was dangerously mentally ill. Arizona has the law in place to have people forcibly evaluated. All they had to do was dial a 1-800 number to get it done. The sheriff’s department did not do so because Loughner’s mother is a supervisor in the county parks department. That same sheriff is the one who came out to blame Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin for the shooting.]
Speaking of background checks, How about the Obama Administration enforce the back ground check system we have now. It stopped 70,000 ineligible people from getting guns, over 15,000 of which were felons trying to trick the system, and guess how many the Obama Administration prosecuted for trying to get a gun – 44.
Obama lets 15,000 felons WALK and then says he needs to restrict you and me? Give me a break.
Why is it that Chicago has the worst gun crime and the lowest enforcement of gun laws against criminals? It is no accident.
The simple truth is this, Joe crack head with a .25 or an untreated paranoid schizophrenic with a stolen gun is not a threat to a leviathan state, good people with the ability to defend their freedom with effective means are.
Colion Noir: Politics and Ignorance (video)
Senator Ted Cruz: Obama Admin Admits “Universal Back Ground Checks” Really A Gun Registration Scheme (VIDEO)
Senator Ted Cruz: The Obama administration has admitted that whet they are calling “Universal Back Ground Checks” is really a gun registration scheme.
Gun registration only has one purpose as history has proved that gun registries have no impact on gun crime. That purpose is confiscation from civilians.
Colion Noir responds:
Communist Terrorist Who Killed Three Police Officers Given Professorship At Columbia (video)
And just before she was given the professorship she was “honored” by New York University.
We have been reporting the repeated and unending idiocy coming from the public education sector for some time now. We have more to report when time permits.
Study: Obamacare To Increase Claims Costs 32 Percent. White House Response Misleading…
By Chuck Norton
This is what happens when you add 21 new taxes to healthcare and insurance, 20,000 pages of new regulations (so far) and hundreds of new mandates on insurance, many of which make no sense.
The IRS estimates that the cheapest Obamacare approved health plan available in 2016 (to avoid the penalty) will cost $20,000.
In bold face below is the administration’s response to this study and what they say is just plain dishonest. Why?
The Obama Administration is trying to confuse people on cost vs price. A small percentage of Americans will have their skyrocketing health insurance premiums partially subsidized by the government, but while that may bring down the price of the premium, the actual cost of the premiums and the rising cost of the claims due to the taxes and regulations still skyrockets.
In this case price does not equal cost. For example: If your son goes to the store to buy a Hot Wheels car that costs $3.00 and your son only has $2.00, if you give him the extra dollar to pay for it, the cost of the toy car is still $3.00.
The idea of the subsidy making insurance affordable is also misleading because those who will be able to qualify to get help paying their premiums, will still not be able to afford their portion of the insurance premium because the cost of the insurance will be so high – subsidized or not.
This very writer’s employer subsidized health insurance premium went from about $30.00 a month to $267.00 and I make too much money to qualify for a subsidy. The poor simply cannot afford to pay it.
The other misleading statement from the Obama Administration is that some people can go on the state insurance exchange and get the state exchange to pay for part of their insurance premium. Setting aside the cost does not equal price fact we explained above, many states are not participating in the exchange. Why? Because after the first three years of Obamacare the states have to pay the subsidized portion of the rising premiums themselves which state after state has made very clear will bankrupt them (assuming that the poor would have the money to sign up and pay for their part of the estimated $20,000 per year premium).
AP/Fox News:
Medical claims costs — the biggest driver of health insurance premiums — will jump an average 32 percent for Americans’ individual policies under President Obama’s overhaul, according to a study by the nation’s leading group of financial risk analysts.
The report could turn into a big headache for the Obama administration at a time when many parts of the country remain skeptical about the Affordable Care Act. The estimates were recently released by the Society of Actuaries to its members.
While some states will see medical claims costs per person decline, the report concluded the overwhelming majority will see double-digit increases in their individual health insurance markets, where people purchase coverage directly from insurers.
The disparities are striking. By 2017, the estimated increase would be 62 percent for California, about 80 percent for Ohio, more than 20 percent for Florida and 67 percent for Maryland. Much of the reason for the higher claims costs is that sicker people are expected to join the pool, the report said.
The report did not make similar estimates for employer plans, the mainstay for workers and their families. That’s because the primary impact of Obama’s law is on people who don’t have coverage through their jobs.
The administration questions the design of the study, saying it focused only on one piece of the puzzle and ignored cost relief strategies in the law such as tax credits to help people afford premiums and special payments to insurers who attract an outsize share of the sick. The study also doesn’t take into account the potential price-cutting effect of competition in new state insurance markets that will go live on Oct. 1, administration officials said.
“It’s misleading to look at only some of the provisions of the law because, taken together, the law will reduce costs,” said Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt.
But a prominent national expert, recently retired Medicare chief actuary Rick Foster, said the report does “a credible job” of estimating potential enrollment and costs under the law, “without trying to tilt the answers in any particular direction.”
NBER: CRA and other leftist policies lead to mortgage collapse
Those who are regular readers of Political Arena are not surprised by this as this writer has penned over a dozen articles on this very subject.
The piece below is certainly written with a partisan attitude, but in this case the facts justify the arguments within the article. Multiple analysis from the New York Times, Dr. Thomas Sowell, The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and many others have come to this same conclusion as the evidence is simply overwhelming.
UPDATE – More from IBD:
A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left’s race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act–enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.
The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.
Again, let’s review:
-President Bush went to Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.
-John McCain also co-sponsored urgently critical reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats shut that down as well, along party lines, and even openly ridiculed anyone who suggested reforms were necessary…to protect their taxpayer-funded campaign contributions as the economy raced uncontrollably toward the cliff.
-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn’t go along with the left’s Affirmative Action lending policies…all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.
-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left’s favorite blatantly partisan “fact-checkers,” Snopes, admits (while pretending to ‘set the record straight’).
-Even The New York Times admitted that there is “little evidence” of any connection between the “Republican” deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed almost unanimously]
If There’s No Inflation, Why Are Prices Up So Much?
If the official inflation rate is next to zero, how come prices are going up so much?
Sarah Palin was blasted by reporters and the Wall Street Journal in 2010 for pointing this out and explaining how food and fuel prices would soon skyrocket.
As this very writer explained in 2010. under Clinton the Consumer Price Index was changed so that government would never have to face the “misery index” and a proper measure of inflation again. They removed “Food & Fuel” from the index, you know, because nobody ever buys that stuff anyways, and they weighted the formula towards housing….. that’s right folks, housing.
When the economy turns south or hits a bump new housing starts talk and housing prices fall, thus showing negative inflation. So when the economy is in trouble and inflation is going up, the government reads it as zero inflation. If we still measured inflation like we used to it would be about 9.3% every year for three years. Of course, every shopper knows this as they see the prices for themselves.
A year later, investment guru Jim Rodgers weighed in, confirming the wisdom of Sarah Palin and this very writer:
U.S. government inflation data is “a sham” and is causing the Federal Reserve to vastly understate price pressures in the economy, influential U.S. investor Jim Rogers said on Tuesday.
The U.S. central bank uses inflation data that relies too heavily on housing prices, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit, and he criticized the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program.
“Everybody in this room knows prices are going up for everything,” Rogers told the Reuters Summit.
Price hikes for a particular item here or there don’t qualify as inflation. If one thing gets more expensive but something else gets cheaper, that’s what economists call a relative price change. Inflation is a simultaneous increase in prices across the board. Some measures of inflation, such as the GDP Deflator, track price changes that affect businesses as well as those that affect consumers. But the Consumer Price Index is supposed to focus on inflation at the consumer level. And the CPI has recorded minimal increases over the past four years. Since the recession ended, the 12-month change in consumer prices has averaged 2% and has never been as high as 4%.
There are lots of other ways to gauge inflation, however, that give very different signals. Gold was $930 an ounce when the recession ended, and today it’s $1,583. So if you believe in the gold standard, prices have increased 70% in four years – or an annualized rate of 14.2%. Of course, many economists dismiss the gold price as an archaic indicator. So it may be more meaningful to look at price increases over a broad range of commodities. The Reuters CRB Commodity Index, which tracks the prices of coffee, cocoa, copper, and cotton, as well as energy, is up 38% over four years, or 8.6% at a compound annual rate.
Perhaps the most telling indicator – albeit a slightly facetious one – is the Big Mac index, popularized by the Economist magazine. McDonalds hamburgers are available in many countries and their prices reflect the cost of food, fuel, commercial real estate, and basic labor. The price of a Big Mac, therefore, can be used to compare the economies of different countries – or serve as a bellwether of inflation in a single country. Since the recession ended, the cost of a Big Mac in the U.S. has risen from an average of $3.57 to $4.37, or 5.2% a year.
So why haven’t these more rapid increases shown up in the Consumer Price Index? One reason is that the index itself has been modified in a variety of ways over the past 35 years. Fluctuations in home prices have been smoothed out, for example. And the index has been adjusted periodically to reflect changes in what people buy, particularly if they shift from more expensive items to cheaper ones. Such revisions to the CPI have tended to reduce the official inflation rate, on balance. Various estimates of what the annual rate would have been over the past four years if earlier methods of calculation had been continued come up with numbers in the 5%-to-10% range.
Several conclusions can be drawn from all this. First, there is no absolute and objective gauge of inflation. Any particular measure is simply one way of making the calculation, based on a host of assumptions. Second, a number of the costs that middle-class households face are going up considerably faster than the CPI.
New regulations create more wealth for Obama’s “green cronies”
Use junk science, arbitrary regulations, and abuse of enforcement and licensing to restrict energy at home to raise energy prices so Obama’s “green donors”, who are profiting not from the market, but from massive tax payer support, can make more money and look more “competitive”.
On Good Friday, a day fewer people would be paying attention to the headlines than on most other days, the Obama administration released news about its plans to raise the price of gasoline. Gasoline prices for the first quarter of 2013 are higher than the same time in 2012. Intentionally pushing prices up would seem stupid in the midst of a struggling economy—that is, if your goal is to help those most impacted by higher fuel and food prices, rather than boosting the bottom line for your billionaire donors.
The plans, announced Friday, call for stricter limits for sulfur in gasoline—from the current 30 parts per million to 10. (Sulfur is an important element that is found naturally in crude oil has many industrial uses.) The EPA estimates that the low-sulfur gasoline will raise the price of a gallon of gas by “less than a penny,” while industry sources say it will be closer to ten cents a gallon.
Energy analyst Robert Rapier, told me that the new regulations “will certainly make gasoline more expensive.” He said; “Note that diesel was historically less expensive than gasoline until the ultra-low sulfur diesel standard was passed. Since then, diesel has often been more expensive than gasoline. I am not saying whether or not those standards were needed, maybe they were. But the impact on cost is undeniable. I worked in a refinery when those standards were passed, and we spent a lot of capital making sure we could comply.”
Though air pollution is a worthy consideration, it is low on the public’s list of priorities, while gas prices are of utmost importance. If the public doesn’t see air pollution as a problem, and the President’s popularity has peaked, why would he put out policy that would hit the middle class the hardest? Because, despite his campaign rhetoric, he’s not “a warrior for the middle class.
One year ago, Christine Lakatos launched her blog— “The Green Corruption Files”—through which she set out to prove that “green corruption is the largest, most expensive and deceptive case of crony capitalism in American history. Stay tuned as we expose one piece of this scandal at a time.” Last summer, Lakatos and I partnered to draw more attention to Obama’s Green-Energy Crony-Corruption Scandal. To date, I’ve written fifteen columns based on her research—this is the sixteenth.
A week ago, she posted her expose on George Soros and his profiting from his, apparent, insider information on green-energy investments. Within her post, Lakatos says: “be prepared for regulations and legislation that will, in some form or another, resemble cap-and-trade and demand additional funds to bank roll Obama’s efforts to save our planet.” Exactly one week later, the new EPA standards on gasoline were released. The standards will raise the cost of fuel—which has been the underlying goal of the Obama energy agenda: make what works more expensive so people will accept the high cost of “green energy” in the name of saving the planet. (Remember outgoing Energy Secretary Chu’s 2008 statement: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”)
But, as the Soros story shows, it’s not about the planet, it’s about the profit. Soros’ investment portfolio shows he invests where he can make money—both traditional and green energy (though, as you’ll see, through Obama’s green energy emphasis, he has more control over green energy investments). In a 1998, 60 Minutes interview, Soros said: “I am basically there to make money. I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.”
Continue reading HERE
South Bend Democrat operative pleads guilty to vote fraud
Remember this story?
Four Democrats from South Bend, St. Joseph County Democratic Party Chair Butch Morgan, St. Joseph County Board of Voter Registration’s member Pam Brunette, Board of Voter Registration worker Beverly Shelton and Democratic volunteer and former board worker Dustin Blythe face charges.
Vote fraud for Democrats being done right at the board of voter registration. Is anyone surprised?
Of the four, board member Beverly Shelton has plead guilty to vote fraud charges.
WSBT-TV reports former voter registration worker Beverly Shelton pleaded guilty Thursday to forgery and falsely making a petition as part of a plea agreement. She had been charged along with former St. Joseph County’s Democratic Party chairman Butch Morgan and two other voter registration workers.
Morgan and the two others have pleaded not guilty and will stand trial. Morgan resigned in October 2011 following 16 years as the county’s Democratic chairman after the South Bend Tribune and the Howey Politics Indiana newsletter reported finding hundreds of questionable signatures.
Shelton will be sentenced May 9.
Judge Jeanine Pirro hits Obama on lie after lie after lie (video)
Lies about sequestration, scores of lies about Benghazi, the release of illegal criminal aliens, Obama sending guns to Mexican drug cartels, the debt, and transparency.
The video doesn’t lie, but the Obama Administration has been constantly. If you know anyone who is still smitten by this man, show them these.
Here is the video referenced by Judge Pirro about how Obama lied about the release of thousands of criminal illegal aliens who were multiple offenders and other lies.
Fed-Ex Founder: Govt regulations make it very difficult to start an industrial business today (video)
And this is a fact, as of March 13, 2013 these are just the Obamacare regulations, over 20,000 pages (photo below). The tax code is over 60,000 pages.
Apple founder Steve Jobs, according to his book, told Obama that government has rendered it almost impossible for him to build a factory here in the United States, which is why he builds them in China. This very writer has a dear friend who runs a small business with less than ten employees. He tells me of the constant efforts by state and federal bureaucrats to put him out of business.
Propaganda Techniques: Allen Keyes destroys a key fallacy for gay marriage (video)
By Chuck Norton
[Editor’s Note – This post is about the propaganda technique described, we are not interested in having a “gay marriage” thread and any comments trying to make it so may be deleted at the Editor’s discretion.]
The left uses the tactic seen in this video endlessly. They try to redefine and/or justify something based on a rare exception and not the pattern, the ideal or the principle. Such as, 80 million gun owners should have their guns taken away because of the actions of a few untreated schizophrenics.
How about a 60,000 page tax code to allow the government to pick winners and losers in the economy, enabling massive corruption and job killing regulations, all because “a few people are too rich”?
In the case of the video below, marriage has no ideal and cannot be about procreation or a contract to raise children well because an elderly couple who marries is unlikely to have children.
Truth is in fact a long series of sub-truths that create a narrative or “paint an accurate picture”. When many of those sub-truths are omitted the crumbs of truth that are left are manipulated to paint the desired false picture. When your child throws a ball in the house and knocks over a lamp, breaking it, and the child tells you that the lamp fell over – sure the lamp did fall over, but he is still lying by omission and deception. This is the type of lie President Obama and the the elite media use constantly to manipulate the public. Consequently, anyone who engages in such a dishonest tactic has torn up the “civility card”.
Trifecta: “Sequestration” fears are a pack of lies (video)
The simple truth is that there are no cuts, there is just a slight reduction in the scheduled spending increases. The scare rhetoric is simply designed to condition the American people against balanced budgets.
In the mean time the Obama Administration moves to send millions to violent Islamic fundamentalist organizations.
Universal Studios Drops Health Insurance For Part Timers
Related:
IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Cost $20,000 Per Family
Aetna CEO: Health insurance premiums will double because of Obamacare
Our Health Law Category – LINK
Via The Inquisitir:
The Universal Studios theme park resort in Florida will end health insurance for part-time employees as of December 31 as a direct result of Obamacare.
As The Inquistir has previously reported, other employers in retail or in the restaurant business and in other sectors are doing the same or offloading full-time employees into a part-time status (less than 30 hours a week) so they don’t qualify for existing coverage. Irrespective of the need to hire more employees, some firms are purposely keeping headcount below 50 workers to avoid the law’s provisions altogether. Despite supporting Obamacare, many politically connected unions have sought and received waivers from the law’s provisions.
Universal explained that its low-premium plan (commonly referred to as a “mini-med” plan) that places a cap on annual benefits is no longer permitted under Obamacare. Universal, one of the largest employers in central Florida, claims, however, that only three percent of its employees will be affected by the change according to the Orlando Sentinel. The paper also reported that Walt Disney World is “still assessing the health-care reform act and how it impacts our business.”
Similarly, according to the Financial Times, David Dillon, chief executive of the Kroger supermarket chain, commented “that some companies might opt to pay a government-mandated penalty for not providing insurance because it was cheaper than the cost of coverage.”
Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini claimed that health insurance premiums for some small businesses and individuals could double next year under Obamacare, according the Bloomberg news agency.
The Los Angeles Times had similar findings about the possibility of premium sticker shock:
“Exactly how high the premiums may go won’t be known until later this year. But already, officials in states that support the law have sounded warnings that some people — mostly those who are young and do not receive coverage through their work — may see considerably higher prices than expected.”
You’ll recall that in the long struggle to get Congress to narrowly approve Obamacare, the president repeatedly insisted that if you like your current insurance, you can keep it. He and his Democrat colleagues also maintained that the law would health insurance less expensive or more widely available.
NBC News has reported that about eight million people, however, will lose their employer-provided health insurance altogether as a result of the so-called fiscal cliff deal, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated.
Rand Paul Wins! Obama Administration finally answers a straight question with a straight answer!
Senator Rand Paul: “For 13 hours yesterday we asked him that question. Under duress and under public humiliation the White House will respond and do the right thing.”
Why have members of the House and Senate, in the case of the video below Senator Ted Cruz, has to go through rhetorical gymnastics to get Obama’s Attorney General to answer a simple question.
The question Senator Cruz is asking is a crucial legal distinction, if there is no imminent danger such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11, the Constitution demands that such a person be arrested, not summarily executed.
This is important to get nailed down because previously President Obama asserted that he has the right to be judge, jury and executioner but said “don’t worry we won’t use it that way”. Also, the Obama Administration, has a habit of using lawyerly rhetorical slight of hand to answer a question not being asked so that they have plausible deniability.
CIA Nominee Brennen, and Attorney General Holder gave slippery non-responsive answers to Senator Rand Paul’s questions when he wrote to them trying to get a straight answer, hence the epic Rand Paul filibuster.
It is also important to keep in mind that Attorney General Holder has been caught lying to Congress more than once and is facing a civil lawsuit from the House for lying.
Senator Rand Paul explains why this issue is so important:
Vote Fraud IS Vote Suppression (video)
Bill Whittle:
Michelle Malkin & Juan Williams Debate Obama’s List of Broken Promises (video)
Michelle Malkin at her best.
Feb 6, 2013.
Armed guard disarms teen in Atlanta school shooting
Obama and the elite media say that having an armed guard in a school is “nuts” – in spite of the fact that Obama and the elite media have armed guards (and Secret Service protection) at their kids schools.
You wont see this on the elite media evening news….
A student opened fire at his middle school Thursday afternoon, wounding a 14-year-old in the neck before an armed officer working at the school was able to get the gun away, police said.
Multiple shots were fired in the courtyard of Price Middle School just south of downtown around 1:50 p.m. and the one boy was hit, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said. In the aftermath, a teacher received minor cuts, he said.
The wounded boy was taken “alert, conscious and breathing” to Grady Memorial Hospital, said police spokesman Carlos Campos. He was expected to be released Thursday night.
Police swarmed the school of about 400 students after reports of the shooting while a crowd of anxious parents gathered in the streets, awaiting word on their children. Students were kept at the locked-down school for more than two hours before being dismissed.
Investigators believe the shooting was not random and that something occurred between the two students that may have led to it.
Schools Superintendent Erroll Davis said the school does have metal detectors.
“The obvious question is how did this get past a metal detector?” Davis asked about the gun. “That’s something we do not know yet.”
IRS: Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Cost $20,000 Per Family
Your employer might cover part of it, or the taxpayers may cover a part of it, but no matter who pays, the cost of insurance is going way up, while at the same time driving down the available resources for medical services.
Via CNS News:
In a final regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a family will cost $20,000 for the year.
Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS.
The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.
The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a bronze plan.
“The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000,” the regulation says.
Bronze will be the lowest tier health-insurance plan available under Obamacare–after Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Under the law, the penalty for not buying health insurance is supposed to be capped at either the annual average Bronze premium, 2.5 percent of taxable income, or $2,085.00 per family in 2016.
In the new final rules published Wednesday, IRS set in law the rules for implementing the penalty Americans must pay if they fail to obey Obamacare’s mandate to buy insurance.
To help illustrate these rules, the IRS presented examples of different situations families might find themselves in.
In the examples, the IRS assumes that families of five who are uninsured would need to pay an average of $20,000 per year to purchase a Bronze plan in 2016.
Using the conditions laid out in the regulations, the IRS calculates that a family earning $120,000 per year that did not buy insurance would need to pay a “penalty” (a word the IRS still uses despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is in fact a “tax”) of $2,400 in 2016.
For those wondering how clear the IRS’s clarifications of this new “penalty” rule are, here is one of the actual examples the IRS gives:
“Example 3. Family without minimum essential coverage.
“(i) In 2016, Taxpayers H and J are married and file a joint return. H and J have three children: K, age 21, L, age 15, and M, age 10. No member of the family has minimum essential coverage for any month in 2016. H and J’s household income is $120,000. H and J’s applicable filing threshold is $24,000. The annual national average bronze plan premium for a family of 5 (2 adults, 3 children) is $20,000.
“(ii) For each month in 2016, under paragraphs (b)(2)(ii) and (b)(2)(iii) of this section, the applicable dollar amount is $2,780 (($695 x 3 adults) + (($695/2) x 2 children)). Under paragraph (b)(2)(i) of this section, the flat dollar amount is $2,085 (the lesser of $2,780 and $2,085 ($695 x 3)). Under paragraph (b)(3) of this section, the excess income amount is $2,400 (($120,000 – $24,000) x 0.025). Therefore, under paragraph (b)(1) of this section, the monthly penalty amount is $200 (the greater of $173.75 ($2,085/12) or $200 ($2,400/12)).
“(iii) The sum of the monthly penalty amounts is $2,400 ($200 x 12). The sum of the monthly national average bronze plan premiums is $20,000 ($20,000/12 x 12). Therefore, under paragraph (a) of this section, the shared responsibility payment imposed on H and J for 2016 is $2,400 (the lesser of $2,400 or $20,000).”
“Only In America” …observations by a Canadian
Author Unknown.
In 2006, Canada’s National Debt was 50% of their GDP. In 2006, America’s National Debt was 50% of their GDP. Since the elections in Canada of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Government the Canadian National Debt stands at less than 30% of the Canadian GDP. Since the midterms of 2006 [when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took power in Congress] in America the National debt now stands at over 100% of the American GDP.
1) Only in America could the rich people – who pay 86% of all income taxes –
be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any
income taxes at all.
2) Only in America could people claim that the government still
discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a
black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal work force is black
while only 12% of the population is black
3) Only in America could they have had the two people most responsible for
our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and
Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to
be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
4) Only in America can they have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah
and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed
by the backlash.
5) Only in America would they make people who want to legally become
American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of
thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who
sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’ become American citizens.
6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and
sticking by the country’s Constitution be thought of as “extremists.”
7) Only in America could you need to present a driver’s license to cash a
check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether
oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when
the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is
less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).
9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the
people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars
more than it has per year – for total spending of $7-Million PER MINUTE, and
complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.
10) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a
$35,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising event.
11) Only in America can a man with no background, no qualifications and no
experience … and a complete failure at his job … be reelected.
Kirsten Powers: Obama does not want to be asked tough questions; avoids reporters who will…(video)
This is how you behave when you believe that you are unaccountable the people.
Newt Gingrich Scolds NBC for Making Limbaugh ‘The Great National Crisis’ (video)
This video is from a few months ago, but it is revealing in demonstration the way the leftist elite media tries to frame the debate falsely, quite frankly, with assumptions that are just lies.
Notice how David Gregory never wants to talk about truly important topics or be critical of President Obama in any way.
Political Arena 