How much does the Obama Administration care about cyber security?
Answer: The Obama appointees outsourced administration of the Office of Personnel Management to a Chinese IT firm who promptly handed full administrative access to the Chinese Government – this includes full information on every federal employee past and present and almost everyone with a security clearance.
Morning Joe on MSNBC doing a post-mortem over Hillary losing the election. His focus is in the wrong headed media reaction and how they just don’t get it.
Anti-Trump protests turn violent: Cops clash with 6,000-strong crowd in Oakland and activists block roads in LA amid nationwide demonstrations that saw Madonna and Cher join 7,000 in NYC
Tens of thousands of protesters gathered across the US as the backlash over Trump’s victory took hold
In Oakland protesters set fires in streets and threw bottles at cops, as police retaliated with tear gas
Demonstrators in New York hung effigies of Trump to chants of ‘not my President’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’
In Los Angeles, a disorganized protest of thousands saw fires on City Hall steps and 110 Freeway taken over
Rallies were held in at least 16 other cities as Americans protest against Trump’s divisive politics
Some protests were planned by groups such as Socialist Alternative and, in Seattle, by a councilwoman
If we had fired General Patton for having a big potty mouth we would have lost the war.
Lt. Gen. George Patton with the signal corps, July 11th 1943, Sicily. (General George Patton Museum)
That being said, Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ and Clinton were all serial adulterers as well as Democrats. We survived. Please don’t let yourself get stuck on stupid.
This is an informative example of why our public school textbooks are rife with inaccuracies. The textbook printers want to sell as many books as possible. In order to do that they give in to every omission, change, and full blown censorship demanded by almost any pressure group. Squeaky pressure groups are bad for business.
As long as government bureaucrats are running schools this will continue to be a problem.
A leading publisher of schoolbooks has banned its authors from mentioning pigs, sausages, and anything pork related in their books, lest the words offend Muslims and Jews. The ban was criticized as “utter nonsense” by a Muslim Member of Parliament, but the publishers have defended their decision as their books are sold around the world.
The edict emerged during a discussion on Radio 4’s Today program on free speech, the Daily Mail has reported. Presenter James Naughtie, whose author wife is currently in discussion with Oxford University Press (OUP) regarding an educational series of books, brandished a letter saying: “I’ve got a letter here that was sent out by OUP to an author doing something for young people.
“Among the things prohibited in the text that was commissioned by OUP was the following: Pigs plus sausages, or anything else which could be perceived as pork.
“Now, if a respectable publisher, tied to an academic institution, is saying you’ve got to write a book in which you cannot mention pigs because some people might be offended, it’s just ludicrous. It is just a joke.”
His guest, Labour MP Khalid Mahmood responded “I absolutely agree. That’s absolute utter nonsense. And when people go too far, that brings the whole discussion into disrepute.”
[Editor’s Note – In this post we will be providing links to the many stories on this emerging scandal. This post will take some time to complete and will be continually updated for some time.]
In a nutshell the Obama Administration bugged an entire division at the Associated Press (AP) and many reporters at Fox News, including the parents of reporters. When asked if a national security leak could be justified into such a wide net of bugging computers, emails and phones former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, who served four presidents, said that such an action “is inconceivable”.
Former AP Washington Chief Fournier: DOJ’s phone record seizure of reporters is “Unprecedented, chilling and plain stupid”
CBS Reporter Sharyl Attkisson (who exposed the “Fast n’ Furious” scandal) : My computer has been compromised – LINK – LINK.
US Attorney in Justice Department who targeted Fox News reporters a large Obama campaign donor – LINK.
Obama Administration targeted other Fox News employees – LINK. Tracking at least one’s every movement. Administration claimed that Fox broke the law by merely asking questions about the scandal. The Obama Administration used the Patriot Act “administrative subpoena” to carry out this abuse. Megyn Kelly comments on this nonsense:
Joseph Curl: CIA source says Fox News scandal the “4th Shoe”; says it goes much deeper; says White House also sitting on “something” that has top aides terrified – LINK.
Attorney General Eric Holder personally signed off on bugging Fox News and labeling Fox reporter James Rosen a “co-conspiritor” – LINK.
Karl Rove: This is how Eric Holder lied to Congress
James Rosen Comments
Ann Coulter goes through the history of “national security” when it comes to reporters under the Bush Administration vs the Obama Administration:
NBC’s Lisa Myers explains how the Obama Administration history of intimidating reporters and sources:
Obama Administration seized records of Fox News reporters parents
Attorney General Eric Holder’s “I don’t know syndrome” under oath:
MORE – IRS Chief Steven Miller: “I Can’t Remember” Who Is Responsible for Targeting Conservatives
Associated Press: Obama Administration has intimidated people from talking to us – LINK.
CNN outlines the timeline of how the Obama Administration accused Fox News reporter Jim Rosen of being a criminal to get his personal information and then lied about it:
Brit Hume: ‘Chilling’ Search of Fox Reporter Shows DOJ Treats ‘Ordinary News Gathering As Crime’
Megyn Kelly – Eric Holder misled Congress:
Kirsten Powers and Denis Prager on Obama’s war in critics:
More prominent liberals call for Attorney General Eric Holder’s resignation – LINK.
BUSTED – If At First You Don’t Succeed? Report: Holder Went Judge-Shopping for James Rosen Subpoena – LINK.
Senator Ted Cruz: Obama Administration does not respect the Bill of Rights. Eric Holder should resign. Obama should tell the truth. They are telling flat-out falsehoods:
It’s not always easy to tell who’s coming or going as the Obama administration starts its second term, but multiple agencies have quietly commissioned artists to paint official portraits of Cabinet secretaries and other top appointees — an expenditure often seen when officials are on the way out the door or already gone.
The Environmental Protection Agency spent nearly $40,000 on a portrait of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, while a painting of Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley will cost $41,200, according to federal purchasing records. The price tag for a 3-by-4-foot oil portrait of Agriculture Department Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack: $22,500.
All told, the government has paid out at least $180,000 for official portraits since last year, according to a review by The Washington Times of spending records at federal agencies and military offices across government.
Painting people high up in all branches of the federal government is a long-held tradition for Republicans and Democrats alike in Washington. Taxpayers picked up the tab for official portraits of top appointees in the Bush administration, too, including more than $40,000 spent on a painting of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, records show.
A portrait of former EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, another Bush appointee, cost about $30,000, according to EPA records.
Like most other agencies, USDA officials wouldn’t say one way or another whether the $22,500 it’s spending to commission a portrait of Mr. Vilsack signals his intent to leave the Obama administration.
“Consistent with previous administrations, the department has commissioned a portrait to be unveiled at some point following Secretary Vilsack’s tenure,” USDA spokesman Justin DeJong wrote in an email to The Times. “USDA solicited bids for the portrait and selected the lowest of five bids.”
In April, Mr. Vilsack hosted the unveiling of a portrait of former Bush USDA Secretary Ed Schaefer, a painting that cost $30,500, while the portrait of another former Bush USDA chief, Michael Johanns, cost $34,425, records show.
Today gun control bills failed on a vote of 54 to 46 with 60 votes needed to pass. Once again those who pioneered the vision of a super majority for certain votes in the Senate have shown their wisdom.
Why did the bills fail in a bipartisan vote? In a nutshell, they were just bad bills.
The Feinstein bill was drafted years ago and is targeted squarely at innocent citizens and not criminals. Of course Senator Feinstein had made it clear that disarming citizens was her intent. No one was surprised that her bill failed.
The Manchin-Toomey bill had many flaws. The most politically damaging was that it was drafted on Senator Manchin’s boat in secret. The American people are weary of ginormous bills that do not go through the regular hearings and mark-up process. Such a lack of transparency is inexcusable in a representative republic. After the Obamacare debacle, the American people were not willing to trust another bill drafted in such a way.
Manchin-Toomey had language that lead to data-mining of gun owners. The ACLU opposed the bill on privacy grounds and the language put into the bill to prevent the information collected to make a back door gun registry lacked teeth and did not deserve to be taken seriously. Some evidence suggests that the Obama Administration is already illegally using data-mining methods to make a secret gun owner registry:
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
Manchin-Toomey was overly complex making technical compliance by civilians difficult:
In short, bills that are a bureaucratic nightmare for innocent citizens get lawmakers tossed out of office.
If the Democratic Leadership in the Senate and in the Administration weren’t so driven to decrease the power and stature of the National Rifle Association the American people could have gotten a common sense bill that is worthy of support, but as is too often the case the recent school shooting created a “crisis” that was used to try to push a political agenda rather than a common sense one.
The NRA is powerful because it has millions upon millions of members and because the NRA stays on the side of the law and our history. The NRA reached out to the Obama Administration and the Senate leadership to craft a bill that would tighten up the current background check system and remedy the lack of enforcement of those laws, but the Democrats simply were not interested.
President Obama’s angry speech after the vote was yet another empty display of political histrionics that is all too common in today’s neo-orwellian political world. Some of the reaction on Twitter was as follows:
The Tyranny of Exquisitely Apt Adjectives. – Jonah Goldberg
Laws are supposed to exist for the benefit, protection & security of our citizens–not to help those who violate them. – Laura Ingraham
Obama’s concern #4thechildren is touching. Where is that concern 4thekids under Kermit Gosnell’s care? – Yours Truly
Obama is carrying on as if he is the only one who cares #4thechildren. Really does anyone fall for such bombastic rhetoric any more? – Yours Truly
The problem with committing a crime and/or alleging a crime in the modern age is that at any significant event there is an ocean of mobile new media recording everything from most any possible angle and so is the case with the bombing in Boston.
There are several sets of photo’s that are circulating around the net. One is of a Caucasian young man with dark brown hair who is wearing a brown hoodie. In pictures before the blast he has a dark blue or black backpack. Later he is shown without his backpack (insert ominous music here).
There is also a man with black hair with a receding hairline who appears to be olive skinned and between 35-45 years of age. He is seen carrying a large black tool-bag or sports-bag (insert ominous music here).
Now read carefully. The problem is that at a sporting event such as a marathon many people would have such a sports duffel bag, especially at the finish line.
Dozens of people would have a bag of water, supplies and a change of clothes waiting for runners to cross the finish line. The runner would take the bag inside and go find a place to freshen up. So people with a bag before and without a bag later would be a common occurrence.
Pointing fingers based on the “bag technique” could get someone hurt or even killed.
One would naturally think it impossible that anyone would hesitate – even for an instant – to honor the woman who tackled communism head on as prime minister of Great Britain. Lady Margaret Thatcher was a principled politician who helped to foster the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States that we all benefit from today.
A Senate resolution to honor Lady Thatcher was supposed to pass last night. However, per well placed sources on the Hill, Democrats have a hold on the resolution.
To refuse to honor a woman of such great historical and political significance, who was deeply loyal to the United States, is petty and shameful. One truly has to wonder, what is it about Lady Thatcher that gives them pause? Her unfaltering commitment to freedom? Or perhaps the way she fought for individual liberty and limited government?
The House used traditional bereavement procedures, the same model they used for John F. Kennedy. It’s a simple, solemn means of honoring the individual by passing a resolution and immediately adjourning. Similarly, Great Britain’s House of Commons was recalled, bringing members of Parliament back from vacation to honor Lady Thatcher.
Those actions were a fitting response to the death of one of the world’s greatest post-World War II leaders.
Dennis Prager, on why the left doesn’t just disagree with, but truly hates Sarah Palin even though she has done nothing wrong and hasn’t harmed anyone.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Foreign ownership of U.S. Treasury securities rose to a record level in October, a sign that overseas investors remain confident in U.S. debt despite a potential budget crisis.
Total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasurys rose to $5.48 trillion in October, the Treasury Department said Monday. That was up 0.1 percent from September. Still, the increase of $6 billion was the weakest since total holdings fell in December 2011.
China, the largest holder of U.S. government debt, increased its holdings slightly to $1.16 trillion. Japan, the second-largest holder, boosted its holdings by a smaller amount to $1.13 trillion. Brazil, the country with the third-largest holdings, increased its total to $255.2 billion.
“Did Jesus Die for Klingons too?” was just one session at a recent workshop funded by the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency:
Further, DARPA paid nearly $100,000 for a strategy planning workshop on the 100 Year Starship project last year included an interesting discussion involving the Klingons, a fictional alien species who were villains and then later allies of humanity in the Star Trek series. The session entitled “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” featured philosophy professor Christian Weidemann of Germany’s Ruhr-University Bochum who pondered the theological conflict to Christianity if intelligent life was found on other planets. (page 17)
At another DoD-funded gathering, the brainstorming sessions covered topics such as how to make deep space travel most efficient, how scientists would go about creating a “warp bubble,” and whether or not humans would need to wear clothing during space travel.
The elite media does a lousy job reporting the civil rights violations that happen almost every day in our public schools. Civil rights organizations such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Alliance Defense Fund, the Rutherford Institute, the Student Press Law Center, and more have so many complaints of abuse that they have have no hope of acting upon them all.
We report on a few of the most outrageous cases here, and we spend a lot of time on this issue, but in truth we barely scratch the surface of the problem, as the problem is just that that big.
Bureaucrats, and unfortunately that includes some school administrators seem to have the ability to make the most outrageous behavior sound reasonable. Even now the school principal insists that the school was within its rights (to stick their hands in a boys underwear, not tell the parents, and take the 4th Amendment and toss it out the window) to conduct the strip search. I suspect that the courts are going to give the school a rude awakening. But even so, the administrators won’t be punished, the tax payer will just have to pay the damages and the administrators will just go on violating students.
Notice what national news outlet is reporting this story?
Parents’ outrage as school strip searches a 10-year-old boy to find a ‘stolen’ $20 bill that was actually in the cafeteria
North Carolina parents are outraged after an assistant principal strip-searched a 10-year-old boy to find a $20 bill the student didn’t even have.
Union Elementary School assistant principal Teresa Holmes is named in a complaint filed against the school, alleging that she made a young boy strip down to his underwear.
She suspected fifth-grader Justin Cox of having the missing $20 and when he didn’t turn it over she demanded he remove his socks, shoes, pants, and shirt so that a manual search could be done.
Holmes defended herself, saying that other students and faculty had said that the money was missing and that Cox had dived under a table for it.
Holmes told Cox he ‘he left her no choice and that she had to search him,’ according to court records.
She then told him she was ‘within her legal rights to do so.’
The complaint against Holmes states that Cox was deprived of his constitutional rights barring unreasonable search and seizure.
According to court documents, Cox had gone under a lunch table after money a passing girl had dropped. Holmes returned the cash to the girl, and afterwards was told that there was still $20 missing.
When confronted, Cox told her he didn’t have it.
Ordered into her office with a custodian to act as a witness, Holmes went so far as to put her fingers inside the waistband of his underwear and run her fingers on his bare torso.
She explained she had the authority to search him ‘because teachers and students thought Justin had the money.’
But another teacher came into the office to announce that the money was ‘miraculously’ found on the cafeteria floor.
Parents, this kind of nuttery on campus is not uncommon. Most universities pay very low wages, barely enough to pay one’s student loans, so universities tend to often attract the least capable of academics who cannot make it in the private sector, or ideologues like Prof. Jensen who are so radical that the private sector is out of their reach.
Forget all that turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie, today should be a day of fasting and atonement for American “sin.” That’s according to Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Jensen, known for his hard-left politics, also calls Thanksgiving a “white-supremacist holiday.”
Jensen’s opinion piece “No Thanks for Thanksgiving,” appeared on the far-left, Soros-connected website Alternet on Thanksgiving eve. In it, he wrote how Native Americans suffered because of the “European invasion of the Americas.” He went on to compare the Founding Fathers to Nazi Germany. “How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis?” he asked.
We are printing up money and borrowing it from China for this? Can anyone say that Obama and the Democrat leadership is at all serious about getting the spending under control? There is no attempt at fiscal discipline. They literally say one thing and do another.
All of the talk about deficit control is just that, the tax they want to raise targets small domestic businesses to make it hard to compete against the mega-corps that fund the Democratic Party and assuming such a tax increase passes it will only raise enough money to run the government for a few days. Yet Democrats have the audacity to call their tax hike proposals “Deficit Reduction”.
The Democrat Leadership knows the spending and printing and borrowing will blow up the currency and make it collapse, and yet they are doing everything that can to bring it about. The only question left to ask is why.
The [Obama] administration is funding a $100,000 study of pregnant and “at-risk” 14-17-year-old girls on probation in Houston, Texas, to determine ways to help them choose safer lifestyles and avoid pregnancy, including better “condom negotiation” tactics.
The National Institutes of Health, part of the Health and Human Services Department, is providing a University of Houston researcher the money because of the lack of study of female teen juveniles in trouble with the law.
The school said the study, “Choices – Teen: A Bundled Risk Reduction Intervention for Juvenile Justice Females,” will include 30 at-risk girls, ages 14-17, on intensive probation with the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.
The goal, said the school, is to determine if intervention programs will help the kids make better life decisions.
According to Danielle Parish, the assistant professor at the school’s Graduate College of Social Work who is conducting the NIH-funded effort, one of the big problems young girls need to learn is how to talk their boyfriends into using condoms.
According to the school’s release, “Parrish notes one of the big issues for this population of adolescent girls is condom negotiation. They may have a boyfriend who says it isn’t ‘cool’ to use a condom. To prepare the girls for these types of situations, the counselors and pediatricians will teach them how to negotiate condom use with their partner. The intervention also helps empower and motivate girls to make healthier choices regarding their alcohol use, smoking and prevention of unplanned pregnancy.”
It is an undeniable truth of life that wealth, capital and labor go where they are treated well. It is this economic truth more than any other that prevents socialism, communism, fascism, and kleptocracy from yielding positive economic benefits in the long term.
When you raise the tax rate, people will modify their behavior to avoid paying the tax, even if that means halting economic activity. As Ronald Reagan said:
The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.
Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50% top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.
In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.
This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50% top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election.
The figures have been seized upon by the Conservatives to claim that increasing the highest rate of tax actually led to a loss in revenues for the Government.
It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.
George Osborne, the Chancellor, announced in the Budget earlier this year that the 50% top rate will be reduced to 45% from next April.
Since the announcement, the number of people declaring annual incomes of more than £1 million has risen to 10,000.
However, the number of million-pound earners is still far below the level recorded even at the height of the recession and financial crisis.
Last night, Harriet Baldwin, the Conservative MP who uncovered the latest figures, said: “Labour’s ideological tax hike led to a tax cull of millionaires.
Far from raising funds, it actually cost the UK £7 billion in lost tax revenue.
“Labour now needs to admit that their policies resulted in millionaires paying less tax and come clean about whether they would reintroduce this failed policy if they were in power.”
Mr Osborne argued earlier this year that the 50% rate was deterring entrepreneurs from coming to Britain.
The U.S. Treasury increased the net debt of the United States $24,327,048,384.38 on the day after Thanksgiving, which equals approximately $211.69 for each of the nation’s 114,916,000 households.
At the close of business last Wednesday, according to the Treasury, the national debt was $16,283,161,895,179.85. On Thanksgiving, the Treasury took the day off and did no borrowing. But on Friday, the Treasury increased the debt of the United States to $16,307,488,943,564.23. That was a one-day increase of $24,327,048,384.38.
That means that since Obama has been president, the national debt has increased by about $49,432.73 per household.
I am sure readers have heard by now that Mitt Romney is blaming the 47% who is “on the take” and “isn’t paying taxes”.
Political Arena contributor Warren Roche put together this brilliant and entertaining montage, “Where is the love?”:
While it was impolitic for Mitt to include veterans and retirees in that number there is some truth to it, but in saying it they way he did left him open to be demagogued and attacked as hating retires, the disabled and veterans.
How many times will Republicans get whacked in the “battle of the narratives” before they learn? Or is the current crew in charge so used to fooling themselves that they have to be swept out for the party to have a chance in future elections?
At least some people get it:
I just think it’s nuts. First of all it is insulting. It is like WalMart after a bad week saying “The customers are being unruly”. – Newt Gingrich
“You have a political problem when the voters don’t like you, but you have a real problem when the voters feel like you don’t like them”. – George Will
Governor Bobby Jindal:
Yours truly had this to say a few days ago in Facebook Notes:
Much of the blue collar in this country used to be solidly in the Republican corner, but they feel like they have been lied to and taken for granted. Since the 2003 Bush tax cuts there have been ZERO domestic policy victories for this group of voters. That is why they are disillusioned and believe that no matter who they vote for government will just gets bigger, the economy will just get smaller while jobs dry up and flee the country. They feel squeezed and while they know that the Democrats are bad, they no longer have confidence in the Republican party. That is why these voters are staying home.
What isn’t helping is Republicans with an entitlement mentality who actually have the nerve to believe that just because the Democrat in power is a failed neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky radical that the man they cram down our throats is entitled to the blue collar conservative vote, and when they don’t get it they call them imbeciles.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz gets it as well and comments on why so many blue collar Republicans stayed home again:
We are not huge fans of Ron Paul, but numbers are numbers and facts are facts. What is also a fact is that political payback has always been a factor in politics.
There are several mistakes that cost Mitt Romney, as well as several Republicans down the ticket, the election. The election was so close that a change in any one of these mistakes very well could have reversed the results.
The Republican National Committee’s (RNC) expulsion of legitimate Ron Paul delegates from the convention is likely one of those factors.
It is up to the candidate and the party to WIN the votes of the people, no one is entitled to them.
Gary Johnson and Ron Paul got up to six percent of the vote in several states, including enough in Ohio and Florida to win it for Romney? Libertarians also cast enough votes to hand the Indiana Senate race to Joe Donnelly. IF you ever wondered why Marxists from Code Pink work Ron Paul’s booths at CPAC, well now you know why.
At the convention the RNC passed a new rule over the objections of the floor to give the RNC Chairman the power to eject and replace any delegate he wished. Then they took the credentials of Ron Paul delegates who were elected fair and square and escorted them out of the convention and replaced them with hand picked cronies. Would you vote for the party that did that to you? It was totally against the democratic process.
You can be sure that almost every Ron Paul supporter in the country knew very well what happened; if there is one thing that Ron Paul supporters are the undisputed masters of, it is networking.
Note to the RNC: Addition by subtraction usually messes up the math.
How bad is this rule? Under the rule they crammed down the throats of the convention, Ronald Reagan could have never mounted the floor fight against Ford in 1976 which set Reagan up for 1980. Remember the “establishment” GOP hated Reagan.
Later the RNC agreed to modify the rule to make it less severe, but this is absolutely irrelevant. Why? Because they can come out to the floor and over the objections of the floor deem a rule passed at the next convention and do it again and later just apologize for it…again.
Mark Levin has more details on the rule change HERE.
UPDATE – WND’s resident Mensan thinks so as well – LINK.
Not standing up the elite media corruption and lies
Not fighting the “Mitt Romney killed a man’s wife” lie
Not fighting the “Republicans want to ban birth control lie”
Not taking advantage of half a dozen opportunities to land hay-makers in the debates
Not having a bold enough economic plan, thus not having a bold policy for people to vote for
Not having enough contrast with the incumbent resulted in a lot of conservative and disillusioned voters staying home
Going “scorched earth” in the primary to cram Romney down the voters throats which most of the base opposed at one time or another; resulting in a lot of conservatives staying home
So we have the biggest storms to hit New York and New Jersey in decades, there are mass power outages and granny is going to whip out her Samsung Galaxy and pull up FEMA.gov to find out what to do?
Local TV stations didn’t even broadcast emergency phone numbers before the storm hit. So what is the FCC/FEMA emergency broadcast system good for again?
UPDATE – Hey buddy you ain’t in da union! I don’t care if those people are stranded and starving YOU ain’t helpin’!
A little-known section in the Obamacare health reform law defines “full-time” work as averaging only 30 hours per week, a definition that will affect some employers who utilize part-time workers to trim the cost of complying with the Obamacare rule that says businesses with 50 or more workers must provide health insurance or pay a fine.
“The term ‘full-time employee’ means, with respect to any month, an employee who is employed on average at least 30 hours of service per week,” section 1513 of the law reads. (Scroll down to section 4, paragraph A.)
That section, known as the employer mandate, requires any business with 50 or more full-time employees to provide at least the minimum level of government-defined health coverage to those employees.
In other words, a business must provide insurance if it has 50 or more employees working an average of just 30 hours per week, which is 10 hours per week fewer than the traditional 40-hour work week.
If an employer has 50 or more “full-time employees” and does not offer health insurance, it must pay a penalty per employee for each month it does not offer coverage.
The obscure provision recently reemerged in regulations issued by the IRS for how employers must account for which workers are full-time and which ones are not.
Under these standards, published in September, employers can choose a “look-back” period of between 3 and 12 months to measure if an employee has worked an average of 30 hours per week.
If an employee has worked 30 hours per week during this time, the person would count as a full-time employee for at least the next six months, regardless of how much they work, thus preventing employers from cutting hours to avoid the mandate.
In other words, an employer calculates the hours an employee works during at least a three-month period, determining if they employee has worked 30 hours or more per week on average.
If the employee meets the 30-hour threshold, they are counted as full-time for at least six months. If the employer has at least 50 such employees, he must provide them with health insurance or pay a fine.
The IRS regulations do not apply to seasonal or temporary workers, only to regular employees.
Singer and liberal activist Bruce Springsteen is well … a man of the people.
“He stands up for the little guy. A regular blue-collar Joe. A union man. A bona fide working-class hero.
And, when he’s not busy being all that… he’s a tax-dodging liberal hypocrite worth over $200 million who pretends to be a farmer to save hundreds of thousands of dollars on his property taxes that would have otherwise funded the welfare programs he pretends to care about.”
Recall that Springsteen actively campaigned for Obama in 2008, hosting free concerts that attracted tens of thousands of people in key battleground states. Springsteen’s song, “The Rising,” became a campaign staple for Obama’s speech venues and culminated in him playing for Obama’s Inauguration. And this time around, the White House plans on using the aging rocker’s new politically-motivated track, “We Take Care of Our Own,” to warm up crowds as the re-election bid kicks into high gear.
~snip
Bruce Springsteen pays over $138,000 a year in taxes for his three-acre home in Colts Neck, New Jersey. He owns another 200 adjoining acres. But because he has a part-time farmer come and grow a few tomatoes (organic, of course) and has horses, his tax bill on the remaining 200 acres is just $4,639 bucks. Do the math. By being a fake farmer, the working-class zero Springsteen is making a mint by robbing New Jersey of the antipoverty program funds he says they desperately need.
“I think it is unfair to our other property taxpayers that if you are a fake farmer, and that you don’t legitimately farm, that you are getting a property tax break and forcing your neighbor to pick up your tab,” said state senator Jennifer Beck. “That was not the intent of the law. It’s a violation of the public trust.” When Fox 5 New York reporter Barbara Nevins Taylor asked a lawyer for the trust that owns Springsteen’s land to comment on the Boss’s lucrative fake-farming tax breaks, predictably, the lawyer had no comment.
The tax loophole comes from the New Jersey’s Farmland Assessment Act of 1964. Originally the provision was created to help preserve agriculture in New Jersey. To qualify for the tax break, landowners must own at least five acres of land and produce just $500 a year in goods in order to qualify. Anyone who can meet those minimum standards can reduce their farmland tax bills by an astounding 98 percent.
Political Arena Editor Chuck Norton – I am just about ready to adopt the position of “separation of school & state” or at least that state and federal dollars in education should follow the student and the relationship should end there. That position may seem extreme, but as I have been doing research for my upcoming book on public education I can tell you with absolute certainty that the overwhelming majority of parents of public schoolers have no idea how bad the education is their child is getting, or the degree of indoctrination the children are subjected to.
When inner city minority students get in charter and public schools they do better.
Of course, in reality this is about putting the lower scoring kids with the worst teachers. Think about it. If a teacher isn’t very good and needs to only get a 74% student proficiency to meet goal those teachers will be with the black kids, and the most brilliant teachers will be put with the Asian kids. This may be a play to help the teacher’s union.
The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race.
On Tuesday, the board passed a revised strategic plan that says that by 2018, it wants 90 percent of Asian students, 88 percent of white students, 81 percent of Hispanics and 74 percent of black students to be reading at or above grade level. For math, the goals are 92 percent of Asian kids to be proficient, whites at 86 percent, Hispanics at 80 percent and blacks at 74 percent. It also measures by other groupings, such as poverty and disabilities, reported the Palm Beach Post.
The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.
Not only were our guys murdered, they were raped and sodomized. The Obama Administration doesn’t like American mercenary companies so some of the bodyguards hired were Libyans. It was those body guards who gave up the locations of our peoples secret safe house. Be sure to see our previous post : Everything you need to know about how Obama lied about the embassy attacks in two minutes (video) – LINK
Representative Trey Gowdy (SC):
Congressman Jason Chaffetz – Politics is being used to make security decisions and not security:
Jake Tapper to White House: Wasn’t it Obama who shot from the hip and not Romney?
Here are the highlights of the House Oversight Committee today:
ISSA OPENING STATEMENT – “The Security Failures of Benghazi”
Lt. Col. Wood: “On the Ground Truth” about Security in Libya Before 9/11 Attack
Benghazi Libya Attack: State Department’s Charlene R. Lamb Opening Statement
Benghazi Attack: Ambassador Patrick Kennedy Opening Statement
LIBYA HEARING: Nordstrom Refuses Oversight Staff, Given Guidelines by Own Agency
Chaffetz: US Security Experts Actually IN Libya Didn’t Get Resources They Needed & Asked For…
Rep. Burton During the Oversight Committee Hearing On Diplomatic Security in Libya (Part 1) where a State Department Official Refuses to Admit that the Attack was done by Terrorists:
UPDATES – Not only were our guys murdered, they were raped and sodomized. The Obama Administration doesn’t like American mercenary companies so they hired Libyan’s to act as bodyguards. It was those body guards who gave up the locations of our peoples secret safe house. Videos from the White House Press Room and the House Oversight Committee highlights can be seen HERE.
This ad is spot on accurate, and only leaves out a couple of points. Think about this, not only was security not beefed up at our embassies on 9/11, but there are credible, yet disputed reports from forces on the ground that they were not given live ammunition at several of the embassy posts.
OK so let me get this straight. The White House released secret methods while coordinated with Sony Pictures in the making of the film “Zero Dark Thirty” about the killing of Osama bin Laden….and that won’t inflame the Islamic world at all…but a tiny film trailer from a Coptic Christian is the cause of the world’s unrest?
So why lie? Ironically the Obama Administration has put itself into a “Mission Accomplished” moment. They say that “We got bin Laden”, “Al-Qaeda is dead – finished”, after we finished Iraq that was it etc. Well they have overplayed that card so the news of coordinated Al-Qaeda attacks against our embassies on 9/11 when they were in essence ordered to essentially stand down by the refusal to allow extra security and safety measures does not bode well politically.
Remember this Lie? White House: This is not a case of protests directed at the United States … and in the video below not only was the White House lying because now it was out that not only did they know what the truth was with 24 hours, they were warned in advance. In the video they also lie and said that they took appropriate measure to give extra security on 9/11. Now we know those requested measures were denied:
Judge Jeanine Pirro: Obama White House Lied About Embassy Attacks for Two Weeks:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. security officer twice asked his State Department superiors for more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi months before an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, but he got no response.
The officer, Eric Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until about two months before the September attack, said a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo summarizing his comments to a congressional committee that was obtained by Reuters.
Nordstrom also argued for more U.S. security in Libya by citing a chronology of over 200 security incidents there from militia gunfights to bomb attacks between June 2011 and July 2012. Forty-eight of the incidents were in Benghazi.
A brief summary of Nordstrom’s October 1 interview with the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was contained in a memo prepared by the committee’s minority Democratic staff.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee leaders today sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking why requests for more protection were denied to the U.S. mission in Libya by Washington officials prior to the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The denials came after repeated attacks and security threats to U.S. personnel.
“Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, as Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, write. “In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”
The letter outlines 13 security threats over the six months prior to the attack.
“Put together, these events indicated a clear pattern of security threats that could only be reasonably interpreted to justify increased security for U.S. personnel and facilities in Benghazi,” the chairmen write.
The Committee indicated it intends to convene a hearing in Washington on Wednesday October 10, 2012, on the security failures that preceded the attack.
Aside from our own coverage of Egypt and Libya be sure to see these related stories:
President Obama Skipped His Intel Brief the Day After the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was Murdered by Terrorists – LINK
Cheney: Obama Administration “Involved In A Cover Up” Of Libya Attack – LINK
This will make your stomach turn. Your bailout money goes to sponsor Chinese propaganda films sponsored by GM. You can watch a GM CEO Dan Ackerson brag that since the bailout 70% of GM’s manufacturing is outside of the USA. They also announced that much of GM’s R&D will move to China in part so as to give advanced technology to the Chinese Government.
Remember that according to far left university academic theory U.S. wealth is essentially “capitalist ill-gotten gains” and that our wealth needs to be transferred to the rest of the world.
Remember how the far left in America has said since the rise of the Tea Party that the right is awash in “violent rhetoric”? What about the proposition to kill the Boy Scouts like one would kill a rabid dog? That is what a columnist for The Atlantic has implied.
James Hamblin, the magazine’s health editor, proclaimed his desire to kill Boy Scouts based on his distaste for their recently re-affirmed policy of refusing to admit openly gay members. Hamblin feels justified in using violent, even hateful rhetoric to attack the Boy Scouts merely because he disagrees with them.
Boy Scouts is an organization that was and is so close to being great. Remember when they had to put Old Yeller down because he got rabies? It’s not like he was a bad dog, but he got a brain infection and he tried to eat Travis
Apparently the First Amendment only applies if you agree with gays?
It should be noted that Hamblin posted his desire to kill Boy Scouts the day after another gay activist tried to do just that, kill people with whom he disagrees. Hamblin posted his hate-mongering screed the day after a gay activist entered the Washington DC headquarters of the Family Research Council intent on mass murder.
Hamblin next went on a hyperbolic trip of accusations that the Scout’s policy will “cause.”
Perpetuating a culture where gay teenagers — who are already commonly battling notions of inferiority and self-hatred — can be openly and decidedly told they aren’t welcome among a preeminent organization that purports to represent and define a standard of behavioral ideals, is dangerous. It’s a decided step back in rejecting the culture of gay bullying. We will see more depression, and more suicide. We’ll see more discrimination of every sort, and more hatred.
But notice the absurdity in Hamblin’s statement. He says that the Scouts “define a standard of behavioral ideals.” But how can one have standards and ideals if one simply pushes them aside for every disgruntled group that comes knocking at your door claiming discrimination? The Boy Scouts aren’t breaking any laws and aren’t illegally discriminating and since the Scouts base their ideals on Christian principles, they have steadfast principles quite regardless of whether Hamblin likes them or not.
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X