February 12, 2013

HUMAN EVENTS
Dr. Carson's good medicine
by David Limbaugh
February 12, 2013

President Obama must have been stunned at the “audacity” of Dr. Benjamin Carson in challenging his core assumptions right to his face in front of thousands of people at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Obama is not used to being challenged, especially in public, even if indirectly and without being specifically named. From the look on his face, it was obvious Obama was none too pleased with Carson’s message or with his “presumptuousness” in presenting it in that forum, while he had to sit still and — remain silent.

I think we can best understand Carson’s message in light of his opening statements, which laid the foundation for the thematic body of this speech.

He began citing scriptural passages that he said would put his upcoming remarks into context. Three of the passages were wisdom sayings from the book of Proverbs, admonishing that the godless destroy their neighbor with their mouths, that a man who lacks judgment derides his neighbor and that a generous man will prosper.

The final passage was God’s promise in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that if his people will humble themselves and pray and seek his face and turn from their wicked ways, he will hear them, forgive their sins and heal their land.

Carson also decried the chilling effect of political correctness that makes people afraid to express certain opinions on important issues, lest they incur the wrath of society’s thought and speech police — those who presume to be the guardians of all moral and acceptable opinions. He then proceeded to boldly articulate a number of ideas that clearly fall in this category of disfavored speech.

Specifically, Carson offered a ringing endorsement of America’s founding principles and its unique constitutional liberties. He decried the moral decay in our society and our government’s grotesque fiscal irresponsibility.

He took aim on our ever-expanding welfare state, not only by championing hard work, self-reliance and personal responsibility but also in invoking his own personal experience as an example.

He related how his mother worked multiple jobs to provide for him and his brother and imparted critically important values to them. She made them read and improve themselves and absolutely refused to let them make excuses and claim victimhood for their plight.

Carson, I believe, was illustrating that we have a moral problem in this nation and that the instilling of good values begins in the home and is neither the responsibility nor the prerogative of a caretaker government.

He denounced the practice — refined to an art form by President Obama — of politicians employing class warfare to deride the wealthy with accusations that they don’t contribute enough while treating the less fortunate as helpless and expecting no contribution from them at all. This, I think, is where he was dovetailing the scriptural texts warning against deriding one’s neighbor. He was saying, in effect, that political demagogues who pit people against one another on the basis of income and wealth harm society, including the very people they pretend to help.

In a television interview, Carson expanded on some of these thoughts, explaining that the Founding Fathers were afraid of an out-of-control government that would “get to the point where it couldn’t subsist without taking everything from the people.” Next, he linked, though not expressly, the scriptural passage on generosity in challenging today’s conventional wisdom that the wealthy are necessarily greedy. He pointed to the remarkable generosity of some of America’s historically wealthiest individuals. America, he said, “has always been a very generous nation. Look at all the foundations that have been created for the purpose of taking care of people.”

He also expounded on his comments on political correctness, apparently criticizing the president’s selective assault on religious liberty. He said, “If the president would exercise anywhere near the sensitivity about religious freedom in this country as he does about Islam and offending them, we wouldn’t even have these kinds of problems.”

There is also no question in my mind that in citing the passage from 2 Chronicles, Carson was expressing his view that America has strayed from its godly roots and replaced God’s absolute moral standards with those that seem right to a man but are wholly destructive of our moral fabric. We must turn back to God, reject this man-made ethic grounded in covetousness, envy and greed, and recommit ourselves to godly values and right living.

In his speech, Carson did not criticize President Obama by name, but he roundly condemned his philosophy of and approach to governance. He did so with abundant forcefulness but equally strong respectfulness.

It was an admirable display of forthrightness and courage and a virtual seminar in how President Obama’s political opponents should boldly, directly and publicly dispute his wrongheaded message and block his destructive agenda.

Read more: http://goo.gl/bQq9B

AMERICAN THINKER
The Resilient Conservative Majority
by Bruce Walker
February 12, 2013

Gallup had a poll recently published a poll which shows that at the end of 2012, self-identified conservatives still outnumbered liberals in every state of the nation except for two -- Rhode Island  has fewer conservatives (27.8%) than liberals (28.3% liberal), as does Massachusetts (28.3% to 30.5%).  Gallup curiously does not play up the ideological gap.  Instead, the February 1, 2013 article title given by Gallup was  "Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming Most Conservative States.  Americans slightly less conservative, slightly more liberal[.]"

This apparent interest in hiding the conservative advantage in America is pervasive; the Gallup Polls invariably have titles to news stories which would cause no one to get curious.  The Gallup Poll data twelve months earlier showed the same dramatic conservative advantage.  So did the February 2011 Gallup Poll, entitled "Mississppi rates as Most Conservative US State."  The  August 2010 Gallup Poll tells us that "Wyoming, Mississippi, Utah rank as Most Conservative States."  The February 2010 Gallup Poll reads, "Ideology:  Three Deep South States Most Conservative."  Gallup in August 2009 featured the headline "Political Ideology: 'Conservative' Label Prevails in South[.]"

A closer look at Gallup's polling results shows something startling.  In February 2012, Gallup reported that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every state but Massachusetts.  In February 2011, Gallup polling results showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.  The August 2010 results showed that conservatives outnumber liberals in every state but Rhode Island.  In August 2009, Gallup polls showed that conservatives outnumbered liberals in every single state.  The February 2009 poll showed conservatives outnumbering liberals in every state of the union.

The Battleground Poll, perhaps the most respected bipartisan poll, has also consistently shown that conservatives dramatically outnumber liberals in America.  Even in December 2012, after Obama had won re-election, Question D3 of that poll showed Americans identifying themselves thus: "Very Conservative" (20%), "Somewhat Conservative" (39%), "Moderate" (2%), "Somewhat Liberal" (24%), "Very Liberal" (12%), and "Unsure" (3%).

As I have been pointing out for many years, the Battleground Poll results -- and there have been dozens of them in the last twelve years -- have always shown not only that self-identified conservatives outnumber liberals by a wide margin, but that conservatives constitute year in and year out about six out of every ten Americans, even when "Moderate" and "Unsure" are included as non-conservatives.

Left-leaning polling organizations like Public Policy Polling, in the aftermath of Obama's re-election, nevertheless reported that "very conservative" voters constituted 15% of respondents and "somewhat conservative" was 24%, while "very liberal" was 11% and "somewhat liberal" was 18%.

Other polling organizations which rely upon local news organizations for their results show the same pattern.  A poll in January 2013, for example, showed that in Minnesota, conservatives outnumbered liberals 30% to 13%.  In Connecticut, conservatives outnumber liberals by 26% to 20%.  In Ohio, conservatives constituted 34% of respondents and liberals 18%.  In Washington State, the conservative advantage over liberals was 34% to 20%.  Other state polls show the same remarkable conservative advantage.

If only one poll or one polling organization showed the huge advantage that conservatives have over liberals, then that might be dismissed as flawed methodology or -- as many conservatives have sourly suggested -- the idea that people who call themselves "conservative" really don't know what the word means.  But, again, the sheer volume of polls, the consistency of the ideological gap, and the constancy of the ideology gap undo this argument.

Why, then, do liberals have so much political success?  One answer is voter fraud, which is why Democrats fought voter identification cards, and the other obstacle is the left's control of every institution in society.  These, however, are only part of the story.  

The principal problem is that Republicans act scared and are reluctant to call themselves unabashed conservatives.  Romney, McCain, George W. Bush with his "compassionate conservatives, Dole (Need I say anything about him?), George H. Bush repudiating Reagan with his notorious "Kinder, gentler America,"  Ford, Nixon, Eisenhower, Dewey, Willkie, Landon, and Hoover -- all were half-hearted and apologetic pseudo-conservatives.

Only four times in the last hundred years has a Republican campaigned as an unabashed conservative.  Coolidge won big in 1924, and he would have won with a bigger landslide if he had chosen to run in 1928.  Reagan won two landslides.  Only Goldwater, running with a divided Republican Party one year after Kennedy was murdered, lost as a conservative.  As for Reagan, he won because he held conservative values and never apologized for them or watered them down.

Conservatives ought to be winning.  When Republicans stop listening to the din of leftist cant, they win.

Read more: http://goo.gl/1BVFr

BREITBART
Thousands Attend Chris Kyle Memorial Service in Cowboys Stadium
by Breitbart News
February 12, 2013 

On Monday, thousands of Americans turned out to pay homage to the late Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL sniper famous for the performance in Iraq that earned him the nickname from his enemies, The Devil of Ramadi. Kyle was murdered last week in Texas by a former soldier suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Kyle’s coffin was placed at the center of Cowboys Stadium, draped in an American flag. Over 7,000 people came to pay tribute to him.

Kyle’s wife and children spoke in moving terms about the American hero. According to wife Taya, Chris made her feel like “pure gold.” “Thank you Chris thank you for loving me, all of me,” she said. “God worked through you to make me the woman I was supposed to be … You taught me I was okay just the way I am. I stand before you a broken woman but I am now and always will be a wife of a man who was a warrior both on and off the battlefield.”

Chris’ children wrote notes that were printed in the program. “You are the best dad ever,” wrote one of Kyle’s daughters, who signed only “Baby Girl.” “I never wanted you to die, I miss your heart.” His other daughter wrote, “One of the best things that has happened to me is you. I love you dad. I always will.”

Luminaries including Sarah Palin attended the funeral. There were no reported attendees from the Obama administration.

Read more: http://goo.gl/A064D

February 7, 2013

HUMAN EVENTS
Richard Hudson brings grassroots to DC
by John Gizzi
February 7, 2013

On the day he was sworn into office for his first term, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) recalled Human Events coverage of his campaign—from the primary to his big win in the run-off to his eventual defeat of Democratic Rep. Larry Kissell.

“I thought everything was fair and accurate—except when you compared me to Lyndon Johnson,” he said, while winking at wife Renee. He cited our analogy between conservative Republican Hudson and the Democratic president Johnson, both of whom went from congressional staffers to representatives from North Carolina and Texas, respectively.

While understanding the comparison, the 41-year-old Hudson, who has all four volumes of Robert Caro’s epic biography of LBJ, explained he was a bit uncomfortable with it because of Johnson’s ethics problems.

“I always felt that Lyndon Johnson was ethically challenged—very much so,” he said. “Integrity is critical to elective office, I feel. Maybe a better analogy might be to another former congressional staffer who went on to serve himself: my personal hero and role model, Jesse Helms.”

At that point, the new congressman pointed to a photograph in his new office in the Cannon House Office Building. In the photo stood Hudson between Helms—conservative icon, Republican senator from North Carolina for 30 years, and former top aide to two senators—and Lady Margaret Thatcher, who came to the Tarheel State a few years ago for an event at the Jesse Helms Center.

“For a conservative, it doesn’t get better than that,” Hudson said.

Grassroots way key

Whomever Richard Hudson is compared to, one thing is sure: as much as his opponents attacked him as an insider for his years in Washington, the new congressman from North Carolina was a lot more than that. In fact, his background in the political grassroots of his state was probably as key to his success at the polls as the acumen he acquired as top aide to three different House members.

A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and the school’s first alumnus to serve in Congress, Richard Hudson began his political career working on Charlotte’s Mayor Richard Vinroot losing gubernatorial campaign in 1996. Following a stint as communications director for the state Republican Party, Hudson was hired as top district aide to the new congressman from his state’s 8th District, Robin Hayes.

“I felt as though I was the mayor of the 8th District,” said Hudson. “Driving around the district and hearing the problems and needs of all constituents. It’s quite an experience—you get a whole different perspective from working in an office.”

He went on to serve as top aide to three conservatives in Congress: Republican Reps. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), John Carter (Texas) and Mike Conaway (Texas). In 2012, he was ready to take on Democratic Rep. Larry Kissell, who had won both of his terms by narrow margins.

But Hudson had to first overcome four other Republicans. He topped the initial primary field and then squared off against second-place finisher Scott Keadle in the resulting run-off.

Keadle hit hard at his opponent, characterizing himself as a conservative “insurgent” and Hudson as a “Washington insider.” Hudson did have some powerful backers in Washington, notably the Young Guns Action Fund run by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). He also had the endorsements of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum.

Hudson had developed a loyal cadre of volunteers from his years of working in Republican campaigns and as an aide to Hayes. With their help in walking precincts, holding coffees and manning phone banks, he maintained his lead in the run-off.

Along with the American Action Network, headed by former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Young Guns ran a barrage of hard-hitting TV spots slamming Keadle for accepting President Obama’s federal stimulus funds as a Rowan County Commissioner in 2009.

This well-oiled effort helped Hudson move to the right of Keadle and win the run-off 63 percent to 36 percent. The November election was anti-climatic, with Hudson unseating incumbent Democrat Kissell with 53 percent of the vote.

With the win, he was part of the Republican tidal wave in his state that stood out in an otherwise disappointing year for the party. Not only did Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney carry North Carolina’s electoral votes, but also, Pat McCrory became the state’s first Republican governor in 24 years. In addition, Republicans maintained control of both houses of the state Legislature and gained three new House members.

“I felt that the good people of our state would turn on the Democrats once they saw their convention in Charlotte last summer and especially the way they removed mention of God on three votes of the platform committee and the full convention—denying God three times, just like Peter,” Hudson said.

Death tax, debt and immigration

When Human Events spoke to Hudson, he had returned our call while in the middle of his tour of the district’s farms.

“I will have visited all 11 counties by the end of the week,” he said. “And what I found is that the two biggest issues to our farmers are the death tax and immigration.” The freshman congressman supports outright repeal of the death tax and voiced some hope for the bipartisan framework recently unveiled by eight senators on immigration.

“From what I have seen, it’s a good start,” Hudson said. “It calls for border control and the building of an infrastructure for the processing of people already here in the U.S. I sometimes think of what Newt Gingrich said when he was speaker—that every time someone comes from across the border on a work permit, we should issue them an American Express card. When you have an American Express card, they can always find you.”

But, he quickly added, “I won’t support an amnesty that gives an advantage to those who are here illegally over those who did it the legal way.”

Like most of the 33 other freshman Republicans elected last fall, Hudson would have voted against the debt ceiling extension passed by the last Congress in its waning days. Earlier this year, the congressman voted against the three-month extension of the debt ceiling because he had given his word to constituents never to support a debt ceiling increase without dollar-for-dollar spending cuts.

Hudson further explained his debt-ceiling vote, saying: “we are finally getting some responses from the White House and Democrats in the Senate about reform the biggest causes of debt—namely, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And now, we just may get the Democratic Senate to finally come up with a budget and engage in the process.”

Rep. Richard Hudson is inarguably a person with a deep connection and knowledge of how Washington works, but he’s also a lawmaker who knows the grassroots well and listens. It’s a much needed combination.

Read more: http://goo.gl/5mBsr

NATIONAL REVIEW
A Mission for the New Congress
Congress needs to mind its own business, and let the states mind theirs.
by Mario Loyola
February 7, 2013

As the March 1 sequester deadline looms, congressional conservatives should wake up to the fact that an agenda focused solely on spending cuts is a losing agenda, one that wouldn’t help matters much even if it prevailed. Our very system of government is badly malfunctioning. What’s needed at the heart of the conservative agenda in Congress is a program of structural reform that goes far beyond entitlements.

The first priority for such reform is something hardly anybody is talking about: disentangling the functions of state government from those of the federal government. The intermingling of state and federal functions through “cooperative federalism” has created the conditions for perpetual fiscal crisis and overregulation at every level of government.

Federal funds now account for about 30 percent of the typical state budget. This “assistance” doesn’t come from Mars, of course. The federal government is taxing and borrowing from all of us in order to return that money to our state governments, under onerous conditions.

According to the White House, the average federal deficit over the past 30 years amounted to 3.4 percent of GDP. The average amount of federal transfers to state and local governments during the same period was 3.0 percent of GDP.

States and localities are severely limited in their ability to borrow. And yet virtually all the expansion of the American public sector since 1950 has come at the state and local level. Almost all of the federal deficit can be accounted for by the federal government’s support of state and local governments, inflating their budgets well beyond what they could sustain on their own.

In effect, the federal government is running up huge deficits in order to purchase control of state governments. The problems that arise from this disastrous intermingling of federal and state finances are almost endless. By seizing substantial control over state governments, Congress invades areas of regulation that the Constitution recognizes as belonging exclusively to the states. Worse, Congress escapes accountability by leaving the states’ elected officials on the hook for what common voters can only assume are state programs but what really are federal programs in disguise. And so local self-government, which is at the heart of our Constitution, is shrinking.

With respect to state budgets, this “assistance” is not just unnecessary; it’s harmful. States are left at the mercy of congressional appropriations and dependent on federal bailouts every time there’s a downturn in the economy. If the federal government weren’t sucking so much money out of the private economy to pay for these programs, the states could run them more efficiently and sustainably on their own. And the whole American public sector would be leaner. These programs, which are meant to equalize income disparities among the states, actually exacerbate them, especially through the tactic of matching funds. For example, under Medicaid, rich states can afford bloated Medicaid programs and are rewarded with federal matching funds.  Poor states are penalized.

Under more than 600 federal spending programs, mainly for health, education, and transportation, Washington sends money to the states on condition that the states do what Washington wants. The conditions on this “assistance” are increasingly complex, intrusive, and suffocating, making state governments little more than instruments of Congress. If your state wants approval for federal Medicaid matching funds, for example, it has to meet about 100 different conditions on matters that in principle should be the state’s prerogative.

Every time a state legislature meets, its most difficult task is to find wiggle room inside the straitjacket of conditions on federal funds. That wiggle room is shrinking.

One reason these programs exist is that regulation-heavy states want to eliminate the competitive advantage of regulation-light states, and they form coalitions in Congress to do just that. In 1926, faced with rampant inheritance-tax competition among the states, Congress adopted a federal inheritance tax with offsets for inheritance-tax payments at the state level. The immediate effect of this law was to eliminate state competition for rich retirees and to incentivize all states to raise their inheritance-tax rates.

What conservative scholars call “competitive federalism” is a basic feature of our Constitution, as Michael Greve argues in The Upside-Down Constitution (2012). Competitive federalism exerts strong downward pressure on government power at every level. But through the disastrous fusion of state and federal finances, that pressure is not only defeated but reversed, leading to the unsustainable expansion of government spending at every level.


Read more: http://goo.gl/DrR2W

REDSTATE
The Tipping Point
by Erick Erickson
February 7, 2013

There is no permanence in politics. Democrats patting themselves on the back at a job well done will at some point be drowning their sorrows in beer as Republicans again talk about their ridiculous fantasy of a permanent Republican majority (this time without steel tariffs).

People shift over time. Pendulums swing. And in the age of instantly lame ducked Presidents upon their swearing in for a second term, discord has ways of getting the best of any political party.

Conservatives who rallied to George W. Bush through No Child Left Behind, steel tariffs, Medicare Part D, Harriet Miers, etc. stood with him until the end. Many held on through TARP and the auto bailout and immigration, unable to see the fractures or trying to will them away. Now the GOP is dealing with the fall out of that legacy.

Consider the suspicion conservative groups have of Bush’s architect, Karl Rove, starting a new group supposedly to support “the most electable conservative”. Conservatives are still trying to work their way back out of the Republican Party and stand up on their own again.

With the 22nd amendment, a President’s second term is about securing his legacy. His party has no chance to throw him out in a third term primary. So the party rallies to make the best of it and help him secure his legacy. It happened with Reagan and Clinton and the second Bush. It is happening now with Barack Obama.

We should not ignore, though, that there is a disturbance in the Democratic force.

Progressives want to stick with Barack Obama because they perceive him as one of them and expect he will push their progressive agenda as best he can. But some progressives are deeply worried about his drone war. They are worried about civil liberties. They are worried that he is, and in fact he really is, to the right of George W. Bush on this issue. The progressive agenda conflicts with his civil liberties stance.

This is but one example. If the President pushes forward with any entitlement reforms or anything else that looks to be in the direction of the GOP, the fractures will exacerbate. If he does not, he risks the public who supposedly wants compromise looking at him as too uncompromising in the same way they’ve looked at the GOP. He cannot afford the public getting tired of him, but he also cannot afford his party growing weary of his positions.

This all puts him in a precarious position. Made worse, as he adds new faces to his cabinet, he is not adding men of particular policy depth, but more men of the same persuasion. That will lessen debate. That will lessen the ability to think outside narrow parameters.

In second terms, people grow weary who have been there a while. The A team gets replaced by the B team, which in turn gets replaced by the C team. Then you get Iran Contra, blue dresses in the Oval Office, U.S. Attorneys being fired in suspicious looking ways, etc. The President has tried to make an academic study of how not to have a bad second term. The problem is his policies will not be up for debate within his own party. His legacy will be preserved. Then, in 2016, it will be Democratic Party voters who will be forced into a great sorting as they decide whether to stay the course or fight over a new one.

Permanent majorities are fleeting. The coalition that swept him into office and kept him there is not yet the Democrats’ coalition. They do not consider themselves Democrats, but progressives. They are not of one mind on all issues. And all those issues will be at stake in 2016.

Read more: http://goo.gl/amOfC

February 4, 2013

NEWSMAX

Conservative Groups Mock Crossroads' Initiative

by Sandy Fitzgerald

February 3, 2013

Two powerful conservative groups say a new American Crossroads' initiative, formed to work against Republican candidates it deems unelectable, is just another attempt to muzzle the GOP's true base.

American Crossroads, a super PAC founded by a group led by former Bush White House advisor Karl Rove, was the largest Republican super PAC of the 2012 election cycle. The idea behind the PAC's latest effort is to intensely vet prospective contenders for Congressional races to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The new organization, the Conservative Victory Project, was formed because “there is a broad concern about having blown a significant number of races because the wrong candidates were selected,” American Crossroads President Steven Law told Politico.

Law and others want to avoid what has become known as the "Todd Akin problem" in some GOP circles. Republicans lost two high-profile Senate battles last year in which their candidate had expressed controversial views on social issues.

Then-Representative Todd Akin had been a favorite to take a Senate seat representing Missouri before commenting on TV that pregnancy rarely occurs in the case of "legitimate rape".

Rove and other senior Republican figures called on him to step down from the campaign, but he refused to do so. The resulting backlash from, in particular, female voters saw him lose a seat that many party officials believed was very winnable.

In Indiana, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock lost the Senate battle after suggesting that rape was "something God intended to happen".

But the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, both of which boost candidates on the right, said the new group — which they mockingly nicknamed the “Conservative Defeat Project,” is another example of “the Republican establishment's hostility toward its conservative base.”

“Rather than listening to the grassroots and working to advance their principles, the establishment has chosen to declare war on the party's most loyal supporters,” said Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund.

SCF, which works to push tea party-leaning conservative candidates, backed Ted Cruz, Deb Fischer and Jeff flake in their successful Senate races last year. It was founded in 2008 by then-Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, becoming an independent PAC in July, 2012.

"The Conservative Defeat Project is... a continuation of the establishment's effort to avoid blame for their horrible performance in the 2012 elections," Hoskins added.

"They blew a ton of races up and down the ticket because they recruited moderate Republicans who didn't stand for anything. Now they want to use this new PAC to trick donors into giving them more money so they can lose more races."

Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin tweeted: "TPPatriots want to save USA. Karl Rove wants to line pockets-Don't Tread on Us! Tea Party bites back-never gives up!"

The First Things' "Postmodern Conservative" blog blasted Rove in a column on Sunday.

"The 'establishment' candidates aren’t losing because of a lack of money, and giving Karl Rove more bucks won’t lead to better Republican Senate candidacies anymore than the $300 million that Rove raised and spent in 2012 helped Republicans win the presidency and pick up Senate seats," blogger Pete Spiliakos wrote.

He advised Republican donors to "stop giving money to super-PACs who will spend the money on thirty second ads designed to win elections in 1988. All you are doing is making old school Republican consultants even more rich without their even having to think through the specific problems of our time."

Barney Keller, spokesman for Club for Growth, said many conservative insurgents have emerged as influential GOP leaders.

“They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst,” Keller said of the new Crossroads group. “We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.”

The tea party-influenced groups spent millions of dollars in 2012 to boost candidates, but American Crossroads was the heaviest spender. However, it did not get involved in nomination fights — something that's changing this spring as it gets involved in competitive races starting to take shape.

Read more: http://goo.gl/zk1wB

TOWNHALL

True the Vote Files Lawsuit Against Supervisor of Elections Over Mishandling of Allen West Recount

by Katie Pavlich

February 4, 2013

Voter integrity group True the Vote (TTV) filed a federal lawsuit Monday against St. Lucie County Florida Supervisor of Elections Gertrude Walker for failing to uphold election law and for failing to enforce record inspection rights under the National Voter Registration Act and the Florida Constitution. The lawsuit has been filed in light of the gross mishandling of the recount between Rep. Allen West and now Rep. Patrick Murphy by St. Lucie County election officials.

"True the Vote's lawsuit will provide information kept from the public. It will allow for a public debate on exactly what happened, why it happened, why it seems to happen repeatedly and how it can be stopped from happening again," True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said in a video statement about the lawsuit.

Walker has already admitted mistakes were made during the recount process but has been less than transparent when it comes to allowing TTV or even the West campaign to access information about votes cast. On November 10, days after the election took place, Walker "unofficially" certified the results and three days later on November 13, she held a press conference where she admitted her staff had acted with "haste" and that "mistakes were made" throughout the tabulation and partial recount process.

According to the NVRA of 1993, Walker "shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters.”

According to a press release, TTV is seeking to "compel St. Lucie County election authorities to grant complete inspection rights to all election records pertaining to the 18th District race and voter registration records under federal and state law. In addition, TTV demands that the court order the Supervisor of Elections to preserve all records. If granted access, TTV will determine a precise vote count, document any illegal participation in the election and offer solutions to prevent similar failures in future recounts."

"Gone are the days when Motor Voter is a law used only by a couple of special interest groups. The law requires physical inspections, I hope we reach a quick agreement," TTV attorney J. Christian Adams of the Election Law Center said.

The lawsuit provides an extensive timeline of events and documented non-cooperation from election officials after information requests were filed.

“This dramatic recount was an extraordinary example of how our elections can suffer systematic failure,” True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said. “We run the risk seeing episodes like this becoming ordinary if citizens do not demand answers and hold election officials accountable. The American people own the voting system – we have the right to ask tough questions when we witness the failure of one of America’s core functions. The clock is ticking on the opportunity for a comprehensive, outside audit of this recount...each passing day heightens the risk of critical documents being disposed of. If you thought voter fraud could erode America’s confidence in elections, unchecked incompetence in the vote tabulation process will destroy all faith remaining in our systems.”

The lawsuit was filed by TTV in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida – Fort Pierce Division.

Read more: http://goo.gl/awXVq

NATIONAL REVIEW

The Real Barack Obama 
He’s a man of the Left, and now he sees no need to hide it.
by John Fund
February 4, 2013

The country may be catching on: Barack Obama is our first knee-jerk liberal president. And now that he will never face the voters again, he doesn’t mind showing it.

“There is a deep recognition that he has a short period of time to get a lot done,” says Jennifer Psaki, Obama’s 2012 campaign spokeswoman. So the moderate mask is slipping.

In his second inaugural address, he gave a full-throated defense of the entitlement state and made no mention of reforming Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security before they go bust. He is issuing a stream of executive orders, and he backed the Pentagon’s recently announced plan to lift the ban that kept female soldiers out of combat positions.

Once in a while, Obama still feints to the center. A sharp reaction to his gun-control proposals prompted him to declare that he is sympathetic to gun owners and that he goes skeet shooting “all the time.” The skepticism this boast generated was so rampant that the White House released a photo of Obama holding a shotgun, awkwardly, while skeet shooting. Few people found his claim to enthusiasm for the sport to be credible. Michael Hampton, a top official with the National Skeet Shooting Association, told AP that the photo suggests Obama is a novice shooter. “This isn’t something he’s done very often because of how he’s standing, how he has the gun mounted,” he said.

What is believable is that Obama is showing his true colors. If personnel are policy, there is no better demonstration of his priorities than his second-term appointments. In every case — John Kerry for secretary of state, Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense, Jack Lew for secretary of the treasury — he has moved to the left. In the case of Hagel and Lew, his nominees’ political alignment, or propensity to serve as “yes men,” seems to have mattered far more to Obama than their capability and relevant experience, which are less than stellar. The choice of Hagel led last week to the embarrassing spectacle of a presidential nominee’s flunking a confirmation hearing he had spent many hours preparing for.

Nor is Obama’s lurch to the left limited to cabinet appointments. Last month he named Denis McDonough as his new chief of staff and Jennifer Palmieri as the new White House communications director. Both aides have blogged for the left-wing website Think Progress and have ties to the George Soros–funded Center for American Progress. McDonough was a senior fellow at CAP before joining Obama’s Senate staff in 2006, and Palmieri served as president of the group’s political-action fund. CAP is a respectable voice for progressive politics, and John Podesta, the group’s founder, also served for a time as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff. But it is undeniably a hard-left group.

Obama will soon fill key vacant posts at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. Reuters reports that the front runner in the race to become the new head of the EPA is Gina McCarthy, who is now the assistant administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, which makes her the point person for the administration’s “war on coal” campaign. McCarthy has superficial credentials as a moderate, having served as the top environmental regulator in Massachusetts and Connecticut under Democratic and Republican governors. She advised Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts and began the state’s first Climate Protection Action Plan. But Romney campaign aides tell me that they got no end of grief from business interests who were worried she might find a place in a Romney administration. “There was no way, no how she was going to be part of anything,” one aide says. “But we know her well enough to know that if Obama promotes her, the EPA is going to go all out in support of climate controls.”

Similarly, energy companies — at least those not subsidized by the federal government — are appalled that former Washington governor Christine Gregoire, who tried to pass a state version of Obama’s cap-and-trade regulatory policy, is a leading candidate to become the new secretary of energy. Gregoire saw her proposal crash and burn, just as Obama saw his plan fail, after key Democratic legislators opposed it.

No one should be surprised by Obama’s embrace of aides and advisers who are clearly more liberal than his first-term picks. The mainstream media have for years largely ignored the evidence that Obama is solidly a man of the Left. Back in 1985, the 24-year-old Obama answered a help-wanted ad for a job with a group run by Saul Alinsky’s Chicago disciples. The late Alinsky has long been the patron saint of radical “community organizers” on the left.

Obama was deeply influenced by his years as an Alinsky-style organizer in Chicago. “Obama embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics and recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of his life,” wrote Peter Slevin of the Washington Post in 2007. That same year, The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza found Obama still “at home talking Alinskian jargon about ‘agitation’” and fondly recalling workshops where he had learned Alinsky’s concepts and methods for infiltrating power structures.

In 1992, after Obama returned to Chicago from Harvard Law School, he ran a voter-registration drive for Project Vote, an affiliate of the now-disgraced ACORN, a community-organizing group founded by Alinksy acolytes. Obama then moonlighted as a top trainer for ACORN and later became its attorney in voting-litigation cases.

Some media observers aren’t at all surprised that the Obama of his ACORN years is resurfacing. “I think Obama . . . sees himself as a Reagan-like president,” Charles Krauthammer said at the National Review Institute summit in Washington, D.C., last month. He pointed to an Obama statement from 2008 that he found “utterly fascinating.” In it, “[Obama] said that Ronald Reagan was consequential historically in a way that Clinton was not.”

Obama has every right to reach far to the left as he tries to reorient America to his liking, much as Reagan did his best to turn America to the right in the 1980s. The difference is that Reagan never hid who he was, what he believed in, and who his staunchest allies were. Obama has consistently cloaked his beliefs and associations, aided by a compliant media that have abetted and adored him every step of his career. Now that Obama has become more forthright about who he is, we can fight the ideological battle over his ideas in earnest. Let’s hope that he now displays more honesty and clarity about his beliefs than he treated the American people to during his two presidential campaigns.

Read more: http://goo.gl/nX9oL

January 7, 2013

TOWNHALL
Obama to nominate Hagel for defense secretary
by Thomas Ferraro
January 6, 2013

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will nominate former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be his defense secretary and an announcement could come on Monday, sources familiar with the nomination process said.

The choice will likely set up a confirmation battle in the Senate over whether the former Nebraska senator and Vietnam veteran is a strong enough supporter of key U.S. ally Israel and over his past calls for military cuts.

The Obama administration backed down from a tough Senate confirmation battle over Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who was Obama's first pick to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

Rice withdrew her name from consideration after drawing heavy fire from Republicans for remarks she made in the aftermath of a September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. Obama then nominated Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry, a former presidential candidate.

"The administration has a lot of work to do on Hagel," a Democratic Senate aide said on Sunday.

"He is in a weaker position now than Rice ever was because Rice would have rallied Democrats behind her. The administration floated Hagel's name, then neglected to defend him effectively when his critics started taking shots," the aide said.

However, the White House is confident it can weather criticism of Hagel's record and garner enough votes from both sides of the political aisle to get his nomination through committee and win confirmation in the Democratic-led Senate.

"The president wants him, because he trusts him and he's an independent voice," a second source close to the situation said.

The source said Hagel had received high-level messages of reassurance in recent days that his nomination was on track despite a campaign by his critics aimed at derailing it.

People close to Hagel have been informed of an imminent announcement, the source added.

Obama is also expected to round out his security team by unveiling his pick for CIA director to replace David Petraeus, the retired general who stepped down in November over an extramarital affair with his biographer.

NOMINATION FIGHT

In recent weeks a number of prominent Republicans have said they would oppose Hagel's nomination. On Sunday, Republican lawmakers made clear he would face a tough nomination process.

"This is an in-your-face nomination by the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel," South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told CNN's "State of the Union."

"I don't know what his management experience is regarding the Pentagon, little, if any, so I think it's an incredibly controversial choice."

Many Republicans contend that Hagel, who left the Senate in 2008, at times opposed Israel's interests. He voted several times against U.S. sanctions on Iran, and made disparaging remarks about the influence of what he called a "Jewish lobby" in Washington.

Read more: http://goo.gl/bSKxj

Critical of Israel - Opposes Iranian Sanctions - BAD Choice for America

WASHINGTON TIMES

Obama supporters shocked, angry at new tax increases

by Joseph Curl

January 6, 2013

Sometimes, watching a Democrat learn something is wonderful, like seeing the family dog finally sit and stay at your command.

With President Obama back in office and his life-saving “fiscal cliff” bill jammed through Congress, the new year has brought a surprising turn of events for his sycophantic supporters.

“What happened that my Social Security withholding’s in my paycheck just went up?” a poster wrote on the liberal site DemocraticUnderground.com. “My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don’t feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna’ hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?”

Shocker. Democrats who supported the president’s re-election just had NO idea that his steadfast pledge to raise taxes meant that he was really going to raise taxes. They thought he planned to just hit those filthy “1 percenters,” you know, the ones who earned fortunes through their inventiveness and hard work. They thought the free ride would continue forever.

So this week, as taxes went up for millions of Americans — which Republicans predicted throughout the campaign would happen — it was fun to watch the agoggery of the left.

“I know to expect between $93 and $94 less in my paycheck on the 15th,” wrote the ironically named “RomneyLies.”

“My boyfriend has had a lot of expenses and is feeling squeezed right now, and having his paycheck shrink really didn’t help,” wrote “DemocratToTheEnd.”

“BlueIndyBlue” added: “Many of my friends didn’t realize it, either. Our payroll department didn’t do a good job of explaining the coming changes.”

So let’s explain something to our ill-informed Democratic friends. In 2009, Mr. Obama enacted a “holiday” on the payroll tax deduction from employees’ paychecks, dropping the rate from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. But like the holidays, the drop ended, and like New Year‘s, the revelers woke up the next morning with a massive hangover and a pounding head.

“Bake,” who may have been trolling the site, jumped into the thread posted Friday. “My paycheck just went down. So did my wife’s. This hurts us. But everybody says it’s a good thing, so I guess we just suck it up and get used to it. I call it a tax increase on the middle class. I wonder what they call it. Somebody on this thread called it a ‘premium.’ Nope. It’s a tax, and it just went up.”

Some in the thread argued that the new tax — or the end of the “holiday,” which makes it a new tax — wouldn’t really amount to much. One calculated it would cost about $86 a month for most people. “Honeycombe8,” though, said that amount is nothing to sneeze at.

“$86 a month is a lot. That would pay for … Groceries for a week, as someone said. More than what I pay for parking every month, after my employer’s contribution to that. A new computer after a year. A new quality pair of shoes … every month. Months of my copay for my hormones. A new thick coat (on sale or at discount place). It would pay for what I spend on my dogs every month … food, vitamins, treats.”

The Twittersphere was even funnier.

“Really, how am I ever supposed to pay off my student loans if my already small paycheck keeps getting smaller? Help a sister out, Obama,” wrote “Meet Virginia.” “Nancy Thongkham” was much more furious. “F***ing Obama! F*** you! This taking out more taxes s*** better f***ing help me out!! Very upset to see my paycheck less today!”

“_Alex™” sounded bummed. “Obama I did not vote for you so you can take away alot of money from my checks.” Christian Dixon seemed crestfallen. “I’m starting to regret voting for Obama.” But “Dave” got his dander up over the tax hike: “Obama is the biggest f***ing liar in the world. Why the f*** did I vote for him”?

Of course, dozens of posters on DemocraticUnderground sought to blame it all (as usual) on President George W. Bush. “Your taxes went up because the leaders need to dig us out of this criminal deficit hole we are in which has been caused because taxes were too low during the Bush years. Everyone has to help by spreading the wealth around a little. Power to the correct people!” posted “Orinoco.”

But in fact, it was Mr. Obama who enacted the “holiday,” and, to be clear, the tax cut that he pushed throughout the campaign — remember? 98 percent of Americans will get a cut under his plan? — was really the extension of the Bush tax suts. Thus, it was Mr. Obama who raised taxes on millions of Americans, not Mr. Bush.

How many Americans? The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington put the total at 77.1 percent of all wage earners. In fact, “More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said,” according to a Bloomberg News article. Hilariously, the tax burden will rise more for someone making $30,000 a year (1.7 percent) than it does for someone earning $500,000 annually (1.3 percent).

Read more: http://goo.gl/ZBK0p

REDSTATE

The Trouble for Conservatives

by Erick Erickson

January 7, 2013

Jim Bridenstine may get a primary challenge. You may not know who he is, but Jim Bridenstine is a brand new member of Congress, a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy Reserves, a fighter pilot from the Iraq and Afghan Wars, and a strong fiscal conservative.

He should be a hero to any and all Republicans. He’s a genuine bad ass. And on Day 1, he decided not to vote for John Boehner for Speaker. Bridenstine is happy to play on the team, but unhappy to go along to get alone when we are looking at $16 trillion in debt.

His office is silent, but friends of his in Congress say the House Republican Leaders already have him on a list of incumbents they may just want to do away with. But he is exactly the type of guy we need in Congress.

This presents a problem for House conservatives. There are more and more signs that the GOP Establishment intends 2014 as an election season to seek revenge on conservatives. Conservatives are going to have to hang together or they will absolutely hang separately.

Jonathan Strong at Roll Call has what I’d consider the definitive take on the Boehner coup attempt. It shows just how vulnerable Boehner was. There are a few details Jonathan, Matthew Boyle, and the others who’ve reported on this have missed, but needless to say there was some overnight and on the floor gamesmanship and a key block of votes got scared in the overnight hours before the vote.

Enough of them, however, have now been outed that they, like Bridenstine, could be marked men. The only solution for them is going to have to be to come out of the shadows and make their voices heard from the back bench. If they will not have the support of the leadership, they must support each other.

They know now that conservatives will absolutely stick with them if they stick with conservatives. They have a position of incumbency that will help them. But they must not just disappear into the back benches now. Remember, it took two years to really orchestrate the removal of Newt Gingrich. The conservatives must keep pushing.

And yes Main Street Republicans or whatever you liberal Republicans call yourselves these days — back in the 90′s the GOP was largely held hostage by the left of the party on spending issues, social issues, etc. Now you know what that feels like.

Read more: http://goo.gl/QPimD

January 4, 2013

NEWSMAX

Gore's $70M Take from Current TV Designed to Avoid Obama Tax Hikes

by Bloomberg News

January 3, 2013

Al Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against global warming, may gross about $70 million from the sale of his Current TV network to Al Jazeera, the cable channel funded in part by oil-rich Qatar.

Al Jazeera will pay about $500 million for Current TV, including the stake held by Gore, 64, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The network is one of dozens of investments made by the former vice president since he lost the 2000 presidential race by a slim margin, Bloomberg reported.

“It’s reeking with irony,” said Jeff Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, who studies corporate governance. “It seems to be at least a paradox in terms of his positions on sustainability and geopolitics.”

The deal highlights Gore’s makeover from career politician to successful businessman. His take from the Current TV sale is is many times the maximum net worth of $1.7 million he reported while running for president in 1999. Besides investing in startups, Gore is on the board of Apple Inc. (AAPL), an adviser to Google Inc., according to his website biography, and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Late Thursday, Fox News and other media reported that the sale seemed to have been rushed to avoid the anticipated fiscal cliff tax increases.

In addition to wanting a buyer who would reflect his political philosophy, Gore was anxious to fulfill his fiduciary responsibility to himself and keep his taxes low, the Washington Times reported.

"A critic of the tax structure that allows the very wealthy, like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and billionaire tax activist Warren Buffet, to escape the high income tax rates paid by their secretaries, Gore attempted to complete the deal by December 31," the Times reported Thursday. "Because the deal wasn’t signed until today, he and his partners will pay the new 23.8 percent capital gains tax rather than 15 percent, or an extra $8.8 million."

“The green of money knows no political boundaries,” Charles Elson, who is director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, told Bloomberg News. “When you are running investments, your priority needs to be maximizing return.”

Gore’s holdings also include investments in Amazon.com Inc., EBay Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. through his Generation Investment Management LLP.
2004 Purchase

Gore holds a 20 percent stake in Current TV, according to the people, who asked not to be named because the sale terms aren’t public. His proceeds are difficult to pin down because the company had $41.4 million in debt, as well as preferred stock entitled to $99.5 million in the event of a sale or liquidation, according to a 2008 regulatory filing.

The Current TV price represents a sevenfold increase from the $71 million Gore and his partners paid for the predecessor company in 2004, according to the filing. Gore, chairman, and Joel Hyatt, a co-founder and chief executive officer, announced the sale yesterday in a statement, without providing financial terms.

Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore, didn’t respond to a phone call or e-mail request for comment.

“Many Americans are tired of borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the Persian Gulf to make huge amounts of pollution that destroys the planet’s climate,” Gore said in September 2006 at the New York University School of Law. “Increasingly, Americans believe that we have to change every part of that pattern.”
Current Investors

The network’s investors included funds controlled by Los Angeles billionaire Ron Burkle and San Francisco money manager Richard Blum, according to the 2008 filing, when the company unsuccessfully sought to sell stock to the public. Blum is married to U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from San Francisco.

The Raine Group advised Current TV on the sale.

The owners introduced Current TV in 2005 after purchasing the network from Vivendi SA.

Al Jazeera is closely held and gets some funding from the government of Qatar, a small country on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula that gets almost half of its gross domestic product from oil and gas, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Read more: http://goo.gl/7waHh

TOWNHALL

Mike Lee: Senators Only Had Six Minutes to Read “Fiscal Cliff” Bill Before Voting

by Daniel Doherty

January 3, 2013

What could go wrong, right? According to Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, members of the upper chamber had -- at most -- six minutes to read the “fiscal cliff” bill before they voted on it. Little wonder, then, that the so-called “compromise” was in many respects a complete and total disaster:

"Everything about this bill was a failure…you need look no further than the fact that we were given a total of six minutes before we voted on it. Not one single Senator who voted for this bill had read it."

 This should trouble every American. I mean, if Senators aren’t reading a bill that will pretty much impact every single working American, what else aren’t they reading? An important question to ponder, it seems. Still, this isn’t the first time members of Congress have passed sweeping legislation without understanding the details of a bill, let alone the consequences of voting “aye.” Nancy Pelosi infamously said in 2010 we need to pass Obamacare to “find out what is in it.” Just look at how that turned out. Is it really surprising, then, that about half the country is not feeling optimistic about the future, and thus probably believes that the American Century has already come and gone? An exceedingly chilling thought, if you ask me.

Above all, we need leadership in Washington, something this Congress -- as well as the last one -- seems incapable of providing.

Read more: http://goo.gl/jfC7C

BREITBART
Inside the Conservative Rebellion Against John Boehner
by Matthew Boyle
January 3, 2012

House Speaker John Boehner barely held onto his job atop Congress’ lower chamber on Thursday. Just how close a call Boehner had is now becoming clear.

Nine House conservatives voted for somebody other than Boehner, two abstained from voting and one voted “present.” That total of 12 Republicans who didn’t support Boehner was a stone’s throw from the required 17 to force a second ballot election – at which point several more Republican members were slated to back a competitor to Boehner’s, who would unite the party behind him or her.

Politico has reported the original list of members possibly considering defection from Boehner was longer and included Reps. Steve King of Iowa, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Steve Fincher and Scott DesJarlais, both of Tennessee.

Politico uncovered this list because Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp “sat on the House floor during the speaker vote brandishing an iPad” with a message “displayed on the screen ticking off members of the House Republican Conference he hoped would oppose the sitting speaker.”

The title of the email message was reportedly: “You would be fired if this goes out.”

Breitbart News has confirmed that the following members were considering voting against Boehner retaining his speakership as well: Reps. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Sam Graves of Missouri, Steve Southerland of Florida, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, David Schweikert of Arizona, Arkansas freshman Tom Cotton and Brett Guthrie of Kentucky.

Breitbart News also learned that outgoing House GOP conference chairman Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling was considering opposing Boehner. Boehner recently named Hensarling to be the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in the next Congress.

All in all, there were more than 20 House Republicans who were considering unseat Boehner. Many of these members bailed on the movement at the last minute on the House floor.

There did appear to be at one point a chance Boehner wouldn’t regain his position during the happenings on the House floor. The Clerk of the House had reached the end of her list of names to call when Boehner reached 216 votes – he needed 217 to win re-election. As the National Review’s Washington, D.C., editor Robert Costa noted on Twitter, there were 17 Republican members either not voting, voting present or voting for someone other than Boehner. “So: In short, we were over 17 for a minute, looking at 2nd ballot, when the conservatives come to floor, save Boehner from 2nd ballot,” Costa wrote.

Then, as Costa notes, Bachmann, Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn and New Jersey’s Scott Garrett came back to the floor – after ignoring their names being called the first time during the alphabetical roll call – and voted for Boehner.

“Boehner is fine, people/ He will be reelected. Blackburn, Bachmann, and Garrett saved him,” Costa said of those conservatives saving Boehner. “What a story. What a story.”

Read more: http://goo.gl/0BcTK

December 14, 2012

 

NEWSMAX
Bernanke: Fiscal Cliff Already Hurting Economy
by the Associated Press
December 13. 2012

The U.S. economy is already being hurt by the "fiscal cliff" standoff in Washington, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday. But Bernanke said the Fed believes the crisis will be resolved without significant long-term damage.

The steep tax increases and spending cuts can be avoided with a successful budget deal, Bernanke said during a news conference after the Fed's final meeting of the year. The Fed's latest forecasts for stronger economic growth next year and slightly lower unemployment assume that happens.

Still, Bernanke said the uncertainty surrounding the resolution is already affecting consumer and business confidence. And it has led businesses to cut back on investment.

"Clearly the fiscal cliff is having effects on the economy," Bernanke said.

Bernanke said the most helpful thing that Congress and the Obama administration can do is resolve the issue quickly.

"I'm hoping that Congress will do the right thing on the fiscal cliff," Bernanke said. "There is a problem with kicking the can down the road."

Bernanke repeated his belief that if the scheduled tax hikes and spending cuts do take effect in January, they will have a significantly adverse effect on the economy, regardless of what the Fed might do.

"We cannot offset the full impact of the fiscal cliff. It's just too big," Bernanke said.

Still, the Fed took more steps Wednesday to try and help boost economic growth and lower unemployment.

After the meeting, the Fed said it would keep its key short-term interest rate near zero as long as unemployment remains above 6.5 percent and inflation stays tame. It was the first time the Fed had linked future rate increases to specific economic markers.

And in an effort to drive unemployment lower, the Fed said it will spend a total of $85 billion a month to sustain an aggressive drive to keep long-term interest rates low.

Keeping rates low encourages more borrowing and spending, which drives economic growth.

At the news conference, Bernanke said changes in the purchases will be determined by how the economy performs.

He said the Fed expects to keep purchasing bonds to support economic growth "until we see substantial improvement in the labor market."

But if the committee determines that the risks of increasing the Fed's balance sheet begin to outweigh the benefits, the purchase program will be modified, he said.

Read more: http://goo.gl/UhGdb

BREITBART
Exclusive-DeMint: Heritage to Audit Campaign, Republicans 'Amateurish'
by Mike Flynn
December 13, 2012

This afternoon, Breitbart News sat down with Sen. Jim DeMint, in advance of his exit from the Senate to take the reigns at the Heritage Foundation. Our conversation primarily focused on the future of the conservative movement and the immediate talks surrounding the "fiscal cliff." But, one particular exchange was unexpected. Breitbart News asked Sen. DeMint about the newly announced 5-member panel to examine or "audit" the recent campaign and the Republican Party's outreach and messaging. His answer was a surprise:

I'll see what they do, but we're going to do that [auditing the campaign] at Heritage and we're not just going to do an analysis of other pols. We're going to go out and do our own research. I know you can't just ask people what they think, unless you give them cues. Like, what do you think of the word conservative. You can ask them if they call themselves conservative or not. 40% call themselves conservative, but you don't know what the other 60% think about it. They may not like the word, but they may be conservatives.

I just see, looking at the political handling from the Republican side is so amateurish compared to even what I was doing in marketing fifteen years ago, before I came to Congress. And the ability is there to be so much more sophisticated in targeting markets, segmenting and communicating with them individually.

The Republican Party used to be very good at targeting voters. We asked the Senator what he thinks happened to the party's ability to do this well:

Well, I think we tend to put political people into positions where we should have CEOs who know how to run things. When you're running a big organization its not the time for red meat for the grass roots. Its the time to make good people around you with good data. And, there are some groups out there beginning to do that...the expertise is out there.

Yes, it is out there. The work that the Republican Party used to do well is now being done by outside conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, American Majority and Heritage Action. With just a fraction of the budget the Party commands, groups like these are building an energized infrastructure of grass roots activists.

Talking to DeMint, its clear he wants to aggressively build out this infrastructure, building an almost alternative structure to the GOP. If he succeeds, the question of whether or not the RNC can re-energize itself may be irrelevant.

Read more: http://goo.gl/GSFUP

THE NATIONAL REVIEW

Return to Federalism - Conservatives need to stop playing a game rigged against them.
by Jonah Goldberg
December 14, 2012

To understand why Republicans have a “branding problem,” you first need to understand how the system is rigged against conservatives.

Such is the schizophrenic dysfunction of our politics: We constantly demand “conviction” politicians who will “do what’s right” and then condemn them, often in the same breath, for being unwilling to put aside their conviction and their sense of what’s right.

But such condemnation does not fall equally on conservatives and progressives alike. For the progressive’s principle is, at its core, more. Do more. Spend more. Spend more doing more. Any compromise of progressive principle in this regard is seen as “pragmatic.” Hence, the progressive’s heart is always in the right place.

The conservative, however, who says the federal government is not the right tool to fix the problem at hand, or that it is not Washington’s job to fix said problem, or that such a problem is itself not fixable and taking money from taxpayers to try is despotic folly: This conservative’s heart is never in the right place.

In other words, the progressive wins entirely on the principled question of direction. The conservative (or libertarian) loses entirely on principle but gets concessions on how fast we’ll go in the wrong direction. The progressive says, “Let’s move to Mars.” The conservative says, “Earth is fine.” They compromise by moving to the moon. And, before the first lunar dawn, the progressives start agitating about how Mars would be so much better.

When the classical-liberal philosopher Friedrich Hayek famously said that he couldn’t call himself a conservative because “It has . . . invariably been the fate of conservatism to be dragged along a path not of its own choosing,” he had this dynamic in mind, and you can see it on full display as progressives respond to the unfolding disaster of Obamacare by arguing for a single-payer system.

This gets to the heart of why the Republican “brand” is in such terrible shape. Over the 20th century, progressives erected a system and culture where the government in Washington is the agency of first and last resort for all of our problems. When government is expected to say yes to everything, electing the Party of No makes as much sense as hiring a priest to run a brothel.

So what is the answer? Many conservatives argue that what the GOP needs to do is start saying “yes” to things. This was the idea behind George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism. Americans want an activist government, so conservatives should find things they can be activist about, too. If the government is going to meddle, it might as well meddle in conservative ways.

While individual policies may be advisable, as a general proposition I think this is the wrong way to go. Not only does this do violence to the constitutional order conservatives are supposed to conserve, it forever puts the Right in a bidding war with the Left about what government can and should do. Conservatives will lose that fight — and possibly their souls in the process.

What’s the alternative? Well, if the game is rigged against you, continuing to play the game is the very definition of idiocy. You have to change the rules.

My own view is that conservatives should recommit themselves to federalism and states’ rights. The party of Lincoln should protect core civil rights, but beyond that, states and localities should be given as much freedom as they can handle. If California wants to become Sweden with better weather, let it. If Texas wants to become Singapore on the Rio Grande, great, go for it. And the same principle goes for cities and towns within those states.

Of course, conservatives already say they believe in federalism, but they rarely demonstrate it save when convenient. Which brings me back to the question of fidelity to principle. In principle, Republicans should look at the monumental clutter in Washington like a boat with too much ballast to stay afloat: When in doubt, throw it overboard.

In practice, Republicans should be more strategic and discriminating. That means taking positions that are right on policy, but also, when possible, highlighting issues that run counter to the (unfair) caricature of Republicans as prudish moneybags. Personally, I’d start with federal marijuana laws. The tide has turned on pot, and states are going to keep legalizing it. Why should Washington stand in their way? The beauty of federalism is that you don’t have to condone legalization in one state or prohibition in another. It’s just not Washington’s fight.

This can’t happen overnight, but the system didn’t get rigged overnight either.

Read more: http://goo.gl/qI4qf

December 11, 2012

NEWSMAX 
Fiscal Cliff Deadline May Come Sooner Than Expected
by Stephen Feller 
December 10, 2012 

While the tax increases and spending cuts of the fiscal cliff don’t kick in until Jan. 1, if Congress wants to do something to stop the country from going over the cliff they’ll need to make a deal and get it passed much sooner than that.

Congress will recess for the holidays on Dec. 21, so President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner have until Dec. 15 to reach a deal, so that legislation can be written and printed with enough time for it to be read and voted on before the break, reported NBC News.

On Jan. 1, the Bush-era tax cuts are set to automatically expire for all income levels and about $110 billion in cuts to the Pentagon budget will begin to be phased in unless Congress passes legislation to override them.

Congress has made a habit during the last few years of waiting until the last possible second to make deals when faced with the threat of extreme calamity. Debates and resulting legislation on tax cut extensions, the debt ceiling debate, and the payroll tax holiday are clear examples of this since 2010.

"The Congress doesn't work on the clock; it works on the calendar," Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri told Reuters. "There is just that required moment when something has to happen because you've run out of time. [In the meantime] there is a desire to maximize your negotiating position until you realize you don't have any room any more to negotiate. It almost invariably works that way."

Obama and Boehner met Sunday at the White House in a private meeting that both agreed not to discuss. The meeting comes days after reports that the two leaders had failed to discuss the cliff last week or speak at all to one another at the White House Christmas party they both attended on Oct. 5.

The money-saving and revenue-generating provisions were put in place by Congress with approval of the Budget Control Act of 2011. The act provided for a super-committee to find areas of the budget that could be slashed with Congressional approval or risk having the automatic cuts kick in. 

After much discussion of the fiscal cliff in the presidential and congressional races, Congress did not start working on a solution until Obama was re-elected.

Negotiations have stalled on Democratic demands that taxes be increased back to Clinton-era levels for the top 2 percent of earners, while Republicans would prefer to reduce spending and keep tax rates unchanged.

In the last week or two, however, some Republicans have walked back their position that nobody’s taxes should go up. 

"There is a growing group of folks looking at this and realizing that we don't have a lot of cards as it relates to the tax issue before year end," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said on "Fox News Sunday."

If Republicans decide to go with Democratic efforts to raise taxes, Corker added, "the focus then shifts to entitlements and maybe it puts us in a place where we actually can do something that really saves the nation."

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REAL CLEAR POLITICS

Taxing the Poor

by Thomas Sowell

December 11, 2012

With all the talk about taxing the rich, we hear very little talk about taxing the poor. Yet the marginal tax rate on someone living in poverty can sometimes be higher than the marginal tax rate on millionaires.

While it is true that nearly half the households in the country pay no income tax at all, the apparently simple word "tax" has many complications that can be a challenge for even professional economists to untangle.

If you define a tax as only those things that the government chooses to call a tax, you get a radically different picture from what you get when you say, "If it looks like a tax, acts like a tax and takes away your resources like a tax, then it's a tax."

One of the biggest, and one of the oldest, taxes in this latter sense is inflation. Governments have stolen their people's resources this way, not just for centuries, but for thousands of years.

Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life's savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all. The Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920s had thousands of printing presses turning out vast amounts of money, which the government could then spend to pay for whatever it wanted to pay for.

Of course, prices skyrocketed with vastly more money in circulation. Many people's life savings would not buy a loaf of bread. For all practical purposes, they had been robbed, big time.

A rising demagogue coined the phrase "starving billionaires," because even a billion Deutschmarks was not enough to feed your family. That demagogue was Adolf Hitler, and the public's loss of faith in their irresponsible government may well have contributed toward his Nazi movement's growth.

Most inflation does not reach that level, but the government can quietly steal a lot of your wealth with much lower rates of inflation. For example a $100 bill at the end of the 20th century would buy less than a $20 bill would buy in 1960.

If you put $1,000 in your piggy bank in 1960 and took it out to spend in 2000, you would discover that your money had, over time, lost 80 percent of its value.

Despite all the political rhetoric today about how nobody's taxes will be raised, except for "the rich," inflation transfers a percentage of everybody's wealth to a government that expands the money supply. Moreover, inflation takes the same percentage from the poorest person in the country as it does from the richest.

That's not all. Income taxes only transfer money from your current income to the government, but it does not touch whatever money you may have saved over the years. With inflation, the government takes the same cut out of both.

It is bad enough when the poorest have to turn over the same share of their assets to the government as the richest do, but it is grotesque when the government puts a bigger bite on the poorest. This can happen because the rich can more easily convert their assets from money into things like real estate, gold or other assets whose value rises with inflation. But a welfare mother is unlikely to be able to buy real estate or gold. She can put a few dollars aside in a jar somewhere. But wherever she may hide it, inflation can steal value from it without having to lay a hand on it.

No wonder the Federal Reserve uses fancy words like "quantitative easing," instead of saying in plain English that they are essentially just printing more money.

The biggest and most deadly "tax" rate on the poor comes from a loss of various welfare state benefits-- food stamps, housing subsidies and the like-- if their income goes up.

Someone who is trying to climb out of poverty by working their way up can easily reach a point where a $10,000 increase in pay can cost them $15,000 in lost benefits that they no longer qualify for. That amounts to a marginal tax rate of 150 percent-- far more than millionaires pay. Some government policies help some people at the expense of other people. But some policies can hurt welfare recipients, the taxpayers and others, all at the same time, even though in different ways.

Why? Because we are too easily impressed by lofty political rhetoric and too little interested in the reality behind the words. 

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