Religious Liberty Is Part Of Our Constitution

The following is a June 29th press release from Liberty Council:

ASHEVILLE, NC – The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals handed North Carolina magistrates a huge victory by ruling that the plaintiffs who opposed their religious liberty opt out of same-sex “marriage” lacked standing to challenge the law.

Liberty Counsel represented, among others, Magistrate Brenda Bumgarner, who has an excellent record during her 10 years of service as a magistrate, and who sought a religious opt out of performing “marriages” for same-sex couples. Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief that argued that SB 2 is not only constitutionally permissible but actually required for magistrates and judges. SB 2 states: “Every magistrate has the right to recuse from performing all lawful marriages under this Chapter based upon any sincerely held religious objection.”

In 2015, Liberty Counsel filed suit on behalf of magistrates seeking accommodation for their religious convictions regarding same-sex “marriage.” The state house and senate passed SB 2 granting an accommodation, and both houses later overrode the governor’s veto. Liberty Counsel dismissed its suit, but then the new law was challenged by those who want to force magistrates to violate their religious convictions and consciences.

“We celebrate this victory for North Carolina magistrates who have the constitutional right to follow their conscience and rights to free exercise without fear of punishment,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel. “The LGBT agenda seeks to steamroll over the conscience of everyone, including those who serve in the court system who believes in natural marriage. We were proud to defend Magistrate Brenda Bumgarner and others in this case as it sets a precedent and has an effect on all judges and their sincerely held religious beliefs,” said Staver.

Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.

If homosexuals want to get married, that is not my concern. If gay marriage is legal, then let them get married. However, I don’t believe anyone who holds a Biblical view on homosexuality should be forced to condone or participate in that marriage in any way. I would also like to note that with all the efforts to force Christians to participate in gay marriages–bake cakes, take pictures, provide pastors, settings, or churches, etc., the same effort has not been made to include the Islamic community in this acceptance of homosexuality, Considering the fact that being a homosexual can result in death in an Islamic country, and being a homosexual in America is barely noteworthy, I find that interesting.

Taking A Close Look At Voter Fraud

The Washington Examiner posted an article today about President Trump’s newly formed Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The Commission is asking states to turn over all publicly available voter roll data. That’s a start.

As those of you who regularly read this blog, the North Carolina election has been scrutinized closely by Major Dave, who has a channel on YouTube chronicling the results of his research.

This is one of his videos:

It is a rather long video, but if you watch it, you can see the detailed research needed to examine an election for evidence of fraud.

The Washington Examiner article reports:

In the letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 secretaries of state, the commission’s vice chairman — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — requests the full names of all registered voters, their addresses, dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, voting history and other personal information.

A further quote from the article indicates that there will be some push back on the results of the Commission:

Vanita Gupta, the former head of the Department of Justice‘s Civil Rights Division, said on Twitter Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence, who serves as the commission’s chairman, “are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple.”

If that refers to the suppression of votes from illegal voters, I am all for it.

Too Close To Home

We lost a family member this week due to drug addiction. She wasn’t particularly young, but she was too young to die. Opioid addiction is becoming a major problem in America, and it is time to take a good look at how to address the present problem and take action to prevent future problems. Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennet recently made some comments on the subject. His comments were posted today at The Daily Signal.

Here are a few of his comments:

For example, nearly 70 percent of our nation’s opioid deaths do not come via prescription abuse. In 2015, there were 33,091 opioid overdose deaths. Heroin deaths constituted 12,990 of those deaths. Synthetic opioids (mostly illegal fentanyl) constituted another 9,580 deaths.

The main problem today, and the growth for tomorrow, is illegal opioids such as heroin, illegal fentanyl, and a hundred other synthetics, not legal drugs used illegally or in ways not as prescribed.

If we are going to tackle the opioid issue head-on, we must take illegal drugs head-on, with strategies aimed at better border enforcement, better monitoring of international mail services, and a crackdown on cartel activity, both here in America and in source countries.

Second, most of the talk and money spent on our current crisis is on treatment, recovery, and urgent overdose reversal. All are important. But simply improving access to treatment is not enough. We need to improve engagement in treatment, reduce dropout, and address the far too common outcome of relapse with sustained recovery—meaning no use of alcohol, marijuana, or other drugs.

One of the most successful drug treatment programs in America is Teen Challenge. They have a program for both men and women that is Christ-centered.

Wikipedia reports the following about Teen Challenge:

Aaron Bicknese tracked down 59 former Teen Challenge students in 1995, in order to compare them with a similar group of addicts who had spent one or two months in a hospital rehabilitation program. His results, part of his PhD dissertation, were published in “The Teen Challenge Drug Treatment Program in Comparative Perspective” [13]

Bicknese found that Teen Challenge graduates reported returning to drug use less often than the hospital program graduates. His results also showed that Teen Challenge graduates were far more likely to be employed, with 18 of the 59 working at Teen Challenge itself, which relies in part on former clients to run the program.

Much of these results were to Teen Challenge’s benefit, and the high success rates (up to 86%) he found have been quoted in numerous Teen Challenge and Christian Counseling websites.

There are other successful programs, but this is the one I am familiar with and the one that I trust.

Secretary Bennett talks about prevention:

But the main unaddressed nature of the opioid crisis is focus and energy on prevention.

Unlike many other chronic diseases, addiction is entirely preventable. Too few are talking about or spending time on stopping the problem before it starts. We must save every life we can, but to focus exclusively on treatment and recovery at the expense of prevention is like building prosthetic limb stores on shark-infested beachfronts. We need to warn people not to swim in those waters and we need to kill the predatory sharks.

We need look only to the recent past as a guide for today. We had major drug problems in this country in the late 1970s and 1980s. The nation rolled up its sleeves, went to work, talked about it, taught about it, and reversed it—and by 1992 we had cut drug use in half, and even more in some age groups.

But it took a national, kitchen sink strategy: Hollywood got involved, professional athletics got involved, and even presidents talked about it and gave speeches on it. Law enforcement was key, but so was direct messaging to the public at large.

That means getting serious about the goal for youth of no use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or other drugs. That is where 90 percent of addiction starts. This clear prevention message needs to come from parents, educators, political leaders, the entertainment industry, and health care professionals—just as in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

We are losing too many good people to addiction. It is time to stand together as a nation and make drug use culturally unacceptable. That message hit home this past week.

A New Degree Of Absurdity

The following video was posted on YouTube on Monday:

Here we have CNN interviewing a person who makes money by resettling refugees into America, an executive with Sesame Street Workshop and Elmo. We need to understand that independent organizations are paid by the government according to how many refugees they bring in. Although there are some caring people in these organizations, a lot of what goes on is related to the money involved. It is a shame that CNN included a muppet on the panel rather than a person who would talk honestly about the profit involved for private agencies in bringing refugees to America and the risk for Americans.. The pictures of the refugees I have seen are not of women and children fleeing war–they are of military-aged men. We have no way of knowing whether they are coming here as refugees or as an undercover army. This question is validated by what we have seen in Sweden, Germany, and France. Women in these countries no longer feel safe being out alone. I don’t want to see that come here.

CNN has gotten so desperate that it is interviewing muppets. Good grief.

The Truth About The Current Healthcare Bill

Yesterday the Independent Journal Review posted an article about some of the lies we are being told about the current healthcare bill. I don’t support the current bill, but I resent the fact that lies are being used in an attempt to discredit it.

The article explains how the numbers are being twisted:

The current repeal and replace bill is a bad bill. ObamaCare needs to be fully repealed and the government needs to get out of health insurance. Let the people who understand actuary tables run healthcare. The only provision the government needs to make is to insure that high-risk pools are set up (and made affordable) for the people that need them. Healthcare should be available across state lines, tort reform is needed, and tax credits given to lower-income families to help pay for insurance. Otherwise, the government needs to let the free market to work.

 

Remember The Promise

“If you give us the House, we will repeal ObamaCare. If you give us the Senate, we will repeal ObamaCare. If you give us the White House, we will repeal ObamaCare.” How about you actually keep your promise and vote to REPEAL ObamaCare. Then you can work to replace it! Otherwise, let’s just throw the whole group out, get a new group, and keep doing that until ObamaCare is repealed.

Yesterday The Federalist Papers posted an article that may be an indication that I am not the only voter who feels that way.

The article states:

It was at a ritzy gathering in a Rocky Mountain resort over the weekend that major GOP donors aligned with the Koch brothers made their concerns known.

Texas GOP donor Doug Deason said he and ten other big Dallas donors are withholding any contributions to the Republican Party until they can actually get something accomplished.

Until then, his “Dallas piggy bank” is closed for business, LifeZette reports. Specifically, Deason wants to see movement on replacing Obamacare and significant health care reform.

“Get Obamacare repealed and replaced, get tax reform passed,” Deason said, according to the Associated Press. “You control the Senate. You control the House. You have the presidency. There’s no reason you can’t get this done. Get it done and we’ll open it back up.”

Deason said he has already said no to two prominent House members – both aligned with the so-called “Freedom Caucus.” Reps. Mark Meadows, from North Carolina and Ohio’s Jim Jordan asked him to hold a fundraiser and he turned them down.

“I said, ‘No, I’m not going to because we’re closing the checkbook until you get some things done,’” Deason said, adding that he even pressured two dozen other Texas-based donors to refuse to partner with them on the fundraiser.

This may be the only way to get things accomplished–cut off the donation money from the big donors. The danger in that is that those of us who are conservatives may not always be on the same page as the big donors.

I have reached the conclusion that ObamaCare may be here to stay. If that is in fact the case, the Democrats are no longer the only ones to blame. The lack of spine in the Republican Party and the desire to thwart Trump by the Washington establishment will also be responsible for the end of private healthcare in America.

Another Step In The Right Direction

In October 2013, I posted an article about private property rights in America. The article dealt with something the Environmental Protection Agency was doing at the time:

...the “Water Body Connectivity Report” – that would remove the limiting word “navigable” from “navigable waters of the United States” and replace it with “connectivity of streams and wetlands to downstream waters” as the test for Clean Water Act regulatory authority.

…If approved, the new rule would give EPA unprecedented power over private property across the nation, gobbling up everything near seasonal streams, isolated wetlands, prairie potholes, and almost anything that occasionally gets wet.

The new rule went into effect, and if you had a mud puddle on your property, you might have a problem exercising your rights as a land owner.

Well, the Trump Administration is changing that law.

The Daily Caller is reporting today that the Trump Administration will rescind the regulation that includes mud puddles in the Clean Water Act.

The article reports:

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Tuesday the agency would repeal the Clean Water Rule, or the “waters of the United States” rule (WOTUS), which was finalized by the Obama administration in 2015.

“We are taking significant action to return power to the states and provide regulatory certainty to our nation’s farmers and businesses,” Pruitt said in a statement.

In February, President Donald Trump ordered EPA to review WOTUS and, if necessary, replace it with a rule that interprets the term “navigable waters” in a “manner consistent with the opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia in Rapanos v. United States.”

This is a welcome move.

Fake News Abounds About The Repeal/Replace ObamaCare Bill

I have stated before that I do not support the current bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare. I believe that what we need is straight repeal. Then we need to teach Congress about the free market and let them apply those principles to healthcare and health insurance.

On Friday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the current repeal-replacement bill on ObamaCare.

Here are some observations from the article:

Look at any story about the Senate health bill, and you’ll see words like those describe its supposed cuts to Medicaid. What if we told you there are no such cuts?

First, the Senate bill doesn’t change Medicaid at all for three years. That means spending on the program will continue to grow, just as it is slated to now — at an annual 5% clip — until 2021.

What does that mean in dollar terms? Under the Senate’s “shredding” reform, Medicaid’s budget in 2021 will be $85 billion bigger than it is this year, and $209 billion (or 79%) bigger than it was in 2013.

What about after that? Under the Senate plan, there’d be a three-year transition to a new way of financing Medicaid.

And then, starting in 2025 federal Medicaid spending would be capped each year, with the cap set to grow at the overall inflation rate.

If you plot annual spending out over the next 10 years, what you see is that spending is never actually cut — at least not in the sense that most people think of a spending cut. Instead, it would grow at a slightly slower rate.

Even under the more restrictive House bill, Medicaid’s budget would still climb 20% over the next decade. So growth will end up higher still under the more generous Senate version.

This is the usual game that Congress and the media play with budget issues–only in Washington could a 5% increase be considered a cut!

The article explains the problems with Medicaid:

As a result, Medicaid now consumes about 20% of state general fund spending — and it’s rising. Next year, the 32 states that expanded Medicaid under ObamaCare will see their costs climb by an additional $9 billion.

Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office investigation found that improper payments accounted for more than 10% of all Medicaid spending last year.

And for all this, Medicaid grossly underpays doctors and provides lousy care to many of its enrollees. In California, for example, the Medicaid expansion resulted in a flood of patients into emergency rooms because they can’t find a doctor willing to treat them.

In short, Medicaid is in dire trouble, and the Senate and House bills offer smart, prudent — and relatively modest — fixes.

Clean up the fraud, and encourage people to actually get jobs that will help them obtain medical insurance. We need less people riding in the wagon and more people pulling the wagon.

Just Repeal–Don’t Replace

The current ObamaCare bill is rapidly collapsing. It was designed that way. The plan was that Hillary Clinton would get elected and we would move to single-payer (totally government-controlled) healthcare. The fact that Donald Trump got elected and isn’t playing the Washington establishment’s games is a problem for those that want government healthcare. That is one of the reasons they are trying so hard to demonize him and get rid of him.

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article yesterday about the current state of ObamaCare.

The article reports:

Roughly 41 percent of counties in the United States could have only one insurer participating on the Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, according to a new analysis from Avalere Health.

This percentage is up from the lack of participation in 2017, when roughly one-third of counties, or 33 percent, had only one insurer participating on the exchanges.

According to their count, there will be 47 counties that will have no insurer participating on the exchange leaving about 34,000 consumers with no choice.

…”In addition to the cost of premiums, insurer decisions around whether or not to offer plans in the exchanges will impact shoppers,” said Caroline Pearson, senior vice president of the group. “Consumers will see fewer choices on the exchange again in 2018, with some counties at risk of having no options.”

This is not what success looks like. ObamaCare has been a failure. The best replacement would be to let the free market rule. Tax credits could be used to help lower income people afford health insurance, but the free market would make healthcare more affordable for everyone.

There are a few principles that would reform healthcare in a way that would benefit everyone–portability across state lines, tort reform, high risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions, and letting the companies with the actuary tables determine rates. The government does not have a stellar record when it comes to running things. There are very few government programs that are not wasteful, inefficient, and expensive. We don’t need another government money pit. It’s time to repeal ObamaCare. Then the debate on its replacement can begin.

Making Americans Safer

The Daily Caller posted an article today stating that the Supreme Court will review the lower court decisions blocking President Trump’s temporary travel ban on people from terrorist countries. Until the Supreme Court hears the case, the travel ban will be in effect.

The article explains exactly what the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case means:

“We grant the government’s applications to stay the injunctions, to the extent the injunctions prevent enforcement of 2(c) with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States.”

Two classes of foreign national from the six countries named in the order may still enter the United States; aliens with relatives in America, or individuals with a meaningful connection to corporate entities and educational institutions in the United States will not be affected by the order.

“To prevent the government from pursuing that objective by enforcing 2(c) against foreign nationals unconnected to the United States would appreciably injure its interests, without alleviating obvious hardship to anyone else,” the Court wrote.

The Court also will allow the order’s ban on refugee entry to take effect, with the same exceptions it provided for the travel ban.

As such, most of the president’s order will take effect within the next few days.

Hopefully, this will limit the ability of terrorists to carry out the same type of attacks we have seen in England and Europe recently.

Circular Logic Used To Justify Breaking The Law

The following post is based on two articles–one from The New York Post yesterday and one from Scott Johnson at Power Line Blog today.

The New York Post article states that the company Fusion GPS (the company that commissioned the Russian intelligence dossier on then candidate Trump) has blocked Congressional investigators from looking at its connection to the Democratic Party.

The article at The New York Post reports:

Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democrat ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.

More, federal records show a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign.

In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.

Property records show that in June 2016, as Clinton allies bankrolled Fusion GPS, Fritsch bought a six-bedroom, five-bathroom home in Bethesda, Md., for $2.3 million.

Fritsch did not respond to requests for comment. A lawyer for Fusion GPS said the firm’s work is confidential.

Sources say Fusion GPS had its own interest, beyond those of its clients, in promulgating negative gossip about Trump.

Why is this important? Because the first FISA request to tap the Trump campaign was turned down. The second was approved after this dossier was leaked.

The Power Line article explains:

I remain convinced that the FISA warrants that were twice sought to target associates of Trump (and possibly Trump himself) are the key to blowing up the Russia narrative. As Andy McCarthy regularly points out, it was all done under the cloak of a counterintelligence (CI) investigation–and FISA techniques are at the heart of any CI investigation. Any FISA application encapsulates most of the predication for the investigation itself, and without FISA techniques the investigation likely goes nowhere. In a CI investigation focused on a foreign power, that’s not a problem since FISA on the foreign power (say, Russia) is already in place–all that needs to be done is to identify a foreign national as the agent of that power (Russia) and, presto, you get FISA coverage of anything that’s not already covered.

Where it becomes an acute problem is when the CI investigation is a ruse to cover domestic spying on political opponents. In that case FISA on the foreign power is of no use–not if, as appears to be the case, there was no significant contact or collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. If, in fact, the real target was Trump himself–and we are told that Trump himself was named in the rejected July 2016 FISA application–you need to gin up a FISA on someone who really IS in contact with Trump, no matter how far-fetched the reasoning. Carter Page? He’ll do in a pinch, right?

The Power Line article concludes with an observation on the changed culture of the FBI:

With respect to possible corruption of the FBI: I regret to say that the process began in earnest under Bush, who appointed Mueller. An acquaintance recently complained that the Bureau was no longer what it used to be, or maybe never had been. I maintained that the institutional culture was changed through the Legal Counsel Division. That’s how it always work in America, isn’t it? If you want to enforce Liberal/PC norms, you change the lawyers.

Formerly, the Bureau’s legal division, and most top administrations positions, was/were staffed with Special Agents who were lawyers. Under Mueller, outsiders were increasingly brought in, including to Legal Counsel Division. For example: Andrew Weissman, who twice did stints at the FBI, and is now a top guy on Mueller’s Special Counsel team. That kind of back and forth between the FBI and private practice and/or other agencies was previously absolutely unheard of. And the choice tells you pretty much all you need to know about Mueller…

It is time to fire the special prosecutor and his staff. They truly are on a witch hunt which was planned before President Trump was elected. If they are successful, then the votes of the American people are worthless–the bureaucrats in Washington have won.

Why Most Americans Don’t Trust Politicians

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article which illustrates why Americans don’t trust politicians.

The article reports:

In a statement delivered on the Senate floor, Grassley (Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA)) said that in March, former FBI Director James Comey had told him, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and the group of Senate and House members known as the “Gang of Eight” that the president was not under investigation.

But Schumer, who is part of the Gang of Eight, continued to tell the media Trump was under investigation, Grassley said.

 “That helped feed the media hysteria,” he said. “The Minority Leader even tried to say that the Senate shouldn’t vote on the Supreme Court nomination because the president was under investigation. And the whole time, he knew it wasn’t true.”

In once instance, Schumer told reporters on March 21, “There is a cloud now hanging over the head of the president, and while that’s happening, to have a lifetime appointment made by this president seems very unseemly and there ought to be a delay.”

Grassley said it was not until months later that it came to light, on May 12, when Trump revealed in a letter firing Comey that the FBI director had told him three times he was not under investigation.

Grassley also said he had asked Comey to come out and tell the public Trump was not under investigation, but he had refused to do so over a hypothetical situation where he might have to correct the record.

Now, because some of our so-called leaders in Washington refused to be honest, we have a special prosecutor spending millions of taxpayer money investigating something that never happened. Worse than that, the special prosecutor has put together a team of political hacks that will pursue political interests over truth–all at taxpayers’ expense.

It truly is time to throw the bums out and replace them with people who actually care about America more than they care about political expediency.

Protecting Our Young Women

This article was posted in The Daily Caller last month. I missed it, but I am posting it now because I think it is important.

Wikipedia states:

In 1996 the Federal Prohibition of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Act made it illegal to perform FGM on minors for non-medical reasons, and in 2013 the Transport for Female Genital Mutilation Act prohibited transporting a minor out of the country for the purpose of FGM. In addition, 24 states have legislation banning FGM. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes all forms of the practice. The firstFGM conviction in the US was in 2006, when Khalid Adem, who had emigrated from Ethiopia, was sentenced to ten years after severing his two-year-old daughter’s clitoris with a pair of scissors.

Unfortunately, some of the Muslim residents of America choose to ignore the law. Last week I posted an article about some recent arrests for performing FGM. We need to remember that Muslims who believe in Sharia Law believe that it supersedes the U.S. Constitution. They do not feel bound by the federal ban on FGM.

The article in The Daily Caller reports:

The American Civil Liberties Union launched a vocal opposition this week against a Maine bill criminalizing female genital mutilation (FGM), Mainely Media reports.

Republican Rep. Heather Sirocki is sponsoring the bill, saying that it would classify performing FGM as a Class B crime in the state, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine. The bill would also punish the parent or guardian of the victim.

However, the Maine ACLU staunchly opposes the protection. ACLU spokesman Oamshri Amarasingham said that the risk of mutilation isn’t worth expanding Maine’s criminal code. The Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault also supported the ACLU, arguing that FGM is not happening in Maine.

…The bill, LD745, only criminalizes the practice on those under 18. It does not apply to adults who choose to undergo mutilation, “though it probably should,” Sirocki said. If the bill passes, Maine would be the 25th state to protect its residents against FGM.

Sirocki said that the Committee of Criminal Justice and Public Safety was divided in its support of the bill, but eventually recommended the bill favorably with a 7-5 vote. The Maine House of Representatives will first review the bill, then it will go to the members of the state senate.

FGM is a brutal practice, often done without anesthesia, that can result in serious health problems for women later on. It does not belong in America. I don’t understand why the ACLU is not protecting young women from being subjected to this practice.

 

If You Notice Extra Income On Your Tax Forms…

The Washington Times posted a story yesterday about the problem of illegal aliens using social security numbers stolen from American citizens. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released its report Thursday stating that in 2015 there were potentially 1.4 million people likely affected by the the theft of their social security numbers.

Part of the problem lies within the government bureaucracy. The article reports:

The IRS knows of 2.4 million people a year who file taxes using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which is generally given out to immigrants who aren’t authorized to work. But the IRS is not allowed to talk with Homeland Security to help agents identify who and where those taxpayers are.

The migrants file their forms with their ITINs, but the W-2 forms they submit show valid Social Security numbers that they fraudulently gave to their employer to clear an initial work authorization check.

A staggering 87 percent of forms filed online using ITINs showed income credited to a Social Security number. More than half of forms filed by paper also showed that same fraudulent behavior.

The IRS tries to mark the files of the fraud victims when electronic filings are used. But the tax agency misses about half of the victims, the inspector general said.

For paper forms, the IRS did even worse, the audit found.

The tax agency, in its official reply to the report, insisted it takes identity theft “very seriously.”

Kenneth C. Corbin, commissioner of the IRS’s wage and investment division, said it has just completed a pilot program to figure out how to notify taxpayers they’re the victims of fraud.

The inspector general submitted recommendations with his report, by the IRS says its resources are too small to implement all of those recommendations. If you will excuse a personal gripe here, the IRS had enough resources to audit me the year I made a donation to the Tea Party. Nothing on our taxes had changed, and it was the first time my husband and I had been audited in 40+ years. I think the resources to solve the problem of stolen social security numbers could be found if the desire were there.

Are The Republicans Trying To Lose Their Majority In Congress?

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can ‘throw the rascals out’ at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy” (Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966.)

It is my opinion that the above quote perfectly describes the ObamaCare repeal bill the Republicans are attempting to see to the American people.

Yesterday Reason Magazine posted an analysis of the proposed bill. We all remember the Republicans promising the voters that if we would give them the House, they would repeal ObamaCare. Then they promised the voters that if we gave them the Senate, they would repeal ObamaCare. Then they promised the voters that if we gave them the White House, they would repeal ObamaCare. Now they are trying to sell us a bill that does not repeal ObamaCare. The bill continues the bad policies that have caused so many insurance companies to opt out of ObamaCare. The bill continues the bad policies that have caused health insurance premiums to rise sharply and government expenditures on ObamaCare to skyrocket. This bill will ensure that a large number of Republican Congressmen running for office in 2018 will be voted out of office. The bill should be called the ‘give Congress back to the Democrats’ act.

The article at Reason Magazine explains:

In other words, it is exactly what critics predicted: a bill that, at least in the near term, retains weakened versions of nearly all of Obamacare’s core features while fixing few if any of the problems that Republicans say they want to fix. It is Obamacare lite—the health law that Republicans claim to oppose, but less of it. It represents a total failure of Republican policy imagination.

To understand the Senate plan, it helps to recall Obamacare’s underlying framework. The centerpiece of the law was a reform of the individual market, intended to give those who do not get coverage through work or a federal program access to subsidized, regulated coverage. The law created a new federal subsidy, based on income, for lower- and middle-income households to purchase health insurance. It set up federal rules requiring insurers to sell to all comers while limiting their ability to charge based on health history. It mandated that all individuals obtain health coverage or pay a tax penalty. And it erected a system of government-run health insurance exchanges on which consumers could purchase subsidized, regulated individual market coverage.

Those exchanges have never been fully stable as either business or policy propositions. Premiums have marched steadily upwards; last year, the price of a typical plan rose by 22 percent, and early reports show large spikes coming this year as well. The non-profit health insurance organizations that Obamacare funded have mostly shut down. Large, for-profit health insurers, meanwhile, have lost money and either scaled back their participation or dropped out entirely.

Republicans have repeatedly criticized these marketplaces for being expensive and unstable. As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who spearheaded the drafting of this bill, likes to say, “Obamacare is collapsing around us.”

Yet even more than the House plan, the Senate plan retains the essential structure of Obamacare’s individual market reforms. It would likely result in fewer people being covered, and it would not stop the destabilization of the market.

There is a correct way for Congress to deal with healthcare reform–get the government out of it, and let the free market prevail. That would mean a true repeal of ObamaCare. Unfortunately we have reached a point where neither political party truly shares the interests of the American people. The first step in the process of fixing healthcare in America should be the full repeal of ObamaCare. It was a bad bill. The second step in this process should be to make sure that Congress is covered under whatever healthcare plan they pass. That might result in a better product. The third step would be to look at the tort reform that was successful in Texas and see if it could be applied on a national level. The fourth step would be to make health insurance something that could be purchased across state lines. These four simple steps would stop the damage currently being done by ObamaCare. There are other things that could be done–tax credits that help people pay health insurance premiums, health savings accounts, etc., but these could be added later. Right now we just need full repeal.

If the current ObamaCare Lite bill proposed is not significantly altered, it should not be passed. However, what is actually happening here is that the Democrats are moving ahead with their plan for total government healthcare (single payer), which is what will magically appear when ObamaCare collapses. It is time for the Republicans to repeal ObamaCare fully. Then they can worry about how to replace it. Right now, they are simply working hard to remove themselves from office.

 

The Real Threat To The Integrity Of Our Elections

On Monday, The Washington Times posted an article about research into the number of ineligible voters who are voting in our elections.

The article reports:

Just Facts’ conclusions confront both sides in the illegal voting debate: those who say it happens a lot and those who say the problem nonexistent.

In one camp, there are groundbreaking studies by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia who attempted to compile scientifically derived illegal voting numbers using the Harvard data, called the Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

…On the other side are the professors who conducted the study and contended that “zero” noncitizens of about 18 million adults in the U.S. voted. The liberal mainstream media adopted this position and proclaimed the Old Dominion work was “debunked.”

The ODU professors, who stand by their work in the face of attacks from the left, concluded that in 2008 as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens voted.

Mr. Agresti’s analysis of the same polling data settled on much higher numbers. He estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted.

These numbers are more in line with the unverified estimates given by President Trump, who said the number of ballots cast by noncitizens was the reason he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

Last month, the president signed an executive order setting up a commission to try to find on-the-ground truth in illegal voting. Headed by Vice President Mike Pence, the panel also will look at outdated voter lists across the nation with names of dead people and multiple registrants.

For 2012, Just Facts said, 3.2 million to 5.6 million noncitizens were registered to vote and 1.2 million to 3.6 million of them voted.

There is real evidence that this is a problem:

There is hard evidence outside of polling that noncitizens do vote. Conservative activists have conducted limited investigations in Maryland and Virginia that found thousands of aliens were registered.

These inquiries, such as comparing noncitizen jury pool rejections to voter rolls, captured just a snapshot. But conservatives say they show there is a much broader problem that a comprehensive probe by the Pence commission could uncover.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, which fights voter fraud, released one of its most comprehensive reports last month.

Its investigation found that Virginia removed more than 5,500 noncitizens from voter lists, including 1,852 people who had cast more than 7,000 ballots. The people volunteered their status, most likely when acquiring driver’s licenses. The Public Interest Legal Foundation said there are likely many more illegal voters on Virginia’s rolls who have never admitted to being noncitizens.

Every vote cast by a noncitizen cancels out the vote of a citizen. It is time for voter identification and proof of citizenship before people can register to vote.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. There are problems with our voter integrity, and those problems have nothing to do with Russia.

While Congress Was Flashing A Shiny Object Over Here…

Sleight of hand is something I used to associate with magicians and people who do card tricks. Lately I associate it with politicians in Washington.

On Tuesday, Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial listing the scandals that Congress is not investigating. Oddly enough, there is more concrete, obvious evidence easily visible in the scandals they are ignoring than in the scandals they choose to investigate.

Some highlights from the editorial:

“Prosecutors, Congress, and the public will want to know when the National Security Council shipped off the records about potential intelligence abuses by Susan Rice and others in the Obama White House to the memory hole of the Obama Presidential Library,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

Fitton fittingly left journalists off his list of those who will want to know about this, since the latest weird twist in this story garnered precious little interest among the mainstream media.

Nor did an earlier development in this case, when the House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas for information related to unmasking requests involving Rice as well as former CIA Director John Brennan, and former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Power.

These subpoenas were, Rep. Devin Nunes said, “just further escalation in the concern we have of the unmaskings of Americans by the senior leaders of the Obama administration.”

Loretta Lynch Scandal: Despite blanket coverage of James Comey‘s testimony about his firing by Trump, few noted the bombshell Comey dropped about Obama’s attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who, Comey said, pressured him to downplay the significance of the FBI‘s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s reckless handling of classified emails on her private server. Comey said Lynch told him to call it a “matter,” not an investigation.

Comey said this gave him a “queasy” feeling, since Lynch was specifically asking him to parrot the words the Clinton campaign was using to describe the FBI probe. That, on top of the Lynch’s private meeting with Bill Clinton, as well as the unusually lenient immunity deals the Justice Department cut with key witnesses in the Clinton email case, suggest Lynch had turned the Justice Department into an arm of the Clinton campaign.

…NSA Spying Scandal: In late May, Circa News published a truly bombshell report about how the National Security Agency had been conducting illegal searches on American citizens for years, “routinely violat(ing) American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts.” In addition, the administration “failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall.”

Classified documents obtained by Circa showed that “one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011.”

Circa also reported that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court blasted Obama administration officials, saying that the improper searches posed a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue” and the administration’s failure to disclose the violations amounted to an “institutional lack of candor.”

Media response? The three network news programs all ignored this report, and it got little attention by any of the other mainstream news outlets.

Under the Obama Administration, Americans were spied on because of their political beliefs. That is a trait of a tyrannical government–not a representative republic. Would that have continued if Hillary Clinton had been elected? I don’t know.

It is time Congress, the Democrats, and the media stop chasing unicorns and actually investigate the constitutional abuses that took place during the Obama Administration. If these unconstitutional actions go unpunished, we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law. Congress and the people who continually vote for the Congressmen and Congresswomen who choose to ignore these violations of the law are responsible for this loss of equal justice. Unfortunately, all of us will eventually pay the price.

I Wonder If The Protesters Know This

The Washington Free Beacon is reporting today according to a report from the Employment Policies Institute, the majority of lawmakers sponsoring legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour do not pay their interns.

The article reports:

However, the analysis conducted by the Employment Policies Institute shows that the majority of the lawmakers who have co-sponsored the measure do not pay their interns a wage at all. The study found that of the 184 lawmakers who supported the bill, 174, or 95 percent did not pay their interns.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), Rep. Betty McCollum (D., Mn.) and Rep. Robert Scott (D., Va.) pay their interns with a stipend. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) said they offer some stipends or limited financial assistance.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hi.), Sen. Mazie Hirono (D., Hi.) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) offer stipends or some assistance but they are only under certain conditions or to cover expenses like travel or housing.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.) said stipends are often available but they are not guaranteed.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt. ) is the only lawmaker who pays his interns at $12 an hour, which is still less than what the legislation demands for the private sector.

“If Democrats in Congress are passionate about raising the wage to $15, they should start by paying it to their own staffers,” said Michael Saltsman, managing director at the Institute. “It’s the height of hypocrisy to hire interns for $0 an hour, while asking private small businesses to pay $15.”

“Entry-level jobs, like unpaid internships, provide young employees with valuable experience–experience that will be difficult if not impossible to come by if the minimum wage is hiked by 107 percent,” he said.

A minimum wage job is not supposed to actually support a person–it is supposed to provide an entry into the workforce for a young person. During the time a young person works at a minimum wage job, they are expected to learn some basic workforce skills–showing up on time, being courteous to people who may not be courteous to them, showing up every day, and respecting authority. When the minimum wage is raised to a certain point, the number of jobs available to young people entering the workforce will decrease and the hours that they will be available for them to work will also decrease.

Aside from the basic economics ignored by those politicians attempting to gain votes by supporting a minimum wage, I find it highly ironic that those supporting a minimum wage are not even paying their interns.

Some Observations On The Election In Georgia Yesterday

Former Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill is credited with saying, “All politics is local.” I think that fact is partially responsible for the victory of Republican Karen Handel over Democrat Jon Ossoff in Tuesday’s special election in Georgia.

This was the most expensive U.S. House of Representatives race in American history. For those people screaming that we need to get the money out of politics, here are some numbers from an article posted at Hot Air today. As of the end of May, Republican Karen Handel had spent $3.2M. Democrat Jon Ossoff had spent $22.5M. Obviously this election was not for sale.

To add irony and a touch of chutzpah to this:

Candidate Ossoff stated in interview:

MARTIN: How do you feel about the money that’s been spent on this campaign? The Atlanta Journal Constitution published a calculation that said you and your opponent have spent or reserved over $40 million for TV and radio ads. Does that disturb you? What does it say about our political culture?

OSSOFF: The role of money in politics is a major problem and particularly the role of unchecked anonymous money. There have been super PACs in Washington who have been putting up tens of millions of dollars of attack ads in air for months now. When you have that kind of an environment, it’s necessary to raise the resources to fight back. I’m proud of the fact that my campaign has raised that money in small-dollar contributions, on average less than $50.

MARTIN: Although, it was your party that started the big spending. The Atlanta Journal Constitution also found your campaign and groups supporting it spent about $2 million more in ad spending than Handel during the runoff.

OSSOFF: Well, the overwhelming majority of money spent supporting my opponent has come from super PACs in Washington. And the overwhelming amount of money that’s been spent supporting my candidacy has come from small-dollar donors. But there’s no question that money in politics is a major problem, which is one of the reasons that we need campaign finance reform so that candidates and campaigns will spend more time talking to voters and discussing the issues and less time raising money.

Really?

On Friday, The Daily Caller reported:

Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff has set a new national record for out-of-state fundraising in his bid for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District.

Only about 3.5 percent of Ossoff’s $15 million reported fundraising total came from within Georgia, according the Atlanta Journal Constitution. More than 14 percent came from California and New York.

Here are some of my observations on the election. The mainstream media again had it wrong–they predicted a much closer race or a victory for Jon Ossoff. The money in the election was not the determining factor–the voters looked at the candidates and made their choice according to what they knew. The media has totally lost contact with the voters–they have no idea what the pulse of America is.

The picture below sums up last night:

They just don’t look happy!

Suspicions Confirmed

Sharyl Attkisson posted her interview with Congressman Jason Chaffetz at the Full Measure website. Congressman Chaffetz has resigned from Congress..

Here are a few highlights from the interview:

Sharyl: After eight and a half years on an upward trajectory in Washington DC, Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah has suddenly and quite unexpectedly, pulled himself out of the game. Some people might think this is a great time to be a Republican Chairman of an important committee because Republicans control the House, they’re the majority in the Senate, and they hold the President’s office. That means, you would think, that federal agencies can’t stonewall investigations of spending, waste, fraud, and abuse.

Jason Chaffetz: The reality is, sadly, I don’t see much difference between the cutting to photo of their middle with no heads is a little disconcerting can you pick a different sort of move? Trump administration and the Obama administration. I thought there would be this, these floodgates would open up with all the documents we wanted from the Department of State, the Department of Justice, the Pentagon. In many ways, it’s almost worse because we’re getting nothing, and that’s terribly frustrating and with all due respect, the Attorney General has not changed at all. I find him to be worse than what I saw with Loretta Lynch in terms of releasing documents and making things available. I just, that’s my experience, and that’s not what I expected.

Sharyl: What were some of the investigations that this committee was stalled on that you hoped could be picked up now, that’s not been able to happen in terms of documents not provided by federal agencies?

Jason Chaffetz: We have everything from the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which is really one of the critical things. There was the investigation into the IRS. And one that was more than 7 years old is Fast and Furious. I mean, we have been in court trying to pry those documents out of the Department of Justice and still to this day, they will not give us those documents. And at the State Department, nothing. Stone cold silence.

…Jason Chaffetz: Congress doesn’t stand up for itself. I think it’s, it’s really lost its way. They say, oh, we’ll use the power of the purse. That doesn’t work. First of all, they never do cut funding. Even getting people to come up and testify before Congress, the Obama Administration at the end of their term, they got so brazen they stopped sending people up. They just didn’t care. And, and there was no way to enforce that, and until that changes, uh the legislative branch is going to get weaker and weaker.

The interview concludes:

Jason Chaffetz: Look, first and foremost, it really is a family decision. I, I loved being engaged in the fight, but yeah there, there does, after 9, you know, 8½, 9 years, get to be a, a degree of frustration that hey, when are we going to get serious about changing these things? Because the American people, when I first started, they had Democrats who had the House and Senate in the Presidency. And that whole pendulum swung, but I’m telling you, in the first five, six months, I haven’t seen any changes. And, and that’s, that’s very frustrating, You come to that point and say, alright, it’s, it’s time for a change.

If the swamp is not drained quickly, we will lose more good congressmen like Congressman Jason Chaffetz.

 

 

What The Research Really Shows

Wattsupwiththat posted an article today about some recent climate news. Global warming is simply not living up to the expectations of the computer predictions.

The article states:

A scientific consensus has emerged among top mainstream climate scientists that “skeptics” or “lukewarmers” were not long ago derided for suggesting — there was a nearly two-decade long “hiatus” in global warming that climate models failed to accurately predict or replicate.A new paper, led by climate scientist Benjamin Santer, adds to the ever-expanding volume of “hiatus” literature embracing popular arguments advanced by skeptics, and even uses satellite temperature datasets to show reduced atmospheric warming.

More importantly, the paper discusses the failure of climate models to predict or replicate the “slowdown” in early 21st century global temperatures, which was another oft-derided skeptic observation.

The article explains:

Then, in early 2016, mainstream scientists admitted the climate model trends did not match observations — a coup for scientists like Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger who have been pointing out flaws in model predictions for years.

John Christy, who collects satellite temperature data out of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, has testified before Congress on the failure of models to predict recent global warming.

Christy’s research has shown climate models show 2.5 times more warming in the bulk atmosphere than satellites and weather balloons have observed.

Now, he and Santer seem to be on the same page — the global warming “hiatus” is real and the models didn’t see it coming.

Meanwhile, the climate is always changing. The earth’s climate has been changing since before man got here. The question is how much does the activity of man impact the climate. That is the answer we don’t have. It is always a good idea to clean up the air and water as much as possible. However, it is also a good idea to do anything possible to raise the standard of living in places where industrialization and modern sanitation has not yet taken hold. The idea behind the global warming panic was to shake down industrialized countries to give money to third-world countries run by tyrants. Very little of that money would go toward anything related to climate change and very little of that money would be used to alleviate poverty where it was sent. Now that the scientists have admitted that they don’t know why there is a hiatus in global warming, maybe we can all relax a little and go on with our lives.

Term Limits Might Help In Draining The Swamp

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the McCain Institute for International Leadership. Before I go any further, I need to say that I respect John McCain as a war hero–not because he was shot down, but because he chose to stay with his men when he had the opportunity to leave North Vietnam. However, some of his actions in the last twenty years or so are questionable at best. He has consistently aligned himself with those who oppose conservative values, and has made some really poor choices in recent years. The Daily Caller may have uncovered the reason for some of his recent behavior.

The article reports:

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in 2012 turned over nearly $9 million in unspent funds from his failed 2008 presidential campaign to a new foundation bearing his name, the McCain Institute for International Leadership.

The institute is intended to serve as a “legacy” for McCain and “is dedicated to advancing human rights, dignity, democracy and freedom.” It is a tax-exempt non-profit foundation with assets valued at $8.1 million and associated with Arizona State University.

…Critics worry that the institute’s donors and McCain’s personal leadership in the organization’s exclusive “Sedona Forum” bear an uncanny resemblance to the glitzy Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) that annually co-mingled special interests and powerful political players in alleged pay-to-play schemes.

The institute has accepted contributions of as much as $100,000 from billionaire liberal activist-funder George Soros and from Teneo, a for-profit company co-founded by Doug Band, former President Bill Clinton’s “bag man.” Teneo has long helped enrich Clinton through lucrative speaking and business deals.

And Bloomberg reported in 2016 on a $1 million Saudi Arabian donation to the institute, a contribution the McCain group has refused to explain publicly.

The article goes on to remind us of some of the history of John McCain:

McCain and Soros reportedly became friends after the senator was exposed as a member of the “Keating Five” during the savings and loan (S&L) industry scandal during former President George H.W. Bush’s administration. As the S&L bank chairman, Charles Keating paid $1.3 million to bribe five members of Congress to interfere with government regulators on behalf of the savings bank.

The experience so scarred McCain that he became a vigorous advocate of campaign finance reform and in the process reportedly became friends with Soros.

McCain recently claimed no involvement with the institute, saying “I’m proud that the institute is named after me, but I have nothing to do with it.”

For whatever reason, many of the people the voters send to Washington to represent them forget why they are there. Many of our so-called representatives get entangled in the Washington political culture and forget the values they espoused during their campaign. Many of our representatives arrive in Washington as members of the middle class and leave thirty or forty years later as millionaires. That is simply not what our founding fathers intended. Representatives and Senators were supposed to serve one or two terms and go back and live under the laws they passed. Congress will never support term limits, but the voters should begin to vote out of office anyone who has been there too long and no longer represents the people who sent him there.