Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

STRAIGHT OUT OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO: The Obama Tax Code, Destroying Jobs and Opportunity

If I'm late with my taxes, will a claim of being an illegal alien undocumented Democrat get me off the hook? Just wondering.

As Americans navigated the labyrinthine tax code ahead of tax day, many felt the sting of the President’s myriad tax increases.

Despite calls for more taxes on the rich, the Heritage chart shown above reveals that the recent tax increases disproportionately affect the working wealthy. The top 10 percent of all income earners paid 71 percent of federal income taxes in 2010, yet they earned 45 percent of all federal income. Compare that to the bottom 50 percent of earners, who earn 12 percent of income yet pay only 2 percent of federal income taxes.

So when Obama and advocates of higher federal taxes opine that the rich do not pay their “fair share,” they are correct—affluent income-earners pay a whole lot more than they would pay if we had a proportional tax code instead of the highly progressive one we have today.

While taxes have increased for most taxpayers, the wealthy are—relative to the rest of the population—increasingly shouldering the federal tax burden. The Wall Street Journal’s John McKinnon notes that this burden has shifted largely as a result of the tax changes passed at the start of 2013 during the fiscal cliff debates. These changes include a “bump in the top ordinary income rate to 39.6% from 35%, a limit on itemized deductions and an increase in the top rate on investment income.”

But the tax misery is not limited only to the well-to-do. All taxpayers faced an average tax increase of 1.8 percent in 2013. Indeed, Heritage tax expert Curtis Dubay uncovered no less than 13 tax increases that kicked in at the beginning of the year, six of which came on the coattails of Obamacare. Taxpayers also face state and local tax burdens that remain high in much of the country, as well as the prospect of rising payroll taxes in the future.

In addition to stifling economic growth, many of these new taxes—especially those on income—penalize success and discourage work. As Dubay has written, it is imperative to reform the tax code because families would be able to earn more, “but would not pay higher marginal tax rates on their higher earnings. The tax code would not punish families as it does today for being more successful and for earning higher compensation because they are more productive.”


Most Americans are not aware that the "progressive" tax code was lifted right out of the Communist Manifesto by the Democrat Party.

It is meant to punish success, dampen investment, destroy jobs and opportunity, and -- in general -- make people more dependent upon the government.

And with this administration, those results are precisely what we're getting.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

REVEALED: IRS Leadership Conspired with Holder Justice Department to Imprison Political Opponents

Continuing its stellar track record of investigative journalism, JudicialWatch today announced it had unearthed emails between Lois Lerner of the IRS and Eric Holder's DOJ that suggested they had explored methods to prosecute and imprison conservative groups for the temerity of opposing the Obama administration.

Judicial Watch today released a new batch of internal IRS documents revealing that former IRS official Lois Lerner communicated with the Department of Justice (DOJ) about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities. The documents were obtained as a result of an October 2013 Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013.

The newly released IRS documents contain an email exchange between Lerner and Nikole C. Flax, then-Chief of Staff to then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller discussing plans to work with the DOJ to prosecute nonprofit groups that “lied” (Lerner’s quotation marks) about political activities.


Writing at PJ Media, Bryan Preston well summarizes the implications of this horrifying scandal that makes Nixon look like a shoplifter at the Dollar Store.

The implications of today’s email disclosure are stunning and terrifying.

Lois Lerner intended to use her position atop the IRS’ tax exempt approval office to coordinate the prosecution of political speech. The Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder had at least tentatively bought into that. The Federal Elections Commission was being roped in as well. Lerner’s emails prove that beyond doubt.

Democrats in Congress were involved. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) appears to have led the anti-constitutional attack on free speech in the House. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) led it from the Senate.

Two days before Lerner was forced to publicly disclose the scandal, she was moving forward with an insidious plan to stamp out conservatives and Tea Party activists’ ability to organize and raise money, by working with the IRS commissioner’s office and the Department of Justice. At the same time, there was no plan for any government crackdown on groups who agreed with President Obama. The traffic was entirely one-way. It was nakedly political, and everyone involved knew it. They also had reason to believe that they would succeed, or they would not have engaged in it. DOJ would serve two roles: Prosecute conservatives, and protect the bureaucrats who were pushing those prosecutions.


But, "nation of cowards" and "racism", y'all.

Any conservative who sits on the sidelines in 2014 bemoaning candidates that aren't to his or her liking is effectively a co-conspirator with the Democrats in the active destruction of this Republic.

We have a President, an Attorney General, a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, the IRS, the FBI, and heaven knows what other alphabet soup agencies conspiring to jail political opponents. Our country has been reduced to something akin to Venezuela, only with craploads more debt.

That, my friends, is fascism, straight up.

So when you sit out the next election because you couldn't find the perfect Republican candidate, don't act surprised when this corrupt, lawless, totalitarian Democrat Party comes after you and your group.

So you can mobilize to stop this, or you can echo Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his masterful The Gulag Archipelago. It related to the greatest regret of those in the slave labor camps:

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Eyewitness: BLM “Scared Crapless” By Thousands of Armed Americans Supporting Nevada Rancher Bundy

The following is the personal account of a female Los Angeles attorney who drove Bunkersville, Nevada, to support besieged rancher Cliven Bundy

I rolled into Laughlin really early, like 5:30 am. So many people had shown up, that we decided to leave in groups. A second group to leave at 8 AM as scheduled. Ours was a big group too. About two dozen cars, loaded with passengers.

The highway was almost empty until near Mesquite. Then it was a traffic jam. Motor homes, campers, ATVs running along side the freeway, motorcyles, vehicles, every thing you could possibly imagine. Everyone on their way to Bunkersville.

Then it [the traffic] about stopped, just inching along.

Word traveled down the traffic line that the feds had blocked the road just out of Mesquite and were searching vehicles for weapons and cell phones. Cell phones were confiscated and smashed. The people were given a chit for $30.00 redemption value. I left my phone at home.

Some of us that had four wheel drives decided to just leave the road and head overland. As we got closer to the ridge, we were stopped by armed militia. We could not go any further. We could wait, or turn around and go back to the road. Men, who I suspect were special forces, had climbed the ridge from the back side and captured the snipers. They were at that moment coming down the ridge to take them to Mesquite where they would be let go. They weren’t prisoners, they were just going to be replaced by friendlies.

Because of the roadblock on I-15, people refused to be searched, and refused to turn back. They just pulled off the road and parked. It was like a dam backing up a river. Soon the feds were trapped between the Americans who had already gotten through, and the Americans who had been stopped on the highway. The BLM agents went into full panic mode and called for help. LVPD [Las Vegas Police Department] who had REFUSED to show up to help Americans HAD to show up to rescue BLM that was now trapped and helpless. The blockade was SEVEN MILES LONG! That’s a potload of people.

GOING POSTAL: United States Postal Service Joins Long List of Federal Agencies Stocking Up on Guns and Ammo

Guest post by Mac Slavo

Going postal just took on a whole new meaning.

Earlier this year Kit Daniels reported that the U.S. Postal Service is joining other alphabet federal agencies in stocking up on ammunition and firearms. It’s an alarming trend that has swept the nation over the last several years and one that Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, calls “highly unusual.”

Conspiracy theories abound over the stockpiling of some two billion rounds of ammunition to date, leaving many wondering what the US government has in store for the American people.

Just last week, in the wake of the most recent Fort Hood shooting, mainstream media issued a report claiming that shooter Ivan Lopez was stockpiling weapons and ammo, when in fact he had purchased a single firearm and perhaps a few hundred rounds for it over a couple of visits to the gun store.

If his meager purchases are supposed to raise concerns with the American public and instill a sense of fear, then should we not be absolutely terrified of what our government is doing?

DEFIANCE: New York Protesters Shred Gun Registration Forms

If we were counting everyone defying New York's unconstitutional "SAFE Act", we could call this the 'Million Shredder March":

Citizens in Buffalo, refusing to comply with the SAFE Act by registering their so-called ‘assault weapons’, gathered today on the deadline for SAFE Act registrations and SHREDDED their gun registration forms...


They had planned to burn them, but since open burning isn’t legal in Buffalo, they decided to shred them instead, just as our elected officials are shredding the Constitution. Their hope is to send a message to Cuomo that they will not comply with this unconstitutional law.

WIVB has some background on this lawless mess:

Monday, April 14, 2014

CLIVEN BUNDY: What's really behind the federal government's militaristic takeover of private land?

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Land Management: A Chinese solar farm that fries birds is OK, as is redrawing tortoise habitat boundaries to benefit political donors. But an American rancher grazing his cattle brings feds with sniper rifles.

It appears Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has, at least temporarily, wonhis "range war" with the paramilitary wing of the Bureau of Land Management. Fearing another Waco, BLM has announced it will no longer enforce a court order and stop stealing Bundy's cows, called "trespass cattle" by the feds, accused of grazing free on part of the 84% of Nevada that is federal property.

If the forces deployed in and around the Nevadan's ranch had been deployed to Benghazi, it's likely Glen Doherty, Ty Woods, Sean Smith and Ambassador Christopher Stevens would be alive today. If illegal aliens were grazing on the disputed property, there would not have been federal snipers perched nearby with American citizens in their sights.

The government that has detonated hundreds of nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert claimed a rancher's meandering cattle threatened a protected species.

BLM, one of the myriad federal agencies armed to the teeth these days, would have us believe the 67-year-old rancher is a trespassing bitter clinger who isn't paying his federal grazing fees as his cattle munch on government-owned vegetation and threaten the endangered desert tortoise.

So BLM SWAT teams descended on the ranch west of Mesquite, Nev., where cattle and the tortoise have lived in harmony for over 100 years. BLM claims Bundy owes them grazing fees dating back to 1993; he says his grazing rights predate the BLM. The desert tortoise in fact is so "endangered" in this area that the government is planning to euthanize some of them.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid may have another reason for getting pesky cattle ranchers like Cliven Bundy out of the way. As Reuters has reported, "(Reid) and his oldest son, Rory, are both involved in an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert." To mitigate this commercial land use, other land had to be set aside. That land was Bundy's ranch.

Sunday, April 13, 2014

REIGN OF ERROR: Kathleen Sebelius a Poster-Child for the Disaster That is Obamacare

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Health Overhaul: The midwife of ObamaCare exits stage left, leaving behind wreckage that once was the finest health care system in the world, less affordable health insurance and patients unable to find doctors and hospitals.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services — referred to in the increasingly un-Affordable Care Act's iconic use of the phrase "the Secretary shall determine," which appears in ObamaCare's guiding document no fewer than 1,005 times — has determined that it's time to go.

Or rather it's been determined for her by a White House in whose parallel universe ObamaCare's current alleged enrollment numbers represent an imagined triumph of a law illegally and unconstitutionally altered on the fly to meet number-goals she once denied having set and deadlines that became movable goal posts.

In fact, she had become the poster child for the ObamaCare disaster and, politically, had to go.

She was a clueless administrator who, in a famous interview with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show," couldn't explain why businesses were getting a delay in their ObamaCare mandate to provide insurance to their employees while individuals were not getting a delay in their ObamaCare mandate to purchase health care or face a penalty.

The correct answer was politics. It was bad enough that some 6 million people were already losing their insurance, including stage 4 cancer patients. To proceed with the business mandate would have produced a tidal wave of cancellations in advance of a critical election.

It was just one of some 37 politically motivated changes to the law that the president was not constitutionally authorized to make.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

HATRED & DIVISION: The Democrat Platform, Illustrated

Another @BiffSpackle science-dropper:


Feel free to copy and spread around.

Word needs to get out to the drones.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

HARRY REID SURRENDERS: Military wing of Bureau of Land Management Says It Will Leave Bundy Alone

Caleb Howe reports that the Harry Reid-controlled Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has raised the white flag and will cease its paramilitary operation against the Bundy family.

Fox News is reporting that the Nevada standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and the Bundy Ranch has come to an end. The feds are pulling out because it has become too dangerous for their employees and the public. In other words, the Bundys win...


Fox reports that 400 of 900 cattle have already been rounded up, but the operation is now ended before it was completed. This means that the intervention of the activists and supporters who have camped out near the disputed area was successful. The crowd, claiming that victory, cheered loudly as the sheriff announced the end of the operation.

The BLM is controlled by one of Harry Reid's cronies.

Given Reid's long history of troubling, sleazy deals, all of the attention on the Senate Majority Leader (thank you, Dana Loesch) seems to have paid off.

It's all but certain that Reid was behind this land grab and I would bet that a close investigation would reveal more crony deals of the sort for which he's infamous. Maybe someday we'll have a real media -- actual journalists and not partisan hacks -- who will investigate this sort of government-run-amok madness.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

Friday, April 11, 2014

WELL, WELL, WELL: Dingy Harry Reid Behind Feds' Land Grab Attacks on Rancher in Sleazy Payback Deal

Guest post by James Simpson

This week, the Bureau of Land Management has been attempting to confiscate the cattle of Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Nevada's Clark County. On Wednesday, BLM agents confronted the Bundy family and supporters, using attack dogs, tasers and stun guns. Bundy's son was tased and his daughter thrown to the ground. Three others were injured. Bundy supporters eventually drove the BLM off, but not before they had taken some cattle.

The BLM claims the cattle are "tresspassing" on land designated for the endangered desert tortoise. This designation is a red flag that something else is going on. Desert tortoises have co-existed with cattle for over 100 years and the cattle offer no threat.

Sure enough, as Dana Loesch reports today in a great piece of investigative journalism, Senator Harry Reid, known as "Cleanface" by the Nevada mob, and named by Judicial Watch as one of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians," has been using the BLM to seize rangeland on behalf of campaign contributors. One of Reid's former senior advisors, Neil Kornze, was recently appointed to lead the BLM, but he has worked there since 2011, and been de facto leader for at least a year. According to Loesch, Reid even ordered BLM to alter boundaries of tortoise habitat to allow top contributor, Harvey Whittemore, to develop the land. Yet another compassionate Democrat concerned for the environment. Good old Cleanface.

All other ranchers have been driven out of the county, but Bundy refuses to bend. The BLM claims Bundy owes them grazing fees dating back to 1993, however, he says his grazing rights predate the BLM, his family has used the land since the 1800s and those rights should have been grandfathered in. Contrary to BLM's accusations, Bundy has been paying grazing fees, but to the governmental entity he believes has true title to the land: Clark County, Nevada. Loesch relates:

The Gut-Wrenching Charts Obama Doesn't Want You to See

Guest post by Amy Payne

Talking about Obamacare’s effects is one thing; seeing hard data is another.

Heritage’s newly updated Obamacare in Pictures has 15 charts that show the law’s effects on Americans—from canceled insurance policies to new taxes, Medicare cuts, reduced choice for plans, and more.

Here’s a quick look at just three of these charts and how Obamacare is hitting three groups.

YOUNG PEOPLE

Obamacare says you can stay on your parents’ health insurance until you turn 26. This chart looks at what happens after that—if you don’t have employer-sponsored insurance and you have to get insured through Obamacare. If you’re trying to save for a car or house—or just paying rent to have your own place—seeing your premiums double is quite a blow.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Obama Budget Lays Groundwork for Universal Gun Registration... and Eventual Confiscation

Guest post by GOA

Last Friday, Attorney General Eric Holder testified before a House appropriations subcommittee on behalf of his department's proposed budget for FY2015.

Apparently, Holder didn't think anyone would read his written submission, because he all-but-admitted that Obama intends to implement a Universal Gun Registry by executive fiat.

He also asked Congress to help fund so-called “smart gun” technology, which would prevent a gun from firing unless the shooter is wearing an accompanying bracelet or ring.

“Smart guns” are a dumb idea

Given that “smart gun” technology only works about 80 percent of the time -- according to the New Jersey Institute of Technology -- gun owners almost universally consider this a “dumb” idea.

Even police have rejected the “dumb gun” approach for themselves.

Currently, there are no such guns on the market in the United States. One gun store did briefly offer an Armatix .22 caliber earlier this year, but public outrage forced them to pull the handgun from the shelves.

Holder pushes a Universal Gun Registry

This year’s Obama budget shows how the administration is trying to quietly create the infrastructure for a universal gun registry.

In proposed “Program Increases” for the FBI, Holder has this to say:

ELIJAH CUMMINGS CAUGHT IN A CIRCLE OF CORRUPTION: Who Will Oversee the Overseers?

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Corruption: New IRS emails released by a congressional panel show staff working for the Democratic ranking member communicated with the IRS multiple times in 2012 and 2013 about a voter-fraud prevention group.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said on CNN's "State of the Union" last year, "Based upon everything I've seen, the case is solved. And if it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on, to be frank with you."

Of course he wanted to move on, for he had been working hand in glove with the IRS to target conservative groups and wanted the fact to remain a secret.

On Feb. 6, in a subcommittee hearing that heard the testimony of Catherine Engelbrecht — founder of True the Vote, who was targeted by the IRS, FBI and other federal agencies — Cummings vehemently denied having any contact or coordination in targeting True the Vote.

Responding, attorney Cleta Mitchell, who is representing True the Vote, indicated that staff on the committee had been involved in communication with the IRS. In short, Cummings was not telling the truth.

Kathleen Sebelius Resigns, Will Seek Employment in Lucrative Building Implosion Industry

But that's just a guess about her next career move.

Just for fun, let's examine how the DNC public relations flacks at The New York Times put it:

Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, is resigning, ending a stormy five-year tenure marred by the disastrous rollout of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Obama accepted Ms. Sebelius’s resignation this week, and on Friday morning he will nominate Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, to replace her, officials said.

The departure comes as the Obama administration tries to move beyond its early stumbles in carrying out the law, persuade a still-skeptical public of its lasting benefits, and help Democratic incumbents, who face blistering attack ads after supporting the legislation, survive the midterm elections this fall.

Officials said Ms. Sebelius, 65, made the decision to resign and was not forced out. But the frustration at the White House over her performance had become increasingly clear, as administration aides worried that the crippling problems at HealthCare.gov, the website set up to enroll Americans in insurance exchanges, would result in lasting damage to the president’s legacy.

Ouch. That's the Times, mind you.

Sebelius is just the latest political victim of the Obamacare debacle. She won't be the last.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

Wednesday, April 09, 2014

REPORT: New York's Unconstitutional "SAFE Act" Allows for Warrentless Searches and Seizures

Guest post by Rusty Weiss

A newly filed lawsuit claims that the registration process under New York’s SAFE Act allows police to search a gun owner’s home without a warrant, seize their weapons, and not be subject to review.

Lawyers representing Gabriel Razzano claim the process is a violation of the Fourth Amendment which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.

The registration process, according to the summons, is secretive and “results in a mandatory, warrantless Penal Law 400 gun removal visit from police.”

The lawyers claim that these warrantless police searches are “the real purpose of the SAFE Act.”

Via the Free Beacon (h/t Weasel Zippers):

Under the SAFE Act, the New York Department of Criminal Justice (NYDCJ), the overseer of the database, may declare a person ineligible to own or possess a weapon without any type of judicial process.

Furthermore, the suit argues that if the NYDCJ declares a person ineligible, “such a determination makes the person vulnerable to imminent seizure of all weapons, without a hearing or even an arrest warrant.”

The attorneys indicate the state is creating a separate database from the federal NICS database but does not have the NICS protections, such as an appeals process.

Supporters of the lawsuit claim that the SAFE Act also violates the Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth amendments.

COLLUSION: Oversight's Elijah Cummings (D) Collaborated With IRS to Target Conservatives Then Lied About It

The wound to the Republic keeps festering, the infection growing deeper and more febrile. Katie Pavlich reports:

New IRS emails released by the House Oversight Committee show staff working for Democratic Ranking Member Elijah Cummings communicated with the IRS multiple times between 2012 and 2013 about voter fraud prevention group True the Vote. True the Vote was targeted by the IRS after applying for tax exempt status more than two years ago. Further, information shows the IRS and Cummings' staff asked for nearly identical information from True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht about her organization, indicating coordination and improper sharing of confidential taxpayer information.

Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, along with five Subcommittee Chairmen are demanding Cummings provide an explanation for the staff inquiries to the IRS about True the Vote and for his denial that his staff ever contacted the IRS about the group.

“Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials – which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff – indicates otherwise,” the letter to Cummings states. “As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

...Up until this point, Rep. Cummings has denied his staff ever contacted the IRS about True the Vote and their activities during Oversight hearings. In fact, on February 6, 2014 during a Subcommittee hearing where Engelbrecht testified, Cummings vehemently denied having any contact or coordination in targeting True the Vote when attorney Cleta Mitchell, who is representing the group, indicated staff on the Committee had been involved in communication with the IRS...


Issa has gone so far as to accuse Cummings of instigating the partisan witch-hunt against True the Vote.

In February 2012, Engelbrecht’s True the Vote received a letter from the IRS requesting more information about the group; one of Cummings’s letters, which Engelbrecht received in October 2012, contained questions that closely mirrored those posed by the IRS. Issa details them in his letter, strongly implying that Cummings based his letter on the one Engelbrecht had already received from the agency: Both requested information about the software True the Vote was using for voter registration, about the process the group used to train its employees, and about the vendors it used to obtain voter lists.

True the Vote’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, raised the prospect that the minority staff had exchanged information with the IRS at a hearing in February. “We want to get to the bottom of how these coincidences happened,” Mitchell said, “and we’re trying to figure out whether any — if there was any staff on this committee that might have been involved in putting True the Vote on the radar screen of some of these federal agencies.” Cummings said in response that Mitchell’s tacit allegation was “absolutely incorrect and not true.”


No wonder Cummings has been so anxious to suppress the investigation: he's been intimately involved with the scandal.

Cummings should be censured and removed from the committee. Of course, knowing the cowardly leaders of the GOP, they'll moan "it's a sad day", and do nothing.

Based on my notes, Democrats have succeeded in hitting the trifecta of government corruption. We have a lawless President, a lawless Attorney General, and a lawless House Oversight Committee Ranking Member.

These people need to be dispatched in November and held to account. Talk to your family members, your friends and your colleagues. We have a rogue government; it can not stand if this country is to survive.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

Tuesday, April 08, 2014

IRS POLITICAL HITMAN LOIS LERNER: Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Corruption: A House panel votes this week to formally ask the DOJ to pursue criminal charges against former IRS employee Lois Lerner. It is time someone in this administration were held accountable for something.

A staff report by House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa reveals testimony by IRS agents that the IRS has not deliberately targeted progressive groups. Now comes word that the House Ways and Means Committee is sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder accusing former IRS director of tax-exempt organizations Lois Lerner of committing at least three crimes in the IRS's targeting tea party and other conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

That crimes have been committed and the Internal Revenue Service has become a corrupt criminal enterprise used to bludgeon political opponents of the Obama administration is hardly in dispute. The charge might have long ago been adjudicated had the Justice Department of Eric Holder, rife with its own very real scandals, not been politicized beyond all recognition.

According to the report, obtained by the Daily Caller, "Only seven applications in the IRS backlog contained the word 'progressive,' all of which were then approved by the IRS, while tea party groups received unprecedented review and experienced years-long delays."

CONFIRMED: Health Premiums Skyrocketing Thanks to Swine Flu and Obamacare, But Mostly Obamacare

The science is settled:

Health insurance premiums are showing the sharpest increases perhaps ever according to a survey of brokers who sell coverage in the individual and small group market. Morgan Stanley’s healthcare analysts conducted the proprietary survey of 148 brokers. The April survey shows the largest acceleration in small and individual group rates in any of the 12 prior quarterly periods when it has been conducted.

The average increases are in excess of 11% in the small group market and 12% in the individual market. Some state show increases 10 to 50 times that amount. The analysts conclude that the “increases are largely due to changes under the ACA.”


...For the individual insurance market (plans sold directly to consumers); among the ten states seeing some of the sharpest average increases are: Delaware at 100%, New Hampshire 90%, Indiana 54%, California 53%, Connecticut 45%, Michigan 36%, Florida 37%, Georgia 29%, Kentucky 29%, and Pennsylvania 28%.

It is believed that the increases triggered by Obamacare will be the biggest in history.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

Monday, April 07, 2014

DEADLY EXPERIMENTS ON HUMANS: The Mengele EPA

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Mad Science: The Environmental Protection Agency has been deliberately exposing people — including children — with asthma and other health issues to pollution to justify ever-more-stringent air quality standards.

'Improvements to EPA Policies and Guidance Could Enhance Protection of Human Study Subjects," released by the EPA's Office of Inspector General on March 31, confirms that the agency "exposed 81 human study subjects to concentrated airborne particles or diesel exhaust emissions in five EPA studies conducted during 2010 and 2011."

According to the report, obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the human subjects, said to have given their "informed consent," were exposed to levels of pollutants up to 50 times greater than the EPA itself says is safe for humans. And there are questions as to how informed that consent was.

The Daily Caller said the inspector general's report revealed that "only one of five studies' consent forms provided the subject with information on the upper range of the pollutant" to which the people would be exposed.

Even more alarming, said the Daily Caller, a new and opinion website, "is the fact that only 'two of five alerted study subjects to the risk of death for older individuals with cardiovascular disease.' "

From the Daily Caller we also learn that "three of the studies exposed human subjects to high levels of particulate matter while two of the studies exposed people to high levels of diesel exhaust and ozone. Diesel exhaust contains 40 toxic air contaminants, including 19 that are known carcinogens and particulate matter."

There's also the issue of tests involving children and the EPA's efforts to cover this up. The agency also exposed children to pollution as part of an experiment at the University of Southern California. In February 2013, JunkScience.com, run by Steve Milloy, a Johns Hopkins-trained biostatistician, reported the EPA giving USC grant money to study how particulate matter affects "asthma in susceptible children."

DEMOCRAT PARTY HARDEST HIT: No connection between education spending and student outcomes

Guest post by Rob Nikolewski

SANTA FE, N.M. – For decades, it’s probably the most troublesome question facing education: Why are results for U.S. public school students so mediocre, despite the billions of taxpayer dollars spent?

Andrew Coulson thinks he’s got the answer: Because there is no discernible correlation between spending and outcomes.

“The takeaway from this study is that what we’ve done over the past 40 years hasn’t worked,” said Coulson, director of the Center For Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute. “The average performance change nationwide has declined 3 percent in mathematical and verbal skills. Moreover, there’s been no relationship, effectively, between spending and academic outcomes.”

The CATO Institute is a free-market think-tank based in Washington, D.C.

Coulson just released his study, “State Education Trends: Academic Performance and Spending over the Past 40 Years,” and he points to this chart that incorporates costs and the number of public school employees with student enrollment and test scores:

While spending has just about tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars and the number of school employees has almost doubled since 1970, reading, math and science scores for students have remained stagnant.

“That is remarkably unusual,” Coulson wrote in his study. “In virtually every other field, productivity has risen over this period thanks to the adoption of countless technological advances — advances that, in many cases, would seem ideally suited to facilitating learning. And yet, surrounded by this torrent of progress, education has remained anchored to the riverbed, watching the rest of the world rush past it.”