The
pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, free markets and individual
liberty
"There is but one straight
course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington
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Immigration reform is coming by Charles Krauthammer
Let’s get it right. What counts as getting it wrong? The 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, signed by President Reagan. It granted amnesty to the then 3 million illegal immigrants and promised border enforcement. Amnesty came. Enforcement never did. Reagan was swindled. Americans are a generous people. They don’t want 11 million souls living in fear among them. They would willingly, indeed overwhelmingly, support amnesty – as long as it is the last. They don’t want another Simpson-Mazzoli, another bait-and-switch that lets in another 11 million illegal immigrants – and brings us back where we began.
There is an obvious solution: enforcement first. Hence the attraction of the bipartisan Senate deal reached by the Gang of Eight, led by Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republicans John McCain and Marco Rubio. It is said to feature border enforcement first, then legalization. Not quite. It is true that only after some commission deems the border under control do illegal immigrants become eligible for green cards and, ultimately, citizenship. But this is misleading because on the day the president signs the reform – long before enforcement even begins – the 11 million are immediately subject to instant legalization.
It is cleverly called “probationary” legal status. But the adjective is meaningless. It grants the right to live and work here openly. Once granted, it will never be revoked. True, they must await the “enforcement trigger” before they can apply for green cards. But they already have the functional equivalent of a green card. They got that on Day One. That matters more than anything to those living here illegally: the right to continue living here without fear. Forever. That’s the very essence of amnesty. And all this happens before the first scintilla of extra enforcement takes place.
When I heard McCain talk about (among other measures) new high-tech border control with advanced radar and drones, my heart sank. In 2006, Congress threw a ton of money at a high-tech fence. Five years, $1 billion and a pathetic 53 (out of 2,000) miles later, Janet Napolitano canceled the program as a complete failure. That was predictable. And some of us predicting it were pleading for something infinitely cheaper and simpler: a prosaic, low-tech fence. Of the kind built near San Diego (triple-layered) that resulted in an astounding 92 percent drop in apprehensions. The current Senate proposal must be improved, either in the Senate or by the House. It’s not complicated. Build the damn fence. And give “probationary legal status” to the 11 million – not on the day the bill is signed but on the day the fence is completed. With the sequencing – and thus the incentives – so properly aligned, I assure you the fence will go up with amazing alacrity. As it should. The point is not to punish anyone or to make things harder, but to ensure we don’t have to do this again – agonizing over the next 11 million cruelly living here in the shadows. I know many Republicans are coming over to immigration reform because of the 2012 election results. Fine. I’ve been advocating this for seven years (”First a wall – then amnesty,” April 7, 2006). Welcome aboard. Enforcement followed by legalization is not just the political thing to do. It is the right thing to do. It has long been the best answer to the immigration conundrum. It remains so.
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Shocking! Cheapest Obamacare Plan Will Be $20,000 Per
Family
In a final
regulation issued Wednesday, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assumed that
under Obamacare the cheapest health insurance plan available in 2016 for a
family will cost $20,000 for the year.
Under Obamacare, Americans will be required to buy health
insurance or pay a penalty to the IRS. The IRS’s assumption that the cheapest
plan for a family will cost $20,000 per year is found in examples the IRS gives
to help people understand how to calculate the penalty they will need to pay the
government if they do not buy a mandated health plan.
The examples point to families of four and families of five, both of which the
IRS expects in its assumptions to pay a minimum of $20,000 per year for a
bronze plan.
~~~~~~
Tax on Medical Devices Trickles Down to Hospitals and
Patients
Small
medical-device makers have little choice but to pass their new 2.3% excise tax— meant to pay for the health law —on to hospitals
and other customers, said the chief executive of one manufacturer that began
surcharging hospitals for its wares on Jan. 1. “The government thinks we’re
just going to absorb these costs, but for a company like us, it’s a lot of
money,” said Kevin Rudolph, the chief executive of the family-run respiratory
valve maker, Hans Rudolph Inc. Instead, he said, device makers will be raising
prices or adding surcharges to bills— just like other companies that faced
excise taxes in the past. In a December letter to several thousand hospital
customers, Mr. Rudolph told hospitals his company would add a new line item for
the tax beginning on Jan. 1. Hospitals and group-purchasing organizations began
protesting last week as similar warnings from other device makers began
piling up, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The tax is meant to raise $30 billion to help cover the health law.
The device industry has lobbied to repeal the tax, which applies to sales,
rather than profits. Obama "We
are going to rescue middle class Amercica" - while picking their pockets!?
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Obamacare Glitch: Some Families to be Priced out of
Health Coverage
Some families could
get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in
President Barack Obama's overhaul law. [ see above]IRS regulations issued
Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan
had hoped. As a result, some families
that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will
not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private
health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear. The
Obama administration says its hands were tied by the way Congress wrote the
law. Officials said the administration tried to mitigate the impact. Families
that can't get coverage because of the glitch will not face a tax penalty for
remaining uninsured, the IRS rules said.
Duh!
This was the Affordable Health Care Act - that of course will never
work. So the millions of uninsured will
be joined by millions more that are being forced out!!
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The plant, which was completely coal fired for almost one
hundred years, exclusively heats the capitol. However,
since 2007, according to the Architect of the Capitol (AOC), the plant
began to move from burning primarily coal to burning mostly natural gas--but
not entirely. Coal is still burned at the plant, but the rate of its reduction
is not fast enough for local environmentalists and lawmakers.
~~~~~~
NBC News Caught Using Deceptive Edits to Tarnish 2nd
Amendment Advocates
NBC News just can’t
stop with its ongoing crusade to deliberately
and maliciously manipulate content in order to push Obama’s agenda. Just
how shamelessly and desperately dishonest is the Peacock Network? Let us count the ways:
1.
During last year’s presidential election Andrea
Mitchell was caught manufacturing a Romney gaffe where none existed.
2.
During last year’s GOP primary, Ed
Schultz edited video of Texas Governor Rick Perry to make him look
racist.
3.
In April of last year, the “Today Show”
was caught editing audio of a 9-1-1 call to make George Zimmerman
look racist.
4.
In August of 2009, Contessa Brewer sliced
and diced a photograph so it wouldn’t look like a black man attended a Tea
Party carrying a firearm.
And just today, NBC was caught in yet another malicious
edit, this time to make Second Amendment
advocates look as though they did something as heinous as heckling the
heartsick father of a child who lost his six-year-old son in the Sandy Hook
massacre. You can watch the full video
and NBC’s science fiction adaptation side-by-side here.
~~~~~~
Economy Stalls: U.S. Growth Halted as Federal Spending
Fell in 4th Quarter
Disappointing data
released Wednesday underscore how tighter fiscal policy may continue to weigh
on growth in the future as government spending, which increased steadily in
recent decades and expanded hugely during the recession, plays a diminished
role in the United States economy. Significant
federal spending cuts are scheduled to take effect March 1, and most Americans
are also now paying higher payroll taxes with the expiration of a temporary cut
in early January.
~~~~~
Delusional Harry Reid: We are in a Recovery
From another elected Idiot! Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on
Thursday said the American economy is “in a recovery” despite the decline in
the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). Reid made
the remark after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blamed the
White House for the unexpected contraction in the economy. “[McConnell] continues bad
mouthing the recovery,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “We are in a recovery.” On
Wednesday, the Commerce Department announced that the nation’s
economy unexpectedly shrank by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.
Echoing the White House, Reid blamed the
GOP’s “austerity and brinkmanship” for the plunge.
~~~~~~
Clinton Blames Bush for Benghazi Disaster
In an
“exit” interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, outgoing
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
continued the theme that, during the Bush administration, requests for monies
from Congress to secure embassies and consulates were rejected. When asked
by Van Susteren whether, in the wake of the Benghazi attack in which four
American diplomats were murdered, Americans could now feel safe or satisfied
that our consulates, embassies, and diplomats are secure, Clinton responded:
Well,
as to the first question, you know, the accountability review board made a set
of recommendations. We are embracing and implementing all of them, and making
sure that we apply them.
Now,
it’s not all a question of money. I am the first to say that. You know, you
have to have the right people and the right job, making the right decisions. But money is a factor. And ever since the
Bush administration, our requests for security monies from Congress have not
been met. So you’ve had to make priority decisions. And it’s been
difficult. So I am determined to leave the State Department safer and stronger
when I walk out the door. And I know that John Kerry will just pick up the ball
and run with it.
For a
reaction the above, see below!
~~~~~~
Anti-Gun Advocates Heckle Woman Wanting to Defend Her
Children
During a Senate
Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill about how to prevent gun
violence, Senior Fellow of the
Independent Women’s Forum Gayle Trotter was loudly heckled by anti-gun
advocates in the crowd after she suggested women need firearms to protect young
children in their homes. “An assault weapon in the hands of a young woman
defending her babies at her home becomes a defense weapon,” Trotter said as
jeers erupted. “Guns are the great equalizer during a violent
confrontation.” One more in a long list of the left virtual
towards anyone that does not follow their version of the truth!
~~~~~~
Hillary Clinton warns GOP lawmakers not to act like North
Africa terrorists by Joel Gehrke
Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, while lamenting the partisanship of congressional Republicans
who grilled her about the Benghazi attack, encouraged Republicans not to
imitate the unwillingness to compromise evinced by terrorists in North Africa.
“It has been increasingly partisan,” Clinton said today at the Newseum when
asked to comment on the questioning she faced from Republicans last week.
“You
can be partisan, you can have a strong sense of the rightness of your position,
but democracy and certainly legislative bodies require compromise. And you
can’t let compromise become a dirty word because then you veer toward
fanaticism.” “I mean, we were just talking about
extremists who think it’s only their way, they are the ones who have the truth,
none of the rest of us have any kind of claim on what is real in their views,”
she continued. “And so it’s important in our democracies – like Australia, like
the United States – that yes, be passionate, be intense about your feelings,
but at the end of the day you’ve got to serve the people who sent you there,
and that requires compromise.” - So
hypocritical: for the left is to think like "I think".
~~~~~~
OWS is exposed:
Rich, white, educated and working By BETH DEFALCO
It seems those Occupy Wall Streeter's were a lot closer
to the 1 percent than they would like to admit. A new study of the OWS movement in New York
found that many of the protesters were highly educated and not nearly as down
on their luck as they portrayed. A third
of protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York lived in households earning more than $100,000
and more than two- thirds were employed professionals, according to
the study from CUNY’s Joseph A. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor
Studies. The study also showed the movement
was mostly organized by experienced political operatives and nearly all of
those involved — 76 percent — were college educated. Of those, half had graduate degrees and among
those with bachelor’s degrees, and 28 percent had attended elite
universities. “Occupy
Wall Street was not a spontaneous eruption but rather an action carefully
planned by committed activists,” the study concluded.
Additionally, the
study found that the protesters were also disproportionately
men — 55 percent — and many were white. “It’s a pretty affluent demographic and highly educated,” said Professor
Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors. “Many were the children of the elite,
if you will.” While they weren’t all homeless, many of the under-30 crowd
who participated in the movement were recently laid off or underemployed, with
nearly a quarter saying they work fewer than 35 hours a week. “Most OWS activists and supporters were
deeply skeptical of the mainstream political system as an effective vehicle for
social change,” the study found.
About 750 protesters were surveyed for the study, which took about six
months.
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