HEALTH CARE CUTS DON’T BOOST WAGES -WORST WILL COME IN NEXT FIVE YEARS

HEALTH CARE CUTS DON’T BOOST WAGES

Employers: Feds don’t understand how companies make salary decisions

Companies aren’t paying workers more as they cut spending on health benefits, a trend that threatens to undermine the key estimate of the funding for Obamacare, federal data show.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates a controversial excise tax that employers will have to pay on generous health benefits starting in 2018 will raise about $87 billion in revenue over 10 years.

About 75% of the revenue from this “Cadillac tax” is supposed to come from taxes on the higher wages workers are supposed to get as companies slash their benefits to avoid paying the tax. The other 25% or so is expected to come from the tax itself.

Companies will have to pay 40% of the value of benefits over a certain threshold.

“How CBO is scoring this is completely flawed,” says Brian Marcotte, CEO of the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit that represents employers. “It really reflects a lack of understanding how companies make wage decisions.” This revenue is supposed to help fund the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health care to millions of people and to keep the law from adding to the deficit.

Companies have a vested interest in killing and undermining the tax, which labor groups have targeted for years and many politicians from both parties oppose. Employers blame the tax for the increasing share workers pay for their benefits, and they don’t want to shock workers with a sudden drop in benefits in two years.

Survey findings vary, but it’s clear at least a third to one half of all employers have health plans that would trigger the tax in the next five years if they didn’t shift more of the costs to employees.

A huge drop in benefit growth rates in 2011 clearly enabled employers to increase wages at that time, says former Labor Department economist and official Mark Wilson. Wage growth should have picked up as the unemployment rate dropped to 5% since then, he says, and Bureau of Labor Statistics data show it hasn’t.

Wages make up about 70% of total compensation, and benefits account for about 30%, so the percentage point changes in the rate of growth in wages and benefits don’t mirror each other, says Wilson, chief economist for the business-funded American Health Policy Institute.

Marcotte says companies may reinvest money they get from paying less for benefits or might add to retirement accounts or start life insurance policies moves that don’t lead to higher tax revenue.

Vote to defund is rooted in the facts

Vote to defund is rooted in the facts

By TYLER HERRMANN letter to editor

Amy Whalen, chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Women’s Caucus, seems to believe the only possible foundation for a vote to defund Planned Parenthood is one of misinformation, and I would like to offer a rebuttal (“Vote to defund Planned Parenthood based on bad info” Nov. 16).

The impetus for Whalen’s opinion piece was a letter from Ohio Sen. William Seitz, R-Green Township, in response to a constituent’s concerns regarding the Senate’s October vote to defund Planned Parenthood. In his letter, Seitz tells the constituent “all the money will be redirected to other, non-baby killing, non-baby-part selling and agencies.” Whalen refers to this response as “unprofessional,” and I must disagree. Quite simply, to those of us who do not believe the unborn are merely dehumanized fetuses, Planned Parenthood is in the business of killing babies. With regard to selling baby parts, Planned Parenthood’s conduct remains the subject of ongoing investigations, which, until resolved, should prevent anyone from definitively claiming Planned Parenthood is free of any wrongdoing.

I certainly agree that the providing of abortion services is a divisive issue, but I would argue Planned Parenthood’s provision of those services is a necessary part of this discussion. The left regularly defends government funding of Planned Parenthood by telling us that public funds are not used for abortion services. The fact of the matter is that, even if no public money is used to pay for any abortion- related services, funding Planned Parenthood’s other functions frees up the organization’s non-government funding to be used for just that purpose.

What I fail to understand is the idea that the loss of public funds will result in the closure of Planned Parenthood facilities, because the group does not appear to be hurting for cash. A congressional hearing revealed that Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s national president, draws a salary of nearly $600,000 – well above the median salary for other nonprofit presidents. Additionally, Stephanie K. Knight, president of Planned Parenthood in Ohio, pulls in over $220,000 annually, and the organization has spent nearly $40 million on travel, parties with celebrity guests and lavish Manhattan offices.

As for Whalen’s proposition that other health centers in the state are not capable of absorbing patients displaced by a vote to defund, Democrats for Life has provided some useful infographics that make it clear that, taken as a whole, community health centers already overshadow Planned Parenthood in terms of health services provided to women. Cecile Richards even acknowledged that the number of abortions provided by Planned Parenthood has steadily been increasing since 2006 while cancer screening and prevention services have been on the decline (including the revelation that Planned Parenthood does not, in fact, provide mammograms).

While it is true that schools are included on the list, they are schools that have “reported/been identified as providing girls’ and women’s health care services at ‘school-based health centers’ on location.” While they may not be an option for every woman, they are certainly “a very real option for girls and young women in the area who need health care.”

Given the above information, it becomes clear that a vote to defund Planned Parenthood does not necessarily equate to a vote that is uninformed or based on misinformation. I commend Seitz and the rest of the Ohio General Assembly for their resolve and for standing on principle regarding this issue.

Obama’s phony war against terrorism

Obama’s phony war against terrorism

By Charles Krauthammer

Tell me: What’s a suicide bomber doing with a passport? He’s not going anywhere. And, though I’m not a religious scholar, I doubt that a passport is required in paradise for a martyr to access his 72 black-eyed virgins.

A Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the terrorists. Why was it there? Undoubtedly, to back up the Islamic State boast that it is infiltrating operatives amid the refugees flooding Europe. The passport may have been fake, but the terrorist’s fingerprints were not. They match those of a man who just a month earlier had come through Greece on his way to kill Frenchmen in Paris.

If the other goal of the Paris massacre was to frighten France out of the air campaign in Syria – the way Spain withdrew from the Iraq War after the terror attack on its trains in 2004 – they picked the wrong country. France is a serious post-colonial power, as demonstrated in Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic and Mali, which France saved from an Islamist takeover in 2013

.

Indeed, socialist President Francois Hollande has responded furiously to his country’s 9/11 with an intensified air campaign, hundreds of raids on suspected domestic terrorists, a state of emergency and proposed changes in the constitution to make France less hospitable to jihad.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, titular head of the free world, has responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment and lassitude, compounded by impatience and irritability at the very suggestion that his Syria strategy might be failing.

The only time he showed any passion was in denouncing Republicans for hardheartedness toward Muslim refugees. One hundred and twenty nine innocents lie dead but it takes the GOP to kindle Obama’s ire.

The rest was mere petulance, dismissing criticisms of his Syria policy as popping off. Inconveniently for Obama, one of those popper-offers is Dianne Feinstein, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. She directly contradictedObama’s blithe assertion, offered the day before the Paris attack, that the Islamic State (aka ISIL) was contained and not gaining strength. “I have never been more concerned,” said Feinstein. “ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding.”

Obama defended his policy by listing its multifaceted elements. Such as, “I hosted at the United Nations an entire discussion of counterterrorism strategies and curbing the flow of foreign fighters.” An “entire” discussion, mind you. Not a partial one. They tremble in Raqqa.

And “We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL.” Yes, and what would we do without Luxembourg?

Obama complained of being criticized for not being bellicose enough. But the complaint is not about an absence of bellicosity but about an absence of passion, of urgency and of commitment to the fight. The air campaign over Syria averages seven strikes a day. Seven! In Operation Desert Storm, we flew 1,100 sorties day. Even in the Kosovo campaign, we averaged 138. Obama is doing just enough in Syria to give the 

appearance of motion, yet not nearly enough to have any chance of success.

Obama’s priorities lie elsewhere. For example, climate change, which he considers the greatest “threat to our future.” And, of course, closing Guantánamo. Obama actually released five detainees on the day after the Paris massacre. He is passionate about Guantánamo. It’s a great terrorist recruiting tool, he repeatedly explains. Obama still seems to believe that – even as the Islamic State has produced an astonishing wave of terrorist recruitment with a campaign of brutality, butchery and enslavement filmed in living color. Who can still believe that young Muslims are leaving Europe to join the Islamic State because of Guantánamo?

Obama’s other passion is protecting Islam from any possible association with “violent extremism.” The Islamic State is nothing but “killers with fantasies of glory.” Obama can never bring himself to acknowledge why these people kill and willingly die: to advance a radical Islamist millenarianism that is, purposeful, indeed eschatological – and appealing enough to have created the largest, most dangerous terrorist movement on earth.

Hollande is trying to gather a real coalition to destroy the Islamic State, even as Obama touts his phony 65. For 11 post-World War II presidencies, coalition leading has been the role of the United States. Where is America today? Awaiting a president. The next president.

Suicide of the West: The Petulant Pretender

Suicide of the WestThe Petulant Pretender

By Mark Alexander

"Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!" —George Washington (1799)

As I wrote for Monday's edition, on the same day that Barack Obama was peddling his failed foreign policy of appeasement and insisting that the Islamic State was "contained," surrogates of what he'd previously characterized as the "JV Team" slaughtered more than 129 civilians in a well-planned and well-executed act of Islamist barbarism.

And later, although the terrorists had repeatedly yelled "allah akbar" during their murderous onslaught, Obama responded by saying, "I don't want to speculate at this point in terms of who was responsible for this."

During the Democrat debate in Iowa on the day after the slaughter in Paris, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders doubled down on his assertion that the most pressing threat to our national security remains — Obama also repeatedly insists — "climate change."

Tellingly, Hillary Clinton didn't take issue with Sanders' analysis.

Arnold Ahlert analyzed the threat of al-Qa'ida and Islamic State Jihadist masquerading as Middle Eastern refugees, while Paul Albaugh evaluated the risk of Obama's immigration "Trojan Horse." Louis DeBroux, in his analysis on the suicide of the West, noted that our greatest potential threat may be the amplification of Obama's already colossal foreign policy failures if enough Americans are duped into voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

And the absurd and surreal utterances of Obama at a press conference in Turkey, which included the following: "I’m not interested in posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning.”

Ponder those words against a backdrop of past Democrat presidents:

·       "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." —Franklin D. Roosevelt

·       "America was not built on fear. American was built on courage, on imagination, and on an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand." —Harry S Truman

·       "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty." —John F. Kennedy

I've said before, though it bears repeating: Our nation's once-noble Democrat Party has morphed into a corrupt political machine that its original protagonists would hardly recognize.

After chastising those who dared to question his failed policies, Obama insisted, "There will be an intensification of the strategy that we put forward, but the strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work. But as I said from the start, it’s going to take time.”

Of course, there is no strategy and the time "it's going to take" is the duration between now and the clean-up effort of the next Republican president.

The Washington Post's editorial board accurately described Obama's remarks as "petulant," while the New York Times' Roger Cohen observed, "Where was the anger in that Obama press conference? I'm in Paris. His words fell shamefully short of sentiment here."

If Obama has lost the Post and the Times, we can be assured that he's lost just about everyone who isn't on the White House payroll or sporting an Obama Phone.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column on Obama's repetitive reference to "our shared values" and "who we are as a nation," as if he is the ultimate arbiter of our national values.

This week, Obama rolled out that same drivel, this time regarding concerns about inadequate vetting of Syrian immigrants. He claimed such concerns were "a betrayal of our values. ... That’s shameful. That’s not American. ... That's not who we are." Instead, he defined his narrow agenda and proclaimed, "Those are the universal values we stand for."

Apparently, Obama believes that we can run highly reliable background checks with the help of Syrian butcher Bashar al-Assad.

For the record, more than half of the nation's governors have now registered objections against the relocation of Syrian migrants to their home state's suburbs, and for good reason. Recall that virtually all the Islamist assaults on our home soil were committed by Muslim refugees/immigrants. That would include the July murder of four Marines and a Navy Petty Officer by a Palestinian immigrant in Chattanooga.

And meanwhile, John Kerry, in Paris this week, noted that the Islamist attack there in January was "legitimate."

Thank you, as always, for standing with us.

On campus, a freedom from speech and thought

On campus, a freedom from speech

By George Will
Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, dealt with the Crisis of the Distressing Email about Hypothetical Halloween Costumes about as you would expect from someone who has risen to eminence in today’s academia. He seems to be the kind of adult who has helped produce the kind of students who are such delicate snowflakes that they melt at the mere mention of even a potential abrasion of their sensibilities.

Salovey gave indignant students a virtuoso demonstration of adult groveling. With a fusillade of academia’s cliches du jour, he said the students’ “great distress” would be ameliorated by “greater inclusion, healing, mutual respect, and understanding” in the service of – wait for it – “diversity.”

But of course, only diversity that is consistent with the students’ capacious sense of the intolerable.

Salovey said he heard their “cries for help.” The cries came from students who either come from families capable of paying Yale’s estimated $65,725 costs for the 2015-16 academic year or who are among the 64 percent of Yale undergraduates receiving financial aid made possible by the university’s $25.6 billion endowment.

The cries were for protection (in the current academic patois, for “a safe space”) from the specter of the possibility that someone might wear an insensitive Halloween costume. A sombrero would constitute “cultural appropriation.” A pirate’s eye patch would distress the visually challenged. And so on, and on.

Normal Americans might wonder: Doesn’t the wearing of Halloween costumes end at about the time puberty begins? Not on campuses, where young adults old enough to vote live in a bubble of perpetual childhood.

Which is why Yale was convulsed by a mob tantrum when, as Halloween approached, a faculty member recklessly said something sensible.

She said in an email it should be permissible for someone to be a bit “obnoxious,” “inappropriate,” “provocative,” even “offensive.” She worried that campuses are becoming places of “censure and prohibition.”

And she quoted her husband, Master of Yale’s Silliman College, as saying “if you don’t like a costume someone is wearing, look away, or tell them you are offended.” Aghast, one student detected “coded language” that is “disrespectful,” and others demanded that the couple be evicted from Silliman.

The students who were scandalized about nonexistent costumes live enveloped in thick swathes of university administrators competing in a sensitivity sweepstakes. They strive to make students feel ever more (another dollop of Salovey rhetoric) “valued” rather than “disrespected” and in “pain.”

What kind of parenting produces children who, living in the lap of Ivy League luxury, revel in their emotional fragility? One answer is: Parents who themselves are arrested-development adolescents, with all the anxieties and insecurities of that developmental stage. They see themselves in their darlings.

Emma Brown, who writes about education, recently told Washington Post readers about Julie Lythcott-Haims’ new book “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare your Kid for Success.” Lythcott-Haims, former Stanford dean, suggests parents pay attention to their language: “If you say ‘we’ when you mean your son or your daughter – as in, ‘We’re on the travel soccer team’ – it’s a hint to yourself that you are intertwined in a way that is unhealthy.”

But whatever responsibility attaches to the parenting that produced those brittle Yalies, a larger portion of blame goes to the monolithic culture of academia. Where progressivism reigns, vigilant thought police will enforce a peace of wary conformity. Here is why: If you believe, as progressives do, that human nature is not fixed, and hence is not a basis for understanding natural rights. And if you believe, as progressives do, that human beings are soft wax who receive their shape from the society that government shapes. And if you believe, as progressives do, that people receive their rights from the shaping government.

And if you believe, as progressives do, that people are the sum of the social promptings they experience.

Then it will seem sensible for government, including a university’s administration, to guarantee not freedom of speech but freedom from speech.

From, that is, speech that might prompt its hearers to develop ideas inimical to progress, and might violate the universal entitlement to perpetual serenity. On campuses so saturated with progressivism that they celebrate diversity in everything but thought, every day is a snow day: There are perishable snowflakes everywhere.

What happens when the Government gets out of the way: Company puts used fracking fluid to other uses

What happens when the Government gets out of the way: Company puts used fracking fluid to other uses

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Deepwell injection of used fracking fluid raises concerns of environmental pollution and pressure-stimulated earthquakes.

Just north of Fairmont, a small plant is busy providing an alternative.

Since 2013, Fairmont Brine Processing has been cleaning up frack fluid and producing distilled water for reuse in the field and rock salt for treatment of snowy winter roads.

The process is technical, with towers and pipes, ponds and basins, tanks and conveyor belts. But General Manager Brian Kalt said it’s simple: “We’re really just boiling salt out of water.”

Fairmont Brine took over the site of the defunct AOP Clearwater in 2012 and, after some facility upgrades, began operations the next summer. The plant employs about 25 people, some engineers.

‘Dummy-proof’

The process begins with eight loading bays on the site’s upper lot. A driver pulls in, hooks up and has an empty tank in 17 minutes.

“It’s dummy-proof,” Kalt said.

Each driver has a radio frequency identification card linked to the trucking company and the gas company.

The card contains an analysis of the fluid — “that way we can treat automatically,” Kalt said. A meter captures volume and time, and two documents detailing the shipment are printed out.

“It’s all about moving trucks as quick as possible,” he said.

For companies that want to frack with recycled distilled water, the driver can stay hooked up and reload to go back to the well pad.

“If you’re going to frack with distilled water, you would drastically reduce your chemical consumption at the wellhead,” he said, perhaps saving $100,000 per well. There’s not as much use of recycled water here as in Texas, he said, because of the easy access to fresh water.

“For the most part, we’re putting that in the river,” Kalt said.

A truck can also load up with liquid calcium chloride — for road application, frack fluid, and use when pulling plugs from fracked well bore stages to control pressure and keep the gas in place. It can be very expensive, Kalt said, but they usually give it for free or pennies on the dollar.

“We think we’re helping out the industry,” he said.

‘Out of the woodwork’

Every well in the Appalachian basin uses liquid calcium chloride, he said.

“We also use it as a way to get our name out there. And it really has because everyone crawls out of the woodwork for that fluid.”

Workers are now assembling equipment on the upper lot to build a new processing facility that will eliminate some steps and make the process more efficient. It could be complete sometime in the spring.

“We’ve got a lot going on right now,” Kalt said. “It’s constantly a work in progress right here.”

Military Defense Analysis: WE’RE SHOOTING OURSELVES IN THE FOOT

Military Defense Analysis: WE’RE SHOOTING OURSELVES IN THE FOOT

By: Lt. Col (Ret.) JW DeLoach

JW DeLoach is a retired USAF Officer & Greater Nashville Area Program Manager. He previously served at HQ Air Force A3/5, Commanded Defense Language Institute Operations Squadron, is largely to blame for the AFSOC NSAv fleet, did some stuff at JSOC, and had the privilege of flying the four fans of freedom (C-130H & MC-130H) with the 40th Airlift Squadron and the 7th Special Operations Squadron.

Historically, huge bureaucracies have habitually tried solving complex problems with well-intentioned but ultimately ineffective solutions. Because of the nature of politics, legislators are often under pressure to be seen doing something even if there are predictable negative outcomes. The solutions often help only the vote-seeking legislators but ultimately hurt those used to sell the legislation – the dynamic of the famous American “positive injury.”

Many equality-themed solutions have been levied on the Department of Defense (DoD) which ignore well-understood human processes which are the backbone of an excellence-minded meritocracy; specifically, mandates which artificially “equalize” unequal individuals actually hurt the cause of the people needing help. This is precisely the case for women in the military. By way of gender (lower) physical standards, manipulated graduation orders of merit, differential training washout procedures, female-only commitment relief policies…military women exist in a separate but unequal universe from the male military members. Some results are predictable – unqualified personnel allowed in harm’s way who are a danger to themselves and others. Think “layman playing NFL offensive line.” Other unintended negative impacts are more subtle, such as undermining and devaluing the accomplishments of women who are able to meet the training standards. Figuratively and literally our well-intentioned policies shoot qualified, exceptionally talented female military members in the foot.

Military operations are complex & dangerous at the best of times (hat tip Clauswitz). Senior military leaders’ jobs are complicated by civilian leaders who are often not deeply familiar with military operations and are nearly always from the professional political class. That means many of the civilian directives are driven by factors contrary to effective & safe military operations.

Many well-intentioned “experts” view the military as a huge, compliant social experiment. With the wave of a pen, civilian leaders are able to mandate their favorite social policies into reality despite the fact that DoD (even more than the NFL or Olympics) should be a meritocracy. Americans are very comfortable with talent-driven sports and we should become equally comfortable with a talent-based military who risk life & limb to execute national policy.

Much discussion surrounding the recent female Ranger school graduates indicates most Americans do not understand the status quo in the DoD. Despite Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that she was barred from USMC due to gender, women have long played an important role in US Armed Forces. When additional human capital was needed, American women have always stepped up and applied their skills to various war efforts as needed and able. The relatively new political twist on gender policy is the use of differential standards to manage a gender quota by rank and career field. This “relative fitness” approach makes sense at a crossfit gym or as a justification for separate men’s and women’s basketball teams but in combat each soldier operates side-by-side as one unit. In a scenario where speed, endurance or sheer strength are needed…it is irrelevant if a soldier is “strong for a girl” – what matters is his/her raw ability.

Further, selective career fields must take the best qualified regardless of gender and without artificially manipulating the order of merit in an inadvertently hurtful attempt to “level the playing field.” If held to male standards women are more than capable to rise to the occasion, though perhaps at lower numbers and slower rate than desired by the political leadership.

Previous accommodations successfully put women in “non-combat” roles such as Supply, Ground/Air Mobility and Space/Missile crew members. However, decades of boots on the ground in the Middle East have shown that nearly all career fields are ultimately combat roles. No one was helped by this artificial division. For a woman to be effective and respected (by any gender) in any combat/combat-support role, she must meet the same standards as the men. Diversity cannot be an end unto itself without risking lives and undermining achievements of women who meet standards. The unequal standards meant to help women causes credible women to be eternally suspect and scrutinized by their peers as well as putting them at risk to themselves and others.

Quotas are enforced in many ways but mainly through headquarters’ pressure on subordinate leaders across the Military Service. This pressure results in many unhelpful actions – recruiting less qualified candidates; commissioning sources adjusting their graduation order of merit; gender-only, non-merit assignments (USAF’s “pink jets”); lowered or eliminated physical standards; gender-specific training washout procedures; female-only awards; and policies which allow for expectant mothers (not fathers) to request early exit from a military service commitment. Most Americans are unaware that as early as 2012, services were pushed to lower or eliminate physical standards for dangerous and physically demanding career fields. The directives were unashamedly based on meeting gender quotas – not an effort to “improve the performance level of female trainees” or “recruit additional physically capable candidates.” Some Services complied readily while other Services maintained focus on standards and competence.

The most basic example is physical fitness: a soldier takes the Army PFT and achieves 50 pushups, 50 sit-ups & a 18:00 2-mile run. The male soldier would fail with a score 175/300. The female soldier would pass with a score of 236/300. A fit soldier performs 50 pushups, 80 sit-ups & 15:30 2-mile run. If that soldier is male, that is a passing score of 243/300. At the same level of body weight fitness, if the soldier is female, that is a perfect 300/300. Apart from the obvious fairness issue, most miss that this gift which keeps on giving – she (not he) is awarded an Army Physical Fitness Badge and the score/badge appears favorably on performance reports and award packages…for the same level of fitness.

Perhaps the cruelest effect of the current differential policy is on women who are able to meet standards without special deals. When a female joins a combat or combat-support unit, there is no way of knowing whether they earned their badge/beret/slot or if it was handed to her. This pressure to improve numbers by lowering the quality of graduates occurs in many demanding career fields across the DoD. Years ago, the Army’s Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) graduated international military student regardless of whether they met US standards or not. This policy changed because when working with partner nations’ Special Operations Forces, US personnel gave undue respect and credibility to the SFQC “graduates.” Standards were eventually raised to equalize the quality of graduates, though it necessarily meant a lower graduation rate.

The existing gender policies put women in the same situation – co-workers do not know if they are reliable or risky. The DoD has (with the best of intentions) created a very bad environment for women and men as well as putting the mission at risk. Capable women are not treated with requisite respect and incapable women are artificially supported. The differential policies often amplify resentment and exclusion due to inequality.

Are there solutions? Absolutely. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could direct Armed Services to eliminate all discriminatory policies and quotas across the board. Services could scrub gender (name, gender, gender identifying info, etc) from any personnel records which might go before a promotion, award or assignment board. Gender-based awards could be eliminated overnight. If a Service sees value in differential standards, they could identify non-combat career fields where an “appearance/health/non-deployable” standard is more appropriate than a “combat readiness/deployable” standard which would apply to men and women alike. This would allow DoD to harness the talents of those whose skills (cyber warfare, Space & Missile, training, finance, personnel) do not match physically demanding and unique skill-based career fields.

For combat/deployable forces however, a gender-blind physical standard must apply if women in those roles are to be mission-effective and credible. As determined by each Service, pregnancy-based early exit policies could be eliminated, changed to a loan payback methodology, or extended to fathers in order to have a single gender-blind standard. Personnel metrics indicating gender imbalance (a particular rank or career field) should lead to a root cause analysis and applicable solution (improved outreach, additional pre-enlistment training, etc) without sacrificing quality of trainees or the graduation standards. If, as a nation, America desires women in combat on an equal footing, they should be added to the Selective Service program. The goal should always be a single standard, equal access, but not managed quotas.

Only by eliminating double standards and keeping those standards high can America stop putting the mission and members at risk. The current policies benefit primarily politicians but for unqualified and qualified personnel alike, they shoot military women in the foot

Analysis: The Ben Carson Flaps

Analysis: The Ben Carson Flaps

By Thomas Sowell

Dr. Ben Carson's whole life has been very unusual, so perhaps we should not be surprised to see the latest twist -- the media going ballistic over discrepancies in a few things he said.

Years ago, when I was writing some autobiographical sketches, I dug up old letters, to check out things that I remembered -- and was surprised more than once to discover that my memory was not always exactly the same as the way things had happened and were recorded at the time.

In the current flap over some things that Dr. Carson said, the biggest discrepancy has been between the furor in the media and the irrelevance of his statements to any political issue.

For example, in a video that someone dug up, Dr. Carson said to an audience that his "theory" about the Pyramids is that they were used as storage facilities. He was smiling as he said this, so it is not clear whether he was using this theory just to illustrate some point. But, in any case, he was not claiming this as a fact.

More important, the Pyramids are not an issue in today's American political campaign, except as a "gotcha" gimmick.

Yet the media have paid far more attention to Ben Carson's speculation about what the Pyramids were built for, thousands of years ago, than to outright lies that Hillary Clinton told about tragic American deaths in Benghazi, within days after she knew the truth, as her own e-mails now reveal.

Another media tempest in a teapot has developed because of the mild-mannered Dr. Carson's recollections about some childhood incidents in which he depicted himself as violent toward another child. Some people who knew the young Ben Carson have said that such behavior would have been out of character for him. But has no one ever acted out of character, especially in childhood?

Albert Einstein, as a child, once threw a heavy object at his little sister that could have injured her or even killed her. Yet Einstein grew up to be a mild-mannered pacifist, and no one ever brought up that incident to try to discredit Einstein's scientific work.

What has been far more disturbing than anything Ben Carson has said or done, has been the media's search-and-destroy mission against the renowned brain surgeon.

 The utter irrelevance of the issues raised by the media at a time when the country faces monumental challenges at home and overseas makes the media hype grotesque. It tells us more about the media than about Dr. Carson.

By contrast, the media showed no such zeal to expose Barack Obama's associations and alliances with a whole series of people who expressed their hatred of America in words and/or deeds. Here was something relevant to his suitability to become president. But the media saw no evil, heard no evil and spoke no evil.

Nor have the media launched such attacks on President Obama as they have on candidate Carson, even after Obama proceeded to abandon existing American commitments to provide defensive aid to countries in Eastern Europe and to directly promote the destruction of governments in Egypt and Libya that posed no threat to American interests -- all the while undermining Israel's ability to defend itself.

Meanwhile he cut back on our own military defense so drastically that even former Secretaries of Defense who had served during his administration have publicly criticized his policies. So have former top generals and former top intelligence officials.

But the media largely circled the wagons to protect Obama -- and now to protect Secretary of State Clinton, who carried out the foreign policies that left America's position in virtually all regions of the world worse than when the Obama administration took office.

It was much the same story on domestic issues. Obama's outright lies, that people would be able to keep their own doctors and their own health insurance under ObamaCare, were far more consequential than Dr. Carson's offhand speculation about the Pyramids. But did the media try to destroy Obama's credibility?

Unfortunately, the moment Dr. Carson entered the political arena it became inevitable that the media would try to discredit him, since any prominent conservative black figure is a threat to the left's vision and the Democrats' voting base. The flimsy basis for the current attacks only demonstrates the media's bias and desperation.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

How GDP Data Blocks Us From Seeing the Recession

How GDP Data Blocks Us From Seeing the Recession

By Roger McKinney

Economists look to GDP to determine if the US economy is in a recession. Generally, it takes two quarters of the economy shrinking (economists call it negative growth, but they’re linguistically challenged) for the National Bureau of Economic Research to declare a recession. Of course, those two quarters indicate the bottom of the recession, by definition.

The problem with GDP accounting is that it ignores about half the economy. GDP was designed to calculate new, value added production. Using standard accounting lingo, GDP is not gross anything; it’s net production. Net numbers, such as net profit, are the gross (total) sales minus the costs of doing business, such as material costs. That’s GDP. So GDP mostly counts retail sales and government spending while leaving out most industrial production. And that’s one reason that recessions take mainstream economists by surprise.

Recessions start in the mining, energy, industrial production sectors that are missing from GDP. They spread to shipping, railroads and trucking and finally hit retail, GDP, last. The odds are good that the US will hit its two quarters of shrinking GDP early next year, but that won’t be the beginning of the recession. It will be the bottom. The beginning will be calculated from the peak of previous GDP growth, probably the second quarter of 2015.

We have been watching the slow motion destruction of the industrial/capital goods sector for a while:

Year-over-Year, Durable Goods orders tumbled 3.6%, accelerating weakness from August, according to Zero Hedge.

From railroads to manufacturers to energy producers, businesses say they are facing a protracted slowdown in production, sales and employment that will spill into next year. Some of them say they are already experiencing a downturn, said a recent WSJ article.

“The industrial environment’s in a recession. I don’t care what anybody says,” Daniel Florness, chief financial officer of Fastenal Co., told investors and analysts earlier this month.

Most of the new jobs created since the recession has come from the oil and gas industry:

Direct employment in the oil and gas industry rose 40% from 2007 through 2013, as compared to a decline of about 3% in the overall U.S. economy.

With the bust in oil and natural gas prices, those jobs are evaporating. Caterpillar, the epitome of capital goods production, has lost sales for a couple of years and looks forward to a bleak future:

Caterpillar said Thursday that its full-year sales and revenue for 2015 and 2016 have weakened, with 2016 revenue now projected to be 5% lower than 2015′s already diminished levels.

Walmart is facing declining sales and that may mean that the disaster in industrial production is finally bleeding over into retail. It's only a matter of time before the stock market catches on and corrects the over valuation that has caused it to sail far above that justified by profits.

Memo to GOP: Take the winnings and run

Memo to GOP: Take the winnings and run

By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON – Where do Republicans get that special talent for turning gold to dross? They score an electoral “massacre” (According to The Economist) in 2014 and, a year later, what do they have to show for it other than another threat to shut down the government? Hillary Clinton is caught in email flagrante and Benghazi mendacity and yet, with one Kevin McCarthy gaffe and a singularly ineffective 11-hour Benghazi hearing, Republicans render her sanitized.

And now their latest feat; winning a stunning victory over their perennial nemesis, the mainstream media – a slam-dunk rim-rattling exposure of the media bias they have been complaining about for a half-century – and within a week they so overplayed their hand as to dissipate whatever sympathetic advantage they gained.

The CNBC debate was a gift for the GOP, so unadorned a demonstration of liberal condescension, hostility and arrogance that the rest of the media – their ideological cover exposed – were forced to denounce and ridicule their ham-handed colleagues. What happened then? Instead of quitting while they were ahead, the Republicans plunged into a week of meetings and statements, whining and complaining, bouncing around a series of demands, including control of the kind of questions that may or may not be asked at future debates.

Who’s the genius who thought up that one? First, it instantly allowed the liberal media to turn the tables and play defenders of journalistic independence against GOP bullies.

Second, it made the Republicans look small. To paraphrase Chris Christie’s “fantasy football” moment, the economy is in the tank, Russia is on the move, the Islamic State is on the attack – and the candidates are debating the proper room temperature for a debate forum?

Third, this continues the season-long GOP diversion from what should be its real target – the wreckage wrought by seven years of Barack Obama. The greatest irony of this campaign is that Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the ones making the case that the economy is stagnant, inequality growing and the middle class falling increasingly behind. That’s a devastating indictment of Democratic governance, exactly the case Republicans should have been making all year. Instead, they’ve wasted months trading schoolboy taunts and ad hominems.

Now another distraction: debate structure. The party is demanding there be no repetition of the CNBC debate. Why, for God’s sake? That debate was the best thing to happen to the GOP since Michael Dukakis.

Won’t someone tell the Republicans that they won? Let it go. Who cares who’s on the next debate panel? Don’t they realize that fear of ridicule alone will temper the instincts of whatever liberal questioners are chosen?

John Harwood’s obnoxiousness and Becky Quick’s incompetence earned most of the opprobrium heaped on the moderators’ performance. But it was Carl Quintanilla who demonstrated just how unmoored liberal delusions about conservatives have become. He asked Ben Carson how, as an opponent of gay marriage, he could remain on the board of a company that is known for its generous treatment of gay employees. Quintanilla seemed genuinely unable to fathom that one can oppose the most radical change in the structure of marriage in human history – as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all did just a few years ago – without wanting to see gay people persecuted and denied decent treatment by their employers.

CNBC produced the best night of the entire campaign season for the GOP. And yet some Republicans were determined to turn it into another theater of their civil war against the GOP “establishment.” This time the target was Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. As if Priebus is responsible for Harwood.

Good grief. Priebus’ job, the party’s job, is to control the number of debates and set the calendar. Its doing so in 2015-16 constitutes a significant achievement, considering the damage done to the GOP in 2011-2012 by its 20 freelance debates. That endless, vicious intramural fight – featuring Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich savaging Mitt Romney’s “vulture capitalism” – laid the premise for Obama’s negative and winning campaign.

Ted Cruz has suggested that Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin moderate Republican debates. Good idea, wrong target. How about this arrangement? Limbaugh & Co. should moderate the Democratic debates. What a splendid blood soaked spectacle that would be.

As for the GOP? Bring on the liberals. The Republicans should demand the return of Harwood, Quick and Quintanilla, until the end of time.

Census-taking or Voter I.D? The Electoral College threat…..

Census-taking or Voter I.D? The Electoral College threat…..

By Walter E. Williams

Voter ID laws have been challenged because liberal Democrats deem them racist. I guess that’s because they see blacks as being incapable of acquiring some kind of government-issued identification. Interesting enough is the fact that I’ve never heard of a challenge to other ID requirements as racist, such as those: to board a plane, open a charge account, have lab work done or cash a welfare check. Since liberal Democrats only challenge legal procedures to promote ballot-box integrity, the conclusion one reaches is that they are for vote fraud prevalent in many Democrat-controlled cities.

There is another area where the attack on ballot-box integrity goes completely unappreciated. We can examine this attack by looking at the laws governing census taking. As required by law, the U.S. Census Bureau is supposed to count all persons in the U.S. Those to be counted include citizens, legal immigrants and non-citizen long-term visitors. The law also requires that illegal immigrants be a part of the decennial census. The estimated number of illegal immigrants ranges widely from 12 million to 30 million. Official estimates put the actual number closer to 12 million.

Both citizens and non-citizens are included in the census and thus affect apportionment counts. Counting illegals in the census undermines one of the fundamental principles of representative democracy – namely, that every citizen-voter has an equal voice. Through the decennial census based process of apportionment, states with large numbers of illegal immigrants, such as California and Texas, unconstitutionally gain additional members in the U.S. House of Representatives thereby robbing the citizen-voters in other states of their rightful representation.

Hans von Spakovsky, a Heritage Foundation scholar and former member of the Federal Election Commission, has written an article, “How Noncitizens Can Swing Elections: Without Even Voting Illegally.” He points to the fact that 12 million illegal aliens, plus other aliens who are here legally but are not citizens and have no right to vote, distort representation in the House. Spakovsky cites studies by Leonard Steinhorn of American University, scholars at Texas A&M University and the Center for Immigration Studies. Steinhorn’s study lists 10 states that are each short one congressional seat that they would have had if apportionment were based on U.S. citizen population: Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

On the other hand, states with large numbers of illegal aliens and other non-citizens have congressional seats they would not have had. They are: California (five seats), Florida (one seat), New York (one seat), Texas (two seats) and Washington state (one seat). Moreover, the inflated population count resulting from the inclusion of illegal immigrants and other non-citizens increases the number of votes some states get in the Electoral College system, affecting the actual process of electing the president of the United States.

There is a strong argument for counting non-citizens, whether they are here legally or illegally. An accurate population count is important for a number of public policy reasons as well as national security – we should know who is in our country. But as professor Mark Rozell, acting dean of the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University, and Paul Goldman, a weekly columnist for the Washington Post, say in their Politico article, there is no “persuasive reason to allow the presence of illegal immigrants, unlawfully in the country, or noncitizens generally, to play such a crucial role in picking a president.”

Hans von Spakovsky concludes his article saying, “It is a felony under federal law for a noncitizen to vote in our elections because voting is a right given only to American citizens. It is a precious right that must be earned by becoming a citizen. Giving aliens (particularly those whose first act was to break our laws to illegally enter the country) political power in Congress and allowing them to help choose our president strike at the very heart of our republic and what it means to be an American.”

Barack Obama is not seeking "legacy"; what is he seeking?

Barack Obama is not seeking "legacy"....

Sylvia Thompson 

To the many gullible souls out there who truly think that Barack Obama is "legacy building" in his all-out assault on America, I implore you to bow out of the conversation because you are not seeing clearly.
 

The term legacy carries positive connotations of something bequeath that is to the receiver's benefit. Everything that Barack Obama does is calculated to destroy America, which he despises. This man no more cares about legacy than he fears being properly prosecuted by the white political leaders whose responsibility it is to remove him from office.

 I focus on white leaders, because whites are still in the majority and they fill the majority of political offices. If the majority of political operatives were of some other ethnicity, I would lodge my complaint against that group. Ethnicity is an issue only because Obama is half-black and he uses that fact to intimidate guilt-conflicted white people. Otherwise, he would have been impeached and likely in prison for treason by now.

 Barack Obama's sole aim has been, since he first entered politics and continues as he winds down this presidency, the complete destruction of America as it was founded.

 It is an insult to the intelligence of all Americans who must listen to elitist pundits on Fox news and elsewhere, and political drones in either party endeavor to make Obama's behavior fit a pattern of normalcy. Attributing his destructive policies to "legacy building" is either self-delusion on the part of the people who make that claim or cowardliness.

This is my take

Obama's nuclear deal with Iran has nothing to do with legacy but rather to enable a Muslim nation to wage nuclear war with America and Israel – the two nations that he most despises. Does anyone wonder why Russians praise Vladimir Putin despite what the rest of the world might think of him? Putin cares about his country, that's why.
 

Obama despises the American military because traditionally it has been a mainstay of America's strength and our strength infuriates him.

 Imposition of a polluting homosexual, anti-Christian agenda upon the military ranks destroys unit cohesion and literally terrorizes male members with the prospect of sodomy rape. Such rapes have increased since the forcing of open homosexuality in the ranks, against the will of a majority of members I might add and couple that with an infiltration of women, for whom all standards of strength must be reduced, and Obama attains his goal of emasculating and demoralizing the forces.

 He could not care less about a legacy of making the forces more diverse. Besides, President Truman diversified the military as much as it should be when he integrated it. Obama's objective is its destruction.
 

Obama reopened relations with Cuba because Cuba is Communist. Legacy is not his concern here either, but rather to scuttle America's attempts to keep Communist influence out of the Americas. That Cuba has major issues with human rights does not matter. Like his Marxist African father before him, he despises the West and all that it represents.

 Obama lawlessly declares open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, because he wants to overrun America with third-world people who bring little more than dependency with them. This tactic not only does not ensure a legacy, but rather it guarantees the eventual conversion of America itself into third-world status, if it is allowed to continue.

 Bill Clinton started the travesty of increasing the numbers of third-world immigrants at the expense of culturally more suited immigrants from European and European-influenced nations, but Obama has taken the trend to lawless, destructive extremes. He is fully aware that many of these invaders have no intention of assimilating.

 It is only the outcry of a majority of Americans that holds back this hateful invasion scheme, and Donald Trump's entry onto the political scene to oppose that scheme is a saving grace for our nation.

 These are but a few instances of behavior that display the loathsome character of Barack Hussein Obama. And he is allowed to roam freely through the American landscape poisoning and polluting as he goes, sure in the realization that no one will stop him because he is "black."

 The day that we no longer have to hear the prattle about his "legacy building" will not be soon enough for me.

 Many, many Americans are thoroughly fed up with Barack Obama and the spineless crop of political leaders who ignore his criminality. It is yet unknown whether Republicans will ever garner the backbone to become a true opposition party and hold him accountable. Promising signs are the House conservatives' getting rid of establishment types John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker and Speaker hopeful, respectively, and Donald Trump's entry into the 2016 presidential race with enough money and testicular fortitude to tell the Establishment and the Left where to shove it.

 Should these positive trends not continue and the 2016 election cycle yield no movement to counter all the harm that Barack Obama has done to this nation, I think there will be massive disruption. Those folks in the National Rifle Association ads currently running on television seem very serious to me, and that is a good thing.

---

Sylvia Thompson is a black conservative writer whose aim is to counter the liberal spin on issues pertaining to race and culture.
 

Ms. Thompson is a copy editor by trade currently residing in Tennessee. She formerly wrote for the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley California Newsletter and the online conservative blog ChronWatch, also out of California.
 

She grew up in Southeast Texas during the waning years of Jim Crow-era legalized segregation, and she concludes that race relations in America will never improve, nor will we ever elevate our culture, as long as there are victims to be pandered to and villains to be vilified. America is better served without victims or villains.

Ohio votes against legalization of pot

Ohio votes against legalization of pot

In a major blow to marijuana legalization nationwide, Ohio voters rejected Tuesday a sweeping initiative that would have ended pot prohibition in the Buckeye State. Unofficial election results found that the proposed constitutional amendment was defeated 65.1 percent to 34.8 percent.

Voters did write into the Ohio Constitution a provision that prohibits the establishment of a “monopoly, oligopoly or cartel” in the state’s founding document. Issue 2, which the state legislature wrote expressly to defeat the marijuana language, passed 52.6 percent to 47.4 percent.

At the Ohio Chamber of Commerce in downtown Columbus, opponents of legalization rejoiced in their double victory, achieved even though they were outspent by a whopping 20-to-1 ratio. Curt Steiner, campaign director for Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies, told the gathering that important issues such as the medical use of marijuana were “overshadowed by the brazen nature and far-reaching extent of the statewide money grab attempted by Issue 3 backers – an attempt voters concluded was, in this instance, an unsavory abuse of the ballot issue process.

“Issue 3 was nothing more and nothing less than a business plan to seize control of the recreational marijuana market in Ohio,” Steiner said. “Issue 3 was designed and built primarily to garner massive and exclusive profits for a small group of self-selected wealthy investors.

Tuesday’s outcome concluded a yearlong campaign by Responsible-Ohio, the private organization of wealthy Ohioans and others who put $20 million into the effort to persuade voters to legalize marijuana.

Why is the outcome a good sign for the Nation? It is not just about marijuana, it is about the people not being able to be swayed by massive amount of political media spending. It demonstrates that people are smart and think through the issues themselves without the pounding by the media!

How The Budget Deal Changes Social Security For Couples

How The Budget Deal Changes Social Security For Couples

By Mark Miller

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Among its many provisions, the budget deal moving quickly through Congress puts an end to “file-and-suspend,” a lucrative strategy for couples that can boost lifetime Social Security retirement benefits by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

File-and-suspend was a little-known strategy until a few years ago, but it has been quickly gaining popularity because it permits married couples to have their cake and eat it too.

The strategy calls for the higher-earning spouse to file for Social Security benefits at his or her full retirement age, but then suspend that filing while the benefit grows, until as late as 70. The lower-earning spouse can then claim spousal benefits at his or her own full retirement age, and later shift to their own full benefit, if it is larger. (A spousal benefit is half of the primary earner’s benefit.)

The Center for Retirement Research has estimated that file-and-suspend adds $9.5 billion in annual benefit costs to the program.

The White House targeted it for elimination in the budget plan issued last year, calling it an “aggressive” move used by high-income households to “manipulate” benefits. The budget deal approved by the House this week would clamp down on the practice for anyone who turns age 62 after calendar year 2015.

File-and-suspend has been at the top of the list for reform over the past year – and it was thrown into this deal as part of the political horse trading that yielded the crucial agreement to beef up Social Security’s disability insurance trust fund.

That fund is on track to run out of money next year, which would have produced an immediate 19 percent cut in disability benefits; that problem has now been pushed down the road to 2022.

The budget deal reallocates funds from Social Security’s retirement trust fund – a move pressed for by disability advocates and the White House but resisted by Republicans.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

The original bill language also implied that benefits would be ended for spouses who already were receiving benefits under a spouse’s suspended filing.

That would have been a damaging, unwise move since it would have pulled the rug out from people relying on benefits – and it would have been an administrative nightmare for the Social Security Administration.

Congressional sources say that was never the intent, and that the language in the bill is being revised to clarify that only new file-and-suspends are disallowed, beginning 180 days after the bill is signed into law. That opens a window for six more months for people to file and suspend, if they choose that strategy.

More routine spousal strategies will remain in place, and couples should study them carefully. It still makes sense for higher-earning spouses to delay their filing, and some lower-earning spouses may want to file for the 50 percent spousal benefit ahead of their own full retirement ages, if that benefit is greater than their own full benefit. (For more on how much couples can reap in additional benefits, see http://reut.rs/1ePEqXg)

It is also possible to boost Social Security benefits through delayed filing by continuing to work or by drawing down retirement nest eggs to fund living expenses in the early years of retirement while allowing eventual Social Security benefits to grow.

Still, the rapid-fire nature of the budget deal shows the need for a more serious, long-range debate about Social Security.

“There hasn’t been a discussion since the Bowles-Simpson commission (about five years ago) about serious, fundamental Social Security reform,” says Jason Fichtner, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a former deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “Frankly, reform should be done holistically, but instead this got done as part of a negotiation over the disability insurance problem.”