Scandal: Veterans Administration taking guns away from 175,000 veterans

/in , , , , /by

Within the past week, Gun Owners of America received an e-mail from a member being treated by the VA (Department of Veterans Affairs).  The member was also receiving Social Security benefits, and Social Security had appointed a guardian to manage his financial affairs.

The member wrote us because the VA, based on the Social Security guardian, was moving to take his guns away.

Although it is Standard Operating Procedure for the VA to appoint its own guardians and use this to justify its gun ban on more than 175,000 veterans, it now appears to us that the VA is searching for new “gun ban excuses” to strip even more veterans of their constitutional rights.

Which brings us to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.  It appears that the Obama administration is so busy using the VA to strip veterans of their gun rights that it doesn’t have time to provide them with medical treatment.

Shinseki was dragged before a Senate hearing Thursday to explain massive waiting lists for treatment.  High level executives at the VA ignored warnings that these lists existed, and agency officials issued falsified letters to conceal them.  Altogether, these delays may have resulted in the deaths of 40 or more veterans at the Phoenix location alone.  The scandal has now spread to at least 10 states, and seems to reflect an endemic problem with the VA.

Shinseki’s response?  He is pushing an Inspector General investigation which will be completed in August.  But even liberal Democrats have questioned how many veterans will die between now and then as a result of the department’s misplaced priorities.

As a result, the American Legion has called for Shinseki’s removal.

Why does this matter to gun owners?

The answer is this:  The VA appears to be too busy with gun bans to do its job.

“We’ve known that combat veterans are being systematically stripped of their rights for some time now,” says Dan Cannon, the founder and editor of GunsSaveLives.net. “There have been numerous reports of veterans losing their gun rights due to seeking counseling or help with depression, PTSD, or for simply not having their financial affairs in perfect order.”

We’re sure that the Obama administration will counter that it doesn’t take much time at all to take away a veteran’s constitutional rights.  But no matter how many personnel or how much time it takes to promote Obama’s anti-gun agenda, it is too much!

This is another example of a phenomenon which is pervasive in the Obama administration:  Politics over performance.

And it’s not going to stop until someone loses his job for pursuing Obama’s anti-gun agenda, at the expense of his department’s mission.

RELATED STORIES:

Lessons of the VA Scandal
Sen. Ed Markey Wants $10 Million Per Year to Treat Guns Like Disease at CDC
Krauthammer on Obama’s Response to VA Scandal: “The Buck Stops Nowhere”
Miami VA Whistleblower Exposes Drug Dealing, Theft, Abuse – CBS Miami
Where VA Has Taken Veterans, Obamacare is Leading All Americans

The Great Inversion: Technology like Bitcoin flips the logic of collective action by Carl Oberg

/in , , , /by

The political logic of “concentrated benefits and diffuse costs” has been with us since day one of democracy. But it was only recently explained effectively by great economists like the Nobel Prize-winning James Buchanan and Mancur Olson.

It works like this: A special interest group such as the sugar lobby wants money in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, scientific study funding, or anything else of value to them. Let’s say the package they want is worth $100 million. The benefit is concentrated with that company or industry doing the lobbying at $100 million.

How much will this cost the American taxpayer? $100 million is the partially right answer. Of course, as individuals we react to the impact of this corruption not as a $100 million tax, but rather as a 32-cent tax. ($100 million divided by 310 million Americans) The costs are diffused over every taxpayer, lessening its impact and making it more politically palatable to any individual voter.

Are you willing to protest for $0.32? Will you hit the barricades for $0.32? Will you use your precious income-earning time to get back that $0.32? They’ve already won, because almost no one is willing to lose time or sleep over this—if they even know any individual instance is occurring.

And so the “logic” of Public Choice Problems is for spending to increase—seemingly forever—on pet projects and special interests until a crisis is reached and the system has to be reset.

But something interesting happens when you start talking about diffuse systems like the internet and bitcoin—something that hasn’t yet been fully examined. This public-choice logic gets turned on its head. The systems not only survive, but thrive. Let’s look at bitcoin as an example.

The government sees bitcoin as a threat to its monopoly on money and the power to create federal reserve notes whenever it wants. The federal government jealously guards this power because it allows the government to pay for anything it desires while passing on the true costs of the money printing to the citizenry through inflation. Increased spending (concentrated benefits) and diffuse costs (inflation which lowers the value of savings) are hallmarks of the current federal monopoly on money.

But as the feds fight against bitcoin and other crypto-currencies, they will find the tables turned: The beneficiaries of these diffuse systems are legion, and spread far and wide. But the costs of fighting technological advancement and increased monetary freedom are laid squarely at the feet of the government. Investigations, new laws, prosecutions, new snooping technologies all cost significant time and resources. And the government has just begun to go after crypto-currencies.

The closure of the first Silk Road site and the arrest of BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem are just the beginning. Meanwhile, the benefits of a robust, changing and growing crypto-currency community and ecosystem are constantly spreading to more and more people. The government can stop places like Silk Road and others, but more will pop back up, considering the relatively low setup costs and its value diffuse throughout a larger user community.

The internet as a whole functions in the same way. Attempts to constrain the internet, like SOPA, incur huge costs for the lawmakers who attempt to get them passed. Meanwhile, technology has developed to the point where even if the government was able to constrain or suppress the internet, other networks outside of their control could easily pop up. The darknet already exists, is being actively used by individuals interested in privacy and could be expanded to address outside infringement of the regular Web.

This is a development which turns the very logic of political action on its head. Thanks to technology and the distributed nature of networks, we are no longer beholden to the political process, majoritarian rule, and the so-called “fair” tax and fiat money regime. The more of the economy we move to the net, the safer we will be and the more distributed power becomes.

Carl ObergABOUT CARL OBERG

Carl Oberg is the Chief Operating Officer of the Foundation for Economic Education.

Time for the States to Take Back Their Land from the Feds

/in , , , /by

According to a 2012 report by the Federal Research Service, “The federal government owns roughly 635-640 million acres, 28% of the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States.

Four agencies administer 609 million acres of this land: the Forest Service (USFS) in the Department of Agriculture, and the National Park Service (NPS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), and Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), all in the Department of the Interior (DOI). Most of these lands are in the West and Alaska. In addition, the Department of Defense administers 19 million acres in military bases, training ranges, and more. Numerous other agencies administer the remaining federal acreage.”

I suspect it may come as a surprise to many people that the federal government owns just over a quarter of the nation’s landmass and, other than land set aside for military bases and naval ports that may seem excessive. It is.

The drama that ensured when the Bureau of Land Management lay siege to the Nevada Bundy ranch over unpaid grazing fees called into attention the fact that the BLM oversees, according to a recent article in the National Review, “the largest piece of leasable real estate in the American West—245 million acres, an area bigger than the mid-Atlantic states and New England combined. The BLM is its landlord.”

In theory one can apply for a license or lease “to make productive use of this land” noted Travis Kavulla in his article, “Public-Land Colonialism.” In practice “The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires an excruciatingly complex process before even mundane land-use decisions can be made.” It is a regulatory nightmare for anyone who might want to create a mine to access coal or valuable minerals or extract oil or natural gas.

The process is subject to government policies, spoken or unspoken, to restrict access. A current case involves actions by the Environmental Protection Agency to stop the creation of the Pebble Mine project in Alaska even before a permit is requested. A May 12 Wall Street Journal editorial noted that “The EPA’s inspector general’s office last week announced it will investigate the agency’s February decision to commence a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine project, a job-rich proposal to develop America’s largest U.S. copper and gold mine in southwest Alaska.”

The Obama administration has been devoted to stopping all kinds of projects that might generate jobs and revenue from projects like the Pebble Mine. Its opposition to the building of the Keystone XL pipeline is the best known example, but the EPA’s “war on coal” has closed many mines in addition to coal-fired plants needed to provide electricity.

The EPA is requesting jurisdiction over all public and private streams in the nation and this has been called “the largest land grab in the history of the world.” So it is not just public lands that are affected, but private lands as well.

In an article on World Net Daily, Alana Cook pointed out that “The proposed rule tinkers with the definition of ‘navigable’ waters which was the central point of litigation in a battle between the Supreme Court and the EPA regarding the Clean Water Act.” The proposal would “allow the EPA in conjunction with the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Energy and the Army (Corps of Engineers) to dictate on a never-before-seen scale everything from grazing rights, food production, animal health and the use of energy on private lands.”

This is, simply stated, Communism in which the government owns all the land.

As Craig Rucker, Executive Director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) points out, “There is no engine on Earth as powerful at creating prosperity and improving the condition of both man and nature than free markets. There can be no free market without the right to property.” He warns that “Property rights are under siege.”

One of the BLM’s reasons cited for its actions against the Bundy ranch involved “endangered animals” and Rucker said, “Take away a person’s right to choose how to use their land and in effect you’ve seized that land.” The attack on private land ownership is led by the United Nations Agenda 21.

The government’s control over public lands and its grasp for control of the use of all private lands reflects the Marxist agenda of the Obama administration. It is so manifest that, in mid-April, officials from nine states got together in Salt Lake City to discuss ways to retake control of poorly managed federal lands.

There are federal laws that have been on the books a very long time that are intended to protect private property from the actions we have seen by the BLM and the EPA. One is the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, so this issue has been around awhile, but what is generally unknown is how vast federal control is.

In his National Review article, Kavulla noted that “In Montana, one county that is a traditional center of natural gas production has a whopping 53 percent of its subsurface minerals controlled by the BLM. Proposed resource management plans (RPM) in Montana “more than quadruple the land off-limits to ‘surface occupancy’ which makes oil and gas drilling virtually impossible. Only about one million acres of a ten million acre federal estate would be open to drilling activities under standard leasing conditions.”

America is under attack from within by federal government agencies that are striving to deny access to the greatest energy reserves in the world and to control the lives of ranchers and farmers whose work feed the rest of us.

It is time for the states to take back their land from the federal government and to oversee its use for the development of the economy, the security of the nation, and the protection of private property, the keystone of capitalism.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

I just got a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services

/in , , , , /by
charlie_rothwell

Charles Rothwell, NCHS Director.

I just received a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asking me to provide them the vaccination information and other private health information on my 2 children age 28 and 27. They want me to give them the information in their immunization records. They said they picked me at random by my phone number.

They want me to call them at 1-877-267-8154 and disclose information that is protected by the HIPPA Privacy Rules. HIPPA is the American Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a set of rules to be followed by doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. HIPAA helps ensure that all medical records, medical billing, and patient accounts meet certain consistent standards with regard to documentation, handling and privacy.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule Ref: 45 CFR Part 160 and Part 164. The Privacy Rule establishes national standards to protect individuals medical records and other personal health information. The Privacy Rule also applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers that conduct health care transactions electronically.

The HIPAA Privacy Rule requires appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of personal health information, and sets limits and conditions on the uses and disclosures that may be made of such information without patient authorization.

This information is being requested by Charles J. Rothwell the Director of the National Center for Health Statistics. Rothwell has been an adviser to the United Nations (U.N.) for automating Peru’s national statistical activities; served as a member of a U.S. team providing on-site consultative services to East Germany, and U.S. representative to a U.N. committee that helped develop electronic data transmission standards between countries. Imagine that ? I wonder if he is taking your health info and sending it to the UN ? He also served as a legislative assistant for Senator Lieberman, working primarily on bipartisan health care reform legislation. He signs off on the letter “Thank your for your cooperation.” Much like the cop in the Fifth Element.

I cooperated all right. I called the number and told them in voice-mail they are close to violating the HIPPA Act a federal law and I will report them to my Congressman. They definitely will have a bad day when they open my voice-mail. Well my Congressman Jeff Miller only contacts me when he wants a petition signed so I doubt he will respond or investigate so I am sending it across the nation as a warning to you all.

If you receive a similar letter I suggest you report it to your representative if you get such a letter.

Call them up and listen to their voice-mail. The number is 1-877-267-8154. Tell them to stop data mining our children. Its illegal and unconstitutional.

The Real State of the Economy — Not Obama’s Lies

/in , , , , , /by

My Father was a Certified Public Accountant and so is my older brother, now comfortably retired in Florida. I tell you this because I would be hard-pressed to balance my checkbook.

Even so, you do not have to be smart with numbers to know that the real state of the U.S. economy is pathetic these days. You can thank Barack Obama for that because, dear reader, he is utterly clueless regarding America’s economy; how it works, and what it needs to work.

Peter Ferrara, a Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute specializing on entitlement and budget policy and a contributor to Forbes magazine, is one of the people to whom I go to understand the economy.

In a May 2 edition, in an article titled “What Obama’s Growth Recession Is Stealing From Your Wallet”, Ferrara wrote “Restoring that booming economic growth and prosperity (of past decades) is the core of solving all of our nation’s problems, not income or wealth redistribution, or addressing ‘inequality.’ But President Obama is not on the path of restoration. The latest report on real GDP growth estimates this year’s first quarter at a pitiful 0.01%. This is in the 6th year of Obama’s Presidency.”

The Heritage Foundation’s chief economist, Stephen Moore, writing on May 1st in the National Review, asked, “What happens to an economy when you do just about everything wrong?” Here’s his list:

  • Say you spend $830 billion on a stimulus stuffed with make-work government-jobs programs and programs to pay people to buy new cars,
  • you borrow $6 trillion,
  • you launch a government-run healthcare system that incentivizes businesses not to hire more workers,
  • you raise tax rates on the businesses that hire workers and on the investors that invest in the businesses that hire workers,
  • you print $3 trillion of paper money,
  • you shut down an entire industry (coal), and try to regulate and restrain the one industry that actually is booming (oil and gas).

“We made all of these imbecilic moves,” wrote Moore, “and the wonder of it all is that the U.S. economy is growing at all. It is a tribute to the indestructible Energizer Bunny that is the entrepreneurial U.S. economy that it keeps going and going even with all the obstacles.” I want to argue with his use of “we”, but enough Americans elected Obama twice to justify it.

The Associated Press, much like most of the mainstream press, paused from protecting Obama in a May 2nd article that began “Despite the unemployment rate plummeting, more than 92 million Americans remain out of the labor force.”

As Harvard Ph.D., Jerome R. Corsi, a World Net Daily senior staff reporter, noted the same day as the AP article, “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announcement that unemployment has dropped from 6.7 percent in March to 6.3 in April was partly attributed to some 800,000 workers dropping out of the labor force last month, reducing the labor participation rate to 62.8 percent, a new low for the Obama administration.”

When people stop looking for work, they are not counted as “unemployed.” Dr. Corsi put the actual unemployment rate in April at 12.3 percent! The numbers you read about from the BLS are “virtually meaningless.” They should just drop the “L” from their acronym.

As the Wall Street Journal opined on May 3rd, “The Americans who left the workforce include older workers who retired before they wanted to, millions who have taken disability, and others who simply don’t find the job openings to be worth the cost of giving up public benefits.”

You don’t have to be an economist to know the truth that has finally sunk into the minds of millions of Americans, many of whom are unemployed or know someone who is. Obama has driven the economy into the toilet. He has foisted trillions of debt on future generations. In order to vote for “the first black President of America”, what those voters and the rest of us got was a man with no experience running so much as a sidewalk lemonade stand.

I think those voters will want a change in November when the midterm elections are held. Between now and then, I want the Republican Party to spend a little less time on the Benghazi scandal and a lot more time telling voters their plans to revive the economy because, in the end, that is the single most important issue facing all of us.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

Extenders For The Millionaire’s Club

/in , , , , /by

“The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption.” – James Garfield

Wall Street Journal columnist and former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes in the June issue of Readers Digest that, “Someday history will write of our era, and the biggest scandal will be the thing we accepted in our leaders; chronic and endemic selfishness. History will be hard on us for that.”

Nowhere is this chronic selfishness more pervasive than in our legislative processes on Capitol Hill. Peter Schweizer writes in his groundbreaking book Extortion that:

“Politics in modern America has become a lucrative business, an industry that has less to do with policy and more to do with accessing money and favors. Bills and regulations are often introduced, not to affect policy change, but as vehicles for shaking down people for money and favors.”

And what’s the favorite vehicle for shaking people down? Why the income tax code of course; all 73,954 pages specially written by Washington’s finest lobbyists, many of whom previously served as staffers on Capitol Hill.

Don Corleone said in the movie, The Godfather, “Make me an offer I can’t refuse”. Today’s legislative equivalent of Corleone’s veiled threat has become tax extenders.

Unlike permanent legislation, tax extenders must be renewed every few years or new taxes go into effect, or the taxes that were temporarily halted under the extender are reinstated.

And make no mistake; the process of renewing tax extenders is all about filling Member’s campaign coffers. And who fills those coffers? Businesses and individuals affected by or who have an interest in the tax law (extender) up for renewal.

Schweizer provided a sickening example of how the Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his campaign coffers during the 2012 election cycle while overseeing that year’s tax extenders that were up for renewal.

This is the same Committee that has yet to act on the FairTax® plan.

According to Schweizer, after announcing hearings on the extenders up for renewal, “ten nervous senior executives at General Electric made donations to Camp on March 19totaling $16,000. Those executives had an enormous amount of money at stake in the tax extenders drama. They had become masters of sorts over the years in turning profits but largely avoiding taxes, thanks to a favorable and complicated tax code.”

He went on. “But Camp’s most lucrative play was targeting corporate PACs. From the beginning of March to the date of the hearings to vet which extenders might stay and which might go, he collected 120 checks totaling $230,000 from corporate or trade association PACs, the vast majority of which had money at stake in the tax extender debate.

The money came from the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Association of Home Builders, Walmart, General Motors, General Electric, Associated Builders and Contractors, Johnson and Johnson and more.”

Very neat, very tidy and it’s all legal.

After all, Congress wrote the laws.

In 2013, this same Committee announced with great fanfare the initiation of a bi-partisan plan for fundamental tax reform. Public comment was requested, a multi-city roadshow was orchestrated and public hearings were held.

In early 2014, the D.C. media all but announced that fundamental tax reform would not see the light of day in 2014. The Committee then began to focus on…. You guessed it…. Tax extenders. In 2014, there are 55 tax extenders up for renewal, and surprise, surprise, 2014 is an election year.

Is it any wonder that Congress is the new millionaires club?   

Our Founding Fathers never envisioned a Congress where, in order to affect the legislative process, businesses and individual citizens have to operate like game pieces on a Monopoly board or risk being punished by the totalitarian enforcement arm of the IRS and other government agencies.

Agencies now literally weaponized with assault rifles and sub-machine guns. As former Microsoft chief operating officer Robert Herbold told Schweizer, “You’re crazy if you don’t play along. They will go after you.”

Our nation deserves a tax code focused on her people and her nation – not one that is punitive and frightening, and fills the campaign coffers of the new millionaires club.

If you agree and have not read Peter Schweizer’s book, Extortion, please pick up this blockbuster expose. We have made it easy.

Simply click here and donate $35 or more, forward your emailed donation confirmation and your preferred mailing address to campaigns@fairtax.org, and we will send you a hardback copy of Extortion. It’s that simple.

Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything by George C. Leef

/in , , , , , /by

Our Legal System Poses a Grave Threat to Our Liberty.

In the gigantic theater that is American politics, one of the favorite roles for politicians to play is that of the tough guy who is determined to “crack down” on something or other. Such actions are predictably cheered by whatever voting groups the politician wants to curry favor with. An often-heard campaign line is, “Vote for me and I’ll push legislation to make it a crime to. . . .” We already have an enormous criminal code, but adding one more thing to it serves to show the voters that the pol really means business.

Like most features of our politics this mania for the criminalization of behavior is harmful. As is usual with government, the unseen problems dwarf the seen benefits. The more we criminalize conduct that voters dislike, the more we put people who never intended any wrongdoing into the quicksand of criminal prosecution. With legions of prosecutors who are more interested in making names for themselves than in doing justice, Americans are living in an increasingly dangerous country.

That’s the point of Go Directly to Jail, edited by lawyer and Cato Institute writer Gene Healy. “At one time,” he writes, “the common law doctrines of mens rea (“guilty mind”) and actus reus (“guilty act”) cabined the reach of criminal sanctions, but those protections have eroded dramatically over the past 50 years. Today it’s possible to send a person to prison without showing criminal intent or even a culpable act. . . .”

Consider this case. Edward Hanousek worked for a railroad in Alaska. One day, a backhoe operator working under his supervision accidentally ruptured an oil pipeline while removing some boulders from the tracks. Hanousek, who wasn’t even at the site of the accident, was nevertheless prosecuted for having violated the Clean Water Act, which makes it a crime if a “negligent failure to supervise” leads to any discharge that might pollute water. Hanousek was convicted for someone else’s accident. His case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to review this legal abomination. Americans must now worry about criminal prosecution for all sorts of conduct that a few decades ago hardly anyone would have thought should be illegal.

The book has six chapters by different authors. Erik Luna’s “Overextending the Criminal Law” explores the unfortunate tendency for politicians to use criminal sanctions as an all-purpose tool of social control. It’s impossible to disagree with Luna’s assessment that “When the criminal sanction is used for conduct that is widely viewed as harmless . . . the moral force of the penal code is diminished, possibly to the point of near irrelevance. . . .”

In the second essay, “The New Criminal Classes: Legal Sanctions and Business Managers,” James V. DeLong observes that the spread of criminalization means that nearly anyone can fall victim to prosecution for some regulatory crime, and often the defendant finds that the law accords him a lower degree of protection for his rights than do old-fashioned criminals who rob and murder. The Fourth and Fifth Amendments have been subverted in the crusade to send people like Ed Hanousek to jail.

Legal scholar Timothy Lynch, in “Polluting Our Principles: Environmental Protection and the Bill of Rights,” shows that the incentives for environmental regulators to produce “results” (that is, convictions to prove how dedicated they are to safeguarding the environment) lead to terrible travesties of justice. The vagueness of many environmental regulations gives the enforcers almost unfettered discretion to prosecute business people. Lynch notes that individuals accused of environmental crimes are often subjected to procedures that the courts would not tolerate for normal criminal defendants. He calls it the “environmental exception to the Bill of Rights.”

Galen Institute president Grace-Marie Turner discusses criminalization in medical care, specifically, the dangerous trend toward criminal prosecution in the futile crusade against Medicare and Medicaid fraud. An especially frightening feature of the law here is that the enforcers get to keep a percentage of the fines they impose.

Editor Healy contributes a chapter on the rampant federalization of crime. To provide just one example, President Bush’s Project Safe Neighborhoods has led to a surge in federal prosecutions for illegal firearms possession. Healy writes that this law “violates the Tenth Amendment, clogs the federal courts, encourages a mindless zero tolerance policy and opens the door for every special interest group in Washington to politicize criminal justice policy.”

The book’s final chapter, again by Erik Luna, examines the nation’s sorry experience with federal sentencing guidelines, which he argues “saps moral judgment from the process of punishment.”

The U.S. is off track in many, many ways. Go Directly to Jail leaves no doubt that our legal system is careening out of control and poses a grave threat to our liberty.

ABOUT GEORGE C. LEEF

George Leef is the former book review editor of The Freeman. He is director of research at the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

RELATED STORY: ‘She’s Just a Child’: 9-Year-Old Taken Away in Handcuffs

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

Obamacare’s Health Insurance Tax Could Cost Up to 286,000 Jobs

/in , , , , /by

As I’ve written previously, small businesses should brace for big health plan premium increases. Some are already seeing this happen. Rod Winter, a Wisconsin business owner told the Wall Street Journal:

Our 440-employee business just received its initial premium from United Healthcare for our July 1 renewal. The renewal premium represents a 29% increase over the current premium. UHC indicated that our premiums are going up 11% to bring our deductibles and out of pocket maximums in line with the provisions of the ACA. In other words, without the ACA, our premiums would be going up approximately 18%, not 29%.

New research finds that the added costs of one of Obamacare’s taxes will be brutal on employment.

The National Federation of Independent Business’ Research Foundation estimates that the Health Insurance Tax (HIT)

will result in a reduction in private sector employment of 152,000 to 286,000 jobs by 2023, with 57 percent of the job losses coming from small businesses.

This will amount to a reduction of U.S. real output (sales) by between $20 billion to $33 billion during the same time frame.

The chart above breaks out how individual states will be affected.

The HIT, which went into effect on January 1, 2014, levies a tax on health plans sold on the fully-insured market. Eighty-eight percent of it is made up of small businesses. Revenue from the tax will rise by 41% in 2015 and reach $14.3 billion in 2018.

“Small businesses are crucial to rebuilding an economy that allows all Americans to prosper,” Katie Mahoney, Executive Director of Health Policy at the U.S. Chamber said. “We need to work to find ways to ensure small businesses and their employees have the tools to build on their current success, not hinder future growth.”

The HIT tax simply adds to their burdens, as Fox Business’ Gabrielle Karol reports:

“When employers are faced with double-digit rate increases, to add a few additional percentage points to the renewal just makes that health insurance less affordable and makes it less likely for them to recruit additional employees to provide better services,” says Tom Harte, president of the National Association of Health Underwriters.

“Just yesterday, I was sitting with a non-profit organization in New Hampshire whose rate increase was over 18% from the prior year, and embedded within that was the HIT. For that non-profit organization to instead be faced with a 15% increase versus 18% would have certainly helped them to deliver more services and provide for additional compensation for their employees,” adds Harte.

The Stop the HIT Coalition released a new tool that will help small businesses and their employees calculate how much the tax will cost them. It will also help them contact their Member of Congress to strengthen the bipartisan support for repealing this harmful tax.

RELATED COLUMN: The Problem With Obamacare’s Employer Mandate

Florida is one of 31 states that have emissions-free energy from this —

/in , , , , , /by

There’s one source of energy that will operate 24/7 – through heat waves or cold snaps – all while producing zero emissions. Seem incredible? That’s just the start of what nuclear energy provides the U.S.

Nuclear energy is powering the country with emissions-free electricity from 100 reactors located in 31 states across the U.S.

Soon, five new reactors will be added to that list with the capacity to produce enough electricity for more than 1 million homes and businesses for the 60 next years.

Nuclear energy directly employs 120,000 workers nationwide, including engineers and skilled tradesmen who provide an economic boost to their communities.

Nuclear is a key component of America’s energy future as it provides affordable, reliable and emissions-free energy for us all. Let’s ensure our energy policy supports a future that includes nuclear.

nuclear power infographic

Nuclear is indispensable to our country’s energy future. Today, explore our infographic, then share the facts on Facebook, Twitter, or by email.

Czech Book Dusting off Tucker (Benjamin, not Jeffrey) by Lawrence W. Reed

/in , , , , , , /by

The literature of liberty, free markets, and individualism is immensely rich and getting richer with each passing year. Today’s great minds are building on yesterday’s greats. Taken as a whole, liberty’s library constitutes a most incredible collection of inspiration and insight into the boundless potential of human society. The only sad thing about it all is the extent to which those of an anti-liberty, statist perspective won’t tell their acolytes about it. Have you ever noticed how well “our side” knows Marx and Keynes while those on the other only think they know Hayek, Mises, Friedman, or even Smith?

Among the great thinkers of barely a century ago was Benjamin Ricketson Tucker. Critic of corporate welfare and a welfare state of any kind, Tucker edited and published a remarkable journal called Libertyfrom 1881 to 1908. It featured the bylines of many other great minds as well. Tucker was a fascinating advocate of “individualist anarchism,” which he also called “unterrified Jeffersonianism.”

In September 2013, the Foundation for Economic Education cosponsored a conference in the Czech Republic. Our partner in the effort was CEVRO, a private college in Prague devoted to advancing liberty ideas. Among the students in attendance was Lukáš Nikodym. He approached me afterward with a project he and his brother Tomas were contemplating: an online book of selected articles from Tucker’s old journal. “Will you write the foreword?” Lukáš asked. I hesitated not a second.

The book is now available, and I commend it to our readers, along with these related materials:

  1. “The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty” (1881-1908)” by Greg Pavlik
  2. “Forgotten Critic of Corporatism” by Sheldon Richman
  3. Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty

Download fileDownload the PDF here

20130918_larryreedauthorABOUT LAWRENCE W. REED

Lawrence W. (“Larry”) Reed became president of FEE in 2008 after serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s and both writing and speaking for FEE since the late 1970s. Prior to becoming FEE’s president, he served for 20 years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan. He also taught economics full-time from 1977 to 1984 at Northwood University in Michigan and chaired its department of economics from 1982 to 1984.

Florida: Sheriff Jim Manfre from Flagler County wants to ban your rifle!

/in , , , , , , /by

Sheriff Jim Manfre from Flagler County in Florida wants to ban your rifle and leave you defenseless against the tyranny flowing from Washington D.C. He calls these rifles “assault weapons.” My AK-47 sits happily in the closet and it has never assaulted anyone. Only people assault other people. Whether its with guns, knives, hammers or bottles.

According to Lee Williams of the Herald-Tribune:

At a meeting Tuesday night of the The Democratic Progressive Caucus of Florida held in Palm Coast, Flagler County Sheriff Jim Manfre called for a ban on “assault weapons,” said he wanted tighter regulation on private firearm sales, and called for changing existing laws on background checks.

According to a news story written about the meeting written by a reporter at the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the sheriff also said his “sensible gun control” ideas were supported by the Florida Sheriff’s Association.

Yesterday, Nanette Schimpf, spokesperson for the Florida Sheriff’s Association, told me the news story was inaccurate. The FSA has never called for ending private sales, banning “assault weapons” or changing background check laws.

Manfre also supports the legalization of marijuana, something the Florida Sheriffs Association is against. Indeed Sheriff Jim Manfre is just another Obama supporter who needs to voted out of office. He is unwilling to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and Florida, as he has sworn to do.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has the solemn duty of serving and protecting the citizens of our great state. The following is contact information for Sheriff Manfre:

Address: 1001 Justice Lane, Bunnell, FL 32110
Email: jmanfre@flaglersheriff.com
Phone: (386) 437-4116
Fax: (386) 586-4820

Notice how his disclaimer is to protect the citizens, yet he wants to disarm law abiding citizens, so his disclaimer is a lie. This man is another example of Obama’s reach into the great State of Florida.

I will not disarm. I will not give up my 2nd Amendment rights to some Sheriff. He has betrayed his oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and must be removed from office. I told him so in an email.

As for my weapons nobody will take them. I am protected under the 2nd Amendment. I gave sheriff Manfre my cell phone number. Lets see if he has the guts to call me back.

US Mortgage risk increases due to growth in FHA’s market share and loan level risk

/in , , , , , /by

Washington, DC, May 12, 2014—American Enterprise Institutes’s National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) for home purchase loans hit a new series’ high of 11.89% for April, up from 11.50% in March.  The increase was due to FHA, which had higher market share and increasing loan level risk.  The FHA’s April home purchase volume was 41,756, an increase of 36% over March.  By contrast Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had April home purchase volume of 101,050, an increase of 24% over March and down 4% from the same month last year.

Overall April purchase volume was up 27% over March, the result of the Spring buying season ramping up.

The April NMRI for FHA loans also hit a new series high of 25.12% up from 24.77% in March.

The April NMRI for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans declined slightly to 5.93% from 6.00% in March.

Complete results will be presented on the monthly NMRI briefing phone call scheduled for Tuesday, May 27 at 10AM EDT.  To RSVP now, please email Emily.Rapp@AEI.org.

The NMRI score is an objective and transparent mortgage risk measure. It represents an estimated cumulative default rate for new home purchase loans under the assumption of stress conditions from 2007-2012.   An overall index level of less than 6% is indicative of conditions conducive to a stable national market.  For more information about the NMRI, please visit HousingRisk.org.

AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk produces the NMRI monthly.

PA Attorney General Charges and Arrests Test Cheaters — FL AG Bondi Missing in Action

/in , , , , , , , /by

Taking a cue from former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers (R) and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R), Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D) charged and arrested a principal and four teachers for cheating on standardized tests at Cayuga Elementary School in Philadelphia over a four year period (2008-2012).

Kane said the educators changed student answers, provided test answers to students and improperly reviewed Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test questions before giving the tests. After the cheating stopped in 2012, the schools test scored dropped dramatically, Kane noted.

In 2008-09 state proficiency tests, Cayuga’s fourth graders excelled: 88.8% pass math and 83.9% pass reading. By 2012-13, the most recent numbers available, fourth graders at the school struggled with 31% passing math and 25% passing reading.

Those charged are:

  • Evelyn Cortez, 59, Dresher, Montgomery County;
  • Jennifer Hughes, 59, Jeffersonville, Montgomery County;
  • Lorraine Vicente, 41, Philadelphia;
  • Rita Wyszynski, 65,  Philadelphia; and
  • Ary Sloane, 56,  Philadelphia.

In Georgia, numerous teachers, and principals were convicted or took plea deals and are in prison. Superintendent Beverly Hall had her plea deal rejected and awaits trial in August 2014.

Unfortunately for Florida students and taxpayers, Attorney General Pam Bondy and Governor Rick Scott took a different course of action in response to test cheating: they did absolutely nothing.

Hard evidence was sent to both of these Constitutional officers and elected officials concerning various violations concerning professional development fraud, teacher certification fraud, teacher observation and evaluation fraud, and test cheating – all of which were documented in a state report issued by the Auditor General of Florida and the Miami-Dade OIG Final Report which concluded that, “Miami Norland has benefited in the form of attaining a higher school grade and may have received financial compensation or other benefit resulting from its high pass rate on the industry certification exams” (page 13).

Katherine-Fernandez Rundle, Miami-Dade State Attorney of the 11th Judicial Circuit, did not respond nor take action on these allegations, stating she can do nothing per “local control,” and that the responsibility for investigation and resolution rests with the employee of the perpetrators – Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

After appearing before investigators with the Office of the Auditor General for the State of Florida and the Miami-Dade Office of Inspector General in April and May 2012, in which sworn statements, evidence, and produced two witnesses (teachers who corroborated the test cheating) were given, to ensure that these investigations would be acted upon by the state, the findings were sent to Governor Rick Scott for action.

Governor Scott’s Inspector General emailed a written response declining assistance for lack of jurisdiction and deferred to the Miami-Dade OIG, who declined to investigate this particular matter as the Auditor General’s Office was investigating it.

On February 6, 2013, the FLDOE OIG, sent a written response claiming “lack of primary jurisdiction.” One would think they would have a secondary jurisdiction to investigate violations of state law pertaining to test cheating and any and all related frauds (money) to protect students, teachers, and taxpayers.

Worse yet, I emailed Florida’s and Miami-Dade’s chief law enforcement officers, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle respectively, and the response was disappointing.

On March 8, 2013, Attorney General Bondi emailed the whistle-blower, Trevor Colestock, back basically citing lack of jurisdiction and passing the buck to the school district of all places and various local and federal agencies.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney did not respond whatsoever, though she did prosecute teachers and school administrators in the MOTET teacher certification scandal 8 years earlier.

These improprieties and related crimes (using computers to commit fraud, wire fraud, malfeasance, test cheating, and 20,000+ counts of record tampering and teacher certification fraud) were reported on by multiple media outlets. However, Governor Scott, Attorney General Bondi, FLDOE bureau chiefs and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle appear to have a “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil” when it comes to stopping cheating and fraud in Florida’s public schools.

Though the state has inherent police and supervisory powers to enforce and regulate its laws, Florida (unlike the States of Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania) has been a passive spectator concerning school districts and test cheating to the detriment of Florida students, teachers, and taxpayers.

Perhaps it is time for Governor Scott and Attorney General Bondi to stop passing the buck and stand against cheating in Florida’s public schools?

The Commonizing of Common Core

/in , , , , /by

Patrick O’Donnell’s Cleveland Plain Dealer articles of April 17 and 20, regarding Common Core, stated that our educators were surprised that Common Core tests were tough. Why did these people in positions of trust accept the new curriculum before evaluating the complete package and its potential damage? The payoffs far outweighed all other considerations, including the children’s maturity levels and welfare.

Despite the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment that prohibits a federally controlled education system, President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (stimulus package) bribed cash-strapped states with $4.35 Billion, Bill Gates Foundation added $200 million more, and states (Ohio: $10 million) will be heavily taxed to cover operational costs of this program that spells disaster.

Gates and “research company,” Achieve, Inc., selected non-academic people to design the standards, excluding educators, parents, and professionals in the disciplines. A 24-member team headed by David Coleman, who also lacks experience with English instruction, signed a non-disclosure agreement, keeping parents and school boards entirely in the dark. And the standards, although accepted, violated three federal laws – Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1965), General Education Provisions Act, and Department of Education Organization Act.

Common Core mandates prohibit teachers from lecturing for more than 15 minutes per day per subject! This “Type #2” agenda is student-centered learning, where the teacher is reduced to facilitator, unable to provide history, purpose, and background for comprehension. How does one grasp a Constitutional Amendment without its foundation and purpose – or find the essence of a speech without the events that inspired it? America’s founding, exceptionalism and achievements are de-emphasized; Islam is whitewashed and accentuated in great detail.

The program is designed to close the education gap by reducing expectations, and emphasizing skills over literary or cultural knowledge. Their perception of college readiness is not academic preparation but abundant test taking that take time from learning, creativity, and encouraging imagination. Great literature and fiction are sacrificed for new sexualized novels that emphasize social activism. Fifty percent of the reading material comprises informational texts and instructional manuals that discourage reading.

Note the test material given for Test I, Grade 3, deals with trickery, disappointment, feelings, social engineering – not resourcefulness, achievement, success. Test 3, Grade 11, deals with aloneness, divisiveness, social issues, and the errors in word usage and punctuation confirm the carelessness that also permeates the history books. Imagine being tested about the Declaration of Independence and speech by Patrick Henry before disambiguating, studying and analyzing them. A brief video would be valueless.

English and Math courses contain social concerns. Students are being taught what to think – that America is a nation of bigots, poverty-creating capitalists, intolerant war-mongering imperialists, anti-immigrants; and segregating, discriminating, disenfranchising racists; and that they should want big government that relies on redistribution of wealth, globalization, etc. Key concepts of America are negative or openly hostile.

The math places students more than two years behind their international peers by eighth grade. High school students will have to pass college exams on faulty information. Reform math is fracturing our society – teachers cannot help the parents who cannot help the children with homework, leading to frustration and anger, and the children are losing interest in school. Our Education Establishment is alienating them from learning.

Highly degreed and qualified professionals, Dr. Sandra Stotsky (developed one of the country’s strongest sets of academic standards for K-12 students and the strongest academic standards and licensure tests for prospective teachers), Stanford University professor Dr. James Milgram and New York University professor Jonathan Goodman refused to sign off on Common Core, citing the damage to education posed by its methods.

Microsoft and Achieve’s State Longitudinal Database System, will capture, analyze, and use students’ personal and confidential data from preschool through employment. Through “functional magnetic resonance imaging,” “skin-sensitive equipment” and “cameras that judge facial expressions and posture, data about student frustration, motivation, confidence, boredom and fatigue, plus private family statistics” will be available for workforce development in this German model system.

Pearson publishers are responsible for the textbooks and tests, apps, international media, business information, and more, although their books are shoddily assembled and written. Most notable are the history textbooks that present history out of time context, a smokescreen for what has intentionally been excluded. Our high school students are being brainwashed so that they will be intellectually incapable of dealing with the subversive threat to our country coming from the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters in the American Islamic community.

Today’s students will be tomorrow’s teachers and leaders, obedient to the state, robbed of their freedom to thrive. Common Core is destructive and it is up to the parents to recapture our educational system from the grip of the current administration.

Hawaii Spends the Most and Florida Spends the Least on Obamacare

/in , , , , , , /by

“April 30 was the final deadline to signup for Obamacare.  All the numbers are in.  Hawaii spent $920 per enrollment, and $87 per uninsured person and enrolled the fewest people in the USA.  Nobody spent more and nobody achieved less,” notes Andrew Walden.

Here is the news:

State-based exchanges spent far more per consumer than states in the federal marketplace did

National Journal: Hawaii spent $920 to enroll each new Obamacare consumer, while Florida spent only $16….

New data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation details the amount spent on consumer assistance for the Affordable Care Act in each state, and like overall enrollment numbers, the state totals vary a huge amount.

Consumer-assistance programs are those intended to help individuals understand and enroll in coverage under Obamacare, including the Navigator program, the In-Person Assister program, and Certified Application Counselors. The totals do not include funding for the exchange systems or other types of public and private outreach….

Overall, the state-based marketplaces spent far more to help get residents enrolled than states in the federal marketplace. State exchanges accounted for 50 percent of total consumer-assistance funds, yet have only 31 percent of all uninsured, according to RWJF. Federal marketplaces accounted for 33 percent of the funding but house 63 percent of the uninsured, and the five partnership states received 17 percent of the assistance funding, yet include only 6 percent of the total uninsured.

State-based exchanges had far more discretion over how much of their exchange establishment grants they would allocate for consumer assistance, while funding on the federal exchange was based to a larger degree on the number of uninsured residents. Thus state-based exchanges had a much larger range in assistance funding: While spending in federal-marketplace states ranged from $16 per enrollee in Florida to $186 per enrollee in Alaska, spending in state-based exchanges was across the board, from $40 in Idaho to $920 in Hawaii.

Top Five Spenders per Enrollee:

  1. Hawaii: $920 per enrollee, $7,904,918 total (state-based exchange)
  2. District of Columbia: $645 per enrollee; $6,906,057 total (state-based exchange)
  3. Arkansas: $442 per enrollee; $19,211,296 total (partnership exchange)
  4. West Virginia: $385 per enrollee; $7,647,178 total (partnership exchange)
  5. Maryland: $385 per enrollee; $25,620,449 total (state-based exchange)

Bottom Five Spenders per Enrollee:

  1. Florida: $16 per enrollee; $15,932,367 total (federal exchange)
  2. Wisconsin: $20 per enrollee; $2,772,728 total (federal exchange)
  3. Virginia: $20 per enrollee; $4,263,053 total (federal exchange)
  4. Pennsylvania: $22 per enrollee; $6,905,518 total (federal exchange)
  5. Georgia: $23 per enrollee; $7,194,944 total (federal exchange)

Hawaii’s Exchange Spent $87 on ‘Consumer Assistance’ for Every Uninsured Person in State

NRO: Hawaii’s exchange was particularly troublesome for users from its beginning. Perhaps almost as infuriating for residents is the small fortune that the state spent on efforts to help people sign up; the state is spending $87.86 in “consumer assistance funding” for every eligible uninsured person in the state, according to a new report by the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Hawaii’s insurance exchange ranked among the nation’s most dysfunctional, not working at all for the first two weeks. It was supposed to be self-sustaining starting next year but enrollment — 8,742 as of mid-April — fell short of projections; state lawmakers approved another $1.5 million in spending to prop up the exchange for the next year.

But Hawaii wasn’t the champion spender. The District of Columbia spent $163.90 per eligible uninsured person, according to the report….

Most Hawaii exchange enrollees didn’t receive aid

AP: Sixty-two percent of the 8,592 people who bought plans as of March 31 didn’t get aid, data released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed. That leaves 38 percent who got help buying a plan.

The numbers run counter to national enrollment figures, for states participating in the federally run exchange as well as for states operating their own exchanges, like Hawaii. Nationally, 85 percent of people who bought plans through an exchange set up under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul got financial aid….

The only other jurisdiction that had a majority of enrollees sign up without financial assistance was the District of Columbia, which enrolled 10,714 people, 84 percent without using financial assistance….

The last-minute Obamacare shoppers were bargain hunters

WaPo: What explains this federal-state difference in bronze enrollment? Federal subsidies appear to have driven Americans to more expensive silver plans. HHS reported that 86 percent of people selecting plans in the federal exchanges qualified for federal assistance, compared to 82 percent of people in the state-run exchanges.

There was a pretty wide disparity in the percentage of people qualifying for federal subsidies in some state-run exchanges. In the District of Columbia, for example, just 16 percent of sign-ups qualified for premium subsidies. The subsidy eligibility rate was also relatively low in Colorado (60 percent), Hawaii (38 percent) and Vermont (59 percent). In Hawaii’s case, major technical problems with the exchange prevented people from applying for subsidies, officials there said.

Related: Feds Release Profile of Hawaii Health Connector Signups

Crain’s Business News: Exchanges with the lowest enrollments (as of April 19, 2014) were Hawaii, 8,592, North Dakota, 10,597, the District of Columbia, 10,714, and Wyoming, 11,790….

UPDATE: Final figures May 2, 2014: Hawaii Health Connector Claims 9,785 Enrollees (still the lowest in USA)

RELATED STORIES:

Insurance CEO: Shut down Hawaii health exchange – Yahoo News
$474 M for 4 failed Obamacare exchanges – Jennifer Haberkorn and Kyle Cheney – POLITICO.com