Daily Digest for Wednesday
February 5, 2014
THE FOUNDATION
"I will not believe our
labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty
are on a steady advance." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1821
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKSFrom Belarus With Love?
U.S. intelligence officials retracted a warning
that developers linked to the Belarus government helped to create
Healthcare.gov and inserted malicious software (malware) that could be
used later for cyber attacks. Obviously, that possibility would raise
new questions about the security of data entered by millions of
Americans, but Caitlin Hayden of the White House National Security
Council promises, "So far HHS has found no indications that any software
was developed in Belarus." That's very reassuring, we guess. But
cyberwarfare expert David Kennedy warned last month that ObamaCare was "much worse off" after
all the fixes, and it almost defies belief that HHS could have paid
contractors tied to a hostile regime to build Healthcare.gov complete
with malware. Then again, the Belarusian malware might have actually
made insurance affordable.
There, He Fixed It
A young fry cook lamented
to the president that ObamaCare is costing him hours at work. "We were
broken down to part time to avoid paying health insurance," he said,
adding that he's making $7.25 an hour. He concluded, "We can't survive,
it's not living." Obama's cut-and-paste solution? "I am working to
encourage states, governors, mayors, [and] state legislators to raise
their own minimum wage," Obama said. "Obviously, the way to reach
millions of people would be for Congress to pass a new federal minimum
wage law." Employers already are addressing increased costs by reducing
employee hours, but Obama's "solution" is to make those hours more
expensive.
IRS Bonuses
Eight months after we
learned that the IRS was abusing its power by targeting the political
opponents of Barack Obama, officials at the agency are running to the
bank to deposit $62.5 million in bonuses. The sequester had eliminated
the bonuses, but they have been reinstated, albeit at a lower cap of 1%.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, for one, is outraged, saying, "It's hard to think of a
group of people less deserving of bonuses than IRS employees." That may
be true, and we're sure the Obama donor investigating the IRS for its
abuses will be sure to get to the bottom of it.
'Second-Term Birtherism'
Not that anybody watches
MSNBC, but rumor has it "Hardball" host Chris Matthews said something
dumb again. Addressing GOP criticism that Barack Obama is lawless,
Matthews likened such claims to the kerfuffle over the president's birth
certificate: "I think it's a second-term birtherism -- he was
illegitimately elected, now he's behaving illegitimately. They want to
put an asterisk next to this guy; he really wasn't a law-abiding or even
legitimately elected president." The difference is Republicans are far
better off hammering Obama for illegal and despotic actions.
New York Appeasement
Picking up where his
predecessor left off, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is wasting no
time transforming the political landscape as he sees fit. In addition to
heavily altering the NYPD's "stop-and-frisk" policy, de Blasio is
pressing ahead with plans to give public schools time off for the Muslim
holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. It goes without saying that
not all Muslims are jihadis, but pretty well all jihadis are Islamic.
Not only is de Blasio appeasing the Muslims, but he's also caving to
political correctness in the very city targeted by terrorists on 9/11.
For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSISCBO 'Finds Out What's in It'
The Congressional Budget
Office dropped a bombshell on ObamaCare Tuesday, reporting that the
horrendous law would significantly reduce the workforce. "CBO estimates
that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by
about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost
entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor -- given the
new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits
some will receive. The reduction in CBO's projections of hours worked
represents a decline in the number of full-time-equivalent workers of
about 2.0 million in 2017, rising to about 2.5 million in 2024." The
estimate is nearly triple CBO's original one.
Remember when Nancy Pelosi said ObamaCare would "create four million jobs, 400,000 almost immediately"? Good times.Subsidies offered on the exchanges will cause some workers to choose not to take full-time jobs because doing so would mean a loss of income when they lose their subsidies. Employers are already reducing hours in order to avoid ObamaCare's costly mandates. That means workers are being pressed from both sides. The administration insists this isn't a bug; it's a feature. The reduction in full-time workers, explained a White House official, "shouldn't be a significant cause for surprise and it reflects the fact that workers have a new set of options and are making the best choices that they can choose to make for themselves given those options." To Democrats, "best choices" and "options" mean working and earning less. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) added that the news is great because "people shouldn't have job lock. ... [W]e live in a country where there should be free agency. People can do what they want." Share the poverty.
Meanwhile, the CBO reports
also estimates that ObamaCare will cost more than $2 trillion over the
next 10 years, quite an increase over the bill of goods Democrats sold
in 2009 and 2010. Back then, Barack Obama said the law would cost
"around $900 billion," which, of course, was because major provisions
were delayed until this year while taxes to pay for it kicked in
earlier.
And that's not all. The CBO projects that one million fewer Americans
will buy coverage through the exchanges this year than previously
expected, thanks to "significant technical problems that have been
encountered in the initial phases of implementing the ACA." By 2024,
there will still be 31 million people without health insurance, in large
part because ObamaCare will eliminate six to seven million
employer-provided insurance plans in that span. At least the CBO is
following Pelosi's advice on ObamaCare and "finding out what's in it."
In short -- and we know
this will come as a shock -- Democrats lied. They took the worst aspects
of the health care system, put them on steroids and then cheered their
"success." The result is that people will work less, remain uncovered
and pay more for it. That's the steep price of Hope 'n' Change™.
Debt, Debt and More Debt
The good news is the
Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal deficit will fall to
$514 billion in fiscal 2014, which is lower than the previously
estimated $560 billion. That's also far lower than the 2013 deficit of
$680 billion and the $1 trillion-plus deficits of the preceding four
years. Fiscal 2015 looks even better with a projected deficit of $478
billion. But wait, that's the good news?
The bad news is that the
"relief" -- such as it is -- is largely due to tax increases and the
2011 Budget Control Act. Therefore it's only temporary, and deficits
will soon skyrocket, increasing every year and reaching $1 trillion
again by 2022 as the economy continues to muddle along after 2015. The
CBO report says "the economy will continue to have considerable unused
labor and capital resources, or 'slack' for the next few years."
Unemployment will remain above 6% until late 2016, and GDP growth could
be a full percentage point slower than previously projected. Such is the
Obama "recovery."
Now let's stipulate for the
record that deficits of $400 and $500 billion are absolutely
outrageous, and are caused by our elected representatives and the
president grossly violating their oath to "support and defend" the
Constitution. Calling $500 billion deficits preferable to $1 trillion
deficits is like saying you'd rather be run over by a car than a bus.
Either way, you're going to be sporting nasty tread marks.
The current total federal debt of more than $17 trillion is
staggering -- and double what it was just five years ago. Far worse,
that doesn't include massive unfunded liabilities like Social Security
and Medicare that run future outlays into the hundreds of trillions of
dollars. The CBO warns, "Such large and growing federal debt could have
serious negative consequences, including restraining economic growth in
the long term, giving policymakers less flexibility to respond to
unexpected challenges, and eventually increasing the risk of a fiscal
crisis." It's a vicious cycle: Out of control federal spending
suppresses the economy, which means the economy is less able to sustain
the spending.
Which brings us to the debt ceiling that Congress plans to raise in the next few days. Republicans may "demand" approval of the Keystone pipeline or repeal of the ObamaCare insurance bailout, but then the GOP will dutifully raise the ceiling as we continue moving toward fiscal oblivion.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
 OPINION IN BRIEF
Columnist Arnold Ahlert:
"[T]he presidents of UniteHere and the Laborers' International Union of
North America (LIUNA) declared they were 'bitterly disappointed' that
the proposed regulations to ObamaCare would be detrimental to their
interests. In short, unions that supported the president's two election
campaigns are apparently just discovering what many Americans have known
for years: Obama's promises are worthless. ... One is hard-pressed to
recall any outpouring of union sympathy for the millions of Americans
relegated to part-time employment due to ObamaCare, or the 91.8 million
Americans who have left the workforce altogether. Moreover, it is no
secret that the labor movement is still in bed with the
administration when it comes to the so-called comprehensive immigration
reform that will further harm American workers."
Economist Walter E.
Williams: "Philadelphia's public school system has joined several other
big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and
Washington, D.C., in widespread teacher-led cheating on standardized
academic achievement tests. ... When a student is given a high-school
diploma, that attests that he can read, write and compute at a
12th-grade level, and when he can't do so at the eighth-grade level,
that diploma is fraudulent. What makes it so tragic is that neither the
student nor his parents are aware that he has a fraudulent diploma. When
a black person is not admitted to college, flunks out of college, can't
pass a civil service test or doesn't get job promotions, he is likelier
to blame racial discrimination than his poor education. Politicians,
civil rights organizations and the education establishment will do
nothing about the fraud. In fact, they give their full allegiance to the
perpetrators."
English poet and hymnodist William Cowper (1731-1800): "He is the freeman whom the truth makes free."
Columnist Ken Blackwell:
"The Washington ruling class understands that the exercise of religion
as a living, breathing 24/7 reality -- as opposed to once-a-week worship
-- is perhaps the most significant threat to the expansion of
government and its spreading control over our lives. Government's
intimidation of competing institutions therefore necessitates an assault
on their values as well."
Comedian Argus Hamilton:
"The White House announced Monday that President Obama will visit Saudi
Arabia and meet with King Abdullah in March. The Saudi way of thinking
is the exact opposite of Western thinking. In California, for instance,
we expose our women and cover up our oil."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
Join us in daily prayer for
our Patriots in uniform -- Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast
Guardsmen -- standing in harm's way in defense of Liberty, and for
their families.
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