Two Democrats Charged in Tea Party Election Fraud

PONTIAC, Mich. (WJBK) - Two former leaders of the Oakland County Democratic Party are facing a total of nine felonies for allegedly forging election paperwork to get fake Tea Party candidates on November's ballot.

"It is not a partisan statement, and we need to make that very clear," said Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper.

Former Oakland County Democratic Chair Mike McGuinness and former Democratic Operations Director Jason Bauer face up to 14 years in prison if convicted.

"Some of the people didn't even know they were on the ballot till they began receiving delinquency notices of filings that were required as a candidate," said Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard.

The sheriff says 23 statewide races had questionable Tea Party candidates on the ballot and the investigation may go beyond Oakland County.

Two Democrats Charged in Tea Party Election Fraud: MyFoxDETROIT.com

Marshall Ramsey Cartoon: In the Eye of the Beholder

MarshallRamsey.com

Yin and Yang: Reagan and Obama

It's simple ideology

The Hill: Liberal groups worry president will cut deal on 'crown jewel' Social Security

BY: Alexander Bolton

A broad coalition of labor unions and liberal groups has launched an intense lobbying campaign directed at the White House in advance of President Obama’s State of the Union address.

These groups are concerned about Obama’s taciturn response to the proposal by his fiscal commission to gradually increase the retirement age and use a different calculation for cost-of-living adjustments.

Coalition partners held a conference call with liberal bloggers on Thursday afternoon to expand the public-relations campaign directed at the White House and Congress.

The Strengthen Social Security Campaign includes more than 200 member groups such as the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, Campaign for America’s Future, National Women’s Law Center, USAction and MoveOn.org.

Many of the groups were members of the Health Care for America Now campaign that worked alongside Obama to push healthcare reform through Congress.

Now that Republicans control the House and Obama is facing reelection, the political dynamic is different and liberal groups fear the president might be willing to cut a deal on Social Security. Labor unions and liberal groups worry Obama could endorse a boost in the retirement age or a change in cost-of-living adjustments when he discusses strategies for reducing the federal deficit later this month.

“Everybody and their cousin is talking to the White House about this,” said a Democratic strategist involved in the lobbying campaign. “Nobody in the progressive world thinks the president ought to endorse the Bowles-Simpson Social Security stuff. People feel very strong about it and have been working it very hard.

“No one knows for sure where the White House is,” said the strategist. “Social Security has been the crown jewel of progressive policy over the last century. Just because so many people voted for the Bowles-Simpson plan and Obama hasn’t said anything specifically about the Social Security recommendations, groups are doing an all-out push.”

The Campaign for America’s Future plans to release polling data next week conducted by Stan Greenberg showing public attitudes about Social Security and the economy.

In December, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), the chairman of Obama’s fiscal commission, released their final recommendations for Social Security as part of a comprehensive proposal to reduce the deficit.

Eleven of the 18 members of the bipartisan commission, including Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) voted for the final debt-reduction proposal.

Kingson said the liberal coalition is also in the midst of planning a nationwide grassroots campaign to press members of Congress not to support cuts to Social Security.

He estimated the coalition’s budget is “a couple million” over the next six months, but that does not include the substantial resources that unions such as the AFL-CIO will allocate to allied activities, such as educating their members on the issue.

"In late January, President Obama will make his annual State of the Union address. It is important that he use the speech to send a clear message to those who want to cut Social Security — Hands Off!" stated an e-mail sent this week.

Hickey warned that if Obama embraced the Bowles-Simpson recommendations for Social Security, it would “split the Democratic Party.”

READ MORE

Could we please dispense with the Palin "target" crap.

BY: B. Keith Plunkett

Let me start by saying I'm no Palin fan. I think she's an opportunist. I doubt her sincerity, and her intelligence. Start "shooting" me those emails ladies. I can take your criticism. But, she hasn't a hooting chance in hell of ever being President.

Having said that, I want to defend her a little here. She's become the whipping girl for everyone on the left for using a graphic of a map that targets Democrat controlled districts with literal targets on her website. But, how about we cut out the holier-than-thou. The Dems did it way back in 2004, and even referenced their "targets" as being "behind enemy lines." There is also a video from 2003 on the same site entitled "A Country Worth Fighting For".

From the Democrat Leadership Council Website:

The heartland strategy begins by choosing likely targets for Democratic gains. Let's go to the map:



Why Obama Caved on the Bush Tax Cuts

By David Paul Kuhn

It's the liberal version of George H.W. Bush reneging on his "read my lips" tax pledge. Candidate Obama excoriated the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But Monday evening, President Obama tentatively agreed to extend those same tax cuts.

Call it compromise or call it caving, the deal will anger the Democratic base. It opens Obama to charges of hypocrisy. Perhaps Obama saw it as a raw deal. But he also likely believes it's the best deal he can get.

This partly comes down to votes. Democrats lack the 60-Senate votes to extend the tax cuts for earnings under $200,000. That left Democrats with two options: expire all or extend all.

Expiration was Obama's worst option. It amounted to bad policy and bad politics. Major tax hikes have a bad record in bad economies. And this economy has struggled to weather smaller headwinds. Democrats would also have to explain to all working Americans, not merely top earners, why their taxes rose in hard times.

Tax hikes have long been a political loser for Democrats. Many liberals argued that Democrats should blame Republicans for obstructing middle class tax cuts to win tax cuts for the rich. But Democrats retain control of Congress and the presidency (for a few more weeks). And they have learned a DC-axiom the hard way: the party that controls Washington accounts for Washington.

Imagine the Bush tax cuts expiring. The conservative Americans for Tax Reform currently have a "Countdown to the Biggest Tax Increase in American History." The most-cogent message wins debates. And Republicans have long had it on taxes.

Timing is another issue. Democrats waited until the eleventh hour to have this debate. Republicans were not going to let Democrats move to the next issue until the tax issue was resolved. This White House still hopes to ratify the new START treaty with Russia as well as end "don't ask, don't tell" this term. Republicans were also unwilling to extend unemployment benefits for about 2 million Americans without extending the tax cuts to the top income bracket. In the game of chicken, Democrats had more to lose. Democrats would also only have a worst hand next year, with a slimmer Senate majority and a Republican House.

The tentative deal was a political win for Republicans. But Obama has a deal he can stand on. If the deal comes to fruition, the package will extend the Bush tax breaks for two years in exchange for an additional 13 months of unemployment benefits. It will also cut payroll taxes to spur hiring.

The package will cost about $900 billion over the next two years. The deal comes only days after the deficit commission report, which urged serious action to combat America's long-term debt problem (or crisis).

Ironies abound. Democrats spent years railing against George W. Bush for not paying for his tax cuts. Democrats are now emulating the very actions they criticized. Republicans have spent two years preaching about the primacy of deficits. The GOP victory however means a tax deal that will likely prove more costly to the deficit than the stimulus package. This bi-partisan compromise is, oddly, politics as usual.

Obama said Monday evening the "framework" for the tax deal "was not perfect." Yet it's conceivable Obama saw an upside to losing this debate.

In Obama's ideal world, he would bolster programs like food stamps or extend the unemployment benefits independent of the tax cut debate. This is liberal orthodoxy. It is also however not without reason.

Consider the math of Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics and a past-advisor to both parties. Zandi calculates that every dollar spent on food stamps, for example, has a $1.74 impact on the economy (the money goes entirely to goods). The bang-for-buck for extending unemployment benefit is $1.61 (unemployed spend what little they have to stay afloat). By comparison, Zandi calculates that extending the Bush tax cuts will only have a 32-cent impact on the economy for every dollar (affluent earners feed government coffers but they are also more likely to save their tax cut, and therefore not greatly stimulate growth).

But Obama lacks the coalition to win his ideals. That ship sailed long ago. And Obama's political recovery is tied to the economic recovery. Obama will take what stimulus he can get.

Read More

Votes Happening Now Over Pelosi's One Last Political Stunt

House Democrats' maneuver blocks GOP amendments on tax vote

With their days numbered in control of the U.S. House, Democrats are planning a political stunt Thursday in hopes of embarrassing Republicans on a vote to raise taxes.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) announced Democrats would disregard the Obama administration’s ongoing negotiations with congressional Republicans and force a vote on taxes. Democrats will use a procedural maneuver preventing the GOP from offering an amendment to extend all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Republicans immediately voiced alarm at the move. While the vote would prevent tax hikes on Americans earning $250,000 or less, small businesses would face steep tax increases under the Democrats’ plan.

Without an opportunity to offer amendments, Republicans are expected to vote against the measure. By doing so they’ll give Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) one final opportunity to demagogue the issue. However, it will likely be a short-lived victory. The measure has little chance of passing in the Senate.

Read More: RS

Coincidence? Fed’s Attack on For-Profit Colleges Supports Dem Donor’s Agenda

Florida trial attorney Chris Hoyer, who along with his wife, has donated close to $30,000 to President Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates and causes over the last decade, appears to be curiously in-tune with the Democratic administration’s agenda on higher education.

Hoyer, through his James/Hoyer Law Firm, is targeting for-profit career schools for class actions at around the same time the Obama administration Department of Education appears to be targeting that same industry through aggressive new regulatory action and rule making.

Hoyer has filed a lawsuit against Westwood College, claiming the school lied about tuition costs and future salary potential for graduating students. As with any class action situation, where the people who benefit are primarily the attorneys, Hoyer’s class action pursuits should not be taken lightly. His 2008 action against Waste Management Company yielded each plaintiff a whopping $25.

But the underserved, largely black and Hispanic students who tend to enroll in similar career schools need to worry that their education choices are under legal assault. “I’m not trying to attack the whole for-profit school industry,” Hoyer maintains. Nevertheless, James/Hoyer claims on its website that it is “investigating” no fewer than seven such for-profit colleges.

As it happens, the Department of Education has begun an aggressive campaign to enforce a beefed up “Gainful Employment” rule. As former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Commissioner Thomas Kean recently pointed out, this “Gainful Employment” rule appears to be specifically targeted at the same career schools in Chris Hoyer’s laser scope:

Specifically, the department’s proposed gainful employment rule, which seeks to regulate the amount of debt that students who attend career colleges can take on, has been met with legitimate criticism from both sides of the aisle. The rules purport to target higher education programs with high loan default rates.

Read More: BG

Nobody wants a fruitcake.

GOP Picks Up 680 State Legislature Seats

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats.
Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures -- the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control -- meaning both chambers -- of 26 state legislatures.

That control is a particularly bad sign for Democrats as they go into the redistricting process. If the GOP is effective in gerrymandering districts in many of these states, it could eventually lead to the GOP actually expanding its majority in 2012.

Republicans now hold the redistricting "trifecta" -- both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship -- in 15 states. They also control the Nebraska governorship and the unicameral legislature, taking the number up to 16. And in North Carolina -- probably the state most gerrymandered to benefit Democrats -- Republicans hold both chambers of the state legislature and the Democratic governor does not have veto power over redistricting proposals.

NJ

Thanks for the memories

If we could only find the murder weapon . . .

Have Democrats become this blatant because they have no fear of prosecution, or is it just ignorance?

Eleanor Holmes Norton

The title of the post on Big Government says Shock Audio. I know when your given the word "Shock" these days its usually just to get your attention and very seldom is it truly shocking. This, however, truly is shocking.

I kept listening for the end when some voiceover would say, "GOTCHA!" But, it didn't happen. Go to the link below and scroll down and listen to House Member Eleanor Holmes Norton make a fundraising call to a lobbyist. What's worse than the call is the fact that she was ignorant enough to leave such a detailed and incriminating voicemail.

Shock Audio: Facing ‘Obligations’ From Leadership, Democrat Congresswoman Leaves Voicemail for Lobbyist Cash

This video speaks for itself, and for your current President.

More proof there's no shortage of race-pimps ready to cash in on "oppression"

Charges of Racism Fly in Arkansas Runoff

The president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP said Tuesday that he’s worried racism is rearing its ugly head in Arkansas’ 2nd district Democratic runoff.

Dale Charles, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he is concerned about what Speaker Robbie Wills and his supporters really mean when they question the “electability” of the other candidate, state Senate Majority Leader Joyce Elliott, who is black.

“To say that she’s not electable — that’s a code word for racism,” Charles said. “She is electable in her [state Senate] district and served three terms in the [state] House. She came out on top in a field of five in the primary. ... Why all the sudden does the word electability come up?”

Elliott won just under 40 percent of the vote in the May 18 primary to set up a Tuesday runoff with Wills, who took second place in the primary with about 28 percent.

The winner of the runoff will face former U.S. attorney Tim Griffin, who has been highly touted by national Republican leaders to take over the seat being vacated by Rep. Vic Snyder (D).

Read more at Roll Call


NAACP race baiting

Obamacare’s Cooked Books and the “Doc Fix”

The Obama administration continues to insist (see this post from White House budget director Peter Orszag) that the recently enacted health-care law will reduce the federal budget deficit by $100 billion over ten years and by ten times that amount in the second decade of implementation. They cite the Congressional Budget Office’s cost estimate for the final legislation to back their claims.

And it is undeniably true that CBO says the legislation, as written, would reduce the federal budget deficit by $124 billion over ten years from the health-related provisions of the new law.

But that’s not whole story about Obamacare’s budgetary implications — not by a long shot.

For starters, CBO is not the only game in town. In the executive branch, the chief actuary of the Medicare program is supposed to provide the official health-care cost projections for the administration — at least he always has in the past. His cost estimate for the new health law differs in important ways from the one provided by CBO and calls into question every major contention the administration has advanced about the bill. The president says the legislation will slow the pace of rising costs; the actuary says it won’t. The president says people will get to keep their job-based plans if they want to; the actuary says 14 million people will lose their employer coverage, many of whom would certainly rather keep it than switch into an untested program. The president says the new law will improve the budget outlook; in so many words, the chief actuary says, don’t bet on it.

All of this helps explain why the president of the United States would be so sensitive about the release of the actuary’s official report that he would dispatch political subordinates to undermine it with the media.

It’s not the chief actuary’s assignment to provide estimates of non-Medicare-related tax provisions, so his cost projections for Obamacare do not capture all of the needed budget data to estimate the full impact on the budget deficit. But it’s possible to back into such a figure by using the Joint Tax Committee’s estimates for the tax provisions missing from the chief actuary’s report. When that is done, $50 billion of deficit reduction found in the CBO report is wiped out.

And that’s before the other gimmicks, double counting, and hidden costs are exposed and removed from the accounting, too.

For instance, this week House and Senate Democratic leaders are rushing to approve a massive, budget-busting, tax-and-spending bill. Among its many provisions is a three-year Medicare “doc fix,” which will effectively undo the scheduled 21 percent cut in Medicare physician fees set to go into effect in June. CBO says this version of the “doc fix” would add $65 billion to the budget deficit over 10 years. The entire bill would pile another $134 billion onto the national debt over the next decade.

If the Obama administration gets its way, this three-year physician-fee fix will eventually get extended again, and also without offsets. Over a full 10-year period, an unfinanced “doc fix” would add $250 to $400 billion to the budget deficit, depending on design and who is doing the cost projection (CBO or the actuary).

Administration officials and their outside enthusiasts (see here) say the Democratic Congress shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix” because everybody knows a fix needs to be enacted and therefore should go into the baseline. (By the way, the history of the sustainable growth rate [SGR] that Ezra Klein provides at the link above is a misleading one. The SGR was a replacement for a predecessor program that too had run off the rails — the so-called “Volume Performance Standard” enacted by a Democratic Congress in 1989.)

But supporting a “doc fix” is not the same as supporting an unfinanced one on a long-term or permanent basis. Not everybody in Congress is for running up more debt to pay for a permanent repeal of the scheduled fee cuts, which is why such a repeal has never been passed before. In the main, the previous administration and Congresses worked to find ways to prevent Medicare fee cuts while finding offsets to pay for it.

But that’s not the policy of the Obama administration. The truth is the president and his allies in Congress worked overtime to pull together every Medicare cut they could find — nearly $500 billion in all over ten years — and put them into the health law to pay for the massive entitlement expansion they so coveted. They could have used those cuts to pay for the “doc fix” if they had wanted to, as well as for a slightly less expansive health program. But that’s not what they did. That wasn’t their priority. They chose instead to break their agenda into multiple bills, and “pay for” the massive health entitlement (on paper) while claiming they shouldn’t have to find offsets for the “doc fix.” But it doesn’t matter to taxpayers if they enact their agenda in one, two, or ten pieces of legislation. The total cost is still the same. All of the supposed deficit reduction now claimed from the health-care law is more than wiped out by the Democrats’ insistent march to borrow and spend for Medicare physician fees.

And the games don’t end there. CBO’s cost estimate assumes $70 billion in deficit reduction from the so-called “CLASS Act.” This is the new voluntary long-term-care insurance program that hitched a ride on Obamacare because it too created the illusion of deficit reduction. People who sign up for the insurance must pay premiums for at least five years before they are eligible to draw benefits. By definition, then, at start-up and for several years thereafter, there will be a surplus in the program as new entrants pay premiums and very few people draw benefits. That’s the source of the $70 billion “savings.” But the premiums collected in the program’s early years will be needed very soon to pay actual claims. Not only that, but the new insurance program is so poorly designed it too will need a federal bailout. So this is far worse than a benign sleight of hand. The Democrats have created a budgetary monster even as they used misleading estimates to tout their budgetary virtue.

There is much more, of course. CBO’s cost projections don’t reflect the administrative costs required to micromanage the health system from the Department of Health and Human Services. The number of employers looking to dump their workers into subsidized insurance is almost certainly going to be much higher than either CBO or the chief actuary now projects. And the price inflation from the added demand of the newly entitled isn’t factored into any of the official cost projections.

We’ve seen this movie before. When the government creates a new entitlement, politicians lowball the costs to get the law passed, and then blame someone else when program costs soar. Witness Massachusetts. Most Americans are sensible enough to know already that’s what can be expected next with Obamacare.

Fix Health Care Policy



Health Care Reform

Must read analysis of the lefts view of the TEA Party Movement from Redstate.

When Newt Gingrich was in Jackson a few months ago he spoke at the Rankin County Republican Dinner to honor Congressman Gregg Harper. He very succinctly broke down the battle of Right Vs. Left when he said the left simply views the message of limited government with disdain. In a nutshell, Conservative's can't hope to compromise with someone who has a fundamentally polar opposite view.

One would expect Gingrich to try to get mileage out of the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress that he helped oversee along with then GOP Chairman Haley Barbour. But, he's right. No matter how hard one tries, attempts to explain away fundamental differences with lip service to compromise has never put us in a position to return to constitutionally limited government.

What will?

Starving the beast that is the federal government.

No matter how hard "lefty pencil necks" attempt to explain away the current movement, and no matter how often their minions parrot the talking points provided (Keith Olbermann, Ed Shulz, Chris Matthews, etc.), and hurl insults and racial accusations, the simple truth is this is going to happen come November. Conservatives have been given yet another chance to get it right, this time by the TEA Party activists. Considering the level of disconnect between words and deeds with the current administration and the Democrat leadership in Congress, this could be the last chance before the country moves beyond the point of no return.

The Tea Party Movement as a Libertarian Mob


a pencil necked lefty explains the Tea Party movement

There is an apocryphal story, truth be told it is more closely akin to a parable than a story, that tells much about the American character. As the story goes, an English nobleman is in America at some point in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, depending upon when you find the story, and he’s seeking directions or a room for the night or somesuch. He approaches an American farmer or rancher or backwoodsman and says, “My good man, where is your master.” The American solemnly stares and replies, “I reckon that sumbitch ain’t been born.”

Segments of the left are all a-Twitter, so to speak, today over an article in the New York Times Review of Books by someone named Mark Lilla titled Tea Party Jacobins. According to the left, this article explains the Tea Party movement and the electoral stomping the left anticipates taking this November. It has nothing to do with the Administration’s policies or its disdain for America rather:

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

This is a very convenient position to take when you’re in Mr. Lilla’s position. The alternative is to admit that your entire world view is being repudiated by most of the country.

Read the entire post at Redstate

More Proof: They Knew, But Hid It From the Public

From the American Spectator

What Lies Beneath


OFFICE POLITICS

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

In the end, the report was released several weeks after the vote -- the review by the secretary's office reportedly took less than three days -- and bore a note that the analysis was not the official position of the Obama administration.

Will Dems 'go for it' on immigration reform?

Across Capitol Hill, Republicans are asking just one question about Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid: Are they really going to do it?

Will the president, the speaker, and the majority leader try to pass "comprehensive" immigration reform in a midterm election year that already threatens to be a disaster for Democrats?

So why are Obama, Pelosi and Reid going forward? There are five possible explanations.

1) They've lost their minds.

2) They are very smart and know something we don't.

3) They're out of touch with the public's concerns.

4) They want to be able to tell the most ardent supporters of reform that they tried.

5) They're fully aware that the public doesn't want "comprehensive" reform but are racing to do as much as they can before the elections take away their power to defy the public's wishes.

The first possibility is highly unlikely. The second is less so, but still pretty unlikely. The third is plausible, but not probable. The fourth is arguable. And the fifth? It makes a lot of sense, especially in light of the Obamacare experience.

Not long ago, in another context, the president challenged Republicans to "Go for it." Don't be surprised if the GOP tells him the same thing this time.

Washington Examiner

More comparisons to '94

Mistrust in Government: 'Perfect Storm'

Last time the weather got this bad (1980 and 1994), big things happened.

Only 22 percent of all Americans surveyed say they trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time -- among the lowest measures in half a century - according to a new Pew Research Center survey released tonight.

The results point to "a perfect storm'' of public unrest, Pew reports -- "a dismal economy, an unhappy public, (a) bitter, partisan-based backlash and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials.

There have been political ramifications in the past when the public mood grew this sour: In 1980, Ronald Reagan unseated President Jimmy Carter. In 1994, the GOP won the House.

The current level of public skepticism was matched previously only in the periods leading up to both events -- from 1992 to 1995 (reaching a low of 17 percent trust in government in the summer of 1994), and from 1978 to 1980 (bottoming out at 25 percent in 1980).

The Swamp