Welfare Payout Statistics That Will Make You Really Angry

Free Patriot) — A new study from the Cato Institute reveals that welfare and other government benefits pay more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states.

For those on welfare and other aid from the government in many U.S. states, getting back into the work force doesn’t always make much sense financially.

In fact, welfare and other government benefits pay more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states and in 13 states, the payout is more than $15 an hour, according to a new study from libertarian think tank The Cato Institute. The study found that the assistance — defined in the study as including government benefits such as food stamps, housing assistance and other programs — pays more than a first-year teacher’s salary in 11 states, the starting salary for a secretary in 39 states and an entry-level job as a computer programmer in three states.

It should be noted that not everyone receiving public assistance is eligible for or receives all of the programs included in Cato’s study. So if a person didn’t get help from all of the programs Cato studied, they might actually make less than minimum wage.

The study “does make a lot of assumptions about what benefits a typical family receives and argues that all the means-tested programs should be included in their fictional family profile,” said Catherine Lawrence, an assistant professor at the University of Albany’s School of Social Welfare. “Research with actual families shows the extreme financial strain of living on welfare or low-wage work; neither welfare nor low-wage employment alone do a very good job supporting the health and well-being of families with children.”

About 1.72 million families received direct assistance during an average month in 2012 through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, according to the latest data from the federal government’s Office of Family Assistance. That adds up to roughly half the 3.94 million families who received TANF in 1997, according to an Urban Institute report funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

States have varying limits on the length of eligibility for welfare benefits, but most top out at 60 months in a lifetime.

“On average, families receiving cash assistance have slightly fewer than two children and receive TANF benefits for two years or less,” Lawrence said. “If they were ‘better off’ not working, then one would find families staying longer, more than twice as long, as they actually do. …Most long-term recipients face a significant barrier to work. For example, an adult may have a significant health issue or a seriously ill child, such as a child with asthma.”

The study, called “The Work Versus Welfare Trade-Off, 2013” and authored by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes, also found that the assistance pays more annually than the median salary in eight states “and nearly as well in numerous other states.”

[H/T Cato Institute]

Media Blackout: SEAL Team 6 Finally Gets A Congressional Hearing, But Of Course No Media Attention

(Before It’s News) —Back in  August of 2011, thirty warriors, including 22 members of SEAL Team 6 that were responsible for killing Osama bin Laden just three months prior, were killed in what was the worst loss of life in the Afghanistan campaign since it began in 2001. Indeed, it was the worst loss of life ever for the elite military force.

Today, almost three long years later, the family and loved ones of those fallen heroes were finally invited to attend a congressional hearing to hopefully resolve some elusive unanswered questions. The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will be holding the hearing this Thursday at 10:00, as relayed to the Examiner by Charles Strange, father of Michael Strange.

Or Watch Full Hearing from the very beginning here on C-Span Live 

Mainstream Media will not be broadcasting this hearing, Live Stream may be your only access. Please share with others. The truth needs to be heard. Amazing testimony so far.

http://static.c-span.org/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.1393275105.swf?pid=318022-1

[H/T Before It’s News]

BREAKING: Russia Spy Ship Discovered In Havana Cuba, While Russia Re-Installs Nuclear Missiles In Cuba (Video)

(Before It’s News) — As you are about to see, Russia has been building up arms in cuba for the last 5 years, while Obama continues to weaken America’s defenses on our southern border.

Now Russian spy ship sneaks into Cuba unannounced. This is highly unusual. The ship is reportedly armed with 30mm guns and anti-aircraft missiles.

Many Americans feel that Obama is deliberately trying to destroy America. His actions since he took office seem to confirm these feelings.

Since Obama has been in office, he has seemingly done all he
can to make the southern border as unsafe as possible. He’s allowed guns to
flow unimpeded across the border with Mexico through Operation Fast and
Furious, he’s tied the hands of border patrol agents and now he’s abandoning the whole of the Southern United States to airborne attack. And he’s violating Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution in the process.

Now let’s step back and look at what Obama is doing right here at home to further render the US helpless when it comes to US defenses.

As Obama’s Federal government spends billions of dollars to expand the surveillance and monitoring of U.S. citizens with electronic eavesdropping devices and drone aircraft, it has decided to shut down a surveillance system that protects the southern border and coastline against low-flying aircraft and missiles and assists U.S. Customs and Border Protection in interdicting illegal border crossings and smuggling.

The Administration of President  Barack Obama has shut down the Tethered Aerostat Radar System (TARS) that uses moored balloons hovering at about 15,000 feet to watch for incoming aircraft and missiles that may penetrate U.S. air space. NORAD, the U.S. Air Force and customs all rely on the system.

This is all done while Russia has been building up arms in Cuba over the last 5 years.

So, then, here is the rub. This site is full of legitimate truth but like most conspiracy theorists, a few outlandish stories that do not gain acceptance will destroy overall credibility. So if it’s only sites like Beforeitsnews and Infowars reporting the story then it must not be true. Right? After all, if CNN is not reporting it…we should not need to worry, correct?

Not on your life. Let me tell you how you get to the truth of these stories. You go to sources outside the USA and see what they have to say. That is the only way to overcome our state-run main stream media. So I looked for the story in Pravda. The story is over a year old now, which shows you exactly how concerned our government is with the situation.

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Lois Lerner Demands Immunity: Time For Congress To Go On Offense

(Walid Shoebat) — Well, that didn’t take long. One day after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent former IRS Tax Exempt Organizations Director Lois Lerner a letter requiring her appearance before the Committee on March 5th, her attorneys say she won’t testify without being granted immunity. Once again, Republicans are given the perfect opportunity to introduce the Malik Obama scandal to the public.

Via Fox News:

The attorney for Lois Lerner, a central figure in the IRS scandal, signaled Wednesday that his client will not comply with a request to testify on Capitol Hill next week.

Attorney William Taylor said Lerner, who resigned last year as the agency’s tax-exempt organizations chief, will return and testify only if compelled by a federal court or if given immunity for her testimony.

Taylor stated his position in a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. He was responding to a letter Tuesday from Issa saying, in part, that Lerner’s testimony remains “critical to the committee’s investigation.”

The committee continues to investigate the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations trying to get tax-exempt status.

Despite Taylor’s letter, staffers with the committee told Fox News they still expect Lerner to show up on March 5. Unclear is whether she would answer any questions.

That last sentence is in bold because it may provide the Committee with a huge opportunity. All eyes will be on this hearing, even if Lerner says nothing. If one, just one, Congressmen brings up the issue of Lerner’s signature being at the bottom of the 501(c)(3) approval letter for Malik Obama’s Foundation, the matter will be on the public record and the ball will be placed firmly back in Lerner’s court.

As an aside, Lerner’s name is not the only name on Malik’s approval letter. Perhaps the other IRS employee at the time should be questioned.

At that point, the Committee could begin playing hardball. If Lerner wants immunity, it should be conditional, to include her giving up everything she knows about why a man who has been found to have extremely nefarious connections to terrorists was given U.S. taxpayer dollars at her direction. If, as evidence suggests, Malik Obama qualifies as an enemy combatant, Lerner may haveprovided material support to terrorism during the commission of another crime (illegally backdating the approval by 38 months). Democrats could be in the unenviable position of choosing terrorism over the rule of law.

What is apparently not acknowledged by Lerner’s attorneys is the finding that the reason she is being called back to testify is because the Committee determined that she waived her Fifth amendment right against self-incrimination when she declared her innocence prior to doing so. Here is the now classic video of Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) calling out Lerner after doing so:

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Progressivism As A Weapon of Mass Destruction

As the president and Secretary Kerry do their part to misdirect attention from the real issues of our time to the fake ones, the nation and the world reap the increasingly rotted fruits of progressivism. What has done more to cause destruction, poverty, disinformation, failure, and death than this cult, premised upon the false superiority of its proponents? Absolutely nothing. Economies lie in ruin, nations are at each other’s throats over bailouts and citizens are pitted against one another for preferential treatment and spoils coerced from others. All while the darkness of human nature parades smugly before us calling itself “hope and change”.

Progressivism is merely the current euphemism for centralized power vested in a class of people who believe their own propaganda, or know it is a lie but tell it anyway. It is not enough merely to note that it has failed every time it has been tried. It must also be said that it has done irreparable damage to humanity wherever it has been practiced. Progressivism is human vice incarnate, the indulgence and celebration of the erasure of the constraints that human experience and wisdom have devised to limit evil. The name has been changed to protect the guilty.

Historically, before the current iteration that we are witnessing in the United States, the quest by elitists for unlimited power over their fellow men, pursued initially under the guise of peaceful change, has usually progressed from societal “improvements” and the well-intended promise of social benefit, to oppression, persecution, and murder. The time line may vary, some are more sudden and violent, some more gradual and subtle, but the outcome has always been the same: the dominance of rulers over the ruled, with all rights and possessions, including life, sacrificed to appease to the insatiable hunger of a soulless state and its foolish enablers.

Along the way, what is lost is immeasurable. Human freedom, the right of each individual to live a life determined by his own needs, skills, and choices, bounded by laws which recognize the need of ethical limits on our interactions, dissolves or, more accurately, is banned. The progressive understands that the usurpation of total control cannot be achieved where humans are permitted to make informed decisions based on accurate information. Thus, it is necessary first to alter the flow and content of the information on which individuals make decisions which, in its totality, directs events that promote one outcome over another. As such, every repressive regime has depended upon disinformation, presented as “news”, meant to shape opinion to favor the illusory virtues of the regime. The success of this process increases in direct proportion to the cultivated pollution of the knowledge of the people.

Because this part of the process snares the weakest and most vulnerable, whether emotional or intellectual, more drastic action is needed to defeat the rest. Those who seek or know the truth are the real enemy of any repressive state. Thus, assuming they still intend to exercise judgment, they must have their choices taken from them in the name of some greater good. Should they still demand freedom, they must be cowed, humiliated, imprisoned, and ground into the dust. To achieve this, in part, the progressive will warp and twist every established truth to make truth seem ugly and defective, under the guise of “progress”.

A significant tool in this arsenal of fraud is the appeal to “science”. After all, the progressive argues, “science” is independent of motives or partisan influence. Only a troglodyte disagrees with “science”. The progressive needs you to believe that the science he has bought is pure and true, and is only what he says it is. Science has always been sacrificed on the altar of total power.

Beware those who speak of “settled science”, and are prepared to act on that conclusion. It was settled science to some that the Jews were genetically inferior. Similarly, those who have historically favored the oppression and servitude of blacks have implicitly invoked settled science to advance the inherent lie that as a people they are genetically incapable of equality on their own, and that a paternalistic hand is necessary to compensate for their historic deficiencies. While this was done in the past to keep them in literal bondage, it is done now to keep them in philosophical bondage, dependent upon the entitlements given to them by their political keepers.

Global warming is merely the latest scientific straw man to walk the stage, dressed in invisible clothes and armed with self-righteous indignation and the power of the state. It’s always about control, and is always based on lies. When people stop believing the lies progressives tell to control their choices and behavior, and refuse to grant them power in the name of false benevolence and phony virtue, the spell will be broken. Of course, this simply cannot be allowed.

The problem, as serious Americans grasp, is that there is nowhere else we can go if progressivism completely destroys freedom here. The rest of the world has already succumbed. For generations, others have fled here when like-minded zealots destroyed their countries, because this was someplace else to go, a haven of freedom left on Earth in which a person could not only survive, but advance, on hard work and merit. Now, many of them voice their fear that this magnificent country to which they have fled is becoming increasingly familiar to what they left behind. There is no place left like the United States as it was before the cancer of progressivism.

Progressives intend that the “land of opportunity” shall become the land of servitude. With their backs against the last wall, threatened with mass destruction of all they know and love, some citizens will surrender to the inevitability of serfdom that progressives have always planned for them, despite the evidence and lessons of history. Others, Americans who recognize the danger and cherish what is threatened and will not be regained, will defend themselves, their families and their future. Before 2008, not many of us ever thought we’d have to confront that choice in our lifetimes. Now, only a few short years later, it is on our doorstep.

Look what has already been lost because we have failed thus far to defuse the destructive power of progressivism, and the historic malice or complicity of its proponents, both left and right. The hour is late and the opportunities are shrinking rapidly. It is our time to defeat progressivism, or it will surely destroy all we hold dear as free Americans.

[H/T American Thinker]

7 Myths About Arizona’s Religious Freedom Law

On Wednesday evening, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) deliberately misread Arizona SB 1062 — and, out of a misguided sense of political correctness, proceeded to veto it. “My agenda is to sign into law legislation that advances Arizona,” Brewer said, in a massive cop-out avoiding the central issue of protection of religious freedom.

Brewer stated that the bill “could divide Arizona in ways we could not even imagine and no one would ever want.” Of course, her veto of the bill is even more divisive, given that it now sends the message that it is open season on private religious business owners who wish to live out their religious principles throughout their lives, not just within the four walls of their churches or homes.

She continued by stating that the bill was too broadly worded, although she could not point to a specific provision that would allow for additional discrimination currently barred by Arizona law. She also suggested that Arizona’s religious population does not face a threat of lawsuit or government action based on practice of religion in the workplace, overlooking the fact that such cases have cropped up repeatedly throughout the United States over the course of the last two years.

***

This week, controversy has broken out over Arizona’s law protecting the right of religious businessowners to reject service to particular customers. The law came hard on the heels of a series of outrageous court decisions finding that private businesses could be forced, in violation of their religion, to serve events such as same-sex weddings.

Cowardly Republicans including former presidential candidates Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) have been running headlong from the law, suggesting that it is somehow granting the moral okay to discrimination to recognize Americans’ First Amendment rights. They have been joined by outraged Democrats and leftists who lie about the nature of the law and suggest that without government intervention, America will be rife with roving bands of Christians looking to bludgeon gays in the streets.

Here, then, are 7 myths the left has told about the Arizona religious freedom law – and why they’re myths:

Arizona’s Law Loosens Discrimination Against Gays and Lesbians in The State.

Adam Serwer of MSNBC says that “‘religious freedom laws could be a license to discrimination.” That’s nonsense. Arizona state law has no provision currently barring discrimination against gays and lesbians. So what does the law do? It actually narrows the law with regard to supposed discrimination against gays and lesbians. The law only provides religious people with an excuse to pick and choose clients if they can prove actual religious adherence (which, by the way, should offend atheists, who should have the same First Amendment right to associate as religious Americans).

The law also makes clear what should be clear from the text of the First Amendment: religious practice is not restricted to your church or your home. Individuals operating businesses have a right to act in accordance with their religion at work. The law also states that religious businessowners can defend lawsuits using the law against other private parties, not merely government prosecution.

This is the essence of American religious freedom. The disgusting attempt to use government to run roughshod over that religious freedom is blatantly unconstitutional. The law, which simply reinforces that, should be unobjectionable to anyone who actually believes in freedom of religion. Unfortunately, many on the left simply do not.

The Government’s Recognition of a Right to Religious Practice “Allows” Discrimination.

“I strongly support religious freedom,” Kansas state Rep. Patricia Sloop (D) explained with regard to a similar law being considered in her state, “but this bill is not about religious freedom. In my opinion, this is about legalized discrimination, and I cannot vote in support of this.”

The logic here is deeply flawed. My right to religious practice does not spring from the government; therefore, it is not up to the government to “allow” me to do anything with regard to my practice of religion. The question is whether government has a right to invade my religious practice in the name of some majority-determined or court-determined or regulator-determined social good. If the answer is yes on any sort of broad level, the Constitution is rendered meaningless. Rights can be balanced with communal needs, and are generally done so through the mechanism of the market. Once you hand the club of social enforcement to the government, however, rights are no longer balanced with communal goods. Communal goods win. Individuals lose.

The right to practice religion is not unique in this respect. My right to associate does not spring from the government; the government’s protection of that right – not violation of that right – is the purpose for the institution of government. My right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure is not subject to the government’s decision that suspicion of racism justifies violation of that right.

Allowing Private Businesses to Discriminate Among Customers Is Like Jim Crow.

On Tuesday evening, NBC’s Brian Williams made this comparison explicit, stating, “Good evening. It’s just one state out of our 50, but tonight what’s happening in Arizona is being compared by some to the epic battles this nation has fought over lunch counters, separate drinking fountains and restrooms.” Outspoken gay activist and former actor George Takei has called Arizona a “Jim Crow state” thanks to the law. Even Fox News’ Andrea Tantaros has jumped on the bandwagon, stating, “I don’t know why you want to bring Jim Crow laws back to the forefront for homosexuals,” prompting host Martha MacCallum to state, “I mean, that’s exactly what it sounds like.”

No, it doesn’t. Private discrimination may be nasty and evil, but it is not and was not Jim Crow. Jim Crow laws mandated segregation in public areas. Here, for example, is Alabama’s Jim Crow law with regard to those “lunch counters:”

It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment.

State-compelled discrimination is not the same as private citizens discriminating.

As to suggestions that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be overthrown by the act, the supremacy clause of the US Constitution prevents any state from superseding federal law.

Immorality and Illegality Should Be Identical.

Many opponents of the bill have argued, in absurd fashion, that if you support the right of religious Americans to discriminate, you therefore support discrimination. That line of argument is as wrong as it is dangerous. You can believe that something is immoral and yet agree that it should not be illegal. I think that Mein Kampf is an evil book. But I don’t think we should ban it in the United States, because I think people have a right to print it and read it. Does that mean I’m an advocate for the dissemination of Mein Kampf?

Ironically, this line of argumentation cuts against gay rights. If we now believe that anything the majority believes to be immoral should be illegal, regardless of countervailing rights, what exactly is the problem with anti-sodomy laws? Where exactly is the objection to segregation by this twisted logic?

Of course, we don’t feel that way in the United States. We believe that people have rights to activity of which we don’t approve. Otherwise, we’re living in a tyranny in which we elect the tyrants.

Race and Homosexuality Are Analogous.

Any analogy between refusing to service same-sex weddings to refusing to serve black customers is fatally flawed. Race is an immutable characteristic; homosexuality is only publicly known due to homosexual behavior. No matter how much you may be attracted to a member of the same sex, no one will ever know unless you choose to divulge that fact, or to engage in sexual activity with someone of the same sex. That means that discrimination against homosexuals would actually be discrimination against either homosexual activity, or against evidenceless perception of homosexuality. The former is entirely within the purview of religious morality (it should be and always has been my choice whether or not to participate in a gay wedding); the latter is entirely outside logic (if someone throws you out of his store because you wore a pink shirt, he’s a moron).

The same is not true for race. If you are black, you are black. Blackness is not behavior-linked, despite what some racists on the left may believe. That means that discrimination based on race is entirely morally unjustified in any religious universe. The same is not true of behavior; homosexual activity falls under a behavioral classification.

This distinction is vital, because we have decided (rightly) as a society that immutable characteristics should not be the basis for discrimination – but we continue to believe that behavior can be the basis for discrimination. It would be wrong for you to refuse me service based on my last name being Shapiro. It would not be wrong, however, for you to refuse to photograph my future son’s religious circumcision if you are an anti-circumcision activist. The same holds true with regard to race versus homosexuality.

America Is a Nasty Place.

If an alien were to land on earth today and watch the media coverage of the Arizona law, he would likely believe that the American people are incredibly homophobic, and that only the massive bulwark of government prevents Americans from routinely lynching gays and lesbians. That, at least, is the implication the media look to make when they label America on the verge of another Jim Crow era – the idea is that religious Americans can’t wait to erect separate straight and gay sections of their cigar bars.

That’s bull. No business has ever used Arizona’s current religious freedom law to defend against charges of discrimination. Hate crimes against gays and lesbians, while heinous and evil, are thankfully remarkably rare. In 2012, according to FBI statistics, there were a grand total of 1,376 hate crimes based on sexual-orientation bias. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, there are approximately 9 million LGBT people in the country. By way of contrast, there are approximately 6.7 million Jews in America, and 836 Jews werevictims of hate crimes in 2012. That means that approximately one out of every 6,540 LGBT people in the United States was victimized by a hate crime in 2012; one out of every 8,014 Jews in the United States was victimized by a hate crime in 2012. America is not an anti-Semitic country; America is not a gay-bashing country.

But it is in the interest of those in the gay rights movement to continue to maintain that America is just moments away from an anti-gay outbreak. Such feelings prompt government action to crackdown on religious opponents of homosexuality. Which is, of course, what this entire debate is about.

The Left Will Leave Your Church Alone.

Even those who oppose the Arizona law maintain that they simply want individual religious businessowners to face a crackdown by the state. But that’s patently false. What, exactly, would be the justification for stating that a business, which is privately held and for-profit, would have to service same-sex weddings, but that a church, which receives non-profit privileges from the state, would not? Where is the left’s internal logic? If a religious person – a person who by definition acts in accordance with religious values in the entirety of his or her life, not just inside the four walls of the church – can be forced to violate religious values, why not a pastor?

A religious person is a religious institution. Anyone who fails to understand that has never met a religious person. Religion starts at home, not in the church. It reaches to businesses, not just to the pews. The left knows that. And that’s why the left will not stop.

[H/T Breitbart]

‘Religion of Peace’ Murders 59 Children: Boko Haram Strikes Again

The infamous “religion of peace” has struck again — perhaps they were celebrating the news issued by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel about US troop cuts.

As initially reported by CBS News/Reuters, gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram stormed a boarding school in northeast Nigeria overnight and killed 29 pupils, many of whom died in flames as the school was burned to the ground. But that number has been revised upward to 59 killed. “Some of the students bodies were burned to ashes,” Police Commissioner Sanusi Rufai said of the attack on the Federal Government college of Buni Yadi, a secondary school in Yobe state, near the state’s capital city of Damaturu. All those killed were boys. No girls were touched, Rufai said.”

The Islamists, whose struggle for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria has killed thousands and made them the biggest threat to security in Africa’s top oil producer, increasingly are preying on the civilian population. Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sinful” in the northern Hausa language, have frequently attacked schools in the past. A similar attack in June in the village of Mamudo left 22 students dead. In September, suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the same region, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms.

More than 200 people were killed in two attacks last week, one in which militants razed a whole village and shot panicked residents as they tried to flee. They have also started abducting scores of girls, a new tactic reminiscent of Uganda’s cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army in decades past.

Some may read this story and ask who cares? I’m not advocating the United States police the world but if we refuse to comprehend the global threat of Islamic totalitarianism, we are only fooling ourselves.

This is not about occupation warfare but strike operations against these non-state, non-uniform belligerents, and we must interdict their flow of financial and materiel support. Along with that we must stop the PC mantra of not attacking their ideology, stop calling them extremists and refer to them as who they are, jihadists, Islamic terrorists.

I am waiting to hear condemnation from President Obama. Not holding my breath.

[H/T Allen West]

IRS Prepared to Enforce Obamacare with Fines and Fees

The IRS is fully prepared to go after the American people if they neglect their “shared responsibility” under Obamacare, the government enforced mandate designed to enrich large insurance corporations and degrade the quality of healthcare in America.

Provisions of the unconstitutional and authoritarian law will fleece millions who either cannot or will not buy products from state-sanctioned preferred monopolies.

For Americans unable to afford over-priced healthcare the state will parcel out “hardship exemptions” to avoid government penalties and fines meted out by IRS enforcers. Others will receive “tax exemptions” to nudge them in the direction of universal government enforced semi-healthcare.

If you’re really down and out, you might be eligible for Medicaid. This will, of course, require the middle class to surrender even more of its income at gunpoint to an insatiable redistributive state that will hand it out as its politically appointed apparatchiks deem appropriate.

According to the establishment media, only fanatical libertarians and such worry about this burden. Most Americans, beaten down by decades of taxation and fed an unrelenting and brazen diet of state worship propaganda, are resigned to a new regimen of taxation and government mandates enforced at gunpoint by the IRS and other government agencies.

Because of this resignation and inability to recognize the fact we live in a totalitarian state dressed in the deceptive bunting of democracy, careerist Democrats like Harry Reid are able to stand up and deny reality.

“Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue, but they’re being told all over America,” said Reid from the floor of the Senate.

“We heard about the evils of Obamacare, about the lives it’s ruining in Republicans’ stump speeches and in ads paid for by oil magnates, the Koch brothers. But in those tales, turned out to be just that: tales, stories made up from whole cloth, lies distorted by the Republicans to grab headlines or make political advertisements,” said an incensed Reid.

Never mind that there is plenty of evidence Obamacare represents a historical failure that will not live up to its promises – from a disastrous website to the inability of the system to enroll customers.

Democrats are vested in participating in a lurid Orwellian illusion that a mega-sweetheart deal delivered to monopolistic insurance corporations is in fact a godsend to the American people.

[H/T Infowars]

Insight: How Obama Alums Aim To Turn Texas Toward The Democrats

(Reuters) – In one of the country’s most conservative states, newly hopeful Democrats measure their progress by ringing a bell.

For those working to turn Texas from Republican red to Democratic blue, it’s the sound of one more volunteer agreeing to join their ranks. On a recent Saturday, phone-bank volunteers in a modest office here smacked the bell every five minutes or so, adding to the nearly 12,000 who have joined the effort.

In the past year, alumni from Democratic President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign quietly have built a grassroots army in Texas, where gun-rights advocates brandish semi-automatic rifles on city streets and pickup trucks bear “SECEDE” bumper stickers.

Battleground Texas, as the group is known, is backing Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis’ underdog bid for governor this November against Republican Greg Abbott, the state’s attorney general.

But those involved say their larger goal – likely to take years to realize, if ever – is to make Texas as competitive in national elections as politically divided states such as Virginia and Ohio. That means identifying potentially Democratic voters, namely those in the state’s booming Hispanic population, and persuading them to show up at the polls.

It is an unusually ambitious effort in U.S. politics. National parties typically measure progress in two- and four-year election cycles, with less focus on longer-term operations.

If Democrats succeed, they could upend the state’s low-tax, low-regulation approach to governance and give their party a decisive advantage in presidential elections for years to come.

Battleground Texas faces a steep climb, however.

Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas for nearly 20 years, and the party now has trouble fielding candidates for many congressional, state and local races.

They also face procedural barriers that they say can make it tougher to register voters than in many other states, and often discourage minorities and low-income residents from participating. Those include a new law that requires residents to show state-issued photo IDs to vote.

But the group has two factors on its side: the state’s growing Hispanic population, which has favored the Democratic Party over Republicans by a 19-point margin in recent polls, and the meticulous door-to-door organizing techniques honed nationwide during Obama’s two presidential campaigns.

GETTING OUT THE VOTE

The campaigns’ on-the-ground organizing helped to give Democrats an edge over Republicans in voter data that the Texas group seeks to exploit by targeting many of the 10.5 million eligible Texans who did not vote in the 2010 governor’s race.

Turnout analysts say that Hispanics made up a disproportionate share of those who stayed home that year. Democrats also see opportunities to win over suburban white women who may feel alienated by the Republican Party’s rightward drift and support of cuts in education.

“There’s a huge amount of potential there,” said Jeremy Bird, who launched the Battleground Texas effort after working as Obama’s national field director in 2012.

Republicans acknowledge they need to do more to reach out to Hispanics and other minority groups. But so far, they see little evidence that Democrats are gaining ground in Texas, even as Davis’ campaign for governor is drawing interest, and millions of dollars in donations, from across the nation.

“All this work and all this money that they’ve spent up to now so far is not showing results,” Texas Republican Party Chairman Steve Munisteri said.

Democrats face long odds this year and probably won’t carry the state in the next presidential election in 2016, said James Henson, who heads the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas.

But by 2020, the state’s Hispanic population is projected to eclipse its white population, and Democrats could make Texas competitive, he said.

“Certainly in 2014 everybody will be looking to see if there’s a leading edge of something bigger coming,” Henson said.

REPUBLICAN OUTREACH

Republicans say they recognize the challenge and have assigned seven staffers to reach out to Hispanics.

But there have been signs that Republican candidates may be undermining that effort as they court conservative voters ahead of the March 4 party primaries.

Abbott drew criticism from Hispanic groups and others this month when he said corruption in Texas’ mostly Hispanic Rio Grande valley resembled “Third World country practices.”

He also came under fire for campaigning with 1970s rocker Ted Nugent, who called Obama a “subhuman mongrel.” Nugent later apologized.

Another Republican, in a four-way primary race for lieutenant governor, has said undocumented Hispanics represent an “illegal invasion” of the United States.

Few prominent Texas Republicans back the immigration overhaul that passed the Democratic-led U.S. Senate last year, a top priority of Hispanic groups.

The Texas Republican Party’s official platform takes a hard line on immigration, saying that U.S. citizenship should be limited to those with at least one parent who is already a citizen. That could exclude from citizenship the party’s own director of Hispanic outreach, who was born to Mexican parents.

“It’s not a deal breaker for me,” said director David Zapata. When promoting Republicans’ ideas to fellow Hispanics, he emphasizes job creation and school choice rather than immigration.

CHICKEN-AND-EGG PROBLEM

Democrats, who dominated Texas politics for decades until the early 1980s, only recently began to rebuild in the state.

Republicans are unchallenged in seven of the state’s 34 congressional seats and 60 of the 150 state House of Representatives districts this year. In suburban Denton County, north of Dallas, Democrats have no candidates for district attorney, county judge and other important local posts.

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, said Jenn Brown, Battleground Texas’ executive director.

“Volunteers don’t like working for bad candidates, but good candidates don’t want to run unless they feel there’s an infrastructure there to support them. So we decided to just go and start building,” she said.

A veteran of both Obama campaigns, Brown set up a neighborhood-based approach that encourages volunteers to organize phone calls and track voter responses.

Having Davis at the top of the ticket has helped, Democrats say. She was popular among Texas Democrats even before her unsuccessful 11-hour filibuster against proposed abortion restrictions rocketed her to national fame last June.

Davis’ campaign and Battleground Texas together have raised nearly $16 million since July 2013. The two groups have $11.3 million in the bank, about one-third of Abbott’s war chest.

But Davis is losing ground in polls. A Texas Tribune/University of Texas survey this week had her trailing Abbott by 11 percentage points. She trailed by 6 points in October.

GROUP’S TACTICS QUESTIONED

Battleground Texas’ tactics have come under attack by conservative provocateur James O’Keefe, whose undercover videos brought down the liberal group ACORN.

O’Keefe released a video last week showing Battleground volunteers copying phone numbers from voter-registration forms they had collected from residents, which Republicans say violated state law.

Brown said it was legal, but added that Battleground had discontinued the practice before the video came out.

“We decided to change it because the law was unclear and we knew attacks would be coming at some point,” she said.

The episode reflects some of the legal hurdles Battleground faces. Besides the new law requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls, Texas requires any individual who wishes to register new voters to get certification.

That doesn’t seem to deter the volunteers.

Between calls in Battleground’s office in Austin, University of Texas student Chris Cyrus said he and other volunteers recently registered 80 new voters in one day on campus. Cyrus, 21, said Democrats aren’t as rare in Texas as he once thought.

“It really seems like it’s something that’s kicking up this election cycle in a way I’ve not seen before,” he said.

http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=283830709&edition=BETAUS

[H/T Reuters]

‘The Imperial Presidency’

Members of Congress and constitutional law experts testified before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, warning that the legislative branch is in danger of ceding its power in the face of an “imperial presidency.”

The hearing, “Enforcing the President’s Constitutional Duty to Faithfully Execute the Laws,” focused on the multiple areas President Barack Obama has bypassed Congress, ranging from healthcare and immigration to marriage and welfare rules.

Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, testified that the expansion of executive power is happening so fast that America is at a “constitutional tipping point.”

“My view [is] that the president, has in fact, exceeded his authority in a way that is creating a destabilizing influence in a three branch system,” he said. “I want to emphasize, of course, this problem didn’t begin with President Obama, I was critical of his predecessor President Bush as well, but the rate at which executive power has been concentrated in our system is accelerating. And frankly, I am very alarmed by the implications of that aggregation of power.”

“What also alarms me, however, is that the two other branches appear not just simply passive, but inert in the face of this concentration of authority,” Turley said.

While Turley agrees with many of Obama’s policy positions, he steadfastly opposes the method he goes about enforcing them.

“The fact that I happen to think the president is right on many of these policies does not alter the fact that I believe the means he is doing [it] is wrong, and that this can be a dangerous change in our system,” he said. “And our system is changing in a very fundamental way. And it’s changing without a whimper of regret or opposition.”

Elizabeth Price Foley, a law professor at Florida International University College of Law, agreed, warning that Congress is in danger of becoming “superfluous.”

“Situations like this, these benevolent suspensions as they get more and more frequent and more and more aggressive, they’re eroding our citizens’ respect for the rule of law,” she said. “We are a country of law and not men. It’s going to render Congress superfluous.”

Foley said Congress is not able to tackle meaningful legislation out of fear that Obama would “simply benevolently suspend portions of the law he doesn’t like.”

“If you want to stay relevant as an institution, I would suggest that you not stand idly by and let the president take your power away,” she said.

Panelists and members of Congress dismissed the idea of impeachment, and instead focused on lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of the president’s unilateral moves.

Four House members testified on the first panel during the hearing to highlight legislation they have sponsored to thwart the administration’s executive overreach.

Impeachment would “surely be extremely divisive within the Congress and the nation generally, and would divert the attention of Congress from other important issues of the day,” said Rep. Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.).

Gerlach, who testified before the committee, introduced H.R. 3857, the “Enforce the Take Care Clause Act,” which would expedite the review and injunction process for federal courts to challenge executive actions. Such a challenge would have to pass a supermajority in both chambers in order to be fast-tracked.

“Given the growing number of examples where this President has clearly failed to faithfully execute all laws, I believe it is time for Congress to put in place a procedure for a fast-track, independent review of those executive actions,” he said.

Gerlach said he proposed the bill due to Obama’s repeated alterations to his signature law, the Affordable Care Act.

“The ACA has been revised, altered and effectively rewritten by the president and his administration 23 times since July,” he said.

“When we have these constant changes at the president’s whim think about what that does to businesses’ planning capabilities and hiring capabilities and their expansion capabilities,” Rep. Tom Rice (R., S.C.) said. “We shouldn’t wonder why our economy is struggling.”

Rice has proposed the “Stop This Overreaching Presidency (STOP) Resolution” as a remedy. The resolution, which has 114 cosponsors, would direct the House to file lawsuits against four of the president’s unilateral actions, including the employer mandate delay in Obamacare and deferred action program for illegal immigrants.

Turley said Congress must take action to regain their power as the “thumping heart of our system.”

“The fact is, we’re stuck with each other,” Turley said. “Whether we like it or not in a system of shared powers. For better or worse we may deadlock, we maybe despise each other. The framers foresaw such periods, they lived in such a period.”

[H/T The Washington Free Beacon]