CBO Confirms Fake Repeal of Obamacare Would Increase Premiums

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What happens when Republicans pursue a half-baked repeal of Obamacare and sell it to the public as full repeal of Obamacare? Premiums go up because of the core Obamacare provisions left behind, yet that increase will be blamed on the false pretense that Obamacare was indeed repealed.

Earlier today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a budgetary and economic score of the presumptive GOP plan to “replace” Obamacare. CBO concluded that not only will premiums fail to decrease, but will increase by 20-25% and 27 million more people would be uninsured. The Left is using this as proof that repeal of Obamacare is a net negative. In fact, this CBO score explicitly states that full repeal of Obamacare would decrease premiums, but only chose to score the GOP’s half-baked repeal, which retains Obamacare itself while repealing only the funding mechanisms.
Now Republicans have a PR nightmare of their own making and feel pressure to “replace” Obamacare in order to plug the hole — a hole that only exists because they are in fact not repealing what is qualitatively 80% of Obamacare.

What is Obamacare?

Obamacare is not the individual mandate or the subsidies. Those are the [insufficient] funding mechanisms to cover the cost of the law. What is the law? A hodgepodge of rules and regulations that result in insurance companies being unable to offer actuarially solvent plans. Between guaranteed issue, community rating, mandated benefits, mandated networks providers, intractably limiting actuarial value requirements, and enrollment and contractual flexibility for individuals to drop coverage until they get sick, insurance has become completely insolvent. These regulations have not just driven up costs, but have destroyed the market by taking the concept of “insurance” out of insurance.

CBO scores GOP’s fake definition of Obamacare

The prospective Obamacare “repeal” law scored by CBO does not repeal any of these elements. Instead, it repeals the requirement to purchase health care and the subsidies along with the ACA’s Medicaid expansion. Thus, the outcome, as we predicted, is quite obvious. Prices remain high, there is no choice or competition in the marketplace, yet the funding mechanism is cut off. This creates a phenomenon of adverse selection and increased premiums. Think about it: if the costly regulations remain in place but you take away the penalty to buy insurance why would someone like me — whose annual health costs have tripled as a result of Obamacare — bother purchasing insurance?

CBO directly addresses this point:

The ACA’s changes to the rules governing the nongroup health insurance market [regulations, such as guaranteed issue and community rating] work in conjunction with the mandates and the subsidies to increase participation in the market and encourage enrollment among people of different ages and health statuses. But eliminating the penalty for not having health insurance would reduce enrollment and raise premiums in the nongroup market. Eliminating subsidies for insurance purchased through the market-places would have the same effects because it would result in a large price increase for many people. Not only would enrollment decline, but the people who would be most likely to remain enrolled would tend to be less healthy (and therefore more willing to pay higher premiums).

Leaving the ACA’s market reforms [euphemism for insurance regs] in place would limit insurers’ ability to use strategies that were common before the ACA was enacted. For example, insurers would not be able to vary premiums to reflect an individual’s health care costs or offer health insurance plans that exclude coverage of preexisting conditions, plans that do not cover certain types of benefits (such as maternity care), or plans with very high deductibles or very low actuarial value (plans paying a very low share of costs for covered services). [clarification and emphasis mine]

Obviously, CBO always overestimates the coverage issue and underestimates the cost of liberal policies. But in a general sense, CBO actually agrees with our analysis that the panoply of regulations is what has made health insurance insolvent. When CBO says repeal of Obamacare will result in higher, not lower, premiums and will exacerbate the complete death spiral of insurance, it is working with the assumption the GOP has presented to them — that they are not repealing the insurance regulations.

Imagine injecting a patient with a painful disease in one arm while injecting them with morphine in the other arm. The only way to stop the morphine (subsidies, individual mandate) is to get rid of the self-immolating injections (debilitating insurance regulations). The answer, first and foremost, is to stop injecting the patient with the disease.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall of regulations would both lower costs and increase number of insured

Repealing the insurance mandates will do more than just lower the cost of coverage. More people would be covered by a positive momentum of lowering costs and fostering choice and competition in the marketplace. CBO recognizes that the “number of people without health insurance would be smaller if, in addition to the changes in H.R. 3762, the insurance market reforms mentioned above were also repealed.” [emphasis added]

Now imagine if in addition to repealing the Obamacare-era regulations, we rolled back other anti-market forces, made insurance a national market (which encourages states to reduce their respective regulations), got rid of the anti-trust exemption, create equal tax treatment for individual insurance purchasers, and expanded HSAs? Prices would diminish, competition would rise, and more individuals would feel incentivized to purchase one of the many tailor-made and cheaper plans they can actually afford.

The dumbest policy and dumbest messaging

Yet instead of committing to full repeal of the insurance regulations in the bill, Republicans responded to the CBO defensively by saying they will have a replacement plan:

Once again, this is akin to saying I’ll take away the morphine but find a suitable replacement. How about taking away the disease itself — the insurance regulations — which were not scored by the CBO, as the report itself said? Then you won’t need a “replacement” plan, other than instituting further free market reforms that we needed long before Obamacare.

Republicans have managed to successfully paint themselves with the liabilities of Obamacare … under the banner of repealing Obamacare.

There is only one viable option to repealing Obamacare: REPEAL OBAMACARE. (For more from the author of “CBO Confirms Fake Repeal of Obamacare Would Increase Premiums” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Lust for Respect Makes National Unity Implausible

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“For many years,” Donald Trump tweeted Sunday afternoon, “our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change, the hatred is too deep. IT WILL CHANGE!!!!”

As persuasive as the ALL CAPS are, I have my doubts.

Put aside Trump’s specific shortcomings for the moment. The presidency has become ill-suited to the task of unifying the country, because the presidency has become the biggest prize and totem in the culture war. Like the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in England, if one side controls the throne, it is seen as an insult and threat to the other. And whoever holds the throne is seen as a kind of personal Protector of the Realm.

The political parties have been utterly complicit in the process. Exploiting social media and other technologies, Republicans and Democrats shape their messages around the assumption that they — and they alone — have legitimate ownership of America’s authentic best self. That’s why whichever party is out of power promises to “take back America” — as if the other side were foreign invaders.

Barack Obama was elected in 2008 in no small part to fulfill the promise of his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address: to banish the slicing and dicing of America into Red States and Blue States. (Read more from “Trump’s Lust for Respect Makes National Unity Implausible” HERE)

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Pro-Lifers Should Start to Imagine What a Post-Roe World Would Look Like

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Dare we think that in the not too distant future, Roe v. Wade will be corrected?

Let us assume that whoever almost-President Donald Trump appoints to the Supreme Court believes that unborn children have value under the law and merit the right to life. Or, at least, that Roe was decided wrongly.

A case then comes before the Court challenging the validity of Roe which has resulted in the deaths of nearly 60 million children within the wombs of their mothers.

First, some background regarding our anti-natal culture. As my former Family Research Council colleague Cathy Ruse and I wrote a few years ago, Roe “did not create a limited right to abortion but a virtually unlimited right to abortion throughout pregnancy.” Indeed, the Supreme Court

ruled that abortion must be permitted for any reason a woman chooses until the child becomes viable; after viability, an abortion must still be permitted if an abortion doctor deems the abortion necessary to protect a woman’s ‘health,’ defined by the Court in another ruling issued the same day as ‘all factors — physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age — relevant to the well-being of the patient’. In this way the Court created a right to abort a child at any time, even past the point of viability, for ‘emotional’ reasons.

Unrestricted access to abortion on demand became the national norm that grim day in January 1973. Under President Obama, that access became even easier: As noted by the director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, Arina Grossu, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) subsidizes abortion through a number of funding streams.

In 1973, the Supreme Court said the foundation of Roe is that abortion is an element of the “right to privacy.” The Court admitted that such a right was not explicit in the Constitution but only resident in a conceptual haze of implicational rights. Using that criterion, this “zone of privacy” should include my right to receive free Internet services, psychiatric treatment, multivitamins or anything else I can convince at least one federal judge is necessary for my well-being.

Justice Blackmun also noted that another reason for jettisoning all state laws against abortion “is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it.”

Interesting criterion. How about the distress to the child herself, dismembered without anesthetic in her mother’s womb? How about the distress of the couple who desperately want a child and are denied her because so few babies are available for domestic adoption? And how about the untold numbers of families which, thinking they are “unable” to rear a child, have been enriched and filled with love because the “unwanted” baby has become the apple of its eye?

It is my hope that these arguments will become, if not mute, at least dormant in light of a Supreme Court decision to bring legal sanity back to the jurisprudence of abortion.

After Roe?

So: Imagine it’s the first day of a post-Roe America. What then?

According the respected legal scholar Paul Linton, “the immediate impact of such a decision (overruling Roe) would be far more modest than most commentators — on both sides of the issue — believe.” According to Linton, “More than two-thirds of the States have repealed their pre-Roe laws or have amended those laws to conform to Roe v. Wade, which allows abortion for any reason before viability and for virtually any reason after viability.

Pre-Roe laws that have been expressly repealed would not be revived by the overruling of Roe. Only three States that repealed their pre-Roe laws (or amended them to conform to Roe) have enacted post-Roe laws attempting to prohibit some or most abortions throughout pregnancy. Those laws have been declared unconstitutional by the federal courts and are not now enforceable. Of the less than one-third of the States that have retained their pre-Roe laws, most would be ineffective in prohibiting abortions.”

Linton concludes that only seven states (Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin) “would be able to enforce their pre-Roe statutes prohibiting most abortions should Roe be overturned.”

At the same time, Tim Bradley of the Charlotte Lozier Institute notes that just four states have “enacted ‘trigger’ statutes that would prohibit abortion in the event that Roe is overruled: Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota. In Mississippi, however, the state Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right to abortion in the state constitution in 1998, meaning that its trigger statute will not be allowed to go into effect.”

Could Congress Prohibit Abortion?

Could Congress pass a law prohibiting abortion except in rare cases? Yes. But as Bradley observes, there is no guarantee that the Supreme Court would find such a law constitutional. If the Constitution is silent on abortion, its silence extends not only to acceptance of the procedure but also to rejection of it. In other words, it becomes a state issue.

It is also unlikely that there would be any quick enactment of a constitutional amendment to prevent abortion-on-demand. Amending the Constitution is a laborious process and given the passions aroused by the abortion debate, inclusion of a pro-life amendment in the Constitution is far from a certainty.

The Guttmacher Institute, once an adjunct of the nation’s leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, noted last year that “states enacted 334 abortion restrictions between 2011 and early July 2016. According to the analysis, the new laws account for 30 percent of all abortion restrictions since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade in 1973.”

These state provisions include such things as banning dismemberment abortions (performed on fully-formed unborn babies), health regulations for abortion centers, and mandatory viewing of ultrasound photographs of their unborn children by women considering abortion.

These common-sense and compassionate provisions are partial steps toward a culture of life. But now is the time when pro-life leaders in all 50 states need to be planning how to safeguard unborn children and their mothers from a predatory abortion industry in a post-Roe America.

This should include a careful review of all existing state laws concerning abortion and what specifically needs to happen to build a wall of legal protection around women and their unborn little ones. This should take place even in states like California, Washington and New York, where the sanctity of unborn life is barely discussed in their statehouses.

Public Persuasion

Additionally, public persuasion is essential. Part of this is exposing the predatory nature of the abortion industry, as has been demonstrated by the gruesome Planned Parenthood videos regarding the sale of the body parts of aborted babies. The pro-life movement also needs to make strong public arguments about the injustice of encouraging women in crisis to abort their unborn children, as if the lives within them were similar to infected appendices or swollen tonsils. As has been said, women deserve — always deserve — better than abortion.

The late Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first African-American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School and a courageous champion of the unborn, said, “The fight for the right to life is not the cause of a special few, but the cause of every man, woman and child who cares not only about his or her own family, but the whole family of man.”

Now is the time for the right-to-life movement to think about our post-Roe strategy. The fight for the unborn and the women carrying them is one we must win. (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers Should Start to Imagine What a Post-Roe World Would Look Like” please click HERE)

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Are You Really More Prejudiced Than You Think?

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How prejudiced are you? Wait — don’t answer, you’ll get it wrong. You’re more prejudiced than you think. You have implicit, automatic associations between gender and certain career tracks. You prefer lighter skin tones. You don’t know how much your biases influence you every day, but you can take a test that will tell you the dark truth about yourself.

It’s called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT. Harvard University has been running “Project Implicit” since 1998, testing people’s hidden attitudes toward gender, race and ethnicity. Millions have taken the test. It comes in several versions, it only takes about ten minutes, and it’s worth giving it a try to see what makes it such a big deal.

The Enormous Influence of the IAT

A big deal it certainly is. Scary, too. President Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy has prepared a white paper telling us,

Research demonstrates that most people hold unconscious, implicit assumptions that influence their judgments and perceptions of others. Implicit bias manifests in expectations or assumptions about physical or social characteristics dictated by stereotypes that are based on a person’s race, gender, age, or ethnicity.

Sounds pretty scientific — who could argue with language like that? And the effects are grim:

People who intend to be fair, and believe they are egalitarian, apply biases unintentionally. Some behaviors that result from implicit bias manifest in actions, and others are embodied in the absence of action; either can reduce the quality of the workforce and create an unfair and destructive environment.

The IAT’s influence has been enormous:

It’s been used to explain why people have doubted Barack Obama was truly American.

It’s also been used to explain why minorities are treated differently in the courtroom: “There is no reason to presume attorney exceptionalism in terms of implicit biases.… If this is right, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about how these biases might play out in practice.” The same paper raised a strong warning about implicit biases among judges.

It’s been used to explain “Why Cops Shoot Young Black Men”; for as we are told, “An impressive body of psychological research suggests that the men who killed Brown and Martin need not have been conscious, overt racists to do what they did.” Time magazine adds, “That’s little comfort to the grieving families of the growing list of victims — and no good at all to the young men who have been lost. But it at least might help us understand how we came to such tragedy.”

We’re all rotten scoundrels, the IAT tells us. Well, maybe not all of us. Chris Mooney, writing in the Washington Post points fingers at one group in particular: “whites are biased and they don’t even know it.”

The IAT Should be stunning, But Isn’t

But what is this “clear evidence of implicit bias,” anyway? Turns out there’s probably nothing there, according to a January 5 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Nothing. It’s lousy science.

Researchers from three universities reviewed almost 500 studies across 20 years and found there was very little evidence that the biases supposedly measured in the IAT have anything to do with behavior. The findings, says one co-author of their 2016 review article, “should be stunning.”

I chose the words “supposedly measured” advisedly. As psychologist Hart Blanton explained in an interview with the Chronicle,

It’s possible to be labeled “moderately biased” on your first test and “slightly biased” on the next. …”The IAT isn’t even predicting the IAT two weeks later,” Blanton says. “How can a test predict behavior if it can’t even predict itself?”

In grad school they taught me no measurement could be more useful (“valid”) than it is reliable; and reliability has to do with how consistently it measures. A yardstick is both valid and reliable for measuring distances up to three feet — unless it’s made by marking inches off on a long rubber band.

That would be worthless, not because it lacks the right kind of measurement, and not even because you couldn’t get lucky with it and land on the right answer sometimes. It’s because you’d get a different answer every time, with no way of knowing which one was right, if any. That’s what Blanton says is going on with the IAT.

If May Look Like Science, But It Still Isn’t Necessarily Science

Naturally, the Project Implicit team thinks they’re producing real science. They could be right — there’s still room for debate — but this latest review casts considerable doubt on it (not for the first time, by the way). Nevertheless the White House tells us with unabashed assurance, “Research demonstrates that most people hold unconscious, implicit assumptions that influence their judgments and perceptions of others.”

I could cite other research — there’s plenty — demonstrating that people are often too quick to trust whatever looks like science to them. The IAT has all the right bells and whistles, and an impressive list of Ph.D.s on its supporting team. So if it says you’re a bigot, you’re a bigot, right?

Wrong. From the 2016 review paper: “We found little evidence that changes in implicit bias mediate [have anything detectable to do with] changes in explicit bias or behavior.” And what difference does it make if some test — completely divorced from real human relationships — says you’re unconsciously biased? What counts is how you actually treat other people. Apparently the IAT doesn’t have much to tell us a thing about that.

But still it shows why cops shoot blacks, doesn’t it? No, wrong again:

Despite clear evidence of implicit bias against Black suspects, officers were slower to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White suspects, and they were less likely to shoot unarmed Black suspects than unarmed White suspects.

Explicit Biases In Operation

Here’s the real lesson. Forget implicit biases. Think explicit ones instead. We don’t need teams of Ph.D.s and arcane tests to expose them. They’re right out in the open. One of them is liberals’ belief that discrimination is the root of all evil; and if you’re not displaying discrimination on the surface, it must be there anyway, especially if you’re white — And we’re gonna dig it out of you, you bigot, you!

I can’t prove it, but I can’t help wondering whether that sentiment explains the IAT’s huge popularity and interest. Never mind its poor record for reliability: it supports the liberals’ narrative of inequality and discrimination.

By Their Fruits

Prying into the unconscious may be an interesting pastime, except it’s way too easy to fool ourselves into thinking we know what’s there when we don’t. God knows what’s going on deep inside everyone’s hearts. For the rest of us, the better rule is, “You will know them by their fruits.” (For more from the author of “Trump’s Lust for Respect Makes National Unity Implausible” please click HERE)

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Obama Isn’t Planning to Be as Silent as Bush in Post-Presidency

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President Barack Obama says he appreciated George W. Bush’s silence during his eight years in office. Now, as the current president prepares for life outside the White House, his aides have given mixed messages about just how political Obama will be during the Trump administration.

Obama has said speaking out on policy won’t be his priority after leaving the White House on Friday.

“Now, that doesn’t mean that if a year from now or a year and a half from now or two years from now, there is an issue of such moment, such import, that isn’t just a debate about a particular tax bill or, you know, a particular policy, but goes to some foundational issues about our democracy that I might not weigh in,” Obama said in a December CNN interview with his former adviser, David Axelrod. “You know, I’m still a citizen and that carries with it duties and obligations.”

Upon leaving the White House, Obama will be the first president to remain in the District of Columbia since Woodrow Wilson in 1921. The first family is remaining in the District until their 15-year-old daughter, Sasha, graduates high school.

Obama will have a new office in the same building that houses the World Wildlife Federation. He has also already started building his post-presidency staff, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday. He hired a chief of staff, Anita Decker Breckenridge, an aide since Obama was an Illinois state legislator in 2003.

Obama White House aides Valerie Jarrett and Jen Psaki told the Tribune that Obama will work to ensure affordable health care access—presumably meaning he will speak out against President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to dismantle Obamacare.

The Tribune also reported that Obama will speak up for Dreamers, the label given to children of illegal immigrants. In June 2012, Obama took executive action to carry out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that protects illegal immigrants from deportation. Trump opposes the program.

Obama’s involvement in policy battles would be a significant departure from his predecessor. Upon leaving office in 2009, Bush retreated to Texas and out of the spotlight.

Just days after the November election, White House press secretary Josh Earnest invoked Bush’s behavior to indicate Obama might not second guess Trump in public.

“He deeply appreciated how President George W. Bush, after leaving office, gave the new president some running room, gave him a little space, wasn’t backseat driving in public, offering up all kinds of critiques with every single decision that President Obama was making in the earliest days of his presidency,” Earnest told reporters during a White House briefing.

“I’m confident that President George W. Bush didn’t agree with every single decision that President Obama was making,” Earnest added, “but he was extraordinarily respectful of the democratic process. President Obama admired that.”

Bush has consistently steered clear of criticizing Obama or even making many policy pronouncements. Democrat predecessors such as Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter have remained in the spotlight, choosing to speak out on various political issues of interest to them.

“He is already one of the wealthiest presidents in modern history and he will probably make millions more on corporate boards,” author and presidential historian Craig Shirley told The Daily Signal of Obama. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he became secretary-general of the United Nations.”

Shirley, a biographer of Ronald Reagan, said Obama will be similar to Clinton—young in retirement and unable to step out of the spotlight. He doesn’t anticipate Obama having a modest post-presidency like his immediate predecessor.

“He will continue talking. That’s what he knows how to do,” Shirley said of Obama. “He won’t fade away. When Reagan’s eight years were up, he went back to California. When [Dwight] Eisenhower’s eight years were up, he returned to Gettysburg and played golf.”

Reports over the last two years indicated Obama would focus on his presidential library to be built in Chicago, but also on helping black youth through a nonprofit incarnation of the White House initiative known as “My Brother’s Keeper.”

Obama has said he was committed to the goals of the “My Brother’s Keeper” program to boost opportunities for young men of color after leaving office. Shirley suggested this could be an “admirable” nonpolitical issue for Obama—one in which he could become an elder statesman in his post-presidency.

A more political effort would come from his work with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which is focused on doing away with gerrymandering. Obama is expected to work with former Attorney General Eric Holder on the initiative. Gerrymandering is the drawing of legislative and congressional districts to help one’s party.

Obama’s involvement is geared toward helping Democrats running for state legislatures win back state houses before the 2020 census and subsequent redistricting.

“The Democrats have lost about 1,000 elective legislative seats since Obama took office,” Shirley said. “For stopping gerrymandering, they’re not going to turn to Obama for guidance.”

During the CNN interview in December, Obama talked about shaping the next generation of leaders.

“With respect to my priorities when I leave, it is to build that next generation of leadership; organizers, journalists, politicians,” Obama said. “I see them in America, I see them around the world, 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds who are just full of talent, full of idealism.”

He continued that a short-term goal would be helping his beleaguered Democrats.

“I think what I can do is not do it myself, but say to those who are still in the game right now look, think about this, think about how you’re organizing that, you know, what are you doing to make sure that young talent is out there in the field being supported,” Obama said. “You know, how are you making sure that your message is reaching everybody and not just those who have already been converted. Identifying really talented staff and organizers who are already out there and encouraging them to get involved.” (For more from the author of “Obama Isn’t Planning to Be as Silent as Bush in Post-Presidency” please click HERE)

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Obama Told US ‘Elections Have Consequences.’ Here’s One Way to Reverse His Liberal Legacy.

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“Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”

These were the infamous words President Barack Obama used to scold congressional Republicans just three days after his inauguration in 2009, foreshadowing how he would approach policymaking for the next eight years.

Rather than listening to and trying to work with Republicans, Obama governed through brute force—with his “pen and phone” more often than with the consent of Congress—guided by the dictates of his progressive ideology rather than the interests of the American people.

In virtually every policy area—from health care and immigration to the deployment of American troops and the accession to new international treaties—Obama ignored those who dared to dissent from his agenda and used whatever means necessary to accomplish his goals.

The result is a precarious legacy burdened by a host of deeply unpopular and highly controversial policies, many of which can be repealed, replaced, rolled back, and otherwise reformed by the new Republican majorities in Congress.

But Republicans should take care to avoid adopting the same high-handed, condescending governing style exhibited by Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress.

Instead of ignoring the concerns and preferences of the American people—and their elected officials at the state and local level—we should listen to and learn from them.

Rather than forcing diverse communities to abide by inflexible, burdensome rules and regulations devised by federal bureaucrats in Washington, we should empower local decision-makers to find solutions that address the unique needs of their families, neighborhoods, and businesses.

One of the areas of federal policy most in need of local empowerment is housing.

For instance, in 2015, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which requires cities and towns across the country to audit their local housing policies.

If any aspect of a community’s housing and demographic patterns fails to meet the department’s expansive definition of “fair housing” under the fair housing rule, the local government must submit a plan to reorganize the community’s housing practices according to the preferences and priorities of the department’s bureaucrats.

Failure to comply will result in the department withholding Community Development Block Grants, federal grant money that local officials have traditionally been free to use as they see fit.

Proponents of the fair housing rule claim the rule establishes a collaborative process, with local government officials in the driver’s seat while the bureaucrats at the Department of Housing and Urban Development merely provide “support” and “guidance.”

But the track record of the fair housing rule proves the opposite.

Many local housing officials from across the country, including in Utah, have told the same story: The costs of complying with the fair housing rule stretch their already thin resources, add hundreds of hours of bureaucratic paperwork to their workloads, and eliminate their autonomy to determine the best ways to provide adequate low-cost housing to their community.

To provide some measure of relief to local public housing authorities, a group of Republicans in Congress has supported legislation to restrict the department from using federal funds to implement the fair housing rule.

The Local Zoning Decisions Protection Act is the latest iteration of this legislation, which I joined Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., to introduce last week.

For the past 18 months, with Obama holding the executive veto pen and unwilling to believe that his policies are unpopular, there was very little chance this bill would be signed into law.

But on Jan. 20, when Donald Trump is sworn into office, that will change, and I will do everything in my power to ensure its swift passage.

After all, elections have consequences. (For more from the author of “Obama Told US ‘Elections Have Consequences.’ Here’s One Way to Reverse His Liberal Legacy.” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Commutation of Manning Sentence Sends a Horrible Message to Service Personnel

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Exercising his authority under Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, President Barack Obama commuted the court-martial sentence of convicted felon Bradley Manning.

Although there is no dispute that Obama had the legal authority to commute the former Army private first class’s sentence, the president and his advisors had to know that any relief granted to Manning would be terribly controversial, and for good reason.

Commuting Manning’s sentence sends a horrible message to everyone who serves in the U.S. military, emboldens those who seek to harm the United States, and disheartens countless Americans—in and out of uniform.

It is important to remember the facts of the case. This was not a whodunit. This was not a case where motive excused his behavior, as some Manning supporters argue.

This is a case about an Army private first class who, while stationed abroad, having access to top secret and other classified material, decided to steal that material and give it to Wikileaks, knowing full well that Wikileaks would publish the material for the world to see.

There is no dispute as to the facts of the case, as in some instances of presidential pardons. After Manning was caught, he was sent to a general (felony) court-martial. After consulting with his able defense attorneys, he decided to plead guilty.

In military guilty pleas, the accused must describe for the military trial judge facts sufficient to convince the judge, beyond a reasonable doubt, as to each and every element in each crime. The accused discusses these facts with the judge while under oath, and those discussions last a long time.

This case was no different.

According to the facts developed in the case, and discussed at the court-martial, between November 2009 and May 2010, Manning was deployed overseas, and during that deployment, had access to secret and top secret data. He had a duty not to disclose the data to any unauthorized person.

Nevertheless, he downloaded 400,000 classified files from the Iraq war, some 91,000 files from the Afghan war, around 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables (emails), sensitive and classified U.S. airstrike videos, and classified documents and files from Guantanamo Bay, including classified assessments of Guantanamo terrorist detainees.

Manning placed that material on a SD-type card, and took it. He gave that highly classified and sensitive material to Wikileaks, knowing full well that they would (1) publish the material and (2) that the material could and likely would fall into the hands of our enemies.

The Army charged Manning with, among other things, aiding the enemy—a crime that under certain circumstances could result in the death penalty.

Eventually, Manning decided to plead guilty instead of contesting the charges against him. The maximum possible sentence to those charges to which he pleaded guilty was 136 years. In other words, it would have been lawful for the trial judge to sentence Manning to 136 years.

At the sentencing hearing, the government presented evidence in aggravation of his crimes. Army Brigadier General Robert A. Carr, a top Pentagon intelligence official, testified that Manning’s disclosures “affected our ability to do our mission,” and endangered U.S. ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary of state for management, testified that Manning’s actions sent the State Department into crisis and prompted a costly effort to assess the damage that the leaks had done.

He asserted, “I believe my colleagues abroad are still feeling [the results of the leak].”

Major General Michael Nagata, the deputy commander of the U.S. defense attaché in Pakistan, testified that Manning’s actions had a strong negative effect on the mission of the Office of Defense Representative in Pakistan.

Colonel Denise Lind, the military trial judge, sentenced Manning to 35 years and a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Army. Manning filed his appeal in May 2016, which is now moot given the president’s commutation.

To some, Manning was a whistleblower who deserved of a pardon, or at least a sentence commutation. Indeed, one of the videos he gave to Wikileaks showed U.S. military personnel in Iraq engaged in a deeply troubling, if not illegal, shooting incident.

But there was so much more to Manning’s crimes than exposing that killing.

By downloading hundreds of thousands of secret documents about some of the most sensitive information related to the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, by disgorging highly sensitive diplomatic emails for the world to see, and recklessly exposing top secret files of terrorist detainees we held at Guantanamo, Manning betrayed his oath to his country, armed our enemies with information that they could only dream about acquiring, and forced our government to expend untold hours and money to minimize the damage inflicted by his criminal conduct.

Those who applaud the commutation also argue that the sentence Manning had received was “excessive and disproportionate.”

Yet it is difficult to imagine, much less point to, another case of a U.S. military member who singlehandedly stole the volume of classified information to an unauthorized source (Wilileaks), or one that caused the multi-layered damage to U.S. military security and diplomatic harmony that Manning caused by doing what he did.

Manning’s defenders argue that his mental health as a “vulnerable person” should act as a mitigating circumstance with respect to his sentence. But that argument was presented, in full, to Judge Lind before she sentenced Manning.

Under the law, military trial judges are required to take into account all aggravating and mitigating evidence before sentencing the accused. Thus, Manning already received the benefit of his gender identity issues when he was sentenced in the first place.

The “mercy” that some argue for was actually granted by the trial judge: She didn’t sentence Manning to the 50 or 100 or 136 years he could have served.

And everyone in the military justice system knows that a 35-year sentence of confinement, assuming good behavior while in custody, in reality will result in less than 10 years of confinement. Manning was set to be released in the coming year or so anyway.

Finally, it bears mentioning that U.S. military members across the globe carry out their duties, for the most part, with honor and fidelity. Many have access to secret and top secret material. Some have access to Special Access Program information—the most highly classified material our government possesses.

They guard this information with their lives, and for good reason. They know that if they violated their oaths by stealing this information and providing it to our enemies, American lives and national security would be in grave danger.

By commuting Manning’s richly deserved sentence, Obama is sending a horrible message to dedicated U.S. public servants, in and out of uniform, that honoring their responsibility to keep national security secrets from the public eye isn’t all that important.

This is a slap in their face. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Commutation of Manning Sentence Sends a Horrible Message to Service Personnel” please click HERE)

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Once Again, Feminists Silence Pro-Life Women

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It’s 2017 and women are still being silenced.

The twist is that it’s now by other women.

The Women’s March on Washington, scheduled to occur the day after President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration, had listed a pro-life group, New Wave Feminists, as a partner organization. After The Atlantic highlighted the group’s participation as a partner in the march, the Women’s March took the group off the list, saying its inclusion had been an “error.”

“The protest is pro-choice and that has been our stance from Day One,” the Women’s March said in a statement. “We want to assure all of our partners, as well as our participants, that we are pro-choice as clearly stated in our Unity Principles. We look forward to marching on behalf of individuals who share the view that women deserve the right to make their own reproductive choices.”

Never mind that the event’s organizers had told The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness in December that pro-lifers were welcome to participate in the Women’s March. “The message is not whether a person is pro-life or pro-choice,” said march organizer Tamika Mallory at the time.

It wasn’t entirely surprising they caved. Since Mallory spoke to The Daily Signal, Planned Parenthood has become a partner. And after The Atlantic published its article about the New Wave Feminists’ inclusion, liberal feminists tweeted their dismay:

The exact mission of the Women’s March, which started with Hawaii grandmother Teresa Shook’s Facebook comment on election night that “I think we should march,” has been somewhat … nebulous from its inception.

“What sparked the need for this movement was the rhetoric of the campaign was so demeaning to women,” Shook told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in an interview. “I just felt women needed to stand up and say, ‘Here we are, hear our voice, we’re strong, we’re empowered, and we’re not going away.’”

But regardless of the mission that the event organizers finally settled upon—(assuming they did settle on one—the Women’s March is now in trouble with liberal feminists for removing a statement on rights for sex workers)—it shouldn’t be called the Women’s March if it isn’t meant to be inclusive for all women.

As much as the left (and some of their cheerleaders in the media) love to portray women as a unified bloc of pink-wearing Planned Parenthood cheerleaders who cherish no political right as much as they do the right to abortion, the political reality is far more complicated.

Four out of 10 women in America think abortion should be “illegal in all/most cases,” according to a poll released last year by the Pew Research Center. And two-thirds of women voters support legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks, except if the mother’s life is in danger or in cases of rape and incest, according to a November poll commissioned by the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life organization.

In other words, the pro-choice position of the “Women’s March” is excluding a lot of American women.

And unfortunately, that’s all too common. In our political discourse, it’s regularly assumed that all women agree with the Lena Dunhams of the world.

It doesn’t matter how many women passionately believe that both female and male unborn children deserve the right to life, despite being small and dependent. It doesn’t matter how many women think all women deserve something better than the kind of treatment delivered by Dr. Kermit Gosnell, under whose care a woman undergoing a second-trimester abortion died.

It doesn’t matter how many women think that what can best help a woman facing an unexpected pregnancy is financial support and personal care, the kind delivered by pregnancy centers across the country—not a push that she end the life of her child.

Or at least that doesn’t matter to the liberal feminists who constantly demand pro-life women be excluded.

It’s time the left accept that women have a diversity of views on many issues, including on abortion.

And if liberal feminists are sincere about women’s rights, they’ll realize that means that all women, not just those they agree with, deserve a seat at the table (or a place in the march) to represent their views. (For more from the author of “Once Again, Feminists Silence Pro-Life Women” please click HERE)

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Why America Needs to Know What Tillerson Thinks about Refugees

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Given that Rex Tillerson is the first secretary of State nominee with absolutely no political or military experience, we have no clue where he stands on many critical geopolitical issues. After this week’s hearing, which was almost completely consumed with Russia and random Democrat priorities, he is still very much a blank slate, including on the all-important issue of refugees.

One of the most important issues within the purview of the secretary of State is refugee resettlement in general and the UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in particular. Although the secretary of DHS is widely viewed as the point-man on the issue of immigration, the secretary of State is the gatekeeper. The State Department works with the UN to identify the pool of refugees and bring them to our shores.

A secretary of State who has his priorities straight would serve as a positive influence on Trump and urge him to shut down or curtail the program in the face of pressure from the global elites. On the other hand, a secretary of State who subscribes to the views of James Baker, Condi Rice, Bob Corker, and Robert Gates — all strong backers of Tillerson — could serve as a major negative influence on the president-elect.

With all the negative energy that will inevitably swarm Trump on behalf of Islamic refugee resettlement, a secretary of State with anything short of a full-throated opposition to this program will become a problem in the long run.

With the Obama administration working closely with the UN to “expedite” the selection process of Syrian refugees, Obama has flooded our shores with a record number of individuals who are impossible to vet, on top of the thousands of others from Somalia, Iraq, and Burma. Where does Tillerson stand on the surge center set up in Amman, Jordan? Will he shut it down?

Nobody will have more influence on forcing reforms to the UNHCR program or ending it altogether than the secretary of State. And that program must end, or we must withdraw from it. A recent Center for Immigration Studies analysis of a “UNHCR Projected Global Resettlement Needs” report demonstrates that not only is the refugee program a ruse for socially transforming America, but it also doesn’t even address the neediest individuals and is therefore counterintuitive to humanitarian goals. “Contrary to UNCHR and U.S. official claims, it is not necessarily the most vulnerable and urgent cases that are being submitted for resettlement,” writes CIS’ Nayla Rush.

The U.S. has already spent $5.6 billion on humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees, is the largest donor to the UNHCR (which also promotes the Palestinian political jihad), and is by far the largest recipient of refugees under this program in the world:

unhcr table 1

As Nayla Rush observes, despite the tremendous cost, the security risks, and cultural transformation of settling America with the Islamic world, millions of refugees are still left out in the cold anyway. It will never be enough because the entire system is not designed to address the core problem. It would be 12 times cheaper to resettle them in the Arab world — closer to their homes with the goal of eventually returning home. Unfortunately, the UN would rather transform America, even if it is counterintuitive to its own stated goals.

In addition to handling refugee resettlement, the State Department oversees the issuance of most visas. What is particularly concerning is the rapid increase in foreign students from the Middle East. Last year, the State Department admitted roughly 1.2 million foreign students with roughly 157,000 coming from predominantly Muslim countries. This is a gaping security hole because they are predominantly young males who are coming straight from the Middle East and, unlike legal permanent residents, have no plans to establish a family or even attempt to share in the future of this country. We are literally recruiting from the subsection of the world that is most prone to subscribing to strict Sharia and Islamic supremacism, from those that have the zeal and energy to act on callings from ISIS and other terror groups.

Shouldn’t we have some idea as to where Rex Tillerson stands on the refugee program and some of our visa programs? The secretary of State is the most important Cabinet official as it relates to the security aspects of immigration. In addition, Nikki Haley as ambassador to the UN, which is also a Cabinet-level position, will have tremendous influence over our policies related to international migration. There are certainly no signs that she has fundamentally changed her views on mass migration from the Middle East.

The point is we can’t merely hope for change on immigration; we have to ensure and demand it. While repeal of Obamacare has unfortunately turned out to be needlessly complex and uncertain, the repeal of refugee resettlement is very straightforward and does not require any complicated legislation. It would be nice if we had a sense of where this administration is headed. Radio silence on these issues seldom portends a strong change in a conservative direction. (For more from the author of “Why America Needs to Know What Tillerson Thinks about Refugees” please click HERE)

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Ben Carson Doubles Down: LGBT Don’t Get ‘Extra Rights’

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By Lisa Bourne. Dr. Ben Carson reiterated at his confirmation hearing Thursday that individuals identifying as LGBT shouldn’t get special rights.

All Americans deserve protection under the law, Carson said, but no one is entitled to “extra rights.”

Trump has appointed Carson as Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary.

Questioned during the hearing by Ohio Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown on whether he would enforce protections for LGBT Americans in public housing, Carson reconfirmed his previously stated belief.

“Of course, I would enforce all the laws of the land,” Carson said. “Of course, I think all Americans should be protected by the law.” (Read more from “Ben Carson Doubles Down: LGBT Don’t Get ‘Extra Rights'” HERE)

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Report: Gay Rights Sympathizer Scaramucci Selected for Role as Key Adviser to Trump

By Peter LaBarbera. Anthony Scaramucci, who describes himself as a committed “gay rights activist,” has been picked for a top job advising President-elect Trump that is comparable to Valerie Jarrett’s preeminent role in the Obama White House, The Washington Post reported Friday.

As LifeSiteNews previous reported, Scaramucci told BBC in November: “I’m … a gay rights activist. … I’ve given to the [pro-“gay” Republican] American Unity PAC … to the Human Rights Campaign, I’m for … marriage equality.”

“We don’t want to be on the wrong side of history,” Scaramucci told the Huffington Post last April, explaining why his investment company, Skybridge Capital, gives to LGBT groups. Scaramucci, a 2012 Mitt Romney mega-donor, last year invited “transgender” activist Bruce (“Caitlyn) Jenner to speak at his annual SALT conference, which he describes as a “premier thought leadership and global investment forum” for fellow hedge-fund investors.

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is the nation’s leading homosexual-bisexual-transgender activist PAC. The D.C.-based group endorsed Hillary Clinton and heavily criticized Trump during the presidential campaign. It generally supports Democrats with donations.

HRC bought the web domain “Dump Trump,” said he is “unfit for the presidency” and that he “spews hate toward LGBTQ people.” Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Trump is the most pro-homosexual major Republican candidate in U.S. history. (Read more from “Report: Gay Rights Sympathizer Scaramucci Selected for Role as Key Adviser to Trump” HERE)

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