The Profound Arrogant Ignorance and Stupidity of Liberals in Charge

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The recent Twitter kerfuffle between Matt Drudge and the Obama/media/academic complex over the ObamaCare tax demonstrates in plain view and without question something many of us have known for years: while the organized left insist that they are the only ones smart enough to run the world, they remain astonishingly ignorant of how it works. They’re even ignorant of how the most fundamental parts of laws that they champion operate.

In case you missed it, Drudge tweeted, “Just paid the Obamacare penalty for not ‘getting covered’… I’M CALLING IT A LIBERTY TAX” shortly after filing his first quarterly installment for 2014 as a self-employed person. Apparently unaware of how self-employed people pay taxes – which is neither new nor a secret – liberals at the White House, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post, and the National Journal all responded immediately by calling Drudge either a liar or ignorant, or both. After all, the liberal reasoning went, Drudge could not possibly have paid a cent toward his 2014 ObamaCare “penalty” because it’s not 2015 yet.

Yes, these wizards who would organize everything and everyone lack even a cursory familiarity with the most basic of tax realities.

What is it Bill Engvall says? Oh yeah: “Here’s your sign.” These liberals really didn’t need Engvall’s sign at all. They tweeted their own “I’m stupid” signs. Some wrote full-fledged low-information articles, including TPM’s Dylan Scott and the HuffPo’s Jeffrey Young.

In none of these attacks on Drudge did it occur to these media maestros how self-employed people are impacted by the tax ramifications of ObamaCare. If Drudge figures he’ll owe, say, ten million in federal income taxes for 2014 (it’s probably a lot more), he is required to send in a quarter of that now. He would also be compelled to include charming little IRS add-ons in his payment, like the ObamaCare penalty. Or is it a fee? A tax, maybe? Whatever John Roberts decided to call it, Drudge and other self-employed quarterly filers have indeed started paying it.

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Connecticut in Turmoil as Gun Owners Demand Return of Rights

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesA Second Amendment fight is brewing in Connecticut over new legislation that turned tens of thousands of gun owners into potential felons.

The law, passed last April in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, put in place bans on magazines that carry more than 10 rounds of ammunition and on many types of weapons, including those that simply have the cosmetic appearance of assault weapons.

The law also requires residents to undergo mental and criminal background checks and to register certain types of guns with authorities.

The pro-gun group Connecticut Carry “calls on every state official, every senator, every representative to make the singular decision: Either enforce the laws as they are written and let us fight it out in court, or else repeal the 2013 gun ban in its entirety. We say: Bring it on,” the group said on its website in a memo intended to rally members.

A challenge to the law has already been shot down, although U.S. District Judge Alfred Covello acknowledged in his ruling that the text of the gun law was fuzzy and that legislators hadn’t written it “with the utmost clarity.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Group Rips Off Gadsden Flag in Pro-ObamaCare Bumper Sticker

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A President Obama-aligned group trying to drum up enrollment for ObamaCare is giving away bumper stickers that spoof the Gadsden flag — a symbol informally adopted by the Tea Party movement and, for that reason, long derided by Democrats.

Photo Credit: OFA

The stickers are a marketing ploy by Organizing for Action, an advocacy group which helped Obama win reelection in 2012. The stickers feature a doctor’s stethoscope, instead of the coiled rattlesnake on the original golden-colored flag.

“This is for everyone who’s tired of hearing the other side talk smack about health care reform that is helping millions of Americans get affordable, quality care,” OFA Executive Director Jon Carson said in announcing the free stickers through Facebook…

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‘Special Consideration’ for ‘Non-Christian’ Job Applicants?

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Photo Credit: Eve Edelheit/Tampa Bay Times/ZUMAPRESS.comA provision in a Michigan teachers’ union contract calling for “special consideration” to be given to “minority” job applicants including “those of the non-Christian faith” was removed by the Ferndale School District this week after the language was identified as a violation of the Federal Civil Rights Act.

Michigan Capitol Confidential reported on the union contract which, for teachers applying for promotions to vacant positions, read: “Special consideration shall be given to women and/or minorit[ies] defined as: Native American, Asian American, Latino, African American and those of the non-Christian faith.”

On both the state and federal level, the Civil Rights Act prohibits religious discrimination in employment. Consequently, it is illegal to ask job applicants about their religious affiliation—a law violated by the “non-Christian” language in the teachers’ union contract.

According to The Detroit News, the decades-old contract was revised after the discriminatory language was brought to the district’s attention. Ferndale Schools spokeswoman Shelley Rose acknowledged, “nobody was really aware of” the language, which “was there much to our embarrassment.”

“Please note that the district does not discriminate in hiring on the basis of religion or other related issues,” Rose affirmed.

This story was produced by The Foundry’s news team. Nothing here should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of The Heritage Foundation.

This article originally appeared at Heritage.com and is re-published in full with the Heritage Foundation’s permission.

NYT Reporter: Obama Administration ‘The Greatest Enemy of Press Freedom’ in a Generation

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Jason ReedNew York Times reporter James Risen called the Obama administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation” on Friday, explaining that the White House seeks to control the flow of information and those who refuse to play along “will be punished.”

Poynter reports that Risen made the remarks while speaking at Sources and Secrets conference — a meeting of journalism , communication and government professionals held in New York City. The foreign policy reporter, who is currently fighting a fierce court battle with the federal government over his protection of a confidential source, warned that press freedom is under serious attack in today’s America.

In a speech kicking off the conference, Risen claimed that the Obama administration wants to “narrow the field of national security reporting” and “create a path for accepted reporting.” Those who stray from that path, he cautioned, “will be punished.”

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Indiana Withdrawing from Common Core Standards

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Photo Credit: abdulrahman.stockBy Associated Press.

Indiana is the first state to withdraw from the Common Core reading and math standards that were adopted by most states around the country.

Republican Gov. Mike Pence’s office says he signed a bill Monday pulling Indiana from the program. Legislators earlier approved the measure requiring the State Board of Education to draft new standards outlining what students should be learning in each grade rather than using the Common Core standards.

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Michelle Malkin flattens Jeb Bush’s assertion Common Core is ‘truth serum’

By Richard Berkow.

Speaking before 900 people at the annual Broward County Workshop breakfast Friday, former Governor Jeb Bush decried the controversy surrounding Common Core.

Let me tell you something,” he said. “In Asia today, they don’t care about children’s esteem. They care about math, whether they can read in English, whether they understand why science is important, whether they have the grit and determination to be successful,” the Sun-Sentinel reported.

He added that the standards are “benchmarked to the rest of the world…a truth serum for our communities to wake up and realize that we’ve languished far too long,” also berating the critics “who go nuts about it.”

What he did not mention, of course, was the integral role his brother Neil has in the financial success of the project, or the prominent role K Street lobbyists, Bill Gates, George Soros, high-placed Democratic strategists, and other left-wing plutocrats have played in promoting this one-size-fits-all brainwashing agenda, according to Dr. Alison Rampersad, Co-Chair of Eyes on U.S. Education.

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America in Decline

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Photo Credit: American Thinker When Barack Obama was running for president he promised, some say threatened, to fundamentally change America. The doubters now say he has fundamentally ruined America. Whichever way one views it, America is in serious decline.

For a president that promised to reduce the national debt, Obama has added a massive seven trillion dollars to that debt. Under his presidency, America has accumulated as much new debt as it did in its first 227 years.

He heads an Administration that produces food stamps, pries into people’s private lives, and sets government agencies against political opponents. Obama is following the guidebook of Saul Alinsky, “Rules for Radicals,” and is putting Alinsky’s primer into practice from the White House. The results of his experiment are devastating.

Under Obama, prices and taxes rose while take home pay fell 7%. Government hand-outs increased dramatically as the national debt has exploded. Recent estimates put 50 million Americans on food stamps, and millions without healthcare.

Obama, the community organizer, preferred social justice over a robust market place, but, under his presidency, people are worse off today than they were back in 2009 when he promised them change. By the end of the first quarter of 2014 America had six million people not only unemployed but also not even looking for jobs, the vast majority under the age of 55. This implies they had given up all hope of finding work. More than forty million Americans lived below the poverty line.

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Cain: If ObamaCare Had Been In Place in 2006, I Would Be Dead

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Photo Credit: Cain TVBy Herman Cain.

Cancer centers opt out, including the one that saved my life.

I saw recently that several cancer centers in this country have decided to opt out of taking ObamaCare-insured patients. One of them is M.D. Anderson in Houston.

That hit home in a very personal way, because it made me realize something. If ObamaCare had been in place in 2006, I would now be dead. (Let’s see if Harry Reid, or Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, want to try to call me a liar for this.)

Eight years ago this month, I was diagnosed with cancer. The first opinion I received was not encouraging. Not at all. So I sought a second opinion. Fortunately, the nature of my insurance at the time was such that I had the freedom to choose who I would see, and I chose the outstanding Dr. Lloyd at Houston’s M.D. Anderson. He believed I could beat the cancer, and I then had the freedom to begin seeing an Atlanta-based oncologist who helped get me on the path back to health.

Today I am cancer-free.

Now let’s say I had been relying on an ObamaCare insurance policy, which would mandate that all my treatment take place within its own network. In that case, I would not have had the freedom to go to M.D. Anderson and I would never have seen Dr. Lloyd.

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueObamacare’s Regulatory Costs More than Double Benefits

By Sarah Hurtubise.

The annual costs of Obamacare regulations come in at $6.8 billion a year so far — around 2.5 times the total benefits of its heavy-handed regulations, according to study released Monday.

The federal government’s estimates of Obamacare’s regulatory “benefits” — what they project in increased efficiency or productivity due to streamlined processes and standards — clock in at just $2.6 billion annually, as opposed to the cost of complying with all those regulations, which is almost $7 billion.

By 2014, when all but those delayed parts of the Affordable Care Act have been implemented, regulations have imposed over $27.2 billion in costs upon the private sector and $8 billion in unfunded state burdens, the report by free-market think tank American Action Forum (AAF) found.

A large portion of the costs come from the paperwork burden that Obamacare places upon states and private companies. Implementing the law takes 159 million paperwork hours a year for state governments and the private sector — an amount that would take close to 80,000 employees, working 50 weeks per year full-time. (That’s 40 hours per week, not Obamacare’s 30-hour work week threshold for full-time.)

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America Deserves Better than the Clintons

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Photo Credit: WND “What difference does it make?”

Indeed, Madam Secretary, Madam Senator, former first lady and FLOA, it makes a very big difference.

The last time we saw Hillary Clinton as our secretary of state, she was testifying before a congressional committee about Benghazi. During that meeting on Jan. 22, 2013, we heard her shriek, “What difference does it make?”

Earlier, right before one of the presidential debates, on Oct. 15, 2012, Hillary stated during a series of interviews that she, as secretary of state, was responsible for the security of the embassy staff. “The buck stops here.”

I remember being so surprised when I heard it, but I was immediately suspicious.

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Thomas Frank: When Clinton, Obama Sold ‘Hope,’ They Sold Out Rank-and-File Democrats

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What’s the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank believes the matter with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as presidential campaigners was that they spent too much time “selling tidy homilies” about “hope” and too little advocating ideas such as single-payer health care. Frank stated his case Sunday in his latest weekly column for the liberal online magazine Salon.

Frank suggests that all the non-ideological rhetoric of hope from Clinton and Obama presaged the sort of lefty-disappointing policies they’ve often yielded (e.g., “Clinton’s deregulations [and] Obama’s spying program”). In that regard, he comments, they’re typical of Democrats over the past three-plus decades:

…Maybe [‘hope’] and these two presidents’ fecklessness actually complement and explain one another. Maybe ‘hope’ is the ideal philosophical doctrine for a party determined to dump its old constituents and chart a brave new course in a marketized world. As a slogan, ‘hope’ is vague and ethereal…but perhaps that is what makes it the consummate brand identity for a party that so often triangulates away the concerns of its rank and file…

Moreover, declares Frank, “this particular platitude is not harmless…To describe politics in terms of ‘hope’…allows [Democrats] to sell us out over and over.”

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