14 Political Races to Watch in 2014

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Photo Credit: Bob LairdIn the 2014 elections, Republicans need to net a six-seat pickup to retake control of the U.S. Senate. They have high hopes, but there is little room for error. In the House, Democrats need a net gain of 17 seats next year to gain majority control and return Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to the speaker’s chair. Here are seven key races to watch in each chamber:

SENATE

•ALASKA: In 2010, Tea Party candidate Joe Miller shocked the GOP by defeating incumbent Lisa Murkowski in a primary; she came back to win re-election as a write-in candidate. Now Miller is expected to be one of three candidates vying for the Republican nomination to challenge Mark Begich, the first-term Democratic incumbent. Other Republicans who could be strong candidates: Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and Dan Sullivan, former head of the state’s natural resources department.

•LOUISIANA: Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu has been called vulnerable in each of her three prior Senate races, and her fourth run is no different. Louisiana regularly votes Republican in presidential years, and Landrieu’s support of the Affordable Care Act has not helped boost her popularity. Her opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, staunchly opposes the law although he introduced health care legislation while a state senator in Louisiana.

•ARKANSAS: Mark Pryor is a moderate Democrat hoping for a third term. His voting record on the Affordable Care Act in increasingly conservative Arkansas, coupled with a strong Republican challenge, may hamper that. Republicans have quickly coalesced around Tom Cotton, a young freshman congressman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. This race will be a huge spend for partisans on both sides of the aisle.

•KENTUCKY: Americans are frustrated with Washington, and Mitch McConnell is one of its best-known faces. The five-term senator is facing a primary challenge from Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin and, if he survives, an Election Day challenge from Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. Major ad buys are already taking over the airwaves – eight months ahead of the primary.

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Report: Obama Knew He Was Lying About Keeping Your Insurance

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Photo Credit: APIn a blockbuster report on Monday, sources told NBC News that at least half to three quarters of those who buy individual insurance will have that insurance cancelled by their insurers over the next year thanks to changes mandated by Obamacare. A huge number of the people forced off their current insurance will have “sticker shock,” the sources said. What’s more, President Obama knew all that even as he campaigned on the promise that if you liked your insurance, you could keep it: “the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”

Robert Laszewski of Health Policy and Strategy Associates has been a supporter of Obamacare, but stated, “This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either.” On Monday, White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo said that people might have to pay more for insurance, but that their insurance would be better: “One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions. The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits.”

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More Obamacare Heartache: Tally Rises for Americans Losing Their Health Insurance

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Photo Credit: heritage.orgBy Marguerite Bowling.

The hype and dream are fizzling out with the Administration’s big promise on Obamacare—that every American who liked his or her health plan could keep it. According to a new tally, nearly 1.5 million customers in the individual insurance market have lost their current health plans.

They’re losing coverage that many of them liked, with one woman in Florida saying the new option under Obamacare would cost her more than 10 times what she currently pays in monthly premiums. David Hogberg breaks down the insurance cancellations to date at the National Center for Public Policy Research:
-800,000 in New Jersey.

-119,000 from Blue Shield in California.
-160,000 from Kaiser in California.
-300,000 in Florida.
-24,000 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
-13,000 in central and eastern Pennsylvania.
-76,000 from CareFirst in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia…

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Photo Credit: westernjournalism.comWhite House Extends ObamaCare Enrollment Period

Americans now have an additional six weeks in which to enroll for a government-mandated healthcare plan without incurring penalty charges.

In the wake of ObamaCare’s rising unpopularity and a website that does not function for the vast majority of users, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed Monday that the enrollment deadline has been extended to March 31. Last week, Carney indicated the administration would work to fix the litany of issues plaguing healthcare.gov.

After sending Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on a whirlwind tour to put a positive spin on the site’s malfunctions, the Obama administration apparently decided damage control was not working.

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Arrival of Obamacare Puts Focus on IRS Tax-Credit Scandal

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Photo Credit: APThere’s no doubt congressional investigators have their hands full probing allegations the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative non-profit groups. But now a different IRS scandal — involving the chronic, ongoing, mind-bogglingly wasteful mismanagement of a popular tax credit program — demands Congress’s attention because it has taken on new importance with the arrival of Obamacare.

The program is the Earned Income Tax Credit, through which the federal government gives out between $60 billion and $70 billion to low-income working Americans each year. It’s known as a “refundable” tax credit, but it is basically a transfer payment, in which the IRS sends a check — perhaps even $5,000 every year — to workers who have little or no tax liability.

The problem is, the IRS does little to determine whether recipients actually qualify for the money. A recent report by the IRS inspector general says the agency has given out somewhere between $110 billion and $132 billion in improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments in the last decade. In that time period, between 21 and 30 percent of tax credit payments went to people who didn’t qualify for them.

That is bad enough. But what infuriates lawmakers is that the IRS refuses to do anything about it. Agency officials told the inspector general they couldn’t fix the problem because the tax credit program is very complicated, and also because they are afraid vigorous enforcement would discourage legitimately qualified recipients from applying for credits. And the IRS is not only not working to reduce improper payments, it is refusing to report those payments to Congress as required. The bottom line, in the words of inspector general Russell George: “The IRS is unlikely to achieve any significant reduction in Earned Income Tax Credit improper payments.”

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has heard that before. “The IRS has repeatedly ignored the fraud and abuse in the Earned Income Tax Credit program, which has already cost Americans over $100 billion,” Camp said in a statement Monday. “Americans should be confident that their tax dollars are being used properly, but that confidence has been shattered by the blatant disregard this agency has shown for monitoring refundable tax credits and better protecting taxpayers.”

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Alaskan Company Suspends Obamacare Enrollments, Cites Faulty Subsidy Calculator

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Photo Credit: Wonderlane/flickrEnroll Alaska, an organization that was specifically created to aid Alaskans in enrolling for Obamacare, has thrown in the towel, at least for the time being.

As the Peninsula Clarion reports, Enroll Alaska has been able to enroll a grand total of only three people since the launch of the health-insurance marketplaces on October 1. It has now given up entirely on that goal, at least until Healthcare.gov, the federal health-care exchange, gives Alaskans accurate figures on the subsidies they’re eligible for.

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Sowell: Our ‘Public Servants’ Have Turned Into Public Masters

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Photo Credit: M.Scott MahaskeyThrow the Rascals Out?

Polls indicate that the public is so disgusted with Washington politicians of both parties that a surprisingly large proportion of the people would like to get rid of the whole lot of them.

It is certainly understandable that the voters would like to “throw the rascals out.” But there is no point in throwing the rascals out if we are just going to get a new set of rascals to replace them.

In other words, we need to think about what there is about current political practices that repeatedly bring to power such a counterproductive set of people. Those we call “public servants” have in fact become public masters. And they act like it.

They squander ever more vast amounts of our tax money and still leave trillions of dollars of national debt to be paid by our children and grandchildren.

They intrude into our private lives with ever more restrictions, red tape and electronic surveillance.

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Democrat Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein Calls for ‘Major Review’ of NSA Spying and Says it’s a ‘Big Problem’ if Obama was Unaware

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Photo Credit: APThe U.S. Senate’s top foreign intelligence official said Monday in a scathing statement that she is ‘totally opposed’ to spying of the sort that has gotten the Obama administration into hot water this week.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, seemed miffed at the idea that she and her colleagues were out of the loop when the president’s men conducted surveillance on foreign leaders in Europe and Latin America.

And she said President Obama’s lack of knowledge about monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phones going back to 2002 posed ‘a big problem.’
So she’s tightening the leash.

‘The White House has informed me that collection on our allies will not continue, which I support,’ said Feinstein.

‘But as far as I’m concerned, Congress needs to know exactly what our intelligence community is doing. To that end, the committee will initiate a major review into all intelligence collection programs.’

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Benghazi Attorney’s Major Assertion: ‘Reason to Believe’ People Who ‘Insisted’ on Military Response That Night Were ‘Relieved of their Duty’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APSome military commanders may have been relieved of duty for insisting on trying to send help for the Americans trapped at the Benghazi compound during the terrorist attack there on Sept. 11, 2012, an attorney for Benghazi whistleblowers said Monday.

Joe diGenova, former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, made the assertion during a Monday moning radio interview on WMAL, the D.C. radio station where he is a regular legal analyst.

“We have reason to believe that things happened that night in the chain of command where people were relieved of their duty because they insisted that there be a military response,” diGenova told WMAL. “We’re working on trying to establish that with news organizations. But there is very, very good evidence that people were actually relieved of command because they refused not to try and dispatch troops and some response.”

Because the information is preliminary, diGenova did not delve into names. But he said he would like to see former Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta answer questions on the matter.

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Feds Confiscate Investigative Reporter’s Confidential Files During Raid

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed.

In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter.

A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.

The document notes that her husband, Paul Flanagan, was found guilty in 1986 to resisting arrest in Prince George’s County. The warrant called for police to search the residence they share and seize all weapons and ammunition because he is prohibited under the law from possessing firearms.

But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said.

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Government ‘Mining’ Social Media for Information on Health Behavior

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Photo Credit: APThe National Library of Medicine (NLM) is “mining” Facebook and Twitter to improve its social media footprint and to assess how Tweets can be used as “change-agents” for health behaviors.

The NLM, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will have software installed on government computers that will store data from social media as part of a $30,000 project announced last week.

“The National Library of Medicine is the world’s largest biomedical library and makes its stored information available online at no charge to consumers, health professionals, and biomedical scientists through a diverse suite of resources,” the agency said in a contract posted on Oct. 23. “Evaluating how its databases and other resources are utilized is an important component of continuing quality improvement and has long been an on-going program of NLM management through a potpourri of monitoring tools.”

“The world-wide explosion in the use of social media provides a unique opportunity for sampling sentiment and use patterns of NLM’s ‘customers’ and for comparing NLM to other sources of health-related information,” the agency said.

“By examining relevant tweets and other comments,” the contract said, “NLM will gain insights to extent of use, context for which information was sought, and effects of various health-related announcements and events on usage patterns.”

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