Parents Warned about Porn in School

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

President Obama already has declared June to be homosexual “Pride” month, but “gay” activists now are designating October “LGBT History Month.”

The move has prompted a pro-family organization in California to issue a warning to parents across the United States about the possibility their children would be confronted with explicit pornography in their public schools this month.

Teachers, they explain, could introduce material that promotes homosexuality.

The homosexual-rights group Equality Forum, which is promoting LGBT History Month, is profiling various homosexuals and lesbians for each day of the month, including some whose work can accurately be described as triple-X rated.

Many schools plan to incorporate LGBT History Month into lessons.

Read more from this story HERE.

Help Kids with Cancer? Reid Asks: ‘Why Would We Want to do That?’

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is blaming Republicans for the National Institutes of Health turning away cancer patients. But when asked why the Senate wouldn’t try to help “one child who has cancer” by approving a mini-spending bill, he shot back: “Why would we want to do that?”

The tense exchange occurred Wednesday, as Senate Democrats tried to lambaste Republicans ahead of a vote where the House ultimately approved funding the NIH and other agencies — a bid to ease the pain amid the budget stand-off.

Reid has opposed the measures, saying that if Republicans want to end the government suspension they’ll have to simply approve a “clean” budget bill — devoid of any provision that would hurt ObamaCare.

But Reid was challenged at a Democratic press conference by CNN’s Dana Bash about why the Senate wouldn’t consider the NIH bill.

“If you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?” she asked.

Read more from this story HERE.

How ObamaCare Wrecks the Work Ethic

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Casey Mulligan

Photo Credit: Casey Mulligan

A new wave of redistribution will arrive in America on Jan. 1, primarily thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The president’s health-insurance plan forces those who hire, work and produce to pay full price for health care, while creating generous discounts for practically everyone else.

This second redistributionist wave of the Obama era will follow a first wave of tax hikes, additional unemployment benefits, food-stamp expansions, waived work requirements for welfare benefits, etc. These measures were supposed to be temporary, intended to help people cope with the recession. The recession officially ended in mid-2009, but many of the administration’s measures continue.

Regardless of whether redistribution is achieved by collecting more taxes from families with high incomes, levying employment taxes on businesses, providing more subsidies to families with low incomes, or all of the above, an essential consequence is the same: a reduction in the reward for working. In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper issued in August, I quantify the combined effect of the two redistribution waves and higher payroll taxes on the financial reward for working…

The 2009-10 peak for marginal tax rates comes from various provisions of the “stimulus” programs in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the extension of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks in some states. At the end of 2012, the marginal tax rate index reached its lowest value since 2008: 43.9%. A little over a year later (January 2014), the index will be close to 50%, driven up by the expiration of the payroll tax cut and multiple provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA employer penalty, delayed until 2015, adds more than a percentage point in that year alone, while other ACA provisions strengthen their disincentives for the various reasons cited above.

Read more from this story HERE.

IRS Collecting Money but Not Sending Tax Refunds During Shutdown

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The IRS is still collecting taxes during the government shutdown, but it isn’t sending refunds — and it also has stopped complying with a subpoena to turn over documents to members of Congress who are investigating the agency’s targeting of tea party groups.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee have stopped getting documents from the Internal Revenue Service.

“The IRS has indicated to the committee that their furlough decisions will affect the agency’s responsiveness to committee requests, including the outstanding subpoena,” said Ali Ahmad, a spokesman for the oversight committee.

The government shutdown, which began Tuesday morning, has kept home an estimated 800,000 federal employees, including more than 85,000 who work for the IRS, according to the agency’s contingency plan. That leaves slightly more than 9 percent of the IRS staff on the job.

That is too few to process refunds but does not let taxpayers out of their obligations.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Phones Offered to Health Insurance Buyers

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Say hello to Obamacare phones.

In Tennessee, those shopping on the new health insurance co-ops could end up with more than just some health insurance. They might even walk away with a free smartphone.

The Nashville Business Journal is reporting that Community Health Alliance, Tennessee’s Obamacare health insurance co-op, is using the prospect of a free phone to encourage folks to enroll:

Community Health Alliance, Tennessee’s health insurance co-op, is running a unique promotional program to drive enrollment in its plans for sale on the exchange: health insurance in exchange for a smartphone.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obamacare Just Gave Me A Death Sentence

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: fedupusa.org

Photo Credit: fedupusa.org

Sounds like hyperbole, right? Well, depends upon your perspective after you read what I have to say.

Long time readers of FedUpUSA know me to some degree or another. I’m a real person. I’m not wealthy. I’m not special. I’m just your average person who happens to be rather opinionated and I share those opinions here on the Internets. The following is my reality after Obamacare smacked me upside the head last week. I’m prompted to share this rather personal story in the hopes that it will wake up a few more people.

I’ve had Blue-Cross/Blue-Shield of Michigan through my employer for more than 10 years. My first reality won’t really be felt until April, but it’s a doozy. With the implementation of Obamacare, my employer’s healthcare coverage is considered a ‘Cadillac’ plan. This means that I will be taxed on the net value of what my employer pays for my insurance plan. This happens to be about $12,000/year. I have been fortunate enough to pay nothing out of pocket for this premium, but it is part of the reason I took my job in the first place. However, now, instead of being taxed on my actual salary of $35,000/year*, I will be taxed on a salary of $47,000/year.

Well, guess what? That pushes me into a much higher tax bracket. So, besides paying for my co-pay ($3,000/year) I’m going to have to pay the government more than $4,000 extra per year in taxes. So, where once I was paying $3,000 annually for medical expenses, I’m now going to be paying $7,000, $4,000 of which I will have to pay even if I don’t ever receive another medical service in my life again. Yet, my actual take-home salary will remain $35,000. So, how do you think this math works out for me and my family?

Yeah, we’ll be lucky if we keep our house or we can eat….because $4,000 of my annual salary is now being redistributed to purportedly cover those who don’t have health insurance. Yet, now I can’t afford to eat!!! How many households in this country can just suddenly assume a $4,000 annual increase in expenses? Not many, according to the most recent polls that say more than 70% of Americans don’t even have savings equal to one month of expenses. Now, this is bad enough, but worse yet is the following:

Photo Credit: fedupusa.org

Photo Credit: fedupusa.org

Read more from this story HERE.

Napolitano: Our Secretive, Witch-Hunting Government

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: infomatique

Photo Credit: infomatique

While the nation’s political class has been fixated on a government shutdown in Washington this week, the NSA has continued to spy on all Americans and by its ambiguity and shrewd silence seems to be acknowledging slowly that the scope of its spying is truly breathtaking.

The Obama administration is of the view that the NSA can spy on anyone anywhere. The president believes that federal statutes enable the secret FISA Court to authorize the NSA to capture any information it desires about any persons without identifying the persons and without a showing of probable cause of criminal behavior on the part of the persons to be spied upon. This is the same mindset the British government had with respect to the colonists. It, too, believed that British law permitted a judge in secret in Britain to issue general warrants to be executed in the colonies at the whim of British agents.

General warrants do not state the name of the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized, and they do not have the necessity of individualized probable cause as their linchpin. They simply authorize the bearer to search wherever he wishes for whatever he wants. General warrants were universally condemned by colonial leaders across the ideological spectrum – from those as radical as Sam Adams to those as establishment as George Washington, and from those as individualistic as Thomas Jefferson to those as big-government as Alexander Hamilton. We know from the literature of the times that the whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment – with its requirements of individualized probable cause and specifically identifying the target – is to prohibit general warrants.

And yet, the FISA Court has been issuing general warrants and the NSA executing them since at least 2004.

Last week we learned in a curious colloquy between members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and Gen. Keith Alexander and Deputy Attorney General James Cole that it is more likely than not that the FISA Court has permitted the NSA to seize not only telephone, Internet and texting records, but also utility bills, credit card bills, banking records, social media records and digital images of mail, and that there is no upper limit on the number of Americans’ records seized or the nature of those records.

Read more from this story HERE.

Drone Crashed, Almost Hit Me, says Manhattan Businessman (+video)

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: CNET

Photo Credit: CNET

We soon will live in a world where drones are zipping around us like grasshoppers.

We won’t stop to wonder what they’re doing, because we’ll have long discarded any notions of personal privacy. Perhaps we’ll visit YouTube every night to see whether we’ve appeared in some drone footage that day.

A Manhattan businessman may not be looking forward to the future quite so much. He claims that on Tuesday evening a drone nearly struck him as it crash-landed near Grand Central Station.

As WABC-TV reports, the unnamed businessman said the drone was “helicopterish” in form and weighed around 3 pounds.

Read more from this story HERE.

Judge Orders Monitor to be Appointed to Oversee Arizona Sheriff Arpaio

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the appointment of an independent monitor and a community advisory board to ensure that an Arizona sheriff is complying with constitutional requirements after finding his office engages in racial profiling.

U.S. District Judge Murray Snow found in May that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office singled out Latinos and deputies unreasonably prolonged detentions.

It was the first finding by a court that the agency covering Arizona’s most populous county engages in racial profiling after a small group of Latinos sued the Arpaio for violating their constitutional rights, saying they were being detained simply because of their race.

Snow had delayed ordering remedies in the case to allow time for both parties to reach agreements, but disputes over key issues prevented consensus.

In his ruling Wednesday, Snow ordered that a monitor be appointed to oversee the agency’s re-training of deputies and ensure the Sheriff’s Office is complying with constitutional requirements. Snow also ordered the creation of a community advisory board aimed at helping restore the public’s confidence, among other remedies.

Read more from this story HERE.

Antonin Scalia: Stupidity Doesn’t Make Something Unconstitutional

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

It’s possible for a law to be really stupid, but still constitutional, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Wednesday in a lecture at Tufts University.

Scalia’s appearance attracted a couple dozen student protesters outside the venue. Inside, Tufts’ president said school officials had to increase seating capacity twice and even turn down ticket requests from some local law students.

Scalia talked about his approach to interpreting the U.S. Constitution, calling it a legal document and “not an organism.”

The justice also called himself a conservative, saying he’d put more people in jail if it was up to him, just not in violation of that document.

Scalia has served on the nation’s highest court since 1986, following a nomination by President Ronald Reagan.

Read more from this story HERE.