Pelosi Says GOP Failure to Act on Immigration Legislation Has Something to Do with Race

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Photo Credit: stevedeace.com

Photo Credit: stevedeace.com

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday blamed racial issues for the GOP’s failure to act on comprehensive immigration legislation.

“I think race has something to do with the fact that they’re not bringing up an immigration bill,” the California Democrat told reporters at her regular weekly press conference. “I’ve heard them say to the Irish, ‘If it were just you, this would be easy.'”

Pelosi was responding to a question about whether race factors into how Republicans deal with members of the Obama administration. She accused Republicans of being generally disrespectful to members of the administration and to women.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill later clarified that the reported GOP comment about the Irish has been relayed to Pelosi a number of times by Irish immigration activists she’s met with.

Pelosi’s comments come as frustration grows among immigration activists and the House’s Democratic minority about the refusal of the GOP majority to act on a far-reaching immigration bill passed by the Senate last year. The Senate bill would provide a path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally and tighten border security.

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Obamacare Taxes Add BILLIONS to Rising Premiums

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque

On top of rising premiums, Obamacare taxes are adding hundreds of dollars per year onto customers’ costs, according to new study from the American Action Forum.

Those who braved the health-care law’s exchanges will have to pay an extra $354 on average in 2014, reports the free-market D.C.-based think tank, just due to seven taxes included in Obamacare.

The vast majority of the country covered by employer-sponsored health insurance will be forced to pay a somewhat lower tab of $196 to cover the taxes. Those with self-funded employer-sponsored insurance are exempt from several of the largest culprits and will have the lowest added cost at $94 in 2014, which will drop to $59 by 2016.

One is aimed at the insurance companies, forcing them to pay the federal government for the privilege of selling health insurance — an ironic touch for a law meant to make health coverage cheaper. AAF estimates that this tax alone, which will be passed onto consumers, will cost an extra $101 in 2014; in 2015 and 2016, it’ll be increased to $143 on average as the federal government ups their funding requests every year.

In 2014, the total tax will amount to $8 billion; in 2015 and 2016, it’ll be $11.3 billion, and the current plan comes it at $14.3 billion in 2018.

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‘You Want to Silence’: Megyn Challenges CAIR Member Over Campaign Against Islam Critic

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Last night on The Kelly File, we told you about Brandeis University’s decision to revoke an honorary degree for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a women’s rights advocate in the Muslim community.

Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman and United States citizen, was subjected to genital mutilation and forced to flee her marriage. She has endured death threats for speaking out against Islam. Recently, she executive produced and starred in a documentary called, “Honor Diaries.”

Last night, Megyn Kelly spoke to Hirsi Ali and also took on Ibrahim Hooper, from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. That group was behind the movement to push Brandeis to take back Ali’s honor.

During part two of the interview, above, Megyn questioned CAIR’s tactics for attacking some of its critics.

Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) has previously stated, “[CAIR] we know has ties to terrorism… prominent members of [CAIR’s] current leadership… also have intimate connections with Hamas.”

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NY Dishes Out Punishments for Opting Out of Common Core

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Photo Credit: FOXNEWS.COM / AP

Photo Credit: FOXNEWS.COM / AP

Angry parents, at least one student suspended and — in one school district — children denied ice cream.

Such has been the roll-out of Common Core testing in New York, the first state to implement the test component of the controversial nationalized educational standard.

Seirra Olivero, a 13-year-old student at Orange-Ulster BOCES, claims she was suspended from school last week after telling classmates they could opt out of taking the Common Core English test — a decision few students and parents in the area knew was possible, according to the girl’s mother.

The eighth-grader was suspended for two days for “insubordination,” following the April 1 incident, in which she informed her friends they had a choice whether or not to take the exam on the day of the test. According to Seirra, she had just stepped off the school bus when she encountered a fellow classmate who was “anxious” about taking the test.

“I told my friend he didn’t have to take the test and then a teacher who overheard me told me to shut my mouth and keep walking,” Seirra told FoxNews.com. Once inside the school, Seirra told another friend the test was not mandatory, she says, prompting that same teacher to usher her into the principal’s office. After walking out of the principal’s office following an argument and then threatening to sue an administrator over his handling of the matter, Seirra was given a two-day suspension.

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Denver Public Schools Recruiting Illegals to Teach (+video)

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Photo Credit: KUSA

Photo Credit: KUSA

Long before Alejandro Fuentes Mena became a fifth grade teacher, he was an undocumented immigrant from Chile.

“I came to the United States when I was four years old,” Fuentes Mena said.

In August, he started at the Denver Center for International Studies at Ford Elementary School as part of effort by Denver Public Schools administrators to be the first school district in the nation to actively seek out teachers people who were initially brought to the United States illegally.

“These young men and women bring extraordinary talent to our classroom,” Tom Boasberg, DPS superintendent, said. “We have many, many kids whose stories are like Alejandro’s.”

DPS is working with Teach for America to bring in people with an official status of “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” as determined by the federal government. Part of the requirements for DACA status is that a person must have been brought to the United States under the age of 16 and have a clean criminal record. Even with DACA status, they are still not recognized as legal citizens, but they are allowed to work.

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Obama Economic Adviser: The Great Moderation is Over, if it Ever Existed

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Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

Photo Credit: AP / Carolyn Kaster

The so-called “Great Moderation” of low economic volatility between the mid-1980s and the financial crisis of 2008 was not as great as it seemed, and the future likely won’t be as pleasant, according to President Obama’s top economic adviser.

Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a speech in Washington on Thursday that “the Great Recession certainly does reveal serious limitations of the concept of a great moderation,” and that the U.S. economy shouldn’t be expected to return to a pattern of relatively smooth growth now that the banking crisis is in the past.

The “Great Moderation” was a term coined by economists James Stock, another current member of the CEA, and Mark Watson in a 2003 paper. It was meant to describe the decline in volatility in macroeconomic indicators such as gross domestic product growth and inflation since Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker brought the high inflation rates of the 1960s and ’70s to an end.

In 2004, Ben Bernanke, then a Fed governor under Chairman Alan Greenspan, popularized the term in a speech that attributed the smoothing out of the business cycle to better monetary policy by the Fed — although Bernanke also acknowledged that luck may also have played a significant role, and that luck might run out in the future.

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GM’s Barra Got Email in 2011 About Steering Problems

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Photo Credit: CNBC

Photo Credit: CNBC

The Congressional committee investigating the long-delayed the recall of millions of vehicles equipped with a faulty ignition switch, released a flurry of internal General Motors documents Friday showing what it described as “failures within the system” that allowed critical safety issues to go unaddressed.

Exactly why the ignition switch problem went unresolved for as much as a decade has spurred a series of investigations by the Department of Justice, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and both houses of Congress. During two Capitol Hill hearings last week, GM CEO Mary Barra was repeatedly criticized for failing to offer clear answers about the ignition switch problem.

One of the documents released Friday showed that while in her previous job as GM’s global product development chief, Barra was kept clearly in the loop about a separate recall issue involving steering problems on the Saturn Ion and other GM products.

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SHE’S OUT! Kathleen Sebelius Resigns as Secretary of HHS After ObamaCare Fiasco

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Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

After holding tight to her position as Health and Human Services Secretary for five years, Kathleen Sebelius resigned earlier this evening.

Sebelius became a household name in the fall for her role supervising the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website and the general failure of President Obama’s signature healthcare law thus far.

The White House announced that tomorrow Obama will nominate Syliva Mathews Burwell, the director of the Office of Management and Budget to succeed Sebelius – a name that few know today, but will certainly come to recognize once she takes over.

According to reports, Sebelius was not forced out and chose to resign on her own recognizance. That said, her decision to leave coincides with a major push by the Obama administration to move past the early failures of the healthcare law, especially in light of the upcoming midterm elections wherein the law will feature prominently.

One of her last acts as HHS Secretary was to testify before the powerful Senate Finance Committee wherein she touted that 7.5 million people had enrolled in private insurance plans – half a million more than the original CBO projections.

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Nancy Pelosi: I’d Rather Pass Amnesty Than Be Speaker (+video)

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Photo credit: Reuters

Photo credit: Reuters

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said she would rather pass amnesty legislation than get her gavel back.

“It’s the biggest thing that we can do, and that’s why I’ve said to the speaker, to the press, to these groups, I would rather pass [a] comprehensive immigration reform bill than win the elections in November,” Pelosi told Politico. “There’s nothing we could accomplish in winning that would be as big as passing immigration reform.”

Politico noted that Pelosi has been traveling the country promoting immigration reform legislation and said she hoped a bill could pass by June or July…

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Gowdy: Lerner ‘Did a Lot of Talking for Someone Who Wants to Remain Silent’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Melanie Hunter.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) – at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee business meeting on Thursday – said he counted “17 separate factual assertions” Lois Lerner made in her opening statement before invoking the Fifth Amendment when she was subpoenaed to testify last year on the congressional probe of the IRS scandal.

“Mr. Chairman, I counted 17 separate factual assertions by Ms. Lerner – not those three little sentences that my colleagues like to cite – 17 separate factual assertions. That is a lot of talking for somebody who wants to remain silent. That’s a lot of talking,” Gowdy said.

“If you honestly believe that you can make 17 separate factual assertions and still invoke your right to remain silent, then please tell me what waiver is. Please tell me what constitutes waiver if saying 17 separate factual things does not,” Gowdy added.

Thursday’s meeting was convened to consider a resolution to hold Lerner, former IRS director of exempt organizations, in contempt of Congress.

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Photo Credit: AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Photo Credit: AP / Lauren Victoria Burke

Republicans Raise ‘Disturbing Concerns’ About Cummings’ Contacts With Lois Lerner’s Office

By Susan Jones.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says the public “deserves a full and truthful explanation” for the actions of its ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), whose staff “surreptitiously contacted the IRS” about a conservative group that was seeking tax-exempt status — and was subjected to inappropriate scrutiny.

Cummings never told committee Republicans about his contacts with the IRS concerning the group True the Vote. In fact, he has denied any such contact.

In a letter to Cummings on Wednesday, Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and other committee Republicans said Cummings’ inquiries about True the Vote may have prompted additional IRS scrutiny of the group.

The letter also notes that Cummings’ email communications with the IRS “raise disturbing concerns about your possible motivations for opposing this investigation and your unwillingness to lend your support to efforts to obtain the testimony of former IRS Exempt Organizations Director Lois G. Lerner.”

Committee Republicans also question whether the IRS had “improperly shared protected taxpayer information” with Cummings’ staff.

Read more from this story HERE.