Study: Welfare Pays More than Work in Most States

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Looking for a good paying job? Well, look no further.

No, really, stop looking. In 35 states, welfare benefits pay more than a minimum wage job, according to a new study by the libertarian Cato Institute, and in 13 states welfare pays more than $15 per hour.

“One of the single best ways to climb out of poverty is taking a job, but as long as welfare provides a better standard of living than an entry-level job, recipients will continue to choose it over work,” said Michael Tanner, senior policy analyst and co-author of the study.

The study is an updated version of one Tanner put out in 1995 that estimated the full value of welfare benefits packages across the states. The 1995 study found that such tax-free welfare benefits greatly exceeded the poverty level and “their dollar value was greater than the amount of take-home income a worker would receive from an entry-level job.”

Despite efforts to curb welfare spending, many welfare programs and benefits have continued to outpace the income that many workers can receive for working an entry-level job, which disincentivizes work, according to the study.

Read more from this story HERE.

Members of ’72 Dolphins Refuse White House Invite, “Diametrically Opposed” to Obama

/15 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: USATSI

Photo Credit: USATSI

Good news: On Tuesday, the White House will honor the 1972 Dolphins, the NFL’s last undefeated team, because, really, that group doesn’t get enough attention.

Bad news: At least three members of the ’72 squad won’t attend the ceremony in the nation’s capital because they oppose the views of President Barack Obama.

“We’ve got some real moral compass issues in Washington,” Hall of Fame center Jim Langer told the Sun-Sentinel’s David Hyde. “I don’t want to be in a room with those people and pretend I’m having a good time. I can’t do that. If that [angers] people, so be it.”

“I’ll just say my views are diametrically opposed to the President’s,” Manny Fernandez said. “Enough said. Let’s leave it at that. I hope everyone enjoys the trip who goes.”

Read more from this story HERE.

DeMint: Republicans Unwilling to Defund ObamaCare ‘Need to be Replaced’

/6 Comments/in , /by

Jim DeMintFormer Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Monday night urged voters to replace any Republican lawmaker unwilling to vote to defund ObamaCare during next month’s budget showdown.

DeMint, the president of the Heritage Foundation, dismissed fears that Republicans would be blamed for a government shutdown, as they were in the 1990s.

“The risk of that is so much less than the risk to our country if we implement ObamaCare, and so I’m not as interested in the political futures of folks who think they might lose a showdown with the president,” DeMint said at a town-hall meeting hosted by Heritage Action, the think tank’s political arm, in Fayetteville, Ark., the first stop on a nine-city tour.

DeMint said President Obama believes he has the upper hand in the coming fight.

“I think he knows that Republicans are afraid, and if they are, they need to be replaced,” DeMint told NPR in an interview after the event.

Read more from this story HERE.

Clinton Dramas: Here We Go Again

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

By Maggie Haberman.

Tabloid headlines. Personal dramas. Organizational disarray. Score-settling between rival factions documented in news accounts like a soap opera.

Does this have a familiar ring?

No one — or mostly no one — truly believes the swirl of headlines surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2013 should lead to a grand conclusion about whether another iteration of a Clinton campaign can be run effectively, free of the internecine warfare and incessant drama that marked her 2008 bid.

But if Clinton and her supporters were hoping to allay those doubts well ahead of a possible 2016 run, the past few months have not been helpful.

Clinton supporters would point out, fairly, that much of what has happened to them this summer — the steady stream of unseemly stories about Anthony Weiner’s continued virtual liaisons, his wife and Clinton confidante Huma Abedin’s very public decision to stand by him, and reports of mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation — has been beyond their control.

Read more from this story HERE.

_________________________________________________________

David Brock accuses N.Y. Times of anti-Clinton bias

By Dylan Byers.

David Brock, the chairman of both Media Matters for America and American Bridge super PAC, has written an open letter to The New York TImes expressing his “concern about a recent string of reports and columns … that have done nothing but use false pretenses to cast a shadow on Bill and Hillary Clinton.”

Brock highlights the Times’ Aug. 13 report on “unease” over finances and management at the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation (“an exercise in evidence-free speculation,” according to Brock) and two recent columns from Maureen Dowd that Brock says “reinforce her long pattern of using hollow caricatures to attack the Clintons (and the former first family in general).”

Brock then calls on the Times to: “Correct the record regarding errors of fact and context in the Foundation news story … Refrain from negatively pre-judging the Clintons in the manner of your political editor … Correct the anti-Clinton animus consistently exhibited by one of your columnists; and … Resist the temptation to create purely speculative news in your new Clinton ‘beat.'”

Read more from this story HERE.

Mark Levin’s Game Changer: Using the Constitution to Arrest Federal Drift

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Forbes

Photo Credit: Forbes

Two Marks, Levin and Meckler, notably and nobly are proposing to change the rules of modern politics and governance.

Debuting at Amazon Number One (for all, not merely political, books) is syndicated radio talk show host Mark Levin’s The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic. Sporting an average of 4.7 stars from, at the time of this writing, 153 reviews on Amazon, Levin calls for a populist suite of Constitutional amendments to be initiated by the States.

Levin proposes to reform the federal government from its degenerate, bloated, imperial structure back to its (small r) republican roots. Even more interesting than his specific proposals is the mechanism.

There is a little-known “emergency cord” built into the Constitution by the Founders. Find it in Article V. It allows for the States, rather than just the Congress, to propose Constitutional amendments. It is obscure yet entirely legitimate — and invaluable. It was extolled by James Madison in The Federalist No. 43.

Meanwhile, on August 15th, on the ground and the Web, a civic “Seal Team Six” — of operatives and activists — has constituted itself as ConventionOfStates.com. (This columnist has there enlisted as a foot soldier.) Its purpose? “COS seeks to call a Convention of States for a particular subject—limiting the jurisdiction and power of the federal government. This strategy would allow the states to formally consider almost all of Mark Levin’s ‘Liberty Amendments,’ giving delegates the freedom to propose the necessary amendments to stop the runaway power of Washington, D.C.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Skips the Kennedy Tax Cuts

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

After delivering a number of “economic growth” speeches this summer, President Obama has failed to inspire any confidence, falling all the way back to square one in a recent Gallup poll. Actually, make that less than square one. Gallup reported that Obama’s approval rating on the economy has sunk to 35 percent in August from 42 percent in early June.

Why should we be surprised?

The actual economy shows real GDP falling well below 2 percent. This so-called recovery remains the worst in modern history dating back to 1947.

And as far as solutions go, Obama keeps giving us the same old, same old: End the spending-cut sequester, lower tax deductions, and raise taxes on the rich, all to free up money for infrastructure, green energy, “manufacturing innovation initiatives,” and the teachers’ unions.

Of course, this would all come on top of Obamacare, which if it doesn’t fall of its own weight, will add so many new taxes and regulations that it will sink the economy even more.

Read more from this story HERE.

39 Percent of Unemployed Workers Have Been Out of Work Longer than 27 Weeks

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Of the 12.2 million Americans who were unemployed as of December 2012, 39 percent (4.7 million) had been out of work for 27 weeks or more, according to a new report from the Urban Institute.

These 4.7 million workers are known as the long-term unemployed, and are among the worst consequences of the Great Recession of 2008.

Report author Josh Mitchell noted that “relative to currently employed workers, the long-term unemployed tend to be less educated and are more likely to be nonwhite, unmarried, disabled, impoverished and to have worked previously in the construction industry and construction occupations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Man who Hacked Zuckerberg’s Facebook Account to Get Cash Reward … but not from Facebook

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

A man who hacked into Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page to expose a software bug is getting donations from hackers around the world after the company declined to pay him under a program that normally rewards people who report flaws.

Khalil Shreateh discovered and reported the flaw but was initially dismissed by the company’s security team. He then posted a message on the billionaire’s wall to prove the bug’s existence.

Now, Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer of cybersecurity firm BeyondTrust, is trying to mobilize fellow hackers to raise a $10,000 reward for Shreateh after Facebook refused to compensate him.

Maiffret, a high school dropout and self-taught hacker, said Tuesday he has raised about $9,000 so far, including the $2,000 he initially contributed.

He and other hackers say Facebook unfairly denied Shreateh, a Palestinian, a payment under its “Bug Bounty” program. It doles out at least $500 to individuals who bring software bugs to the company’s attention.

Read more from this story HERE.

The Missing Koch Report

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

In late September 2010, Iowa senator Chuck Grassley and six of his colleagues grew suspicious that a senior Obama administration official had improperly accessed the tax information of industrial behemoth Koch Industries. After Austan Goolsbee, then-chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, made an erroneous statement that implied direct knowledge of the company’s confidential tax status, the senators demanded that the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) investigate. Now, more than two years since the completion of that investigation, and despite repeated requests from Koch Industries and Senator Grassley himself, the results have yet to see the light of day.

Ironically, federal law is designed to keep that information from public view. Asked how taxpayers might discover whether their information has been accessed improperly, a spokeswoman for the House Ways and Means Committee tells National Review Online that, in most cases, “They won’t.”

In order for Koch Industries or the general public to see the TIGTA report, the IG’s office must refer the case to the Department of Justice for prosecution. If Justice declines to prosecute, all the relevant information remains under lock and key. Critics worry that a highly politicized Justice Department is unlikely to take up cases that have the potential to damage the Obama administration.

Koch Industries’ tax returns became the subject of controversy when, in an August 2010 briefing with reporters on a newly released tax-reform report, Goolsbee claimed that the company paid no corporate-income taxes. “We have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax,” he said, “some of which are really giant firms — you know, Koch Industries, I think, is one, is a multibillion-dollar business…”

Goolsbee’s assertion raised the eyebrows of a half-dozen GOP lawmakers, who subsequently called on Treasury Department inspector general J. Russell George to investigate whether Goolsbee had accessed the company’s tax returns in violation of federal law. In a letter to George, Grassley and his colleagues said they were “very concerned” by Goolsbee’s remarks. “The statement that Koch is a pass-through entity implies direct knowledge of Koch’s legal and tax status, which would appear to be a violation of section 6103,” they wrote, referring to the section of the Internal Revenue Code that protects the confidentiality of tax returns and all related information. George agreed to investigate.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz to Renounce Canadian Citizenship: ‘Nothing Against Canada, but I’m an American’

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Jason Howerton.

Less than 24 hours after the Dallas Morning News reported that he likely maintains dual citizenship to the U.S. and Canada, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced Monday evening that he will renounce his Canadian citizenship.

“Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator; I believe I should be only an American,” Cruz said in a statement.

Several legal experts apparently determined that Cruz remains a Canadian citizen because his mother gave birth to him in the country and he never renounced it…

Read more from this story HERE.

________________________________________________________

Photo Credit: Dallas News

Photo Credit: Dallas News

Dual citizenship may pose problem if Ted Cruz seeks presidency

By Todd Gillman.

Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born.

Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say.

That means he could assert the right to vote in Canada or even run for Parliament. On a lunch break from the U.S. Senate, he could head to the nearby embassy — the one flying a bright red maple leaf flag — pull out his Calgary, Alberta, birth certificate and obtain a passport.

“He’s a Canadian,” said Toronto lawyer Stephen Green, past chairman of the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section.

The circumstances of Cruz’s birth have fueled a simmering debate over his eligibility to run for president. Knowingly or not, dual citizenship is an apparent if inconvenient truth for the tea party firebrand, who shows every sign he’s angling for the White House.

Read more from this story HERE.