Morning Bell: Obama’s Friends Win Big in Budget

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You don’t need to log on to President Barack Obama’s Facebook page to find out who his friends are, and you don’t need to read tea leaves, gaze into a crystal ball, or consult a psychic to learn where his priorities lie. No, you only have to take a look at his 2013 budget, just released on Monday, to see what kind of company the president keeps and to what extent he will go to lend his pals a helping hand.

The folks seated at the president’s head table haven’t changed much in the past few years — the only difference is how much is being served up in the taxpayer-funded buffet. As in the past, the president has plenty of handouts for his big labor buddies. His budget delivers a fourth consecutive annual deficit exceeding $1 trillion — and that spending goes to yet another round of not-so-shovel-ready construction projects and government “investments” totaling $178 billion. Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen writes that the spending includes the president’s favored road, bridge, and school construction projects, but “then they go alarmingly beyond the usual ‘infrastructure’ arguments to fund teachers’ pay.” In other words, unions representing the construction site and the classroom win big.

Other winners in the president’s budget are those who fit into the Administration’s vision of a green economy that is propelled not by the market’s demand, but by Obama’s whim. The 2013 budget proposes to spend $310 million to make solar energy cost-competitive without subsidies by 2020, $290 million to expand R&D on energy efficient manufacturing techniques, and $421 million in fossil energy research and development. Heritage energy expert Nicolas Loris writes that the budget “rejects the notion of a market-based energy industry and wastes taxpayer dollars at a time when we desperately need to curtail out-of-control spending.” In other words, he says, the president’s blueprint is all wrong.

There’s no clearer example of just how wrong the president’s blueprint is than his decision to increase subsidies for electric vehicles like the $41,000 Chevy Volt while ending funding for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP), which gives low-income children in the nation’s capital a chance to escape underperforming schools. The White House intends to increase taxpayer-funded subsidies for those who purchase new-technology vehicles to $10,000 per buyer, up from $7,500. Keep in mind that the average income of a Volt buyer is $175,000 per year. That means that middle-class taxpayers are helping the rich buy pricy, politically correct cars.

With his other hand, President Obama is taking from the poor. The DCOSP provides $8,000 vouchers to 1,600 low-income children in the District of Columbia, empowering them to attend a school that they choose. The program has been a stunning success — though it has drawn criticism from the president’s teachers union allies. If the president gets his way, those children will pay the price.

Read More at The Foundry By Mike Brownfield, The Foundry

Voter Fraud Could Decide Next Election

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Reports are coming in that the voter rolls have been faked. We knew that the voter rolls were padded in places like Chicago, but now we’re learning that the fraud is more widespread than we ever could have imagined. The question is, can we do anything to stop it?

In the days of the Soviet Union, Communist leaders would generally get 95 percent of the vote, and nearly every eligible voter voted.

A new report by Pew Center on the States estimates that among 24 million voter registrations, about one out of every eight are either no longer valid or are inaccurate. Of the invalid or inaccurate registrations, 1.8 million belong to deceased individuals and 2.75 million belong to people who are registered to vote in more than one state.

You can see how these fraudulent voter numbers can be used to tip an election. Most of elections these days are close to even. We are a 51 to 49 percent nation. It doesn’t take much fraud to throw enough votes to a favorite-son candidate. The Kennedy-Nixon presidential election in 1960 was always thought to have been won by Kennedy due to voter fraud:

Many Republicans (including Nixon and Eisenhower) believed that Kennedy had benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas, where Kennedy’s running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was Senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley’s powerful Chicago political machine. These two states are important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have won the election in the Electoral College.

Read More at godfatherpolitics.com

Issa takes step toward holding Holder in contempt of Congress

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On Tuesday Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform, took a major step toward holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his failure to provide subpoenaed documents and other information about Operation Fast and Furious.

In a Jan. 31 letter, Issa had threatened Holder with such a move if he failed to provide all the subpoenaed documents relating to the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal by Feb. 9. That deadline has come and gone, and Holder’s Department of Justice still hasn’t provided most of those documents. Issa’s subpoena dates back to Oct. 12, 2011.

On Tuesday in a seven-page letter, Issa revealed that Deputy Attorney General James Cole begged Congress to extend the Feb. 9 deadline. Issa wrote that the request was “ironic” and “ignores the reality that the Department has unreasonably delayed producing these documents to the Committee.”

“On its face, the requested extension demonstrates a lack of good faith,” Issa wrote to Holder. “With one exception, the Department has only produced documents responsive to the subpoena on the eve of congressional hearings in which senior Department officials testified. The Department appears to be more concerned with protecting its image through spin control than actually cooperating with Congress.”

“We cannot wait any longer for the Department’s cooperation,” Issa continued. “As such, please specify a date by which you expect the Department to produce all documents responsive to the subpoena. In addition, please specify a Department representative who will interface with the Committee for production purposes.”

Read More at The Daily Caller By Matthew Boyle, The Daily Caller

Presenting PreCheck: Fascist and Furious

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Seldom have so many bragged so much about so little.

The TSA and its flaks in the corporate media are currently shilling for the agency’s “Pre√ (yes, Jargon plumbs new depths here: that cuneiform translates as ‘PreCheck’) Program.” The outrage with the Orwellian name isn’t anything new: it’s haunted nationalized aviation for almost as long as the TSA has. Sometimes, companies who “partner” with the Feds but nonetheless insist that they’re “private” have offered it. Other times, as now, the Thieves and Sexual Assailants are its sole sponsors.

The scam pretends that serfs who divulge even more information to the Feds than their dossiers already contain will suffer less persecution from the TSA than the rest of us. The agency doesn’t go so far as to claim they’ll completely escape its sexual molestation, nor even that they’ll breeze through checkpoints; rather, these self-snitches will merely “undergo expedited screening [sic for ‘unconstitutional, warrantless searches’].” Our Masters will “no longer” force them to “remov[e] the following items: Shoes; 3-1-1 compliant bag from carry-on; Laptop from bag; Light outerwear/jacket; Belt.” However, “TSA will always incorporate random and unpredictable security measures [sic for ‘sexual assault and humiliation’] throughout the airport and no individual will be guaranteed expedited screening.”

Indeed, one of the TSA’s spokesliars insists that “random” groping is “an important element of the program.” Wanna bet the groping is no more random than the porno-scanning is? (And by the way, where are the feminists on this? Why have we heard diddly from NOW during the TSA’s decade of degrading women?)

Permission to sometimes perhaps avoid Big Brother’s fondling comes with a price: $100. Since we’re dealing with Leviathan here, assume this is a yearly fee and that it will rise steeply as more passengers seek relief, even if partial, from the agency’s abuse.

Read More at lewrockwell.com By Becky Akers, lewrockwell.com

Conservatives Unite in Opposing Obama’s Assault on Religious Liberty

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(CNSNews.com) – A sweeping alliance of fiscal, social and national security conservatives and leaders of the Tea Party movement came together on Monday to denounce the attack that President Barack Obama has launched on the free exercise of religion by ordering virtually all Americans to buy health insurance plans that pay for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients even if doing so forces them to act against their consciences and the teachings of their faith.

The conservatives called for Obama’s mandate to be fully and unconditionally repealed.

“The Obama administration’s mandate that Catholics provide contraceptive, sterilization and abortifacient services is the greatest assault on religious freedom in the history of the Republic,” said L. Brent Bozell III, who is president of CNSNews.com’s parent organization, the Media Research Center.

“Never before has this nation ever witnessed the federal government so ruthless in its over-reach of power, and so dismissive of the Constitution,” said Bozell. “This is an issue that affects every Catholic and non-Catholic, should it be another Christian, a Jew, even a non-believer. To allow this ‘rule,’ as this administration so arrogantly calls it, to stand is to surrender our most basic freedom, the freedom of conscience. We cannot.”

Edwin Meese, who served as attorney general to President Ronald Reagan, said that patriotic groups have an obligation to stop Obama’s mandate.

Read More at CNS News By Terence P. Jeffrey, CNS News

Fox News ‘course correction’ rankles some

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As a white, male, middle-aged conservative talk radio host from Virginia, John Fredericks is something close to the Platonic ideal of a Fox News fan.

And until last year, he was one. But then Fox’s treatment of the Republican primary race — the presentation of Karl Rove as a political analyst despite his having “thrown in for Romney” and Sean Hannity’s clear ties to the Republican establishment — began to grate on him. So he changed the channel.

“I’ve gone from all Fox to no Fox, and replaced it with CNN, which I think right now is giving me a much fairer analysis of what’s going on,” he said. “I feel they’ve lost that independent conservative mantra that had drove people like me to them. I used to feel that I got it straight, and I got an independent conservative view. Now, what I get is some wholly owned subsidiary of the RNC [Republican National Committee].”

Across the Conservative Political Action Conference this year, there were similar grumbles among conservative activists that the cable channel was no longer speaking for them as it once did.

The grumblers were picking up on a strategy that has been under way for some time — a “course correction,” as Fox chief Roger Ailes put it last fall — with the network distancing itself from the tea party cheerleading that characterized the first two years of President Barack Obama’s presidency. Lately, Fox has increasingly promoted its straight-news talent in the press and conducted some of the toughest interviews and debates of the Republican primary season. Just last week, it hired the openly gay liberal activist Sally Kohn as a contributor.

Read More at Politico By Keach Hagey, Politico

GOP Critics Hit Obama’s $3.8 Trillion Budget

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President Barack Obama feels he has struck just the right budget balance between providing more short-term support for the economy while putting forth a long-term plan to get control of the government’s soaring budget deficits.

Republicans vehemently disagree, attacking his 2013 budget as a replay of the failed economic policies they say have resulted in an economy growing at subpar rates and government debt soaring to record highs.

Both parties would agree that Obama’s latest budget, released Monday, will feature heavily as a debating point in the November elections to determine who will win the White House and whether Democrats or Republicans win control of the House and Senate.

Republican Mitt Romney, who is campaigning for the GOP nomination to challenge Obama in the fall, called the budget Obama released Monday “an insult to the American taxpayer.” GOP candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are all advocating bigger spending cuts to control the deficits, and all the GOP candidates oppose Obama’s tax increases.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the administration’s chief economic spokesman, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday in what will be the first of four congressional appearances this week by Geithner to explain and defend Obama’s budget plan.

Read More at OfficialWire By Martin Crutsinger, OfficialWire

Panetta challenges lawmakers over opposition to Pentagon cuts

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Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey will run a three-day gantlet in Congress starting Tuesday morning as they face Republican critics of President Obama’s new military strategy.

Panetta and Dempsey will testify on the president’s defense budget in back-to-back-to-back hearings, beginning with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Obama’s budget request, released Monday, cuts absolute defense spending for the first time in a decade and slashes more than 100,000 troops. Those reductions are in line with the president’s strategy revamp, which drops a requirement that the military stand ready to fight two large-scale ground wars at once.
Panetta defended Obama’s proposed cuts in opening remarks on Tuesday and reminded lawmakers that the $487 billion reduction in Pentagon spending the president is implementing is their own handiwork.

“It was this Congress that mandated, on a bipartisan basis, that we reduce the Defense budget, and we need your partnership to do this in a manner that preserves the strongest military in the world,” Panetta said in prepared testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. “This will be a test of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action.”

Read More at The Hill By Jeremy Herb, The Hill

Obama chief of staff: No more compromise, contraceptive rule is done deal

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Despite renewed statements of concern by Catholic leaders and lawmakers, the Obama administration is done negotiating and will finalize its plan requiring insurance companies to provide free contraception to women working and studying at religious institutions, President Obama’s chief of staff said Sunday.

Jacob Lew told “Fox News Sunday” that the compromise offered last week to address objections by the Catholic Church is clear and consistent with the president’s “very deep belief that a woman has a right to all forms of preventive health care, including contraception.”

“We have set out our policy,” Lew said. “We are going to finalize it in the final rules, but I think what the president announced on Friday is a balanced approach that meets the concerns raised both in terms of access to health care and in terms of protecting religious liberties, and we think that’s the right approach.”

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the conversation isn’t over yet.

“If we end up having to try to overcome the president’s opposition by legislation, of course, I’d be happy to support it and intend to support it,” McConnell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Read More at Fox News

Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations

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David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs.

Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe.

The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.

“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said, explaining that Brock’s bodyguards would rarely leave his side, even accompanying him to his home in an affluent Washington neighborhood each night where they “stood post” to protect him. “What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.

Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats.

Read More at The Daily Caller By Tucker Carlson and Vince Coglianese, The Daily Caller