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Obama’s Absurd Double Standard on Defense Spending

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This week we learned that the Obama administration has requested $2.6 billion in emergency funding for Louisiana flood relief. While the specifics of the Louisiana flood relief request should be thoughtfully considered, the very nature of this request highlights the Obama administration’s absurd double standard on budget issues.

Back in July, President Barack Obama announced that he had decided to keep more troops in Afghanistan at the end of 2016 than he had previously planned, and more than he had proposed funding in his fiscal year 2017 Overseas Contingency Operations budget request. While the decision to keep more troops in Afghanistan was a step in the right direction, it immediately raised the question of how to pay for these forces.

The day after Obama’s announcement, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter suggested that the Department of Defense might need to submit a supplemental funding request to cover the costs of the increased Afghanistan mission. This supplemental request would be categorized as “emergency spending,” just like the Louisiana flooding request.

And here’s where politics enters the picture. While Obama has now submitted an emergency funding request for Louisiana by itself, he has so far, two months after announcing his policy change, refused to submit an emergency funding request for the mission in Afghanistan without pairing it with unrelated domestic spending requests.

A White House Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman publicly admitted that any funding request for Afghanistan would not be considered by itself because “any increase in funding must be shared equally between defense and nondefense.”

Some in Congress were understandably upset by this. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called it “extortion,” saying:

If the president believes that sending thousands more young Americans into war is in the national security interest of the United States, he should support the additional funding required to support those warfighters. Full stop. No caveats, no qualifications, and no strings attached.

It would seem this “extortion” only goes one way. According to the Obama administration, if the military needs increased funding to succeed in a mission, that funding increase has to be paired with unrelated domestic funding. But if additional domestic spending is needed, it apparently does not need to be paired with increased defense spending, as we witnessed with the recent Louisiana funding request.

As commander in chief, the president should take a more strategic view of the nation’s needs.

Ever since the Budget Control Act of 2011, the Obama administration has successfully fought to preserve a dollar-for-dollar link between defense and nondefense discretionary spending levels. According to Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress, every dollar added to the defense budget must be matched with a dollar added to the domestic budget.

This is an absurd, nonsensical way of budgeting that only survives in Washington. Threats to U.S. vital interests are rising and the U.S. military has been dramatically weakened under major budget cuts over the last five years, but any increase in the defense budget has to be matched with nondefense budget increases? This makes no sense.

Think about it in the context of a family budget. If one spouse wants to invest in a better, more expensive home security system due to increased crime in the neighborhood, will the other spouse refuse to agree to this funding increase without a dollar-for-dollar increase in funding toward a new car or an upgraded cable TV package? Of course not.

If threats are rising, and your security system needs to be improved, you will tighten your belt in other areas to pay for this increase. Only in Washington can a politician get away with holding a security funding increase hostage for completely unrelated domestic spending increases.

While the details of the Louisiana flooding relief request can be debated, the request shows that the Obama administration is only committed to the “dollar-for-dollar” principle when it results in growing domestic spending. When security spending is on the table, it is happy to use it as political leverage for its own priorities. Defense and nondefense should not be linked. What some call the “firewall” between defense and nondefense should be broken, and every dollar spent should be considered on its own merits.

This crazy suicide pact on spending needs to end. Afghanistan funding and other security needs should be considered on their own merits, and the defense budget overall should be increased in response to growing threats and a shrinking, weaker U.S. military. The American people deserve a reasonable budget process, not one that involves hostage-taking and extortion, or using the military as leverage for domestic agendas. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Absurd Double Standard on Defense Spending” please click HERE)

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How Hispanics, Blacks Have Fared in Obama Economy

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President Barack Obama will be speaking this week for the last time during his presidency to annual dinners for black and Hispanic members of Congress, even as his record for the two largest minority groups in the country is at best questionable, based on government numbers.

A Census Bureau report this week found wages have climbed back to pre-recession levels in 2015, including for blacks and Hispanics. However, throughout Obama’s two terms, the highest unemployment rates continue to be among African-Americans and Hispanics, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The president’s policies haven’t helped either group, said Horace Cooper, co-chairman of Project 21, a black conservative group.

“The black community has suffered tremendously under the president’s policies,” Cooper told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“The president seems to be so proud that wages are back, but that just means the misery has endured until his last year in office,” Cooper added. “He has turned the Great Recession that should have been two to three years into five to seven years. We haven’t had full job growth for almost eight years.”

The president, not surprisingly, had a different perspective, touting the Census numbers in a White House video Tuesday. Obama said:

Incomes actually went up 5.2 percent. This is actually the biggest jump year over year since 1968. The good news is, it went up for everybody, all income groups, except those at the very, very top, all races, genders … It paints a picture of an economy that is improving, that is reducing poverty and increasing incomes. This is all a consequence of some of the smart economic policies we’ve been putting in place over the last several years.

The White House noted that Hispanics saw the largest gain in median income at 6.1 percent, while seeing a 2.2 percent drop in poverty. Further, blacks had a 2.1 percent drop in poverty.

However, the recovery has been too weak to celebrate, said James Sherk, a research fellow for labor economics at The Heritage Foundation.

“This has been the slowest recovery of the post-war era,” Sherk told The Daily Signal. “All racial groups suffered losses in the downturn that are only now being recovered.”

On Thursday, Obama is speaking to the 39th Annual Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Public Policy Conference and Annual Awards Gala. Then, on Saturday, he will speak at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 46th Annual Legislative Conference Phoenix Awards Dinner. Both events are in Washington.

Based on the new Census report, the estimated median income for blacks in 2015 was $37,211. That’s up from the previous year, when it was $35,694. But it’s only nominally higher than when Obama came into office at $36,179. The year before Obama ran, the estimated median income for blacks was $37,809. Pre-recession, 2007, the median income for black Americans was $38,970.

However, the wages picture is better for Hispanics, whose estimated median income for 2015 was $45,148, up about $2,600 from the previous year. It marks the only significant increase for Hispanics during Obama’s tenure. In 2009, the median income was $42,022, then leveled to $40,000 or $41,000 until a slight increase in 2014. In 2007, before the recession, the median income was $44,215.

However, a year-to-year comparison could lack precision based on a redesigned survey from the Census Bureau in 2014, which is intended to capture more income than the old survey.

The employment situation for the two demographics is more cloudy, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. African-Americans are hit hard on both fronts. Hispanics have one of the highest labor force participation rates of any demographic, but also lag in employment. Labor force participation has actually declined slightly for both groups, going from 63 percent in 2008 to 61 percent for blacks during most of Obama’s time in office. Hispanics had a 68 percent workforce participation rate in 2008, but after 2010 fell to 66 percent and remained there.

Pre-recession, the unemployment rates were 8.3 percent for blacks and 5.6 percent for Hispanics in 2007. This climbed in 2008 during when the recession hit. During Obama’s first year in office, according to the statistics bureau, blacks had an unemployment rate of 14.8 percent. Hispanics had a 12.1 percent unemployment rate. They remained mostly steady the next two years.

By 2012, the unemployment rate dropped for both groups, but was still much higher than the national average. It dropped slightly during the first year of Obama’s second term. However, in 2014, overall unemployment had decreased to 6.2 percent, but actually increased to 11.3 percent for blacks. Hispanics, that year, were on a par with the national average.

Obama and progressives in general would prefer to identify various voting blocs instead of boosting economic advancement, said Michael Gonzalez, a senior fellow in foreign policy for The Heritage Foundation and author of “Race for the Future: How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans.”

“My main beef with progressives is blocs rather than individuals,” Gonzalez told The Daily Signal. “They want to drive a narrative that you have no power to change things and must depend on the government for help. We shouldn’t look at Hispanics as a group, that’s their mistake.”

Cooper, of Project 21, said that African-Americans did fare better during the Ronald Reagan years, and even during the 1990s with Bill Clinton, along with every other demographic, before Obamacare, the stimulus spending, and other regulation crowded out the private sector.

“There was an increase in black Americans owning homes, in high school graduations, and attending college,” Cooper said. “Today, it’s harder for entrepreneurs. If not for the digital economy, all opportunities might be eliminated. Barriers for entry into the economy are artificially higher because of the federal government.” (For more from the author of “How Hispanics, Blacks Have Fared in Obama Economy” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Key Internet Giveaway Advocate Can’t Give a Straight Answer on Free Speech Concerns

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A key player of the Obama administration’s internet giveaway was unable to offer a straight answer about how the organization that handles the system’s road map would be run, or whether or not it would be moved outside of the United States.

At a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing about the proposed internet giveaway at the end of the month, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) confronted Goran Marby, president and CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is responsible for maintaining the internet’s address systems.

In a particularly tense exchange with Marby, the ICANN chief could not seem to find a straight answer on whether or not the organization — which currently operates as a nonprofit under California law — could see its bylaws altered by a multi-stakeholder body, or whether the organization could be moved to countries under oppressive regimes.

Under the structure of the proposed giveaway, ICANN would be no longer be tied to the United States government, which opponents of the move argue would remove free speech protections from the government’s overall administration.

During the exchange, in which Goran repeatedly dodged the chair’s questions, the nonprofit leader could not even answer the question regarding whether or not he agreed with Reporters Without Borders’ assertion that the People’s Republic of China is an “enemy of the internet” due to its repeated free speech violations.

Cruz: So, just to clarify your testimony is the community – the U.S. businesses – who have had a questionable record of protecting free speech in the past have the authority to change the bylaws in the future. Is that correct.

Marby: As I stated earlier, if someone really wants to change this setting, it’s easier to start an alternative ICANN … outside the U.S.

Cruz: I’m not asking you which is easier. I’m asking if the bylaws can be changed.

Marby: There are so many checks and balances within the system, I would say that it’s hardly possible to do.

Cruz: Sir, this isn’t a complicated question. Can the bylaws be changed? You’re saying, ‘gosh, it would be easier to do something else.’ Either the bylaws can be changed, or they can’t.

Marby: I think I’ve answered this to the best of my ability. I cannot do it, the community can after all checks and balances, but the whole bylaws are built on California law.

Cruz: And under California law, the bylaws can be changed under what you referred to as the stakeholders community, is that correct?

Marby finally gave a stilted answer assuring that the bylaws could indeed be changed by the parties mentioned, but only after satisfying ICANN’s “checks and balances,” which also represent internet users and other stakeholders outside of large tech companies.

Earlier in the hearing, Sen. Cruz also voiced his concerns about the role that private corporations would play in the governance of the internet under the terms of the transition, given the reputation that many have earned for suppressing free speech on their own platforms.

“Under the guardianship of the United States and the First Amendment, the internet has truly become an oasis of freedom,” said Cruz in his opening statement, but warned that severing that role could lead to infringement of free speech due to powerful corporations and oppressive regimes.

“Imagine an internet run like one of our large, private universities today, with speech codes and safe zones — an Internet that determines some terms are too scary … microaggressions are too troubling … we will not allow them to be spoken on the Internet.

“Imagine an internet run like far too many European countries that punish so-called ‘hate speech’ — a notoriously malleable concept that has often been used to suppress views disfavored by those in power,” Cruz continued. “Or imagine an internet run like many Middle Eastern countries that punish what they deem to be blasphemy. Or imagine an internet run like China or Russia that punish and incarcerate those who engage in political dissent.”

Cruz referred to ICANN as a “corporation with a Byzantine governing structure designed to blur lines of accountability that is run by global bureaucrats who are supposedly accountable to the technocrats, to multinational corporations, to governments, including some of the most oppressive regimes in the world like China, Iran, and Russia.”

In his opening statement, Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa (D, 68%) also voiced concerns about the constitutionality of the proposed handoff, which rests on whether or not America’s “historic role” as steward of the internet also means that the information system counts as U.S. government property.

“We’ve continued to engage with the administration about this transition and to date the answers we’ve received have been inadequate,” reads a statement from Grassely. “It’s clear that the administration hasn’t conducted a thorough legal analysis of the many issues outstanding.”

Proponents of the handoff argue that the handoff is somewhere between a good thing and an irrelevant thing, like Techdirt’s Mike Masnick, who calls the government’s role in internet governance “flimsy” and near-nonexistent.

During the hearing, pro-giveaway testimonies attempted to cast the handoff in terms of decentralization and free markets, quoting reports from center-right organizations and urging those distrustful of the move to trust market forces and privatization in the matter.

“The best way to preserve Internet freedom is to depend on the community of stakeholders who own, operate, and transact business and exchange information over the myriad of networks that comprise the Internet,” said National Telecommunications and Information Administration Assistant Secretary Lawrence Strickling, who also said that the U.S. government’s current internet infrastructure framework “is too limited in scope” to effectively protect freedom of expression on the Web.

Sen. Cruz took issue with this sentiment, pointing to the fact that many of the tech companies who have come out in support of the giveaway have a spotty record on internet censorship themselves. In May, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, and YouTube partnered with the European Union to promote a code of conduct that would crack down on what the international body considers “hate speech.”

“That’s not what I would call a fine record of free speech,” said Cruz, who accused proponents of “asking the American people to trust private companies with control of their free speech.”

NTIA’s Strickling contested the assertion, saying that the government’s role is at the highest level and has no control over content on websites at the “second and third level.”

During the second panel, Tech Freedom president Berin Szoka also urged congress to assert the power of the purse on the issue — alleging that the NTIA had already violated previous congressional mandates to not use public funds to work on the transition — and block the transition via appropriations riders at the end of the month.

“The power of the purse is not an auxiliary power, to be used sparingly and construed narrowly, it is the ultimate power of Congress,” he concluded.

The giveaway will take place on September 30 unless congress passes legislation specifically blocking it. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Key Internet Giveaway Advocate Can’t Give a Straight Answer on Free Speech Concerns” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Parting Gift to Planned Parenthood

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What do you give to a cash-flush abortion business and political ally that has everything? More taxpayer dollars, of course.

In his remaining few months in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama has found a new way to direct more taxpayer money to his friends at Planned Parenthood.

The Department of Health and Human Services has announced a new regulation that would force states to give federal family planning funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. The move could mean millions more in taxpayer dollars for the nation’s abortion market leader at the expense of women’s health.

Title X is a federal program designed to fund “family planning” for low-income individuals. Created in 1970, it was only authorized through 1985. But Congress just keeps appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars anyway, and a large share of that goes to Planned Parenthood every year.

The Office of Population Affairs, which runs Title X, grants funds for “family planning services” (like contraceptives and sterilizations) and “education and information” for low-income individuals. While the common understanding is that Title X-paid counselors must inform a woman of all her options, the Clinton-era regulations actually make adoption counseling optional, perhaps explaining Planned Parenthood’s sometimes over 300-1 ratio of abortions over adoptions.

Grants are available to both public entities (like state health departments) and private networks. Where a state health department chooses not to apply, private entities often receive and distribute Title X funds. Among states that receive Title X funds, some have wisely chosen to prioritize the funds to more comprehensive health care providers than Planned Parenthood, thereby avoiding state entanglement with abortion. That’s why the Obama administration is upset.

Consider Kansas.

Recognizing that it made little public health sense to have women go to one location for birth control pills and another for other health needs, Kansas chose to prioritize the Title X funds it received to public health departments and clinics, nonpublic hospitals, and federally qualified health centers.

This would mean that any woman receiving Title X services would also be connected to a provider that could meet the primary care needs for her and her family, including preventive services, immunizations, diagnostic and radiological services (often including mammograms), and pediatric care.

She would have one primary care provider who knows her medical needs and history and wouldn’t need to travel to multiple sites for services that can be provided at one location more cost-effectively. Planned Parenthood is simply not equipped to provide these primary care services.

Kansas’ desire to consolidate public health funding to encourage primary care and preventive services rather than discrete “family planning” boutiques that detach patients from the broader health care system is shared by other states like Texas, Utah, Arizona, Wisconsin, Indiana, and others that have passed similar laws.

The Obama administration itself recognizes that “primary care providers are critical for ensuring better coordinated care and better health outcomes for all Americans.” So there should be common ground here on directing Title X funds to places where these primary care providers can be found, better coordinating an individual’s health care.

Alas, Planned Parenthood sued Kansas. Kansas won. But rather than allowing Kansas to meet women’s health care needs better through other providers, the Obama administration cut Title X funds to Kansas, hurting women in retaliation for the perceived slight to its ally.

A similar pattern has played out in Tennessee, New Hampshire, and other states where the Obama administration has directly granted money to Planned Parenthood, ignoring the judgment of states that Title X services should be provided where patients can connect to providers able to meet their comprehensive health care needs.

In New Hampshire, the administration even refused to disclose information about its direct Planned Parenthood grant, claiming disclosure would harm the nonprofit’s “competitive position.” But in just a few months, Obama won’t be around to help his friends at Planned Parenthood anymore, so the administration is trying to make it official before Obama is gone.

In the three decades since Title X’s authorization lapsed, many other government programs have served the purpose it was once intended to serve.

Federally qualified health centers serve at least eight times as many patients than Planned Parenthood. Medicaid has expanded, and many states employ federally approved Medicaid waiver programs to provide the same services covered under Title X to many more people. And, of course, Obamacare now mandates coverage of contraceptives on virtually every health plan.

In 2016 there would seem to be little need for a program that was supposed to end in 1985. Certainly, there is no need for that program’s more recent use to direct patients away from preventive services and primary care providers—unless, of course, the aim is actually to reward an industry that has been one of the president’s chief supporters, even at the expense of public health.

It’s difficult to read the president’s new regulation as anything other than a parting taxpayer-funded gift to a loyal crony. “For more from the author of “Obama’s Parting Gift to Planned Parenthood” please click HERE)

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Obama Eyes Hacking Threat as Rationale to ‘Protect’ Elections

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The federal government is mulling a decision to protect state election systems on par with national defense and the power grid, citing recent hacking efforts. But state officials and other critics worry this move, under the guise of thwarting cyberterrorists, would be a back-door means of nationalizing local election functions.

Neither the Constitution nor Congress has granted the Department of Homeland Security the authority to provide special protection to locally administered election systems, said Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“States regulate elections, this is different from highways or communication systems that can be legitimately regulated by the commerce clause,” he told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Where would they have the authority to do this?”

The commerce clause of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce between states and with other countries.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told state elections officials in August that he would consider designating election systems as “critical infrastructure” amid concerns that malevolent cyberagents could hack local election systems.

The FBI recently found that someone, possibly Russians, hacked voter registration information in both Arizona and Illinois. However, most security experts and elections officials contend that hacking actual voting machines is unlikely.

After 9/11, both the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Homeland Security Act of 2002 established definitions of critical infrastructure as “systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, so vital to the United States that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.”

A presidential directive from President George W. Bush in 2003, later superseded by one from President Barack Obama, elaborated on critical systems for maintaining the country.

The Department of Homeland Security designated 16 sectors of American society as critical infrastructure, including the energy sector, including the power grid; information technology, including maintaining the internet; and the the nation’s food and agriculture system.

But election problems would not prevent the country from functioning, said Brad Smith, a law professor at Capital University.

“It’s not really a catastrophe if we are down a couple of members of the House or the Senate. Even presidential races, [such as in] 2000, 1876, were resolved,” Smith told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “For people in Washington, it’s hard to accept that a delayed election result wouldn’t be like the power grid failing and people dying because they can’t get medical care, or the internet going down and no one can do business and access funds.”

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said the agency doesn’t plan an announcement on whether it will designate election systems as critical infrastructure. The spokesman referred to comments Johnson made Thursday at an Atlantic forum, when he said:

It would be very difficult to alter the [vote] count, but we are concerned about bad cyberactors, general state actors, hacktivists, criminals that intrude into [the] internet presence of state election officials generally, and so, we’re offering assistance to these officials. … It does not mean a federal takeover of state election systems or state elections, or even national elections. We don’t have the authority to do that. What we can do in homeland security, in cybersecurity, is offer assistance when people ask for it.

Other state election officials concur that elections won’t likely be electronically rigged.

“It’s highly improbable at best that a national election could be hacked,” Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, president of the national group, said last month during a press conference. “First of all, there is no national system of elections. Our election system is extremely decentralized. It is run [individually] by all 50 states and within those states, the counties are really responsible.”

That virtue, Cato Institute’s Shapiro said, keeps American elections secure from hacking.

“There are 9,000 different election jurisdictions,” he said. “Voting machines are not connected to a network.”

Shapiro said he suspects the Obama administration has another motivation.

“Jeh Johnson floated this and senior administration officials don’t float things haphazardly,” Shapiro said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “This could be a way for the federal government to work around the Shelby County decision. It could be about cybersecurity, but also about [what the administration considers] protecting the right to vote.”

Shapiro was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder. That ruling came after the Justice Department took numerous actions to block state voter ID laws, such as requiring persons to show a driver’s license before they can vote.

The high court’s decision left in place bans on impediments to voting such as literacy tests. But it also determined some of the four-decade-old voting rights law—in which the federal government evaluated a state’s compliance based on minority voter turnout—is not applicable today.

Federal officials could try to use a critical infrastructure designation for election systems to try to convince Congress that elections should be centralized, said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation who studies election issues. Von Spakovsky told The Daily Signal:

Homeland Security doesn’t have the legal authority to regulate whatever it designates as critical infrastructure, but it could be used as an excuse to say to local jurisdictions: You should do this or you shouldn’t do this. For a county election official to stand up to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official and say no would be tough.

On Sept. 1, Investor’s Business Daily editorialized that such a designation by the federal government would be “nationalizing” elections:

This is not just a bad idea; it is dangerous. America’s polling functions have long been managed at the state and local level, to ensure that our mammoth federal government doesn’t get involved. It should stay that way. This government has stood by as an unprecedented series of cyberattacks have stolen our secrets and endangered our security. We should give them more power?

Letting our elephantine government get its giant proboscis under the tent flap for reasons of ‘national interest’ is opening up the possibility of political meddling in elections by government officials—either through actual intervention in the running and management of polling places, or by clever regulation that favors one party over another.

(For more from the author of “Obama Eyes Hacking Threat as Rationale to ‘Protect’ Elections” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Radical Internet Proposal Could Result in Censorship Online

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This is a portion of remarks Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, delivered on the Senate floor on Thursday.

The Obama administration’s proposal to give away control of the internet poses a significant threat to our freedom, and it’s one that many Americans don’t know about. It is scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 30, 2016. Twenty-two days away. Just over three weeks.

Now what does it mean to give away control of the internet?

From the very first days of the internet, when it was developed here in America, the United States government has maintained its core functions to ensure equal access for everyone with no censorship. The government role isn’t to monitor what we say, it isn’t to censor what we say, it is simply to ensure that it works — that when you type in a website, it actually goes to that website and not somewhere else. And yet, that can change.

The Obama administration is instead pushing through a radical proposal to take control of internet domain names and instead give it to an international organization, ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], that includes 162 foreign countries. And if that proposal goes through, it will empower countries like Russia, like China, like Iran to be able to censor speech on the internet, your speech. Countries like China, Russia, and Iran are not our friends, and their interests are not our interests.

Imagine searching the internet and instead of seeing your standard search results, you see a disclaimer that the information you were searching for is censored. It is not consistent with the standards of this new international body, it does not meet their approval.

Now, if you’re in China, that situation could well come with the threat of arrest for daring to merely search for such a thing that didn’t meet the approval of the censors. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen in America, but giving control of the internet to an international body with Russia, and China, and Iran having power over it could lead to precisely that threat, and it’s going to take Congress acting affirmatively to stop it.

You look at the influence of foreign governments within ICANN, it should give us greater and greater concern.

For example, ICANN’s former CEO Fadi Chehadé left ICANN to lead a high-level working group for China’s World Internet Conference. Mr. Chehadé’s decision to use his insider knowledge of how ICANN operates to help the Chinese government and their conference is more than a little concerning.

This is the person who was leading ICANN, the body that we are being told to trust with our freedoms. Yet this man has since gone to work for the Chinese Internet Conference, which has rightly been criticized for banning members of the press such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

But you know what, even reporters you may fundamentally disagree with have a right to report and say what they believe. And yet, the World Internet Conference banned them — said “we do not want these reporters here, presumably, because we don’t like what they’re saying.” — which led Reporters Without Borders to demand an international boycott of the conference, calling China the “enemy of the internet.”

Mr. President, if China is the enemy of the internet, do we want the enemy of the internet having power over what you’re allowed to say, what you’re allowed to search for, what you’re allowed to read online? Do we want China, and Russia, and Iran having the power to determine if a website is unacceptable, it’s taken down?

I would note that once this transition happens, there are serious indications that ICANN intends to seek to flee U.S. jurisdiction and flee U.S. laws. Indeed, earlier this summer, ICANN held a global conference in Finland in which jurisdiction shopping was part of their agenda, trying to figure out what jurisdiction should we base control of the internet out of across the globe.

A representative of Iran is already on record stating, “we should not take it [for] granted that jurisdiction is already agreed to be totally based on U.S. law.” Our enemies are not hiding what they intend to do.

Not only is there a concern of censorship and foreign jurisdictions stripping U.S. law from authority over the internet, there are also real national security concerns. Congress has received no assurances from the Obama administration that the U.S. government will continue to have exclusive ownership and control of the .gov and .mil top-level domains in perpetuity, which are vital to our national security. The Department of Defense, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines all use the .mil top-level domain. The White House, the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security all use .gov.

The only assurance ICANN has provided the federal government regarding .gov and .mil is that ICANN will notify the government in the future if it decides to give .gov and .mil to another entity. So if someone is going to the IRS, or what you think is the IRS, and you’re comforted that it’s on a .gov website so that you know it must be safe, you may instead find yourself victims of a foreign scam, a phishing scam, some other means of fraud with no basic protections.

Congress should not sit by and let this happen. Congress must not sit by and let censorship happen.

Now, some defenders of the Obama proposal say “this is not about censorship. It’s about handing control to a multi-stakeholder unit. They would never dream of censoring content on the internet.”

Well recently, leading technology companies in the United States — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft — reached an agreement with the European Union, to remove “hate speech” from their online platforms within 24 hours. Giant U.S. corporations signing on with the government to say, “we are going to help you censor speech that is deemed unacceptable.”

And by the way, the definition of “hate speech” we have seen can be very, very malleable depending upon what norms are trying to be enforced. For example, the Human Rights Campaign, which is active within ICANN, has featured the Family Research Institute, the National Organization for Marriage, the American Center for Law and Justice, and other conservative and religious groups in a report entitled “The Export of Hate.”

We are facing the real possibility of an international body having the ability to censor political speech if it is contrary to the norms they intend to enforce. In their view, it is hate to express a view different from whatever the prevailing orthodoxy is being enforced.

Now it is one thing dealing with government organizations that try to stifle speech that is profoundly inconsistent with who we are as Americans. But to hand over control of the internet, to potentially muzzle everybody on the internet, is to ensure that what you say is only consistent with whatever is approved by the powers that be, and that ought to frighten everybody. And there is something we can do about it.

Along with Congressman Sean Duffy [R-Wis.] in the House, I have introduced the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, which if enacted will stop the internet transition, and it will also ensure that the United States government keeps exclusive ownership and control of the .gov and .mil top-level domains. Our legislation is supported by 17 key groups across the country, advocacy groups, consumer groups, and it also has the formal endorsement of the House Freedom Caucus.

This should be an issue that brings us all together — Republicans, Democrats, all of us coming together. There are partisan issues that divide us, there always will be. We can have Republicans and Democrats argue till the cows come home about the top marginal tax rate, and that is a good and healthy debate to have. But when it comes to the internet, when it comes to basic principles of freedom, letting people speak online without being censored, that ought to bring every one of us together.

As members of the legislative branch, Congress should stand united to rein in this president, to protect the constitutional authority expressly given to Congress to control disposition of property of the United States. To put the matter very simply: The Obama administration does not have the authorization of Congress, and yet, they are endeavoring to give away this valuable, critical property, to give it away with no authorization in law. I would note the government employees doing so are doing so in violation of federal law, and they risk personal liability in going forward contrary to law. That ought to trouble all of us.

And if the Obama administration jams this through, hands control of the internet over to this international organization, this United Nations-like, unaccountable group, and they take it overseas — it’s not like the next president can magically snap his or her fingers and bring it back. Unscrambling those eggs may well not be possible. I suspect that’s why the Obama administration is trying to jam it through on Sept. 30, to get it done in a way that the next president can’t undo it, that the internet is lost for generations to come. To stop the giveaway of our internet freedom, Congress should act by continuing and by strengthening the appropriations rider in the continuing resolution that we will be considering this month, by preventing the Obama administration from giving away control of the internet.

Next week, I will be chairing a hearing on the harms to our freedom that come from the Obama administration’s proposal to give away the internet.

As President Ronald Reagan stated, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”

I don’t want you and I to have to tell our children and our children’s children what it was once like when the internet wasn’t censored, wasn’t in the control of the foreign governments.

And I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together, to stand together and ensure that we protect freedom of the internet for generations to come. It is not too late to act, and I am encouraged by the leadership of members of both houses of Congress to stand up and protect freedom of the internet going forward. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Radical Internet Proposal Could Result in Censorship Online” please click HERE)

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House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to End Obama Admin ‘Slush Fund’

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The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday which would block President Obama from funding favored political organizations through penalties levied against banks.

The final tally of votes for the “Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016” (H.R. 5063) was 241-174, with five Democrats joining with all the Republicans present to approve the measure.

As reported by Western Journalism, the Obama administration once again appears to be employing extra-constitutional ways to get around Congress and fund many of its favorite organizations, some of which are engaged in political activities.

After forcing multi-billion settlements with most of the major banks in the country over mortgage practices, the Justice Department offered them the option of paying back some or all of the amounts owed on a better than a two-for-one dollar basis by “donating” to approved organizations, rather than remitting all the money to the U.S. Treasury.

For example, Bank of America donated “$1.15 million to the National Urban League, which counts as if it were $2.6 million against the bank’s settlement. Similarly, $1.5 million to La Raza takes $3.5 million off the total amount of ‘consumer relief’ owed by the bank,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Many of these groups engage in voter registration, community organizing and lobbying on liberal policy priorities at every level of government,” the Journal noted. “They also provide grants to other liberal groups not eligible for payouts under the settlements. Thanks to the Obama administration, and the fungibility of money, the settlements’ beneficiaries can now devote hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to these activities.”

House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., introduced the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act in April, which prevents government officials from enforcing settlements that funnel money to third parties.

“Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, the Constitution is clear: Congress shall have the power to appropriate,” said Goodlatte in a House Judiciary Committee press release on Wednesday following the bill’s passage.

“The practices discovered within the DOJ must be stopped. The passage of this bill by the House ensures the recovered funds are used to benefit direct victims and not special interests, and brings accountability to the Executive Branch as a whole.”

According to the House Judiciary release, “the DOJ has used mandatory donations to direct as much as $880 million dollars to activist groups.”

In a related issue, the Obama administration announced earlier this year it will hand out over $7 billion to health insurance companies from fees collected through the Affordable Care Act as a means of mitigating the disastrous financial impact the legislation is having on them.

The only problem is the law authorizes a fixed share of those collected fees to be used for that purpose and the rest is to go Treasury’s general funds. The administration has handed over all the funds collected without obtaining authorization from Congress. (For more from the author of “House Overwhelmingly Passes Bill to End Obama Admin ‘Slush Fund'” please click HERE)

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Obama Cancels Meeting After Philippines President Curses Him

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The president of the Philippines, who was scheduled to face criticism Tuesday from President Barack Obama for his controversial “war on drugs” that has resulted in open season on suspected drug dealers, on Monday lashed out at Obama and called him a “son of a whore.”

Afterward, U.S. officials announced that Obama no longer had any plans to meet with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte took office June 30 and promised a war on drugs that would wipe out drug dealing in the island nation. As a result, more than 2,000 suspected drug dealers have been killed, often without any form of judicial process.

“Double your efforts. Triple them, if need be. We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars — or below the ground, if they so wish,” Duterte said in July.

His tactics have raised eyebrows, and were expected to be a subject of conversation on Tuesday between Duterte and Obama at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference, which both are attending.

However, before he left Manila for Laos, where the conference is held, Duterte became enraged when a reporter asked him how he planned to explain the killings to Obama.

“Who does he think he is? I am no American puppet. I am a president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody,” he said.

“You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina I will swear at you in that forum,” he said, using the Tagalog phrase translated literally as “son of a whore” and colloquially as “son of a b—-.”

Duterte, whose combative and abrasive style has seen him curse out other world leaders including Pope Francis, suggested Obama has no right to ask about internal Philippine affairs.

“Who is he to confront me?” Duterte said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology for misdeeds committed during the U.S. colonization of the Philippines.

He linked his current problems with American misdeeds dating back to the war fought at the turn of the 20th century against Moro insurgents on the southern Island of Mindanao.

“As a matter of fact, we inherited this problem from the United States,” he said. “Why? Because they invaded this country and made us their subjugated people. Everybody has a terrible record of extra-judicial killing. Why make an issue about fighting crime?”

He added: “Look at the human rights of America along that line. The way they treat the migrants there.”

Obama indicated during a news conference he was focused on whether any meeting would be productive.

“I always want to make sure if I’m having a meeting that it’s productive and we’re getting something done,” he said.

“If and when we have a meeting, this is something that is going to be brought up,” Obama said, referring to Duterte’s war on drug dealers. (For more from the author of “Obama Cancels Meeting After Philippines President Curses Him” please click HERE)

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Obama’s Greatest Achievement

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The time for complaining about President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran has passed. The time has come to overcome the enormous damage his signature foreign policy accomplishment has caused.

To understand why this is the case, it is important to understand the breadth and depth of Obama’s failure.

On August 4, during the course of a press conference, Obama gave his interim assessment of his nuclear agreement with Iran.

“It worked,” he insisted.

A year after the deal was signed, Obama argued, events have proven that he was right and the deal’s critics were wrong.

“You’ll recall that there were all these horror stories about how Iran was going to cheat and this wasn’t going to work and Iran was going to get $150 billion to finance terrorism and all these kinds of scenarios, and none of them have come to pass,” he proclaimed.

Obama then snidely swiped at the deal’s opponents saying that it would be “impressive” if the people who criticized the deal would own up to their mistakes and admit that it worked.

As it works out, everything that Obama said about the deal with Iran during his press conference was a lie.

Some of his lies became apparent within hours.

For instance, Obama falsely claimed that Israel now “acknowledges this has been a game changer and Iran has abided by the deal and they no longer have the sort of short-term breakout capacity that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons.”

Hours later, the Defense Ministry issued a stinging rebuke of Obama’s claim, parroted more diplomatically by the Prime Minister’s Office.

Obama’s press conference took place the day after The Wall Street Journal reported that in January 2016, the US sent an unmarked plane to the Tehran airport filled with $400 million in cash, on the same day Iran released four US hostages.

Obama angrily rejected allegations that the cash payment was a ransom payment for the hostages’ release. He insisted that the US had made the payment as the first installment of a $1.7b. payment the administration made to settle an Iranian government lawsuit against America.

Obama claimed that the administration agreed to the settlement at the urging of the Justice Department.

He said his administration was able to settle the dispute only due to the nuclear deal which placed US officials in direct contact with their Iranian counterparts for the first time in decades.

Within a day, Obama’s claims were exposed as lies. It turns out that Justice Department lawyers opposed the cash payout to Iran.

One of the hostages released in January told the media that the Iranians refused to allow the hostages to leave Iran until the airplane with the cash landed in the airport.

The Iranians, for their part, contemptuously mocked Obama, and stated openly that the $400m.

was a ransom payment for the hostages.

Two weeks later, Obama’s State Department admitted that the $400m. was a payment for the hostages.

Obama’s principle claim is that due to his deal, Iran no longer has a short-term nuclear breakout capacity. He also says that in accordance with the deal, Iran has shipped its nuclear materials out of the country. These claims are both untrue and misleading.

On Thursday Reuters reported that Iran did not ship the quantities of low-enriched uranium out of the country in the quantities the deal required.

Last January, when the deadline arrived for Iran to comply with the deal’s clauses calling for it to move its uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent out of the country and so enable the US and its European colleagues to cancel UN sanctions against it, it worked out that Iran had failed to comply.

Rather than acknowledge Iran’s failure and maintain the sanctions in accordance with their deal, the Americans and Europeans decided to move the goalpost closer to Iran.

They secretly decreased the amount of uranium the Iranians were required to part with. They then announced triumphantly that they were canceling UN sanctions because Iran had complied with the agreement.

Reuters reported that much of the low-enriched uranium Iran did remove from its territory wasn’t actually removed from its possession. Instead it was transferred to neighboring Oman, where it is held under Iranian guard and control.

Obama of course knows all of this. So his claims that the agreement “worked” are nothing more than a card trick meant to trick the American public.

Obama’s assertion that Iran’s breakout time to a nuclear arsenal has been slowed as a result of his deal is similarly a stretch of the imagination. The Iranians have suspended much of their prior centrifuge spinning. But that is only because they are now directing their efforts to developing and deploying more advanced centrifuges that will be able to enrich uranium to bomb grade material far more rapidly than the centrifuges they were required to retire.

Experts have already placed Iran’s post-deal nuclear breakout time at a mere six months. And Iran can leave the agreement – which it never actually signed or officially agreed to – anytime it wants.

While developing their next generation centrifuges, the Iranians are expanding the range and precision of their ballistic missiles, deploying them and increasing the size of their arsenals. Despite the fact that these actions are prohibited under US law and breach what was initially claimed about the ever-changing nuclear deal, the Obama administration has refused to impose sanctions against Iran, insisting that its actions merely breach the spirit, rather than substance, of the deal.

The administration has had a similar response to Iran’s recent deployment of Russia’s S-300 missile defense battery around its military nuclear site at Fordo. On Sunday Iranian television showed footage of the missiles being set up around the formerly secret site.

As Omri Ceren of the Israel Project noted this week, Iran’s deployment of the S-300 system places it in breach of three US sanctions laws. Despite this, the White House announced on Wednesday that it has no intention of enforcing US law and applying sanctions on Iran. The S-300 missiles can be used both as a defensive system and as an offensive one.

On Tuesday, Tehran announced that it will be launching three satellites in the coming months.

Satellite launches are widely viewed as a means through which Iran is covertly developing a longrange ballistic missile capability. Rather than censure Iran for its actions, the Obama administration insists that such actions, as well as Iran’s recent longrange rocket tests, do not violate the nuclear deal or warrant US action.

Taken separately and together, Iran’s actions since the nuclear deal was officially concluded make clear that it continues to pursue its nuclear program, and indeed, has become more brazen in its nuclear operations than it was before the agreement was announced last year.

In other words, not only has the deal not worked, contrary to Obama’s claims, it has been a colossal failure on every level. The deal’s opponents were entirely right about the dangers it posed and Obama was entirely wrong.

This is true as well in relation to the administration’s qualified promises that the deal would lead to better relations between the US and Iran. As Shoshana and Stephen Bryen noted last week following the Iranian naval assault on the USS Nitze in the Strait of Hormuz, with its repeated harassment of US naval ships traversing the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is clearly practicing its tactic of swarming US naval craft as a preparation for a real strike against them.

The main reason that Iran’s nuclear program is such a grave concern for Israel and for other Middle Eastern states is that the Iranian regime has hegemonic ambitions. It seeks to destroy Israel and dominate the entire region.

Since it concluded the deal with Washington, Iran has surged its forces and massively expanded its power projection throughout the region.

On Thursday the Daily Mail reported that the commonly held belief that Iran commands 16,000 troops in Syria is wrong. According to the National Council of Resistance in Iran, the regime actually commands 60,000 forces in Syria, deployed throughout the country. The entire Syrian army today numbers a mere 50,000 men.

On August 4, Obama mocked claims that Iran would spend its windfall profits of $100b.-$150b.

from the sanctions relief the nuclear deal offered to fund terrorism. Yet, according to the Daily Mail report, to date Iran has spent $100b. on the war in Syria.

The implications of the report are blood curdling.

They mean that despite Obama’s denials, the funds Iran has received as a result of the sanctions relief he brought about through his nuclear deal have paid for Iran’s war in Syria. That war has caused the death of nearly half a million people and forced more than 11 million people to flee their homes.

Obviously, it is important for Americans to know the truth about the Iran deal and its consequences as they consider their votes for Obama’s replacement.

One of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s top candidates for secretary of state is Wendy Sherman.

Sherman was the chief negotiator of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

For Israel, the question of what to do about Iran now is far more urgent than it is for Americans.

Today more and more commentators are voicing concern over the prospect that Obama will support an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council as a parting shot at Israel.

But any such resolution will be small potatoes in comparison to the strategic devastation his nuclear deal, which is his main foreign policy legacy, has caused.

The rapidity of Iran’s advance makes clear that there is no justification for waiting to act until Obama has left office. If it doesn’t act soon, Israel is on the fast track to waking up one morning and discovering it has no means of thwarting the threat.

Indeed, with each passing month, its options for action become more and more limited.

After Israel’s security leadership undermined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in 2010 and 2012, Netanyahu settled on a strategy of blocking Obama’s moves to appease Tehran.

That strategy of course failed last summer. Since then, Netanyahu has worked to build an anti-Iranian alliance with the Sunni Arab states. His efforts in this area have clearly met with some measure of success, as witnessed by public statements from prominent Saudis and others.

Whatever that success may be, and whatever the status of that burgeoning alliance of spurned US allies, the fact is that it’s time Israel and its new allies do something more than send signals. Time is a-wasting.

Last spring Brig.-Gen. Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, said, “Today the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are more present than ever before.”

Thanks to Obama, he may be right.

It is time for Israel to make him eat his words. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Greatest Achievement” please click HERE)

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Obama Defends Kaepernick

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President Obama defended Colin Kaepernick while answering questions from the press at the G20 summit meeting in Hangzhou, saying that the quarterback was “exercising his constitutional right.”

Kaepernick, who has created a firestorm of debate over his criticism of the national anthem, has said that he will continue his protest of sitting out the anthem at the start of games indefinitely. This weekend, 49ers coach Chip Kelly announced that Kaepernick would be the team’s backup quarterback.

“I don’t doubt his sincerity,” Obama said of Kaepernick, before going on to say generating conversation on the topic was positive.

The conversation Kapernick has generated — about race, patriotism, sports protest and violence by and against police — has not been received positively by all Americans.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said one week ago that “maybe [Kaepernick] should find a country that works better for him” and angry fans have posted videos of themselves burning Kaepernick jerseys and other memorabilia on social media. (Read more from “Obama Defends Kaepernick” HERE)

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