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LIBTARD Austin slap Perry video of Rosemary Lehmberg

SO a LIBTARD and a LIBTARD Austin grand jury acting out in true public corruption slap Perry with an indictment. 

[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7y7oJ266qI” autoplay=”yes”]

Texas – Texas Gov. Rick Perry has been indicted for abuse of power after carrying out a threat to veto funding for state public corruption prosecutors.

The Republican governor is accused of abusing his official powers by publicly promising to veto $7.5 million for the state public integrity unit at the Travis County District Attorney’s office. He was indicted by an Austin grand jury Friday.

Perry said he’d veto the funding if the district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg, didn’t resign. Lehmberg had recently been convicted of drunken driving. The state’s Public Integrity Unit operates out of her office.

When Lehmberg refused, Perry carried out his veto, drawing an ethics complaint.

 

 

Cochran staffers to commit massive voter fraud

Got News.

Cochran Campaign Manager, Staffer Busted in Illegal Vote Buying Operation

Charles C. Johnson and Joel S. Gilbert

Democrat black reverend, who brought “hundreds” to the polls for promise of payment, exposes alleged massive voter fraud, vote buying operation by Cochran campaign.

 

A black reverend stiffed by the Cochran campaign has exposed an alleged criminal conspiracy by Cochran staffers to commit massive voter fraud ahead of Tuesday’s controversial U.S. Senate Republican runoff election in Mississippi.

Reverend Stevie Fielder, associate pastor at historic First Union Missionary Baptist Church and former official at Meridian’s redevelopment agency, says he delivered “hundreds or even thousands,” of blacks to the polls after being offered money and being assured by a Cochran campaign operative that Chris McDaniel was a racist. “They [the Cochran campaign] told me to offer blacks fifteen dollars each and to vote for Thad.”

It is illegal under several provisions of Mississippi law and federal law for campaign officials to bribe voters with cash and punishable up to five years in jail. (MS Code 97-13-1; MS Code 97-13-3 (2013) (Federal Code 18 U.S.C. 597, U.S.C. 1973i(c)) Voter fraud schemes are not unusual for Mississippi. In 1999 Mississippi’s attorney general reported massive voter fraud allegations throughout the Magnolia state. In 2011, a Mississippi NAACP leader was sent to prison for voter fraud, according to the Daily Caller.

It would seem that laws were broken here, too. At the direction of the Cochran campaign, Reverend Fielder went “door to door, different places, mostly impoverished neighborhoods, to the housing authorities and stuff like that,” telling fellow blacks that McDaniel was a racist and promising them $15 per vote. “They sold me on the fact that he was a racist and that the right thing to do was to keep him out of office,” Fielder says.

Text messages released to Got News and a recorded interview with Reverend Fielder confirmed that Saleem Baird, a staffer with the Cochran campaign and current legislative aide to U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, and Cochran campaign manager, Kirk Sims, were involved in a $15-per-vote cash bribery scheme to target members of the black community.

“They said they needed black votes,” said the Reverend Fielder on the phone. He says Baird told him to “give the fifteen dollars in each envelope to people as they go in and vote. You know, not right outside of the polling place but he would actually recruit people with the $15 dollars and they would go in and vote.” Fielder said he received thousands of dollars in envelopes from Baird and distributed them accordingly. Fielder also says he went to the campaign office on another occasion to pick up $300 in cash and was among a room full of people who were doing the same thing he was.

Fielder said that Saleem Baird was doing the same thing with people all over the state. Fielder believes that the racism charge against McDaniel and the promise of $15 a vote motivated ‘thousands’ of black Democrats like him to vote for Cochran in the runoff. When asked if Fielder would have been more suspicious of Baird’s promises had he been white, Fielder replied, “Yes, definitely.”

For his efforts, Fielder says the Cochran campaign and Baird promised him $16,000 for paying black voters $15 a vote, but Baird wound up stiffing him. Baird even asked him to delete all texts between the two of them. In addition to Baird, Fielder says he spoke with Kirk Sims, the Cochran campaign manager, and a woman named “Amanda” with the campaign, most likely Amanda Shook, director of operations to re-elect Thad Cochran. All refused to pay him the agreed upon amount of $16,000.

Baird realized he had been lied to when he “took a good look at the campaign ads” and realized “McDaniel was not a racist…me and other people were misguided and misled.”

Fielder confronted Saleem the weekend before the election and asked about whether or not McDaniel was actually a racist and Baird confirmed it. Baird “personally confirmed that McDaniel was a racist.” Baird ‘manipulated me to manipulate many other people,” says Fielder. Baird did not disclose that he worked as a paid legislative staffer for Senator Roger Wicker. Fielder also says he spoke with campaign manager Kirk Sims about getting paid and about the ethical complaints he had.

Fielder is a Democrat but said he has voted for Republicans in the past. And though Fielder is being paid for his story by Got News, he says he’d come forward anyway. “I thought what I did was wrong.” Fielder said he was motivated mostly by concerns that McDaniel was a racist, not money.

As to what should happen next, ‘definitely the election should not be allowed to stand,” says Fielder, who says he’ll support McDaniel in event of a special election. ‘He’s been done wrong. He’s not what they said that he is.’

Got News tried calling both Baird and Sims with Fielder on the line. We got through to Sims but Sims insisted that there was a bad connection when Fielder asked about the racist smear campaign against Chris McDaniel and hung up. Were Baird found to have violated any laws in this matter, this would not be his first time he had a brush with the wrong side of the law. In 2011, Baird, who is a legislative staffer with U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, was allowed to keep his job with the senator after being arrested on charges of running an illegal strip joint in Jackson.
Fully aware that we have helped reveal the Cochran campaign may be involved in a criminal conspiracy, Got News will turn over any and all evidence to law enforcement.

Got News–which will provide additional stories in the coming days–is made possible by donations from individuals like you. Please consider supporting our independent journalism.www.gofundme.com/charlescjohnsonresearch

 

 

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#SanAntonio #Texas Learn about your White Man Hating Marxist Mayor and his Brother

TwitLonger — When you talk too much for Twitter.

By

Rebel Cause

@RebelCause2013 (twitter suspended account at time of posting)

 Julian Castro & brother Joaquin (in congress) fed their political affiliations by their mother Rosie.


Mother Rosie founded radical, anti-white, socialist Chicano party called La Raza Unida (literally “The Race United”) that sought to create a separate country—Aztlan—in the Southwest. 

Today she helps manage her sons’ political careers, after a storied career of her own as a community activist and a stint as San Antonio Housing Authority ombudsman.

Castro wrote fondly of those early days at Stanford and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am—Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy. 

Rosie named her first son, Julian, for his father whom she never married, and her second, who arrived a minute later, for the character in the 1967 Chicano anti-gringo movement poem, “I Am Joaquin.” She is particularly proud that they were born on Mexico’s Independence Day. And she was a fan of the Aztlan aspirations of La Raza Unida. Those aspirations were deeply radical. “As far as we got was simply to take over control in those [Texas] communities where we were the majority,” one of its founders, Jose Angel Gutierrez, told the Toronto paper. “We did think of carving out a geographic territory where we could have our own weight, and our own leverage could then be felt nation-wide.” 

A bit on Jose Angel Gutierrez – 
Jose Angel Gutierrez, professor, University of Texas, Arlington; founder of La Raza Unida political party; and beneficiary of American generosity: “We have an aging white America. . . . They are dying. . . . They are ******** in their pants with fear! I love it!” “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”

http://www.mayorno.com/villar.html

Removing all doubt, Gutierrez repeated himself often. “What we hoped to do back then was to create a nation within a nation,” he told the Denver Post in 2001. Gutierrez bemoaned the loss of that separatist vision among activists, but predicted that Latinos will “soon take over politically.” (“Brothers in Chicano Movement to Reunite,” Denver Post, August 16, 2001).

Gutierrez made clear his hatred for “the gringo” when he led the Mexican-American Youth Organization, the precursor to La Raza Unida. According to the Houston Chronicle, he “was denounced by many elected officials as militant and un-American.” And anti-American he was. “We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to worst, we have got to kill him,” Gutierrez told a San Antonio audience in 1969. At around that time, Rosie Castro eagerly joined his cause, becoming the first chairwoman of the Bexar County Raza Unida Party. There’s no evidence of her distancing herself from Gutierrez’s comments, even today. Gutierrez even dedicated a chapter in one of his books to Ms. Castro.

One of La Raza’s most powerful leaders, Frank Shaffer-Corona, an at-large member of the Washington, D.C. school board, even visited communist Cuba for a conference on Yankee imperialism and conferred with Marxists in Mexico. He was prone to conspiracy theories, decrying the “pervasive influence of the Central Intelligence Agency on American politics and what he says is a conspiracy of the multinational corporations against all minorities and the people of Latin America,” in the words of the Washington Post. (“His Pitch: Populism, and Very Latino; Shaffer-Corona Unruffled After Trip to Cuba,” Washington Post, August 28, 1978). The radical organization’s second most successful candidate, Texas gubernatorial aspirant Ramsey Muñiz, remains in prison on drug charges. La Raza Unida members periodically call for him to be pardoned, saying without evidence that the corrupt Muñiz is a “political prisoner.”) 

Now the interesting thing is that Saudi Oil backed Citibank is a major donor to “La Raza” and their influence is HIGH in Mexico to the wealthy Latinos.

Carlos Pelayo, another founder of La Raza Unida, clung to communism even after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, telling a San Diego paper that “the desire of people for social justice will never end.” “If it doesn’t work [the Soviet Union’s] way, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work,” he said. “So we capitalists have 20 different cereals and Nike shoes. Over there [in the Soviet Union], they have free education, free medical care.” (“Fall of Communism Fails to Deter Local Communists,” San Diego Union Tribune, September 14, 1991)

Is Ms. Castro repentant in the slightest over her involvement with La Raza Unida? Not in the least. She sees the rise of her sons’ political fortune as the fulfillment of her promise—some say threat—in 1971 when she lost her bid for San Antonio city council: “We’ll be back.” “When Julian was installed, it was just such an incredible thing to be there because for years we [the Chicano activists and La Raza Unida] had been struggling to be there,” she told Texas Monthly in 2002. “There was so much hurt associated with being on the outside. And I don’t mean personal hurt, but a whole group of people [the activists] being on the outside—the educational, social, political, economic outside.” Now she has not just one, but two men on the inside—her sons.

Castro’s speech below:

My fellow Democrats, my fellow Texans, my fellow Americans: I stand before you tonight as a young American, a proud American, of a generation born as the Cold War receded, shaped by the tragedy of 9/11, connected by the digital revolution and determined to re-elect the man who will make the 21st century another American century — President Barack Obama.

The unlikely journey that brought me here tonight began many miles from this podium. My brother Joaquin and I grew up with my mother Rosie and my grandmother Victoria. My grandmother was an orphan. As a young girl, she had to leave her home in Mexico and move to San Antonio, where some relatives had agreed to take her in. She never made it past the fourth grade. She had to drop out and start working to help her family. My grandmother spent her whole life working as a maid, a cook and a babysitter, barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.

As my grandmother got older, she begged my mother to give her grandchildren. She prayed to God for just one grandbaby before she died. You can imagine her excitement when she found out her prayers would be answered — twice over. She was so excited that the day before Joaquin and I were born she entered a menudo cook-off, and she won $300! That’s how she paid our hospital bill.

By the time my brother and I came along, this incredible woman had taught herself to read and write in both Spanish and English. I can still see her in the room that Joaquin and I shared with her, reading her Agatha Christie novels late into the night. And I can still remember her, every morning as Joaquin and I walked out the door to school, making the sign of the cross behind us, saying, “Que dios los bendiga.” “May God bless you.”

My grandmother didn’t live to see us begin our lives in public service. But she probably would have thought it extraordinary that just two generations after she arrived in San Antonio, one grandson would be the mayor and the other would be on his way — the good people of San Antonio willing — to the United States Congress.

My family’s story isn’t special. What’s special is the America that makes our story possible. Ours is a nation like no other, a place where great journeys can be made in a single generation. No matter who you are or where you come from, the path is always forward.

America didn’t become the land of opportunity by accident. My grandmother’s generation and generations before always saw beyond the horizons of their own lives and their own circumstances. They believed that opportunity created today would lead to prosperity tomorrow. That’s the country they envisioned, and that’s the country they helped build. The roads and bridges they built, the schools and universities they created, the rights they fought for and won — these opened the doors to a decent job, a secure retirement, the chance for your children to do better than you did.

And that’s the middle class– the engine of our economic growth. With hard work, everybody ought to be able to get there. And with hard work, everybody ought to be able to stay there — and go beyond. The dream of raising a family in a place where hard work is rewarded is not unique to Americans. It’s a human dream, one that calls across oceans and borders. The dream is universal, but America makes it possible. And our investment in opportunity makes it a reality.

Now, in Texas, we believe in the rugged individual. Texas may be the one place where people actually still have bootstraps, and we expect folks to pull themselves up by them. But we also recognize there are some things we can’t do alone. We have to come together and invest in opportunity today for prosperity tomorrow.

And it starts with education. Twenty years ago, Joaquin and I left home for college and then for law school. In those classrooms, we met some of the brightest folks in the world. But at the end of our days there, I couldn’t help but to think back to my classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. They had the same talent, the same brains, the same dreams as the folks we sat with at Stanford and Harvard. I realized the difference wasn’t one of intelligence or drive. The difference was opportunity.

In my city of San Antonio, we get that. So we’re working to ensure that more four-year-olds have access to pre-K. We opened Cafe College, where students get help with everything from test prep to financial aid paperwork. We know that you can’t be pro-business unless you’re pro-education. We know that pre-K and student loans aren’t charity. They’re a smart investment in a workforce that can fill and create the jobs of tomorrow. We’re investing in our young minds today to be competitive in the global economy tomorrow.

And it’s paying off. Last year the Milken Institute ranked San Antonio as the nation’s top performing local economy. And we’re only getting started. Opportunity today, prosperity tomorrow.

Now, like many of you, I watched last week’s Republican convention. They told a few stories of individual success. We all celebrate individual success. But the question is, how do we multiply that success? The answer is President Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney, quite simply, doesn’t get it. A few months ago he visited a university in Ohio and gave the students there a little entrepreneurial advice. “Start a business,” he said. But how? “Borrow money if you have to from your parents,” he told them. Gee, why didn’t I think of that? Some people are lucky enough to borrow money from their parents, but that shouldn’t determine whether you can pursue your dreams. I don’t think Gov. Romney meant any harm. I think he’s a good guy. He just has no idea how good he’s had it.

We know that in our free market economy some will prosper more than others. What we don’t accept is the idea that some folks won’t even get a chance. And the thing is, Mitt Romney and the Republican Party are perfectly comfortable with that America. In fact, that’s exactly what they’re promising us.

The Romney-Ryan budget doesn’t just cut public education, cut Medicare, cut transportation and cut job training.

It doesn’t just pummel the middle class — it dismantles it. It dismantles what generations before have built to ensure that everybody can enter and stay in the middle class. When it comes to getting the middle class back to work, Mitt Romney says, “No.” When it comes to respecting women’s rights, Mitt Romney says, “No.” When it comes to letting people marry whomever they love, Mitt Romney says, “No.” When it comes to expanding access to good health care, Mitt Romney says, “No.”

Actually, Mitt Romney said, “Yes,” and now he says, “No.” Gov. Romney has undergone an extreme makeover, and it ain’t pretty. So here’s what we’re going to say to Mitt Romney. We’re going to say, “No.”

Of all the fictions we heard last week in Tampa, the one I find most troubling is this: If we all just go our own way, our nation will be stronger for it. Because if we sever the threads that connect us, the only people who will go far are those who are already ahead. We all understand that freedom isn’t free. What Romney and Ryan don’t understand is that neither is opportunity. We have to invest in it.

Republicans tell us that if the most prosperous among us do even better, that somehow the rest of us will too. Folks, we’ve heard that before. First they called it “trickle-down.” Then “supply-side.” Now it’s “Romney-Ryan.” Or is it “Ryan-Romney”? Either way, their theory has been tested. It failed. Our economy failed. The middle class paid the price. Your family paid the price.

Mitt Romney just doesn’t get it. But Barack Obama gets it. He understands that when we invest in people we’re investing in our shared prosperity. And when we neglect that responsibility, we risk our promise as a nation. Just a few years ago, families that had never asked for anything found themselves at risk of losing everything. And the dream my grandmother held, that work would be rewarded, that the middle class would be there, if not for her, then for her children — that dream was being crushed.

But then President Obama took office — and he took action. When Detroit was in trouble, President Obama saved the auto industry and saved a million jobs. Seven presidents before him — Democrats and Republicans — tried to expand health care to all Americans. President Obama got it done. He made a historic investment to lift our nation’s public schools and expanded Pell grants so that more young people can afford college. And because he knows that we don’t have an ounce of talent to waste, the president took action to lift the shadow of deportation from a generation of young, law-abiding immigrants called dreamers.

I believe in you. Barack Obama believes in you. Now it’s time for Congress to enshrine in law their right to pursue their dreams in the only place they’ve ever called home: America.

Four years ago, America stood on the brink of a depression. Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action, and now we’ve seen 4.5 million new jobs. He knows better than anyone that there’s more hard work to do, but we’re making progress. And now we need to make a choice.

It’s a choice between a country where the middle class pays more so that millionaires can pay less — or a country where everybody pays their fair share, so we can reduce the deficit and create the jobs of the future. It’s a choice between a nation that slashes funding for our schools and guts Pell grants — or a nation that invests more in education. It’s a choice between a politician who rewards companies that ship American jobs overseas — or a leader who brings jobs back home.

This is the choice before us. And to me, to my generation and for all the generations to come, our choice is clear. Our choice is a man who’s always chosen us. A man who already is our president: Barack Obama.

In the end, the American dream is not a sprint, or even a marathon, but a relay. Our families don’t always cross the finish line in the span of one generation. But each generation passes on to the next the fruits of their labor. My grandmother never owned a house. She cleaned other people’s houses so she could afford to rent her own. But she saw her daughter become the first in her family to graduate from college. And my mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone.

And while she may be proud of me tonight, I’ve got to tell you, mom, I’m even more proud of you. Thank you, mom. Today, my beautiful wife Erica and I are the proud parents of a three-year-old little girl, Carina Victoria, named after my grandmother.

A couple of Mondays ago was her first day of pre-K. As we dropped her off, we walked out of the classroom, and I found myself whispering to her, as was once whispered to me, “Que dios te bendiga.” “May God bless you.” She’s still young, and her dreams are far off yet, but I hope she’ll reach them. As a dad, I’m going to do my part, and I know she’ll do hers. But our responsibility as a nation is to come together and do our part, as one community, one United States of America, to ensure opportunity for all of our children.

The days we live in are not easy ones, but we have seen days like this before, and America prevailed. With the wisdom of our founders and the values of our families, America prevailed. With each generation going further than the last, America prevailed. And with the opportunity we build today for a shared prosperity tomorrow, America will prevail.

It begins with re-electing Barack Obama. It begins with you. It begins now. Que dios los bendiga. May God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.

Primary Runoff Election on May 27, 2014

May 27, 2014, Primary Election Runoff

Republican

  • Lt. Governor
    David Dewhurst
    Dan Patrick
  • Attorney General
    Dan Branch
    Ken Paxton
  • Commissioner of Agriculture
    Tommy Merritt
    Sid Miller
  • Railroad Commissioner
    Wayne Christian
    Ryan Sitton

Where Do I Vote

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BHO 4 LIFE… WTF See we told you so

End presidential term limits

By Jonathan Zimmerman, Published: November 28

Jonathan Zimmerman is a professor of history and education at New York University. His books include “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory.”

In 1947, Sen. Harley Kilgore (D-W.Va.) condemned a proposed constitutional amendment that would restrict presidents to two terms. “The executive’s effectiveness will be seriously impaired,” Kilgore argued on the Senate floor, “ as no one will obey and respect him if he knows that the executive cannot run again.”

I’ve been thinking about Kilgore’s comments as I watch President Obama, whose approval rating has dipped to 37 percent in CBS News polling — the lowest ever for him — during the troubled rollout of his health-care reform. Many of Obama’s fellow Democrats have distanced themselves from the reform and from the president. Even former president Bill Clinton has said that Americans should be allowed to keep the health insurance they have.

Or consider the reaction to the Iran nuclear deal. Regardless of his political approval ratings, Obama could expect Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) to attack the agreement. But if Obama could run again, would he be facing such fervent objections from Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)?

Probably not. Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected. Thanks to term limits, though, they’ve got little to fear.

Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all. If he chooses, he could simply ignore their will. And if the people wanted him to serve another term, why shouldn’t they be allowed to award him one?

That was the argument of our first president, who is often held up as the father of term limits. In fact, George Washington opposed them. “I can see no propriety in precluding ourselves from the service of any man who, in some great emergency, shall be deemed universally most capable of serving the public,” Washington wrote in a much-quoted letter to the Marquis de Lafayette.

Washington stepped down after two terms, establishing a pattern that would stand for more than a century. But he made clear that he was doing so because the young republic was on solid footing, not because his service should be limited in any way.

The first president to openly challenge the two-term tradition was Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for a third term as president in 1912 on the Bull Moose ticket. When he stepped down in 1908, Roosevelt pledged not to seek a third term; reminded of this promise in 1912, he said that he had meant he would not seek a “third consecutive term.” The New York Times called Roosevelt’s explanation a “pitiful sophistication,” and the voters sent Woodrow Wilson to the White House.

Only in 1940, amid what George Washington might have called a “great emergency,” did a president successfully stand for a third term. Citing the outbreak of war overseas and the Depression at home, Democrats renominated Franklin D. Roosevelt. They pegged him for a fourth time in 1944 despite his health problems, which were serious enough to send him to his grave the following year.

To Republicans, these developments echoed the fascist trends enveloping Europe. “You will be serving under an American totalitarian government before the long third term is finished,” warned Wendell Wilkie, Roosevelt’s opponent in 1940. Once the two-term tradition was broken, Wilkie added, nobody could put it back together. “If this principle dies, it will be dead forever,” he said.

That’s why the GOP moved to codify it in the Constitution in 1947, when a large Republican majority took over Congress. Ratified by the states in 1951, the 22nd Amendment was an “undisguised slap at the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” wrote Clinton Rossiter, one of the era’s leading political scientists. It also reflected “a shocking lack of faith in the common sense and good judgment of the people,” Rossiter said.

He was right. Every Republican in Congress voted for the amendment, while its handful of Democratic supporters were mostly legislators who had broken with FDR and his New Deal. When they succeeded in limiting the presidency to two terms, they limited democracy itself.

“I think our people are to be safely trusted with their own destiny,” Sen. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.) argued in 1947. “We do not need to protect the American people with a prohibition against a president whom they do not wish to elect; and if they wanted to elect him, have we the right to deny them the power?”

It’s time to put that power back where it belongs. When Ronald Reagan was serving his second term, some Republicans briefly floated the idea of removing term limits so he could run again. The effort went nowhere, but it was right on principle. Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re election just as citizens should be allowed to vote for — or against — him. Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves.

Read more about this issue: Thomas E. Mann: Want to end partisan politics? Here’s what won’t work, and what will Robert J. Samuelson: Why we no longer trust government Letter: After shutdown debacle, it’s time for term limits Zachary A. Goldfarb: How we misread the numbers that dominate our politics

#Obamacare Taxes That Will Crush The Middle Class

The Hidden Obamacare Taxes That
Will Crush The Middle Class

By Money Morning Staff Reports


Get ready to be blindsided by a barrage of new taxes. $1 trillion worth…

They’ll be coming courtesy of the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

And they won’t just be affecting those who make over $250,000. The bulk of these taxes will be passed on directly to the middle class.

That’s because while a majority of these “stealth taxes” were designed to be taxes on businesses, they’re actually transferred directly to ordinary citizens.

MORE: How much extra will you have to pay? To see how Obamacare taxes will directly affect your paycheck, go here.

They include the investment income surtax, a Medicare payroll tax, even a “tanning tax” on those who utilize indoor tanning services.

“Many of those [hidden] taxes, especially those on hospitals, insurers and medical device manufacturers, will ultimately be passed on through higher health costs,” said Michael Tanner an expert on the healthcare law.

In fact, analysts estimate Obamacare will cost the average taxpayer nearly $6,000 in extra taxes as early as next year.

Obamacare Tax Hikes Stoke Outrage

Many of the Obamacare taxes are already in effect, others will hit January 1. But they are already infuriating millions of Americans.

While even Obamacare detractors applaud the requirement that insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions and put a stop to lifetime caps on benefits, they say these laudable benefits don’t compensate for the bills high cost – especially in new taxes.

According to most experts, Obamacare will create a total of twenty new taxes or tax hikes on the American people.

In fact, the Obama administration has already given the IRS an extra $500 million to enforce the rules and regulations of Obamacare.

The new taxes don’t bode well for millions of middle-class Americans. Incomes for the rich have soared this decade but middle class workers have seen their wages stagnate and even drop since the 2008 Great Recession.

Many fear Obamacare with its high insurance costs and new taxes, could provide the middle class a fatal blow.

The 20 new Obamacare taxes are making Americans eyes pop out in disbelief.Take a look.

Of course, the Obamacare plan was primarily designed to decrease the number of uninsured Americans and reduce healthcare costs.

Many experts are saying it will have the exact opposite effect.

That’s just one of the reasons why Republicans hope to defund Obamacare before January.

They claim that the taxes and costs needed to pay for Obamacare will crush the middle class and most U.S. taxpayers, as well as trigger job losses in affected industries.

Tax experts say you should try to estimate how much you will have to pay when the law goes into full effect – and take precautions to limit the damage to your bottom line.

What the Experts Say: How to avoid getting your financial neck broken by Obamacare… Watch this video.

One expert, Dr. Betsy McCaughey, a constitutional scholar with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, recently wrote a best-seller showing Americans how they can not only survive Obamacare, but prosper through it.

McCaughey claims to be one of the only people in the country – including members of Congress – who has actually read the entire 2,572 page law.

Her book, titled Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving The New Health Care Law, breaks the huge bill down into 168 pages of actionable advice.

The book, written in an easy going, easy to read style, shows some startling facts about Obamacare not seen in the mainstream press.

For example, she points to a little known passage in the bill that shows how you could get slapped with a $2,000 fine for not having health insurance – even if you do actually have it.

She also goes into detail explaining how a third of all U.S. employers could stop offering health insurance to their workers.

In one chapter, she shows how ordinary Americans will get stuck paying for substance abuse coverage – even if they never touched a drink or drug in their life.

According to McCaughey’s research, senior citizens will get hit the hardest.

Hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery will be especially hard to get from Medicare in the months ahead thanks to Obamacare, according to McCaughey.

She warns seniors to get those types of procedures done now before Obamacare goes into effect January 1.

Editor’s Note: Real facts and figures about the hidden Obamacare taxes and fees and how they will affect everyday Americans and seniors are hard to find. As a courtesy, Money Morning is offering readers a free copy of Betsy McCaughey’s new book Beating Obamacare: Your Handbook for Surviving The New Health Care Law. But only a limited number of copies are available. Please go here to reserve yours today.

The Libertarian and Conservative Case for the Abolition of Marriage Laws by Peter S. Rieth

The Libertarian and Conservative Case for the Abolition of Marriage Laws

by Peter S. Rieth

Amidst the ever louder public debate over the question of “gay marriage” or civil unions for same-sex couples, one view which seems to have gained little public exposure is the position in favor of abolishing all marriage laws everywhere and leaving the issue of marriage to be regulated by the private market place. I propose to examine this view in detail, demonstrating along the way how this libertarian methodology of dealing with the problem of marriage policy would eventually lead to the realization of the conservative goals of strengthening family, faith and patriotism.

The Left and Marriage

American Liberals and members of the political Left would likely reject this position because the prime reason why they favor “gay marriage” or civil unions for same-sex couples is that they believe all people should have equal access to government regulation of personal and social life. They would not put it quite this way, but it is essentially their position. To abolish marriage laws would, in the liberal left’s view, deprive all people of the “right” to file joint tax returns, or a number of other “rights” that the state has imagined for us over the years. All of these imagined “rights” granted by the state are not, of course, natural rights, but rather positive rights akin to the New Deal’s “Four Freedoms” – freedom from fear, want, and so forth and so on – invented rights that, politically, are fit for demagogues in a populist regime and that are intellectually groundless.

The political Left would never consider the viewpoint that many “rights” which they champion for homosexual couples – such as visitation rights – might be achieved in a free society via contracts between consenting adults. Far better, the Left generally believes, to let “experts” in public administration regulate things for us – we mere plebians are left to simply fill out all the paper work.

There is, of course, another reason why the political left favors same-sex marriage or civil unions, and that is a more insidious reason. Although they would never agree with the likes of conservatives like Harry Jaffa on the principle that since the law molds the customs and habits of citizens, thus the law must itself be molded by moral customs and habits; the left would concur that the law molds customs and habits. It is the fervent desire of the social engineers of the political left to enhance their power and prestige by forming men into the type of citizens who need the state to control and command their daily lives. There is, as every good conservative understands, no faster way to achieve this general dependency of citizens on the state than to undermine the one private social institution that we might call a fully functional voluntary polis – the family. I have no doubt, from my observation of both the practice and theory of the political left over the years, that many of them hate the family and wish to “liberate” us from this old institution.

The Right and Marriage

Nietzsche noted in one or another of his writings that as cultures decline, so too the number of laws meant to preserve them seem to multiply. Thus things that at one time did not seem to need legal mandates are being proposes as new laws by conservatives. There is perhaps no more direct example of this than the proposals to create a Constitutional Amendment in the United States that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. One almost wants to consider whether, at this rate, we shall not next be amending the constitution to say that “a father is understood to be a man” or that “dogs are not cats.” As moral relativism and multiculturalism progress in or schools and in our culture, the notion that words can be used to signify things, and that language is a tool for communication rather than confusion becomes out of date and old fashioned. In light of this, conservatives often feel that they must rescue common sense by using the full force of the state apparatus to do so. The most extreme example of this was William F Buckley’s call to tolerate a totalitarian bureaucracy in the United States as a necessary price to pay in order to halt communism (predictably, communism is long halted; the bureaucracy remains and grows). The impulse to use the state as a means to coerce virtue, or even the recognition of common sense, is a powerful temptation – and is perhaps the a particularly fatal temptation for conservatives who should know better.

How Civil Marriage Laws actually operate

Before getting carried away with the notion that the political question before us is one of conservative traditionalism versus the liberal enthusiasm for social engineering and the universality of “social” justice, let us explore for a moment how contemporary civil marriage laws actually operate.

It should be noted from the outset that it is illegal in all states, and in all member states of the European Union (thus in the West) to get married in a Church without concurrently being “married” by the civil authorities. I begin with this observation because this fact should be alarming for all of us, but seems rather to be “quite normal” and non-controversial. “Why,” someone might ask, “would anyone wish to get married without also having their marriage valid in the eyes of the law?”

This viewpoint presumes, of course, that the law is there to protect the marriage that we have consecrated in Church. It is not an uncommon viewpoint, in fact, to regard the law as generally being there to protect any number of given rights we have as individuals or to guarantee the fulfillment of obligations that we have contracted out to others.

This viewpoint of the law as beneficial protector of rights is, in fact, the cornerstone of modern democratic society (whether socialist democrat, liberal democrat or even Christian democrat). But libertarianism, and particularly public choice theory as well as the general political economy of “unintended consequences” teaches us to be wary of the law as a protector of anything.

This is something that any man or woman who has gone through a divorce will surely attest to. In a divorce, the parties to a civil marriage turn to the law to redress their grievances. Suddenly, in most cases, they realize that the civil law is not concerned with the just redress of grievances, but rather only with the application of a law that is all too often predicated on the notion that – far from being a binding contract to love and care for spouses, marriage was more like a “lifestyle choice”, made for temporary gratification of whims. Divorce courts rarely end up satisfying both parties. They compound the damage by usually taking a very long time to come to a decision, thus prolonging the anguish of the disillusion of a civil union.

In short – just like a government post office doesn’t deliver mail on time and a government train doesn’t run on time – so to the lack of a price mechanism and any real pressure from market forces of supply and demand leads government courts to fail in the delivery of their promised goods: justice.

Why, you might ask, did people not think about this before getting married? Why not sign a prenuptial agreement or a separate civil agreement? The standard answer, if ever this question is asked, is usually that to do so would be unromantic and somehow introduce some element of doubt into what ought to be a firm and serious desire to form a lasting union.

Libertarian political economy leads me, however, to suggest another answer: whenever the government takes it upon itself to craft fiat laws of inter-personal conduct and impose them on humans, humans tend not to think independently about said aspects of interpersonal conduct, and by force of habit cede their responsibilities to the government that has in effect taken them away from the individual. In other words – moral hazard functions in the realm of marriage no less than in the realm of government flood insurance. Since government promises the redress grievances justly in an eventual divorce case, and since marriage laws promise a plethora of rights to spouses and promise the execution of duties from spouses – potential spouses do not think at all about what marriage entails – they have been conditioned to focus on the proverbial ceremony and not on the nature of the relationship.

Imagine if business were expected to run this way? Imagine if government regulated the terms of employment contracts or set the rules of trade? Isn’t it likely that traders and businessmen would become more and more careless – since the issue is out of their hands by fiat anyways? Isn’t this, in fact, what happened on Wall Street or in the Banking Sector, where government control and regulation reached such grotesque heights, that all traders were left with was the option of buying high, and all bankers were left with was the option of selling credit at low interest rates? Once the government introduces top down command and control – it conditions the market to act within an unnatural, mandated framework. Why would it be any different with government command and control of marriage?

Catholicism, Marriage and Civil Marriage

I wish to speak here of one specific example, because it is an example I am familiar with – namely the issue of Catholic Marriage and Civil Marriage laws. I do not mean to suggest here that the Catholic Church is somehow more deserving of attention than other Churches, institutions or individuals, but rather – alongside what I hope is slowly becoming a logical argument in favor of the abolition of marriage laws – I would like to demonstrate my argument by way of a practical example.

I am a practicing Catholic, having been through one year of preparation for Communion and Confirmation within a Jesuit Order (something I am very proud of), and have given much thought to the following conundrum:

Catholics define marriage as a sacred union of a man and a woman before God. Because it is sacred, it is also a sacrament, which in the Catholic religion is perhaps the most intimate relationship imaginable between a man and God. As such, Catholics naturally believe that marriage cannot be dissolved. To suggest that it can would be akin to suggesting that the sun didn’t shine yesterday when clearly we saw that it did.

It is, however, possible – to continue the metaphor – that having violated some precepts of our religion (let’s say we gluttonously drank too much) – we found ourselves staring into a Police flashlight, thinking that this very shiny thing was actually the sun. For anyone who has ever experienced excessive intoxication, you will understand this metaphor quite well. In such a case, no matter how convinced we might be that what we saw was the sun – no matter. Witnesses will testify otherwise, and it will turn out that we did not, in fact, see the sun – but only a bright flashlight dimly thought to be the sun in our state of mindless intoxication.

In its’ wisdom – the Catholic Church recognizes that this unfortunate metaphorical scenario could well be a true event in the case of marriage. That is to say, Cannon law recognizes that it is possible that, under certain very specific circumstances, a Catholic Wedding ceremony – in spite of having nominally been performed – was actually never in fact performed. Thus Catholic Cannon allows for the Church to declare something that once was thought to have been a wedding null and void – as never having actually taken place.

Contrary to what many people might think, the Catholic Church’s private court system deals with thousands of such annulment cases on a yearly basis. In the majority of instances, these cases are brought to the attention of the Church by a devote Catholic who was betrayed by their spouce (by “betrayed” I mean in the full sense, not the narrow sense of sexual betrayal – I mean that someone betrayed their wedding vows and left the other person). The Church must then determine whether or not this marriage was ever valid in the first place. In the majority of cases where annulment is granted, it is on the basis of psychological immaturity of one or more of the parties participating in the wedding ceremony.

The Church is very thorough in its’ investigations. Unlike civil divorce courts, the Church is interested in truth and justice – and not in the satisfaction of the desires of the participants to the court case. It does not matter what people “want” – all that matters is what they have done, and what it means.

Those who do not agree with this system are, of course, free to simply ignore it. The Catholic Church does not have and does not seek to have any state sanctioned legal powers of coercion towards anyone. Yet Catholic Courts function with a power greater than most government courts precisely because it is the voluntary consent of Catholic parishioners which fuels them. So many Catholics wish to live virtuous lives that they insist on clearing up what has developed into a bad situation rather than remaining outcasts in the eyes of the Church. The Church has thus set up these private courts to deal with the matter.

Now – consider this for a moment: an entire system of private courts, run by a Church, on a purely voluntary basis – all dealing with a problem that the majority of people think cannot be dealt with except by the government. Naturally, all of this costs less than what government divorce courts cost as well. The Catholic Church generally charges the equivalent of the monthly salary of a parishioner who wishes to have his case heard. Thus, if you make 1,000 USD per month – that is what you pay. I f you make 1,000,000 USD per month – that is what you pay. Hence the wealthy pay more and the poor pay less, but both pay what is proportionally just in lieu of their income. In practice of course, this means that the wealthy subsidize the poor (voluntarily), but the poor do not become corrupted by this because they must pay a sum which, proportionally for them, is nevertheless high enough to be felt in their households budgets. It is, from the point of view of ethics, a wonderful situation that promotes virtue. Not surprisingly – at the core of this system is the principle of liberty, or faith – which is in effect the same thing, since it is impossible to have true faith except freely.

Now imagine for a moment if two Catholics wish to be married and protest against civil marriage under the pretext that the civil marriage laws violate their religious convictions. What religious convictions, you ask? The religious conviction that marriage cannot be dissolved. The majority of civil laws in the world allow for divorce, and the path towards divorce is ever easier. Why should I, as a Catholic, be forced to marry someone who might receive legal sanction one day if they wish to leave me? What if I am not satisfied with the notion of possibly signing a prenuptial agreement because a long train of abuses at the hand of government agencies has taught me not to trust them – including not to trust their courts or their capacity to uphold contracts? What if my would-be spouse feels the same way?

If we declared ourselves leaders of a new church – let’s call it the “unregistered, informal church of God” – we could go off to the forest, perform our wedding vows, and be done with it. We, however, being Catholics, have made a free choice – to entrust our marriage to the Catholic Church. What now? Why can we not have a Catholic wedding without a Civil Ceremony?

This problem is actually not as abstract as you might think. The Catholic Church is often forced to break the civil law and grant Catholic Weddings without civil ceremonies to people who, due to prior civil divorces, might lose their social security benefits, alimony payments and other hard one legal compensations. Now you might say that theyshould lose them, because if someone remarries, then they do not “need” them. But this is all predicated on the state’s notion of justice, which is to say – injustice.

If a person enters into a contract that stipulates that a) there is a God, and b) we are vowing before this supreme God to be together forever – then you would think that the breaking of this contract by one of the parties ought to carry with it a very hefty punishment. Catholics believe it does – but only in the court of the Final Judge. Here on Earth, civil courts often reward people who turn out to have been irresponsible husbands or wives who have left their loyal spouse. The least that the injured party can expect is to collect compensations and not have to be put in the agonizing situation of choosing between recovering some of their costs or marrying again.

These kinds of situations exist, of course, because the civil law considers marriage a mere “life style choice” – one that can be reversed essentially whenever one party to the wedding wants. If a Catholic argued in civil court that he or she had been cheated, that they entered into a life-long contract, the government court would tell them that the only contract the law recognizes is the civil marriage contract – and that one clearly stipulates that you can divorce whenever you feel like it. Ergo – there is no possibility for a Catholic to gain justice through government divorce courts. In fact, the existence of these courts precludes it – since Catholics do not believe in divorce, and the nature of the marriage contract inherent in the sacrament of Catholic marriage precludes it.

This is one – only one – example of how civil marriage laws violate the individual rights of citizens to practice their religion. It is also an example of how a voluntary religious order (in this case the Catholic church) regulates matters pertaining to marriage with the full consent of parishoners. It is an example which should make conservatives pause whenever they consider advocating for more government control over marriage.

A Libertarian Method towards the Conservative Goal of preserving Family, Faith and Patriotism

Conservatives ought to advocate for the abolition of marriage laws for essentially the same reasons they advocate for the abolition of gun regulation, business regulation or a number of other command-and-control regulations and laws. They ought to do this not for the morally relativistic purpose of “tolerating” whatever individuals want to do, but for the thoroughly morally objective reason of ensuring the conditions for virtue in a political community. The condition for virtue in a political community is, of course, freedom.

Marriages and families, as well as faith and patriotism, are only true and good when they are freely chosen. I hope that this is not a controversial argument. Conservatives often say that it is in the nature of man to wish to find happiness in the community of his fellows. Nature has given us a variety of instincts, sexual, psychological, emotional – for the satisfaction of which we require a spouse, children, good neighbors, a meaningful life of labor, and numerous other activities which are the traditional realm of republican citizenship. Independent of whether or not we are more or less optimistic about the nature of man, I think it is impossible to disagree with the proposition as it stands above that all that is arguably good and virtuous ceases to be so if men do it out of fear or through coercion rather than out of a true faith or rational, free choice.

Marriage is perhaps the most intimately private and personal of all social institutions because unlike governments, schools, factories, universities, corporations and other social bodies – marriage is made up of only two people; and they must have not merely consensus or mutual self-interest to function – they must nurture a true, deep, and ever- lasting love. (I admit, of course, that “marriage” – according to some, might be defined as short-lived, consisting of three individuals and a dog, and requiring nothing but whim – and if there are people who wish to define it so for their own purposes; or in whatever other way – they may have the freedom to do it; though I do not speak of them here because I presume that it is not the goal of conservative social policy to promote such relationships).

If there were no laws on the books regarding marriage – and ever man who wished to marry a woman had to either create their own institution for doing it, redefine marriage to mean something arbitrary or marry in an established religious institution – I submit to you that the following would happen:

  1. Those who created their own institutions in order to marry themselves would either create new, long lived churches rooted in their deep love and virtue which would – by the power of their example nurture more such marriages or they would create a short-lived sham which would give shape to their childish folly and have no further impact beyond their separation in not too long a time after. The former situation is a conservative ideal – the latter situation, while deplorable, is a limited harm done to two individuals by one another – and they bear the psychological and emotional costs of this harm.
  2. Redefine marriage in such a way as to make it immaterial to this essay.
  3. Marry in established religious orders with their own body of private church, synagogue or mosque laws governing marriage – thereby making it extremely difficult to actually lead to a situation wherein people would marry who had no intention of staying married, or who thought that the civil laws would somehow sanction their later change of hearts. Would we still have people leaving their spouses? Yes. Would they be able to benefit financially and otherwise from this immoral decision on the basis of civil laws which protect the right to divorce? No. They would, in fact, if ever their vows turned out to be worthless, lose all credibility in said religious community – which would be strengthened by the loss of such elements form their midst.

Thus, by restoring full responsibilities for the regulation of marriage to individuals and churches, we would restore the grand sense of overwhelming obligation that a man and woman ought to feel before what is supposed to be a mighty institution. Surely this serves the development of strong families, secures faith, and ultimately leads to the patriotism of a people who love their country because it gives them the means to be self-governing men and women?

It is not, you will note, my contention that the abolition of marriage laws will lead to perfect marriages. Rather, it is to show that private regulation of marriage is a fact and a tradition (at least in the Catholic church, and I expect in many others), that this is a matter that individuals have been dealing with well for ages – and that to take away the powers and responsibilities of the individuals and their churches for marriage is to mold dependents rather than independent citizens.

August 3, 2011

Peter S Rieth [send him mail] is an American citizen, born in Poland and educated at Hillsdale College, Michigan.

Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

FCC to police media, BLOGGERS THAT’S YOU

this new step will eventually give the FCC the power to take out websites like TheBonfireMedia, TheBlaze and many others. Your VOICE must be stopped because it’s harming Obama and the Big Govt. Libs.

The Federal Communications Commission is planning a broad probe of political speech across media platforms, an unprecedented move that raises serious First Amendment concerns.

The FCC’s proposed “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” which is set to begin a field test in a single market with an eye toward a comprehensive study in 2014, would collect a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview.

The airwaves regulator would also subject news producers in all media to invasive questioning about their work and content.

A methodology worked up by Silver Spring, Maryland-based Social Solutions International (SSI) says that in addition to its general evaluation of news content, the survey will include a “qualitative component” featuring interrogations of news organization owners, management and employees.

Among the questions federal contractors will be asking of private media companies:

For media owners:

“What is the news philosophy of the station?”

For editors, producers and managers:

“Do you have any reporters or editors assigned to topic ‘beats’? If so how many and what are the beats?”

“Who decides which stories are covered?”

For reporters:

“Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers (viewers, listeners, readers) that was rejected by management?” (Followup questions ask the reporter to speculate on why a particular story was spiked.)

According to a May article in Communications Daily, Social Solutions International will be paid $917,823 for the study, which also questions news consumers about their habits and numerically codes news content according to how well, in the FCC’s view, it meets the “critical information needs” (CIN) of particular “communities.”

“The FCC has a duty to make sure that the industries it regulates serve the needs of the American public no matter where they live or what financial resources they have,” acting FCC chairwoman Mignon Clyburn said in a May announcement of the survey. “The research design we announce today is an important next step in understanding what those needs are, how Americans obtain the information critical to their daily lives in a dynamic technological environment, and what barriers exist in our media ecologies to providing and accessing this information.”

Other observers take a less sanguine view of the proposal.

“In this study, the FCC will delve into the editorial discretion of newspapers, web sites and radio and TV stations,” Hudson Institute Fellow Robert McDowell, who served as an FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2013, told The Daily Caller. “This starts sticking the government’s nose into what has traditionally been privileged and protected ground. Regardless of one’s political stripes, one should be concerned.”

via FCC to police media, question reporters in content survey | The Daily Caller.

Kerry Says World Leaders Mocked Him

Kerry Says World Leaders Mocked Him Over Shutdown

Im sure it’s not over the shutdown John it’s that they’ve seen The Addams Family and their making jokes behind your back or to your face as i would. 

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Just how bad was the shutdown for America’s image on the world stage? So bad, says Secretary of State John Kerry, that foreign officials joked about buying him meals.

“I have seen how our allies, our partners and those who wish to challenge us or to do us harm are all sizing us up every day,” Kerry said at an event hosted by Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “What we do in Washington matters deeply…that’s why a self-inflicted wound like the shutdown can never happen again.”

Kerry added that the shutdown delayed security aid to Israel. “The dysfunction and the shutdown and the simplistic dialogue that came with it didn’t impress anyone,” he said.

The federal government was mostly shuttered for 16 days after House Republicans refused to sign off on a budget unless it stripped away funding for President Obama’s health care law. The impasse was condemned repeatedly by the Democratic leaders and progressive policymakers at the conference.

“I do love this country, damnit, and this country is in deep trouble,” declared former Vice President Al Gore. “What happened down there on Capitol Hill was pathetic.”

The shutdown sent the GOP’s approval ratings spiraling downward, leading some Democrats to think they might be able to take over the House in the 2014 mid-term election. “If they stay on course Democrats have a good chance,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman who led the Democratic Party’s House campaign committee. “If they reverse course than it’s a district by district scenario.

Gerrymandering by GOP-led state legislatures, however, have left few competitive seats. “This is a map that the Republicans designed nationwide,” Emanuel said. “If you want to win it back, you have to pick the lock nationwide.”

Senator Cruz returns to Texas welcome after shutdown battle

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, returned home to a rousing welcome in Texas on Saturday after his attempt to derail Obamacare with a shutdown of the federal government led to sharp criticism of his tactics as reckless and futile.

“After two months in Washington, it’s great to be back in America,” Cruz joked in speaking to a crowd of about 750 people in a packed downtown San Antonio hotel ballroom.

Cruz was greeted with an eight-minute standing ovation in an appearance organized by the Texas Federation of Republican Women. People in attendance, many of them wearing red to show their support for keeping Texas a conservative-leaning state, lined up to greet him.

The speech and another talk earlier in the day at a panel in Austin marked Cruz’s first public appearance in his home state of Texas since his part in the showdown in Washington over the rollout of Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day shutdown of the federal government that ended on Thursday.

A related stalemate over the debt limit threatened to lead to a default on U.S. government debt until the Senate on Wednesday voted 81-18 to end the crisis and the House of Representatives followed with a vote of 285-144 to approve the plan, allowing government to open without defunding Obamacare.

Cruz in his speech in San Antonio blasted Senate Republican leaders for “failing to stand with House Republicans against the train wreck that is Obamacare.”

He declined to criticize any Republicans by name.

While he said the agreement to end the shutdown and extend the debt ceiling was a “lousy deal for the American people,” Cruz said the battle he and other Republicans waged will end up helping his party.

Cruz became a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and even from key Republicans when he staged a 21-hour filibuster-style talk on the floor of the Senate last month, as part of his attempt to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Texas senator, who has been in office for 10 months since his election last year, received scathing criticism from Democrats, the White House and even some of his fellow Republicans in the Senate during the shutdown and the debate leading up to it.

Senator John McCain from Arizona, a former presidential candidate, and Representative Peter King from New York have been two of the most vocal Republican opponents of Cruz’s tactics, with McCain calling Cruz and his allies “wacko birds.”

Cruz also took a hit in the polls. A Gallup poll released on October 10 found he had gained significant name recognition, but the percentage of Americans with an unfavorable view of him has jumped to 36 percent from 18 percent in June.

But the welcome Cruz received in Texas demonstrated his popularity among many Republican activists has grown.

In an interview with Reuters after his speech, Cruz said there is “a lot to be encouraged about” after the battle in Washington.

“We saw what can happen when the American people unite, when the American people stand up,” he said. “What the American people want is economic growth and job creation. They are crying out for something that fixes all the enormous damage that Obamacare is causing.”

(Additional reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)

(treachery, treason, knavery, dishonest, ASSWAGON) McConnell: No More Shutdowns Over Obamacare

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear on Thursday that repealing Obamacare would never be used by Republicans again to bring the federal government to a halt.

“One of my favorite old Kentucky sayings is there’s no education in the second kick of a mule,” McConnell told The Hill. “The first kick of a mule was when we shut the government down in the mid-1990s — and the second kick was over the last 16 days.”

“There will not be a government shutdown,” the Kentucky Republican added.

Urgent: Should the House Have Agreed to Debt Deal? Vote Here 

The Obamacare strategy was pushed by several young congressional Republicans backed by the tea party — including freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, who spoke against the healthcare plan for more than 21 hours on the Senate floor last month — which led to a 16-day partial shutdown of the government and jeopardized the nation’s borrowing authority.

“I think we have fully now acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is,” McConnell told The Hill. 

The federal government reopened 
on Thursday after a battle-scarred Congress approved a bipartisan measure to end the shutdown and avert the possibility of an economy-jarring default on U.S. obligations.

President Barack Obama signed the measure early Thursday after the House and Senate passed it late Wednesday.

The legislation funds the government through Jan. 15 and extends the nation’s debt ceiling through Feb. 7. It ended a brawl with Republicans who tried to use the must-pass legislation to mount a last-ditch effort to derail the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and demand concessions on the budget.

The White House directed all agencies to reopen promptly and in an orderly fashion. More than 350,000 furloughed federal employees across the country were expected to return to work on Thursday.

Standard & Poor’s estimated the shutdown has taken $24 billion out of the economy, and the Fitch credit rating agency warned on Tuesday that it was reviewing its AAA rating on U.S. government debt for a possible downgrade.

McConnell told The Hill that the fight to stop the healthcare law would not take place in January, either, even though he and many other Republicans “hate, detest, and despise Obamacare.”

Noting that some Democrats would like to repeal the 2.3 percent medical-device tax that is used to finance the healthcare law, McConnell said Republicans are out of luck on ending or altering Obamacare before 2017 “unless Democrats get so shaky about parts of it.

Urgent: Should the House Have Agreed to Debt Deal? Vote Here 

“They may, depending upon the amount of heat they get from their constituents because of rising premiums, because of job loss, because of the chaos of the exchanges, they may be open to changes,” he said.

“But full-scale repeal is obviously something that’s not going to be achievable until I’m the majority leader of the Senate and we have a new president,” McConnell said.

In several exclusive interviews with Newsmax in recent weeks, McConnell related the “math problem” Republicans face in the Senate in trying to repeal Obamacare.

The GOP holds 46 seats in the upper chamber, versus 52 for Democrats. The Senate also has two independents, and they caucus with the Democrats.

“We demonstrated once again that every single Republican is in favor of defunding Obamacare,” he told Newsmax after senators backed a measure to temporarily fund the government that Obama later rejected. “We had a solid party-line vote. Our difficulty, of course, in achieving that has to do with simple mathematics.”

Meanwhile, McConnell told The Hill that he took over the negotiations leading to the final agreement after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the White House rejected the latest offer from House Republicans.

“By the time I came in [Wednesday], it was clear to me that it was up to me to get us out of the government shutdown and make sure we didn’t default,” he told The Hill.

He said he related the party’s untenable position to fellow Republican senators privately via football analogies, looking toward being in a better position to seek cuts in spending and entitlement programs next year.

“So I met with my members. I said, ‘Look, I think we all know I have a weak hand here,'” McConnell told The Hill. “I’m on my own two-yard line. The offensive line is a little shaky, and what best I think we can do is get off a punt here to try to get into a better field position.”

But his requirements for the deal were that it not raise taxes nor jeopardize the spending cuts imposed through sequestration.

“We didn’t raise taxes and we didn’t bust the caps, but we’ll be back at it in January and February, which is why I call it a punt, with better field position to fight again another day,” McConnell told The Hill.

McConnell: No More Shutdowns Over Obamacare.

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