Washington Merry-Go-Round

Tax-exempt Obama Foundation doesn’t exist at listed addresses

2013-05-21T04:35:00.002-04:00

The “charity” run by President Barack Obama’s half-brother that was fast-tracked for IRS tax-exempt status is based at a Virginia UPS store, according to its website.

The organization’s IRS filings list another Virginia address that is actually a drug rehab center where the foundation does not appear ever to have been based.

The Barack H. Obama Foundation is run by Abon’go “Roy” Malik Obama, the half-brother of Barack Obama.

As first reported by The Daily Caller, the foundation was speedily approved for IRS exemption by Lois Lerner, the IRS senior official at the center of the targeting of conservative organizations that have waited over two years to receive tax exempt status.
The charity was even given retroactive tax-exempt status despite never having bothered to apply for it. And its history of soliciting donations before receiving tax-exempt status was apparently overlooked.

The address listed on the site barackhobamafoundation.org is 107 S. West St. #401, Alexandria, Va., which houses a UPS store on a street that includes a tailor, a Catholic Charities thrift shop and a Gold Works jewelry store.

“They probably just rent a mailbox here or receive mail here,” said a UPS employee when asked if the store was the address for the Barack H. Obama Foundation. She did not know if Malik Obama, who his website says divides his time between Kenya and Virginia, had been in to the store.
A visit to the UPS store revealed that there is a mailbox numbered 401.

The address listed in the group’s IRS filings — 4201 Wilson Blvd. Ste 110-152, Arlington, Va. 22030 — is even more suspicious, as it is a marketing center for A Better Today Recovery Services — a drug-and-alcohol treatment organization.

A receptionist who answered the phone at A Better Today said neither she nor anybody in the office had heard of the Barack H. Obama Foundation. She said A Better Today had been located at the Arlington address for “a couple years.” The IRS filings that list the Arlington address as the foundation’s headquarters were dated May 2011.

“I don’t know if it’s listed wrong or what’s going on, but we have never heard of that,” the receptionist said, adding that A Better Today had never received calls or correspondence related to the Barack H. Foundation.

Although the future president’s 1995 book “Dreams From My Father” depicted the foundation’s namesake, Barack H. Obama, Sr., as a heavy drinker who lost both legs in a car accident, the foundation does not appear to take any interest in addiction treatment.

The foundation’s mission statement is “to provide people everywhere with resources to uplift their welfare and living standards in memory of Barack H. Obama: in the region of his birth, Kenya, and beyond.”

Its guiding principle is “the inherent belief that no one can truly enjoy the riches he has reaped if his neighbor suffers. … We seek to elevate the human condition so that everyone can live in dignity and truly enjoy having one another as neighbors.”

Despite raising more than $250,000, the alleged charity doesn’t seem to have done much. Its website claims the organization has built a madrassa and was building an imam’s house as well as some “proposed latrines,” but there is no other evidence that the nonprofit was working to “mitigate social-shortcomings in areas of education and literacy, health and well-being, poverty, and lack of community infrastructure in such basic needs such as water, electricity, shelter and sustenance,” as the site says.

Alton Ray Baysden, a former Department of State employee and registered Republican who helped to start the foundation, declined to comment before seeing copies of this reporter’s passport and government ID, along with a description of the article’s “motivation” and “slant.”

Repeated phone calls to the Barack H. Foundation went to the organization’s voicemail and were not returned.

Source

IRS Scandal Could Hurt Obama's Health Care Law

2013-05-20T04:53:00.003-04:00

Political scandals have strange ways of causing collateral damage.

The Internal Revenue Service has a major role in carrying out President Barack Obama's health care law, and Republicans are hoping the furor over federal tax enforcers singling out conservative groups will take down the Affordable Care Act.

There is a link, but it may only be coincidence. No one appears to have connected the dots factually, and it's unclear whether they will.

The IRS is highly involved in the health care law because financial assistance to help the uninsured afford coverage will be funneled through the tax system. At the same time, the IRS is also responsible for penalties on individuals and employers who fail to comply with the law's requirements.

But the really tantalizing connection is that a former head of the office that subjected tea-party groups seeking tax exemptions to tougher scrutiny is now running the tax agency's division in charge of implementing the health care law.

That official apparently switched roles before internal alarm bells went off about the problem. But feed all that into today's frenzied world of online speculation, and red-meat associations are irresistible.

In Saturday's weekly GOP radio and Internet address, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris tried to make the connection.

"If we've learned anything this week, it's that the IRS needs less power, not more," Harris said. "As matter of fact, it turns out that the IRS official who oversaw the operation that's under scrutiny for targeting conservatives is now in charge of the IRS's Obamacare office. You can't make this stuff up."

Earlier in the week, debating the latest GOP bill to try to repeal the health care law, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., also reached for a link. Citing the IRS role in administering the law, she said:

"Under Obamacare, the average American will pay more, they'll get less, and now they have to worry that their government may punish them because of their beliefs."

Nonsense, says Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS.

"There really isn't a tie," said Levin. "This is another effort by the Republicans to essentially try to score political points."

The head of the IRS health care office, Sarah Hall Ingram, was in charge of the tax exempt division when agents first started improperly targeting conservative groups over their applications for tax-exempt status. The fallout has already led to the ouster of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, followed by the announcement that the current head of the division will retire.

But the IRS said Ingram was re-assigned to help the agency implement the health care law in December 2010, about six months before a Treasury inspector general's report said her subordinate, the director of exempt organizations, learned about the targeting.

"There isn't any evidence that Sarah Ingram had any inkling of the problems," said Levin. In contrast, Levin continued, ousted commissioner Miller failed to adequately inform Congress after he learned.
At a congressional hearing on the IRS scandal Friday, Miller was grilled by Rep. Pat Tiberi, R-Ohio, about Ingram's shift to running the IRS health care office.

Tiberi: "Why would you promote somebody to that position who was in charge of the exempt organization division, which certainly has had some controversy over the last couple years, under an investigation?

Miller: "Because she's a superb civil servant, sir."

Tiberi: "So she had nothing to do with this?"

Miller: "I wouldn't imagine so."

GOP lawmakers are smart to be looking for a connection, said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, but must be careful not to overplay their hand.

The health care law "is 50-50 with the public on a good day," said Davis. "You put that together with the IRS and it's combustible. For Republicans, I think they need to go a little slower and get some facts in."

"I don't think it's just a couple of underlings, but they don't have any smoking gun yet," he added.
Though it plays a crucial role in carrying out the health care law, the IRS is part of the back-office operation. IRS agents won't be setting up health insurance markets, and they won't have a say in which health plans people get to pick or what doctors they see.

However, agency officials will determine who is eligible for financial assistance under the law — and who must pay penalties.

The reason the IRS is involved in what's essentially a social program is that lawmakers crafted the financial subsidies available under the health law as tax credits. The agency already administers another major social program, the earned income tax credit, which long ago surpassed welfare as the main source of government assistance for low-income families.

The IRS handles four major components of the health care law. The most important one is determining if individual Americans are entitled to new tax credits to help pay private insurance premiums. It's a complex calculation.

Keyed to income on a sliding scale, the credits are available starting in 2014 to households making up to four times the federal poverty level, or about $94,000 for a family of four. Individuals or families are eligible if they don't have affordable coverage on the job. But if you understate your income to get a bigger credit, you'll owe more taxes next year.

The agency is also in charge of assessing penalties on people who ignore the law's requirement to carry health insurance, which applies to virtually all Americans starting next year.

On the employer side, the IRS administers a tax credit to help small businesses with low-wage employees afford coverage, and it's also in charge of imposing penalties on companies with 50 or more employees that don't offer coverage.

Read the entire article

Senate immigration gang frustrates GOP efforts to bolster border enforcement

2013-05-17T04:58:00.004-04:00

The Senate Gang of Eight stayed unified through the third day of marking up immigration reform legislation, frustrating Republican attempts to strengthen the bill’s enforcement provisions.
Democrats touted the Senate Judiciary Committee’s passage of three Republican amendments to crack down on the future hiring of illegal immigrants but senior Republicans on the panel were left disgruntled by the failure of stronger proposals.
“The gang’s agreement to stick together is firmly in place. They’ve united in opposition to a lot of good amendments,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “Anything that comes close to being a significant vote they voted ‘no’ on.

“I’m disappointed in that,” he added.

Republican members of the Gang of Eight, Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.), joined with Democrats to defeat a proposal sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) requiring the government to implement an E-Verify program to combat the future hiring of illegal workers within 18 months after the bill’s enactment.

Republicans on the Gang of Eight and Democrats quashed a second Grassley amendment to delay the pre-emption of state and local laws related to employment eligibility verification until employers across the nation are required to use the E-Verify program. E-Verify is an Internet-based system that allows businesses to verify the legal status and work eligibility of prospective employees.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) joined Gang-of-Eight Republicans and Democrats on both votes, bolstering their hopes that he may vote for the broader bill.

The committee instead moved to soften E-Verify regulations to spare small businesses from added costs, adopting a proposal sponsored by Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.).

The Franken amendment requires annual accuracy audits of E-Verify and reduces the cap on penalties for businesses failing to use or misusing the program if audits show error rates above 0.3 percent. It covers first-time violations.

Franken argued that having to verify the employment eligibility of workers mistakenly identified as illegal is a burden on businesses.

Franken’s proposal passed on a voice vote despite opposition from Grassley and Flake.

Flake noted the legislation already includes a four-year phase-in period for small businesses.

“I think that there are protections in the legislation,” he said. “I know we come under a lot of criticism for not going after employers and making sure employers are fined when they run afoul of the law.”

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the lead Democratic sponsor of the bill and a member of the Gang of Eight, persuaded Franken to hold off on another amendment that would have exempted businesses with 14 or fewer employees from e-verify until low error rates had been achieved.

Schumer called that proposal a deal breaker.

Pro-immigrant advocacy groups said they were pleased with the bill’s progress after the first three days of markup.

“Overall there’s been a very concerted effort that has resulted in protecting the basic architecture of the agreement, which is very welcome to organizations like mine,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, director of immigration and national campaigns at National Council of La Raza.

Schumer touted the panel’s adoption of three Grassley-sponsored amendments that he said would strengthen enforcement.

One amendment requires U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to provide weekly reports about people who fail E-Verify checks; a second amendment requires a parent or guardian to attest to the identification of minors for employment verification; a third allows parents to lock the Social Security numbers of children to safeguard against identity theft.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has taken the lead in selling the bill to conservative voters, praised the changes.

Rubio’s office said the revised bill empowers parents to protect children from becoming the victims of fraud within the E-Verify system and noted the original bill allowed anyone over the age of 21 to attest to the identity of a minor for purposes of employment.

Pro-immigrant groups, however, raised concerns about the Grassley amendment requiring Citizenship and Immigration Services to issue reports on people who failed e-verify.

“The problem is as we know there are a lot of ways to use and misuse those kinds of tools and one of the things we’re concerned about is having certain employers willing to use a tool like that to intimidate workers speaking up about bad working conditions,” said Martinez Del Castro.

“What are going to be the measures to protect workers when unscrupulous employers try to use it for a different purpose?” she said.

Critics of the bill said the amendments did not go far enough to prevent future waves of illegal immigration.

"After two weeks of considering amendments to the Gang of Eight immigration bill, the Senate Judiciary Committee has generally failed to strengthen the loophole-filled enforcement provisions or to reduce the harm of radically expanded immigration numbers on unemployed and underemployed Americans," said Roy Beck, executive director of NumbersUSA, which opposes granting millions of illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.

The committee postponed action on a package of amendments sponsored by Hatch to ease regulations on companies hiring foreign workers under the H-1B visa program. Schumer requested a delay for more time to negotiate a deal, prompting an exasperated response from Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).

“At some point, we have to vote on these things,” Leahy said.

Hatch told reporters Thursday afternoon that a compromise on visas for high-skilled workers is necessary to secure his support for the bill.

“We've got to iron out the H-1B situation so it doesn't push businesses to hire people overseas, which is what the current language will do, and everyone who looks at it knows that,” Hatch told reporters Thursday afternoon.

“I think if we don't solve their problem, it will sink the bill,” he said.

The Judiciary panel will resume its markup on Monday morning. Leahy plans to report the bill out of committee by the end of next week.

Source

How the IRS and Benghazi Fuel the Washington Trust Divide

2013-05-16T04:29:00.005-04:00

The IRS’ targeting of conservative groups has nothing to do with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, but these two political tornados collided simultaneously into the White House Friday and continue to swirl around Washington.

Both stories are like catnip for conspiracy theorists. On the Internal Revenue Service, conservative groups and lawmakers have for years complained they were getting harassed by the IRS. Maybe they weren’t imagining things.

On Benghazi, conservatives have long alleged that the White House tried in the immediate aftermath to downplay that terrorism led to the consulate attack. Their suspicion is that the White House didn’t want to admit a terrorist attack occurred right before the presidential election.

But talking points on Benghazi, it turns out, underwent heavy revisions. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl unearthed those edits last week.

But while in both cases some long-held suspicions were confirmed, and the two have combined to dominate the political airwaves in the past several days, there are some key distinctions between the two.

First, disdain at the IRS has been swift and bipartisan. The tax-collecting agency, it turns out, was targeting conservative political groups as it assessed tax-exempt status for new organizations. The IRS scandal burst forth out of nowhere Friday and seems poised to dominate the political conversation.

Lawmakers from both parties have called on the acting IRS commissioner to resign. Indignant hearings are expected on Capitol Hill later this week.

The Benghazi story, on the other hand, has become ultra-partisan as it has percolated for months. Republicans on Capitol Hill have argued that the Obama administration intentionally played down the possibility that the attack on the consulate was a planned terrorist attack.

Sure, President Obama referred to it as “terror” the day after Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three others died in Benghazi. But Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations said shortly thereafter that it might have been spontaneous reaction to a video.

In hindsight, she was wrong. The question is whether the Obama administration was intentionally misleading or just misguided. The revelation Friday that the State Department was heavily involved in extensive editing of talking points that were given to Susan Rice set administration critics on fire.
That sort of political meddling is what the IRS story lacks so far.

Obama strongly condemned political targeting by IRS staffers in Cincinnati. He said today that he didn’t learn about the story until Friday.

He said he would wait for an internal IRS investigation to take action.

“But I’ve got no patience with it,” he said. “I will not tolerate it. And we’ll make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.”

And he added that “integrity” is key for the IRS.

“People have to have confidence that they’re applying it in a nonpartisan way, applying the laws in a nonpartisan way,” he said. “I don’t care whether you’re a Democrat, independent or a Republican. At some point there are going to be Republican administrations. At some point there are going to be Democratic ones. Either way, you don’t want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate.”

Compare that to his dismissive tone regarding the Benghazi controversy, which he called a “sideshow.”

“There’s no there there,” he said of controversy about the Benghazi talking points.

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Friday it doesn’t really matter whether President Obama knew specifically what the IRS was doing when it targeted conservative groups. Obama, McConnell said, deserves some blame regardless.

“They all take their cues from the tone expressed by the president, and he’s made it clear that this administration is perfectly willing to crack down on critics,” McConnell told the National Review.

“… This is a lot bigger than just one person,” he added. “This a whole effort by the administration, across the board, to squelch their opponents, to shut them up, and, finally, they’ve done it in a way that will allow us to call attention to it nationwide.”

This is an important distinction.

You wouldn’t know it from the way people talk about the IRS, but IRS agents – at least before this new political scandal – actually aren’t all that reviled.

Here’s how ABC pollster Greg Holyk put it just before Tax Day this year in summarizing an ABC News-Washington Post poll:

“The Internal Revenue Service, for its part, is more popular than the tax system it administers. This poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, finds that about half of Americans see the IRS favorably, half unfavorably, 49-48 percent, better than one might expect for an organization that has to carry out the task of tax collection.”

It is true the IRS ranks near the bottom in favorability for government institutions. A 2010 Pew Poll found the IRS with a 47 percent favorability. But that’s a 9 point increase since a similar poll in 1998. Other government agencies, while seen more favorably than the IRS, have suffered falling popularity. The Food and Drug Administration had 75 percent favorability in the late 90s. It was down to 58 percent in 2010.

These institutions all have better favorability than Washington in general and Congress in particular.
Just 28 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Washington, the lowest ever in a Pew survey.
“This is more about elected officials in Washington, than it is about bureaucracy,” said Pew’s Michael Dimock, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, trying to explain the discrepancy between attitudes toward the people elected to run the government as opposed to individual pieces of the bureaucracy.

“They don’t really like either [institutions like the IRS or politicians], but politics is worse,” Dimock said. “A big part of the dark cloud is politics. There’s always a lot of distrust of Washington politics.”
He added that this latest scandal, by politicizing what is supposed to be a nonpartisan government agency, could hurt impressions of the IRS, particularly among the limited government advocates whose interest groups were receiving special scrutiny.

“This cuts so close to the concerns of the tea party movement,” he said. “It is the script. This is what they’re worried about. Here is the government trying to use its power to tip the scales.”

Source

An Interview With Barack Obama About The IRS Scandal, AP Phone Records And Benghazi

2013-05-15T05:10:00.003-04:00

Does Barack Obama have any idea what is going on in the government that he is supposedly running? Scandals are erupting all around him, and he supposedly was not aware that any wrongdoing had taken place in any of those instances. It is almost as if every major government agency has gone rogue and Obama has no idea what the heck they are doing. According to Obama, he often doesn't learn what those under his authority are up to until he sits down and turns on the news. Should we believe him when he claims ignorance over and over again, or is Obama just trying to protect himself? Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, the revelations that have come out in recent days about the IRS, the seizure of AP phone records and Benghazi should be very alarming to you. Taken together, these scandals paint a picture of a federal government that has become drunk with power, and no matter where you may fall on the political spectrum that is something that nobody should want.

Posted below is a fictional interview that I have created between an anonymous reporter and Barack Obama about the IRS scandal, the seizure of AP phone records, Benghazi and other sensitive topics. Yes, this interview is a bit absurd, but so is the notion that Barack Obama is completely ignorant about so many important things that are going on inside his own government...
REPORTER: "President Obama, the IRS has publicly admitted that they were specifically targeting patriot groups and Tea Party organizations for 'extra scrutiny'. When did you first learn about this?"

REPORTER: "But how is that possible? We have now learned that the targeting of patriots and Tea Party groups began as early as March 2010. The head of the IRS tax-exempt organizations division was informed about this targeting in June 2011, the chief counsel for the IRS knew about this targeting by August 2011, the deputy commissioner for services and enforcement knew about this targeting by March 2012, and IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller knew about this targeting by May 2012. Throughout this period of time, the IRS repeatedly lied to Congress when they were specifically asked about the targeting of conservative groups. Are you claiming that nobody from your administration ever had any contact with anyone from the IRS about this?"

REPORTER: That is what the IRS was claiming at first. But now the Washington Post is reporting that "IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups." That would seem to indicate that this was being coordinated on a nationwide level by someone at the IRS. Would you care to comment on that?

REPORTER: But you were just commenting on it. Don't you think that the American people deserve the truth about this?

REPORTER: Okay, let's switch gears. Did you know that the Justice Department was spying on AP reporters just months before the 2012 election? Did you know that two months of cellular, office and home telephone records were secretly obtained without any explanation last April and May?

REPORTER: The Associated Press is now the enemy? Without a free and independent media, what would keep us from descending into tyranny?

REPORTER: But shouldn't we be alarmed when government agencies target specific groups of people for their political beliefs? Breitbart is reporting that the EPA "has routinely charged conservative and watchdog groups fees that the agency has waived for the mainstream media and 'green' groups". Do you know anything about this?

REPORTER: I understand that these are tougher questions than you normally get from the media. But I think that the American people deserve some answers. For example, would you like to discuss Benghazi?

REPORTER: Very funny Mr. President. What about the Fast and Furious scandal? Would you be willing to talk about that?

REPORTER: Are there any difficult subjects that you would be willing to discuss? I have questions here about the Secret Service prostitution scandal, Solyndra, the new NSA spy center out in Utah, government ammunition stockpiling, the NDAA, drone strikes, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers. Would you be willing to answer any of those questions?

Source

Multiple Agencies Involved with IRS in Intimidation

2013-05-14T02:59:00.001-04:00

Tea party groups' allegations that the IRS has long been targeting them for their political beliefs were recently confirmed by an apology from the IRS. The scandal gained traction as congressional leaders began efforts to hold the IRS accountable and understand the depths of the federal government’s politically-motivated abuses of power.

Yet given the history of such abuses, the problem may extend further than the IRS, and require a "government-wide" probe across several agencies, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested.

The issue was initially believed to only involve groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names being singled out for greater scrutiny by the IRS, but recent admissions reveal that a wide range of conservative and constitution-oriented groups were singled out by the federal government. Most media outlets have focused on 2012 as the year the abuses occurred, but one prominent Tea Party-initiated organization, True the Vote, began to run into alleged federal government abuses in 2010--from a variety of agencies.

True the Vote, a Houston-based nonprofit which focuses on election integrity issues, was formed by Catherine Engelbrecht and her King Street Patriots Tea Party group. True the Vote applied to the IRS for their 501(c3) non-profit status in July 2010, and almost immediately their problems began.

Within two years, multiple federal agencies, along with an EPA-affiliated Texas state agency, began auditing True the Vote and its founders, visiting their group, their businesses, and asking questions of people who knew them. The IRS was not the only governmental agency involved.

True the Vote’s experiences with the IRS’s abuse of power were recently discussed by Catherine Engelbrecht in a previous interview with Breitbart News. She said:

We applied for nonprofit C-3 status early in 2010. Since that time the IRS has run us through a gauntlet of analysts and hundreds of questions over and over again. They’ve requested to see each and every tweet I’ve ever tweeted or Facebook post I’ve ever posted. They also asked to know every place I’ve ever spoken since our inception and to whom, and everywhere I intend to speak in the future.

Engelbrecht’s application with the IRS for non-profit status allegedly triggered aggressive audits of one of her family’s personal businesses as well. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) began a series of inquiries about her and her group; the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) began demanding to see her family's firearms in surprise audits of her and her husband’s small gun dealership--which had done less than $200 in sales; OSHA (Occupational Safety Hazards Administration) began a surprise audit of their small family manufacturing business; and the EPA-affiliated TCEQ (Texas Commission on Environment Quality) did a surprise visit and audit due to “a complaint being called in.”

The Democratic Party of Texas filed a lawsuit against her, as did an ACORN affiliated group. Both the FBI and the BATF continued to poke around her life, the lives of people in her Tea Party group, and her businesses.

Ultimately, the IRS determined that it actually owed a refund to Engelbrecht; the BATF found nothing wrong in any of its repeated visits and audits; OSHA’s fine-toothed comb found reason to demand $25,000 from Engelbrecht’s family business; and TCEQ demanded the Engelbrechts spend $42,000 on additional storage sheds.

“This is what the beginning of tyranny looks like," Engelbrecht said. "My family and I have lived with great concern that we would be subject to even greater government abuses if we were vocal about what they were doing to us because of our political views and our efforts to increase governmental accountability.

"We are now convinced the only way to protect ourselves from our government is to speak out and bring our story straight to the American people. If such politically-motivated governmental abuses of power can happen to us, they can happen to anyone,” said Engelbrecht.

Source

Lamar Alexander slams Sebelius over Iran-Contra-style health care scandal

2013-05-13T04:30:00.005-04:00

Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander says Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius may be involved in an Iran-Contra-style health care scandal and he wants Congress to investigate it.

The Washington Post reported Friday that Sebelius is asking private companies involved in health care to contribute funds to Enroll America, a nonprofit that is working to help implement the Affordable Care Act by enrolling the uninsured and educating Americans on the new law. Congress has turned down requests from the Obama administration for additional funds to help implement the ACA.

Alexander, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, called for an investigation into Sebelius’ actions Saturday, saying it “may be illegal, should cease immediately and should be fully investigated by Congress.”

“Such private fundraising circumvents the constitutional requirement that only Congress may appropriate funds. If the secretary or others in her department are closely coordinating the activities of Enroll America, which is headed by a former White House aide, then those actions may be in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act,” he said.

He compared such behavior to the Iran-Contra scandal, “when Reagan administration official Oliver North raised funds and directed their spending through private entities in support of Nicaraguan rebels even though Congress had refused to appropriate such funds.”

A report from the Joint Select Committee charged with investigating the Iran-Contra incident determined that “Congress’s exclusive control over the expenditure of funds cannot legally be evaded through the use of gifts or donations to the executive branch,” Alexander noted.

Alexander added that Sebelius’ actions also possibly violated “federal laws prohibiting raising private funds from those she regulates.”

HHS spokesman Jason Young told Bloomberg News that Sebelius had not solicited money from any companies she regulates.

HHS did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Source

House Foreign Affairs Chair: More Benghazi Hearings Coming

2013-05-10T04:42:00.001-04:00

The day after the House Oversight Committee’s blockbuster hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attack of September 11, 2012, House Foreign Relations Committee chair Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) told Breitbart News that the Oversight Committee would hold more hearings:

The Committee continues its examination of the deadly Benghazi terrorist attacks so we can ensure that the bureaucratic failures that left State Department personnel vulnerable are not repeated. The Committee will continue to review the responsibility of senior State Department officials for the failure to provide proper security prior to the Benghazi attacks and needed improvements in embassy security.

Based on testimony in Wednesday’s Benghazi hearing that contradicted the rosy findings of the Obama-appointed Accountability Review Board, Royce has also introduced the Accountability Review Board Reform Act of 2013. He penned a letter to other House members on Thursday encouraging such reforms to the Accountability Review Board process. “Yesterday,” Royce wrote, “the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing that reaffirmed the flaws in the Benghazi ARB’s review. Specifically, the ARB found that the responsibility for the ‘systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies within the State Department stopped at the Assistant Secretary level. As we heard throughout the hearing, this was simply not the case.”

Royce’s proposed legislation would help sever the bond between the ARB and the State Department – currently, the Secretary of State “appoints four out of the ARB’s five members – a clear majority that could influence the outcome of any investigation.” It would change the ARB staffing so that it isn’t as reliant on the State Department. Board members with conflicts of interest would be banned. The Secretary of State would have to hand over a list of staffers to Congress. And the ARB report would have to go to Congress, not merely the Secretary of State.

“These improvements seek to strengthen future ARB investigations to help avoid disasters like Benghazi,” Royce wrote. “Please join me in co-sponsoring this legislation.”

Source

Benghazi whistleblower: ‘I’ve been demoted’ for challenging Susan Rice’s claims

2013-05-09T04:42:00.003-04:00

Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Benghazi, told Congress today that a State Department official began criticizing his job performance, and he was ultimately demoted, after he asked why U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice attributed the Benghazi attack to an anti-Islamic Youtube video.

“In hindsight, I think it began after I asked the question about Ambassador Rice’s statement on the TV shows,” Hicks said of the criticism during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the attack today.

Hicks said he asked Assistant Secretary Beth Jones why Rice made the statements that she did on the 9/16/13 Sunday talk shows.

“Her reaction was ‘I don’t know,’ and it was very clear from the tone that I should not proceed with any further [questions],” he told lawmakers.

On September 12, Jones had emailed Hicks and several other State Department officials stating that she told the Libyan government that the Benghazi attack had been carried out by a terrorist group.

“I spoke to the Libyan ambassador and emphasized the importance of Libyan leaders continuing to make strong statements,” Jones wrote in the email, from which Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., read during the hearing. “I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”

Jones eventually “delivered a blistering critique of my management style,” Hicks said, “[and] even exclaimed “I don’t know why Larry Pope [the top U.S. diplomat in Libya] would want you to come back.”

Hicks told the committee, “I’ve effectively been demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer.”

Source

It’s come to this: Solar installer now suing the government for more money

2013-05-08T05:08:00.004-04:00

This is where the path of relentlessly determined government subsidization of politically-preferred, rather than free-marked-selected, fledgling technologies has brought us: A troubled global solar industry awash in oversupply and rent-seeking, and taxpayer dollars being spent on a lawsuit with a solar company that wants still more taxpayer dollars. The mind reels.

Last December, the Inspector General of the Treasury launched a probe of the three largest providers of solar panel installation companies that received funds from the much-vaunted 1603 Program — “Payments-In-Lieu-Of-Tax-Credits,” part of President Obama’s stimulus law meant to help the residential market make a switch to more renewable-energy use — as part of an ongoing investigation into whether the companies received excessive government grants via inflating their reported work costs.

One of the companies in question, SolarCity (several of whose executives and venture capital firm backers, you might remember, were generous Obama donors), is now countering with their own lawsuit against the federal government, demanding that they haven’t been paid enough money because their payouts were actually smaller than promised. From the WSJ:

The suit, filed quietly in February in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, comes as SolarCity and other industry players are defending solar-friendly government policies, and it could undermine the industry’s message that solar power will soon be viable without government help. …

The government is looking into whether SolarCity and other firms misrepresented the fair-market value of solar systems in order to boost the value of the grants they received. In its suit, SolarCity says two of the company’s subsidiaries received smaller-than-expected grants. The company doesn’t say exactly how much funding it applied for originally, but it says the final grants issued by the Treasury Department were $8 million less than was proper under the law.

The company says it could lose millions of dollars more if the government does the same thing on all $400 million in grants it has sought. …

SolarCity, of San Mateo, Calif., installs solar panels on homes and businesses and sells shares in those systems to investors. The company, which went public in December, depends heavily on federal and state subsidies and government policies that support solar-power development.

“…depends heavily on federal and state subsidies.” Gee, whatever would we do without the federal government using our money to pick the products they feel we should be buying, for us? ‘Cause let’s not forget who’s really to blame here: Yes, it sounds suspiciously like this company really doesn’t care about cheating the taxpayers as long as they can get theirs, but hey, they’re trying to get the best deal they can out of a contract promised to them by the feds. All of this cronyism, waste, and artificial market-distortion is only made possible by the cancer that is big-government largesse in the first place and the many ways in which it encourages people and businesses to rent-seek rather than survive on their competitive merits.

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Bill Ayers defends Weather Underground bombings, dismisses comparison to Boston blasts

2013-05-07T04:25:00.003-04:00

Left-wing radical Bill Ayers, a longtime friend of President Barack Obama, recently defended the series of bombings that he carried out as a member of the Weather Underground, saying that his bombings were not like the Boston Marathon attack and that America is the most violent country that has ever been created.

Ayers — who participated in a series of anti-Vietnam War bombings in the early 1970s including an attack on New York City police department headquarters and the Pentagon — answered an Akron Beacon Journal reporter’s questions after giving a keynote speech at an event commemorating the anniversary of the 1970 Kent State National Guard shootings.

Ayers said that there is no equivalence between his bombings and the deadly bombings that rocked the Boston Marathon.

“What I did was some destruction of property to issue a scream and cry against an illegal war in which 6,000 people a week are being killed,” Ayers said.

Ayers reportedly said that the United States is the most violent country that has ever been created, and said that Republican Senator and Vietnam War hero John McCain committed daily war crimes.
“Six thousand a week being killed and I destroyed some property. Show me the equivalence. You should ask John McCain that question … I’m against violence,” Ayers said.

“To conflate a group of fundamentalist people [in Boston] who are nihilistic in some way with a group of people who spent their lives trying to oppose the murder of 6,000 people a week … and still the killing went on. And still the killing went on. What would you have done?” Ayers said.

“There’s no equivalence [with Boston]. Property damage. That’s what we did,” Ayers said.

But Ayers was involved in a Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970 that resulted in the accidental deaths of three Weather Underground members who were preparing a bomb. Ayers subsequently went underground as a fugitive from justice.

Ayers has since served as a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been a “family friend” to Obama, who previously lived in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, where Ayers and wife Bernadine Dohrn reside.

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Democrats now critical of Rice's Benghazi explanation, amid more damaging evidence

2013-05-06T05:18:00.001-04:00

Congressional Democrats on Sunday distanced themselves from the Obama administration’s explanation of the Benghazi, Libya, attacks in the immediate aftermath of the fatal strikes, amid mounting evidence that suggests the information was revised to intentionally mislead Americans.
The original explanation of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, was written by CIA officials, then revised by State Department and White House officials, according to news reports and witness testimony made available to Fox News.

Removed from the CIA's so-called talking points were references to “Islamic extremists” and Al Qaeda in Libya. And five days later, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, made the Sunday talk show rounds to say the attacks were “demonstrations” sparked by protests in Egypt over an anti-Islamic video on YouTube.

However, the video is never mentioned in the numerous talking-points drafts, according to a Weekly Standard story last week, based in part on a 43-page House report and records of official emails.

“Well, it was scrubbed,” Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Steve Lynch told “Fox News Sunday.” “It was totally inaccurate. There's no excuse for that. It was false information. And what they try to do is harmonize what happened in Benghazi with what happened everywhere else across the Middle East.”
Lynch also acknowledged the talking points were likely revised to reflect President Obama’s decry – with his re-election bid in the balance -- that “Al Qaeda is on the run.”

Maryland Democratic Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also acknowledged Sunday the facts as told by Rice were wrong.

“At the time, as it turns out” the information was incorrect, he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation”
Ruppersberger, who was briefed by the CIA about the attacks in immediate aftermath, asked agency officials what congressional leaders could tell the public, according to The Weekly Standard story.

On Sunday, he also said he welcomes a House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee hearing this week in which Greg Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of attacks, is expected to say Rice said the attacks didn’t appear to be “pre-meditated or pre-planned,” despite having information suggesting they were.

“That's what an investigation is about,” Ruppersberger told CBS. “Let's get the facts.”

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Terrorism and The Obama Doctrine

2013-05-03T04:27:00.004-04:00

Editor’s note: Over the course of President Obama's first term in office, the president and senior officials of his administration have given a series of major speeches on the legal framework for confronting terrorists overseas. The speeches collectively represent the fullest statement the administration has given of the law of drones, targeted killing, and the larger approach to the war against Al Qaeda and its allies. In the new e-book Speaking the Law, Kenneth Anderson and Benjamin Wittes, members of the Hoover Task Force on National Security, dissect the Obama administration's major speeches on national security law. Below is an excerpt of the first chapter of the book. You may read the introduction of the book here.

Let us begin with a simple effort to summarize and reconstruct what the Obama administration has actually said in its speeches on national security legal policy to date—keeping in mind that President Obama’s reelection likely means that this body of statements will not represent an exhaustive account of the administration’s views of these subjects. Here we offer, initially without much greater ambition, an overview of official statements on the wide range of issues the administration has addressed.

Our aim here is not to offer analysis, praise, or critique. Rather, we strive to weave the speeches together around the topics that seem most important in establishing the administration’s national security legal doctrine and to construct a synthetic policy document that brings all of the major policy threads together in one place. In doing so, we necessarily make some editorial decisions about what parts to include and exclude and how to intertwine them as a single statement and voice.

We do this knowing that officials gave these speeches at different times and under different circumstances across the last four years, and we specifically organize the summary thematically, not temporally. The exercise gives a sense of just how comprehensively the administration has, in fact, addressed a set of issues on which critics often accuse it of obfuscation and silence. We begin with those issues that frame the nature of the conflict at its deepest level.

The Fundamental Nature of the Conflict and the Law Governing It

The speeches at their most fundamental are an effort to characterize legally the struggle against transnational terrorism by non-state groups and the powers the United States government has deployed to wage this fight. The speakers seek both to declare and to expound upon the US government’s exercise of national security powers in counterterrorism operations at home and abroad; at the same time, they seek to establish and maintain the legal and political legitimacy of those operations among the American people and, to the extent possible, in the wider world.

One of the striking features of the speeches is their consistent acknowledgment that international law meaningfully limits the American exercise of these powers. After the Bush administration, which very publicly—at least at first—denied legal constraints in general, and international legal constraints in particular, this is not a foregone conclusion in the construction of the US position.

Yet other countries have access, or soon will have access, to the kinds of methods and means of counterterrorism that the United States deploys. And, perhaps with that fact in mind, as a matter of general principle the speeches acknowledge that the principles we apply to ourselves—principles of both permission and limitation in confronting transnational terrorist adversaries—we must grant to other sovereign states in similar situations.

President Obama acknowledged this point directly in his December 10, 2009, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in Oslo:

[A]ll nations—strong and weak alike—must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I—like any head of state— reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do and isolates and weakens those who don’t. . . . Furthermore, America [cannot insist] . . . that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified.

This high-altitude principle infuses a great deal of the rhetoric and persuasive ambition of many of the speeches. And its acknowledgment represents an important starting place. It’s also a comforting one for many who ache to see the United States embrace international legal standards.

But it leaves open the question of what fundamental paradigm of international law actually governs the activities that constitute the American confrontation with international terrorists. Is the fundamental legal paradigm one of the laws of war and armed conflict, on the one hand, or is it extraterritorial law enforcement as limited by international human rights law, on the other—or perhaps some mixture of these distinct legal authorities?

The differences here are not academic; they can yield radically different answers to questions concerning the use of force and its conduct, starting with whether there is an obligation to seek to arrest and detain someone before striking with lethal force. They also guide questions of how one detains and tries suspects for crimes.

The Obama administration’s answer to this fundamental question is far less comforting to those who seek a kinder, gentler American counterterrorism. The administration has decisively rejected the widespread expectation that Obama’s election heralded a return to a purely—or more purely—law enforcement approach, at least insofar as that expectation included in the short term a law enforcement–dominated approach outside of the United States itself.

From the beginning, the administration has emphasized a kind of bifurcated nature of the conflict, in which law enforcement dominated domestically while war dominated beyond US shores. The speeches disclaim, at least as a policy matter, any intention to use law-of-war powers here at home and fiercely defend the criminal justice apparatus as a means of dealing with both US citizens captured abroad and anyone captured state-side. On the other hand, they also emphasize that the fundamental relationship between the United States and the enemy groups it confronts is one of armed conflict, as a matter of international as well as domestic law. Let’s consider these points in turn.

As early as May 21, 2009, President Obama himself insisted that warfare lay at the heart of the relationship in his address at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., saying, “Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with Al Qaeda and its affiliates.” The administration has since consistently maintained both that the current conflict is authorized by domestic law—specifically by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and by the president’s inherent constitutional power to defend the nation—and that these authorities are consistent with international law.

As Attorney General Eric Holder put it on March 5, 2012, in his address at Northwestern University School of Law:

[T]here are instances where our government has the clear authority—and, I would argue, the responsibility—to defend the United States through the appropriate and lawful use of lethal force.

This principle has long been established under both US and international law. In response to the attacks perpetrated—and the continuing threat posed—by Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, Congress has authorized the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those groups. Because the United States is in an armed conflict, we are authorized to take action against enemy belligerents under international law. The Constitution empowers the president to protect the nation from any imminent threat of violent attack. And international law recognizes the inherent right of national self-defense. None of this is changed by the fact that we are not in a conventional war.

The insistence that the United States is in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda and its affiliates, or associated forces, is unwavering across all the speeches. The nature of this conflict, it bears emphasis, involves actual war—not war as a metaphor for policy seriousness, but armed conflict in the strict legal sense. This is the US government’s position even though the enemy is not a state. In the parlance of international law, the United States considers itself as fighting a “non-international armed conflict”—that is, an armed conflict against something other than another sovereign state. To continue reading this chapter at no charge, please click here.

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Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith

2013-05-02T06:31:00.003-04:00

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”.

The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith.

(From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military are guilty of “treason,” and of committing an act of “spiritual rape” as serious a crime as “sexual assault.” He also asserted that Christians sharing their faith in the military are “enemies of the Constitution.”)
Being convicted in a court martial means that a soldier has committed a crime under federal military law. Punishment for a court martial can include imprisonment and being dishonorably discharged from the military.

So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime--possibly resulting in imprisonment--for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains—military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith (mostly Christian pastors or priests, or Jewish rabbis)--whose duty since the founding of the U.S. military under George Washington is to teach their faith and minister to the spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruction, or comfort.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion.

In response to the Pentagon’s plans, retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), said on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning:

It’s a matter of what do they mean by "proselytizing." ...I think they’ve got their defintions a little confused. If you’re talking about coercion that’s one thing, but if you’re talking about the free exercise of our faith as individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, especially for the chaplains, they I think the worst thing we can do is stop the ability for a soldier to be able to exercise his faith.”

FRC has launched a petition here which has already collected over 60,000 signatures, calling on Secretary Hagel is stop working with Weinstein and his anti-Christian organization to develop military policy regarding religious faith.

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State Department downplays reports of Benghazi bullying

2013-05-01T04:38:00.002-04:00

The Obama administration found itself in the cross hairs of mounting Republican frustration Tuesday over national security policy, with particular focus on unanswered questions surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings last month and the terrorist attack last year on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

With 134 Republican members of the GOP-controlled House now signed on to a bill that would create a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks, Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, seethed that U.S. national security has “deteriorated” under President Obama’s watch.
“If Benghazi is not an example of system failure before, during and after the attack, what would be?” asked Mr. Graham. “If Boston is not an example of a pre-9/11 stovepiping mentality, what would be?”

Mr. Graham made the remarks on a day when Mr. Obama told reporters that he was unaware of recent accusations by Benghazi whistleblowers that they were being intimidated by the administration over their cooperation with congressional investigators.

While Mr. Obama pledged to look into the matter, State Department officials vowed closer communication with Congress about Benghazi while seeking to discredit a media report that claimed someone in the administration warned CIA and State Department officials not to speak out about the incident.

When asked about the report, Secretary of State John F. Kerry responded that “there’s an enormous amount of misinformation out there” and that he was appointing his own chief of staff, David Wade, to work directly with lawmakers in an effort to answer any questions related to the Benghazi attack, in which U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

“We have to demythologize this issue and certainly depoliticize it,” said Mr. Kerry. “The American people deserve answers. I’m determined that this will be an accountable and open State Department as it has been in the past, and we will continue to do that, and we will provide answers.”

Later Tuesday, another State Department official took on a dismissive posture toward a report Monday by Fox News. In the report, Washington power lawyer Victoria Toensing said she is representing a State Department employee who has been threatened by unidentified Obama administration officials not to cooperate with lawmakers seeking to keep the Benghazi attack in the headlines.

“The State Department would never tolerate or sanction retaliation against whistleblowers on any issue, including this one,” said the department’s deputy spokesman, Patrick Ventrell. “That’s an obligation we take very seriously.”

Sensitive material

Mrs. Toensing, a former Justice Department official and former Republican counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also told Fox that at least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained attorneys or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attack to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Her claims appeared to dovetail with a letter written Friday to Mr. Kerry by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, suggesting that the State Department is deliberately making it difficult for private lawyers to achieve security clearances needed for the lawyers to represent department officials.

“In each case, witnesses may need to share sensitive or classified information with their lawyers,” wrote Mr. Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “The Department’s unwillingness to make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish information to Congress.”

But Mr. Ventrell on Tuesday said that the department’s leadership was “not aware of any employees who have requested … security clearances for private attorneys in connection with Benghazi.”

“In the event of such requests, the department has a security clearance process in place under which clearances can be provided to private attorneys who are representing individual employees of this building,” said Mr. Ventrell. “We’re not aware of any.”

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Supreme Court: States can deny FOIAs from out-of-state residents

2013-04-30T05:50:00.003-04:00

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday morning that states had the right to deny Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from non-residents. Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote the court opinion stating that, “This court has repeatedly made clear that there is no constitutional right to obtain all the information provided by FOIA laws.”

The ruling comes from a case brought by Rhode Island resident Mark J. McBurney and California resident Roger W. Hurlbert after their FOIA request for a child-support petition from McBurney’s divorce was denied, AP reports. The plaintiffs sued on grounds that denying their request was in violation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause, as well as the dormant Commerce Clause.

“Requiring noncitizens to conduct a few minutes of Internet research in lieu of using a relatively cumbersome state FOIA process cannot be said to impose any significant burden,” Alito wrote.

Virginia is not the only state to have such provisions in place against non-residents being able to request information through the FOIA process. Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, New Hampshire and New Jersey all have limiting laws to their FOIA process.

The case, McBurney v. Young, 12-17, was first brought to the Supreme Court in April 2012, with main arguments heard in February 2013. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion with Alito.

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Immigration bill grants amnesty to employers of illegals; no prosecution for bogus IDs

2013-04-29T04:51:00.004-04:00

The debate is raging over whether the latest immigration bill is an amnesty for illegal immigrants, but one part is clear: The legislation would forgive businesses that have employed those immigrants illegally.

Employers who have allowed illegal immigrants to work off the books can come forward safely and provide their work history without fear of prosecution, and businesses that knowingly employed someone using a bogus or stolen Social Security number likewise would get a pass, according to an analysis of the bill by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that wants a crackdown on immigration.

“The illegal workers at least have to pay a token fine. The employers of illegal immigrants who violated a whole list of laws themselves don’t even have to pay,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the center. “It’s the business side of the amnesty that doesn’t get a lot of focus.”

Business groups’ support is considered critical to getting a bill passed this year, but attention has been focused mostly on a guest worker program and requirements that all employers would have to meet, such as using an electronic verification system to check potential hires.

Indeed, it wasn’t until business groups, led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, struck a deal with the AFL-CIO on a guest worker program that the final Senate bill came together.

The chamber said the provisions exempting businesses from penalties “had nothing to do” with earning their support.”Our focus in assessing the bill was looking to the good faith compliance and safe harbor provisions and other terms of the E-Verify mandate, the revisions to the high-skilled worker program, and the creation of a workable low-skilled worker program,” said Blair Holmes, a chamber spokeswoman.

The crux of the Senate bill, negotiated by four Republican senators and four Democrats, would legalize most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., but withhold a full pathway to citizenship for most of them until after the Homeland Security Department takes more steps to secure the border and implements the electronic verification system for employers.

All sides are still combing through the 844-page bill, trying to figure out what it would do. One major fight is over how many foreigners would be let into the country as a result of higher caps on legal immigration.

The Center for Immigration Studies says more attention should be given to the free pass for businesses.It counts four different ways businesses get a break: Employers who have illegal immigrants on their payroll can keep them there with no penalty; there is no assessment of back taxes for their employees who worked off the books; those who paid unfair wages will not be prosecuted; and those who aided fraud by accepting bogus Social Security numbers won’t face a penalty.

“It lets businesses that knowingly violated the law off the hook,” Mr. Krikorian said. “If they were not withholding payroll taxes, they’re held harmless. If they were violating labor laws, they’re held harmless. So this is a boon for crooked business.”

The word “amnesty” itself is loaded. The bill’s backers argue that it isn’t an amnesty for illegal immigrants because it imposes a penalty of a long wait for citizenship and a nominal fine. Opponents say illegal immigrants are almost immediately safe from deportation, which amounts to an amnesty.

The backers appear to be winning the public relations battle. A poll by MWR Strategies, released last week, found that 38 percent of voters labeled the Senate bill as “immigration reform,” compared with 30 percent who labeled it “amnesty.”

What to do about businesses that hire illegal immigrants has long been a sticking point in the debate.

The last time Congress granted an amnesty, in 1986, lawmakers legalized millions of immigrants but vowed to secure the borders and crack down on businesses that were magnets for the flow of people.

Knowingly hiring illegal immigrants became illegal and is punishable by fines ranging from $250 per employee for a first offense up to $10,000 per employee for a third offense. If prosecutors can demonstrate a pattern, employers can face up to six months in jail.

The current bill again promises to crack down on employers with fines and the potential for jail time.

Numbers are difficult to come by, but the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 55 percent to 60 percent of illegal immigrants are working on the books, which means their taxes are being paid — though they are credited to bogus or stolen Social Security numbers.

The Obama administration has stepped up enforcement against employers compared with its predecessor, conducting far more reviews of businesses’ immigration records.

In 2006, for example, George W. Bush’s administration didn’t issue any final orders imposing penalties on businesses. But the Obama administration in 2011 issued 385 final orders, for a total of $10.5 million in fines.Mr. Krikorian said one question is whether it would be worth the cost to the government to try to go after business scofflaws for back taxes or other penalties. He said that would be difficult given the short time frames written into the Senate bill. If Congress writes a longer-term bill that requires Internal Revenue Service audits of illegal immigrants and businesses, he said, it might be possible.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will begin voting on amendments to the bill next week, once lawmakers return from a weeklong vacation.

The business amnesty could prove tricky to navigate when the bill comes to the Senate floor. Amendments imposing penalties on businesses that broke the law could be attractive for many lawmakers but could upset the delicate balance of the bill.

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USDA to Mexico: Illegal immigrants can have food stamps

2013-04-26T04:24:00.003-04:00

With food stamp spending in the United States skyrocketing since the beginning of the recession, the Department of Agriculture is paying to promote food stamp usage to illegal immigrants for the sake of their American children, according to documents obtained by a government watchdog.

“The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance,” Judicial Watch announced today. “Emphasized in bold and underlined, the statement reads, ‘You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.’”

The USDA said the program is designed to help American children. “[The USDA Food and Nutrition Service] understands that mixed status households may be particularly vulnerable,” FNS’ Yibo Wood wrote to Mexican embassy officials in a January 2012 email. “Many of these households contain a non-citizen parent and a citizen child.”

The food stamp program may be cut when Congress moves to pass a farm bill this year. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., introduced a bill last week to cut $30 billion from the $760 billion the program is expected to spend over the next ten years.

“Since President Obama came into office, SNAP participation has increased at 10 times the rate of job creation, the annual spending on SNAP has doubled, and one in seven Americans now participates in SNAP,” Thune said in a statement on the bill. “This explosive growth in both the SNAP enrollment and federal cost of the program is alarming and requires lawmakers to take cost-effective legislative control measures.”

“We save taxpayers $30 billion and make sure that families in need still receive a helping hand,” Stutzman added. “This is a common-sense start for Congress’ Farm Bill discussions as we look for ways to tackle Washington’s nearly $17 trillion debt.”

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Obama, Clinton blew Benghazi response, Republican report says

2013-04-24T05:09:00.003-04:00

House Republicans have concluded that the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies bear no blame for failing to halt the terrorist assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last year, releasing a report Tuesday that said President Obama and the State Department set up the military for failure.

The report also found that plenty of intelligence presaged the attack, but the White House and State Department — including the secretary at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton — failed to heed the warnings.
In the most damning conclusion, House Republicans said Mr. Obama’s team lied about the attacks afterward, first by blaming mob violence spawned by an anti-Muslim video, and then wrongly saying it had misled the public because it was trying to protect an FBI investigation.

“This progress report reveals a fundamental lack of understanding at the highest levels of the State Department as to the dangers presented in Benghazi, Libya, as well as a concerted attempt to insulate the Department of State from blame following the terrorist attacks,” the GOP investigation concluded in its 46-page report.

The White House dismissed the report as a rehash of questions the administration has answered, and said it has provided extraordinary cooperation.

The report was released after rank-and-file Republicans feared the pressure to get answers on the Benghazi attacks was subsiding.

Some House Republicans want to create a Watergate-style special committee to investigate the attacks, but leaders have resisted, saying the existing investigative, defense, foreign affairs, intelligence and judiciary committees can handle it. Tuesday’s interim report is the result.

The report also could dog Mrs. Clinton if she returns to politics.

The Sept. 11 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

The GOP report said the White House was responsible for prohibiting the mention of terrorism, and the report said administration officials were trying to shield themselves from criticism that they had been too lax in security.

“It is clear that the State Department expressed concerns — and was backed by the White House — that the information be removed to avoid criticism for ignoring the general threat environment in Benghazi,” the report said.

Democrats on the five committees fired off a letter Tuesday saying they were left out of the report-writing entirely, and that the end result was biased.

“You are sacrificing accuracy in favor of partisanship,” the ranking Democrats on each committee said in a letter to House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said the report goes over old ground and that some of the conclusions conflict with the State Department’s internal review.

“The State Department’s Accountability Review Board — the independent body charged with reviewing the attacks and evaluating the interagency response — released its report which specifically found that the interagency response was ‘timely and appropriate’ and ‘helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans,’ while also making important recommendations to improve security that we are in the process of implementing,” she said.

She said the administration has cooperated with the House committees’ efforts to investigate.

But House Republicans said the State Department’s review fell short. The GOP report said blame for lax security extended all the way to Mrs. Clinton.

The State Department didn’t comment on the report, but Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who took over for Mrs. Clinton this year, told House lawmakers last week that he would appoint a special liaison to try to dispel lingering questions. Still, he dismissed the core of the GOP’s charge.

“I don’t think anybody lied to anybody,” he said.

The Benghazi attacks played a major role in last year’s presidential campaign, with Republican nominee Mitt Romney arguing Mr. Obama was slow in recognizing it was a terrorist assault.

In a major turning point in the presidential debates, Mr. Obama retorted that he had mentioned terrorism in his first remarks on the attacks in a speech from the White House Rose Garden.

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Gun group chief: Liberals OK with liberals dying in Boston to force more gun control

2013-04-23T05:39:00.004-04:00

Larry Pratt, the head of the lobbying group Gun Owners of America, recently agreed with a pair of conservative Internet TV hosts who asserted that liberals didn’t mind if other liberals were killed in bombings like the one in Boston last week because “they are like the Chinese” and “they got a billion backups.”

Creative People’s Network host Steve Davis told Pratt in an interview last week that liberals “love guns,” but they just wanted to keep them out of the hands of conservatives.
“They just don’t want us to have guns,” Davis explained. “And they don’t care how many of us get killed, blown up, assaulted murdered, whatever, as long as they can control us by taking away our guns.”

Co-host Stan Solomon pointed out that it wasn’t just conservatives and Republicans that were going to die, “because these people that were killed and maimed and devastated and traumatized [in Boston] were overwhelmingly their people.”

“They don’t care, they are like the Chinese who don’t care if they have a million casualties because they got a billion backups,” Solomon insisted.

“That’s exactly right,” Pratt agreed. “This is mission oriented, they don’t care who the victims are.”
“If anything it might be to their liking because maybe they’re thinking that will make the liberals all the more prone to want more control, which plays right into the hands of terrorists and criminals, but then I repeat myself.”

Watch this video from the Creative People’s Network, uploaded on April 22, 2013.

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SAUDI NATIONAL'S DEPORTATION RECORD ALTERED

2013-04-21T23:55:00.005-04:00

Breitbart News has learned that the Saudi National questioned after the Boston Marathon Bombing had his deportation order records altered, rescinding his deportation order.

The alteration occurred the night before Secretary Napolitano vehemently denied the existence of any deportation order in testimony before the House of Representatives. Sources with knowledge of these matters says the change occurred subsequent to Secretary John Kerry's closed door meeting on Tuesday with the Saudi Minister and around the time of the meeting between the Saudi Minister and Obama later on Wednesday evening.

The Saudi National has been identified as Abdulrahman Ali Al-Harbi. There is no evidence that Al-Harbi is connected to the Boston Marathon Bombings.

Steven Emerson announced on Wednesday night's episode of Hannity that the Saudi National who was a person of interest and later cleared, was set to be deported.

Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was questioned by Congressman Jeff Duncan about the alleged deportation in a House hearing. Napolitano responded “I am unaware of anyone who is being deported for national security concerns at all related to Boston. I don’t know where that rumor came from.”

Congressman Duncan pushed Napolitano and she retorted:

“I am not going to answer that question, it is so full of misstatements and misapprehensions, that it is just not worthy of an answer....there has been so much reported on this that has been wrong, I can’t even begin to tell you, congressman.”

Emerson appeared for a second time on Hannity on Thursday night to reveal that "the documents are going to surface or at least members of Congress have it right now, and they'll make the contents public."

HANNITY: I have multiple sources, high level, within our government, that told me the exact same thing. That this Saudi national, they said now is a witness, not a suspect, but saying is to be deported Tuesday, I was told for the exact same thing, for national security reasons. I did see the video where Janet Napolitano denied any knowledge of that, but yet it's been confirmed now by multiple sources.

EMERSON: And the documents are going to surface or at least members of Congress have it right now, and they'll make the contents public. We don't know if he was connected to the bombing or not, but it's a strange coincidence for sure.

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Top Obamacare jobs vacant for months at HHS as Baucus fears 'train wreck,' Issa demands docs

2013-04-19T06:49:00.003-04:00

Top executive jobs have been vacant for months at the Department of Health and Human Services key Obamacare insurance program, but officials there refuse to talk about the problem.

The vacancies appear to support Sen. Max Baucus' complaint Wednesday to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that Obamacare is headed toward a "train wreck."

Baucus, a Montana Democrat, is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and was a key architect of Obamacare in 2010. Sebelius was testifying before the panel on how her department is implementing Obamacare.

"You need data. Do you have any data? You've never given me data. You only give me concepts, frankly," the senator told Sebelius, referring to how HHS has handled implementation of Obamacare more generally.

The vacancies are at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, a key federal agency established under Obamacare to implement major parts of the health reform.

Evidence has been mounting for months of management problems within CCIIO. Vacancies have plagued the center since its inception. The center now has its third director in three years.

Other vacancies are in CCIIO's financial management group and consumer service division. The vacancies have been listed for months on CCIIO's website.

An HHS spokesman refused to comment, despite repeated requests from The Washington Examiner.
The specific vacancies fall on three vital areas: consumer protection, financial operations and the establishment of 24 health care co-operatives start-ups.

Two of the top four executive slots are unfilled in the insurance program office, which oversees the establishment of the $2 billion health care cooperative start-ups.

The job of insurance director is being performed by Teresa Miller on an acting basis. She splits her time between the Insurance Group and a CCIIO oversight group.

Three of five director positions are vacant at CCIIO's Payment Policy and Financial Management Group.

The vacancy in the consumer services director post may partially explain what Baucus said resulted in the fact "small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect."

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., recently echoed Baucus' complaints about lack of responsiveness from HHS on Obamacare implementation.

Issa is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"HHS did not provide a single document" the committee requested, Issa told Sebelius in a March 25 letter, a comment repeated by other congressional oversight committees including the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.

The vacancies may also contribute to multiple problems in the $2 billion Obamacare co-op program that have been reported by The Washington Examiner. Among the problems are hundreds of millions of dollars in loans made by CCIIO to groups led by executives with criminal records, as well groups with abyssmal ratings by state insurance regulators, little or no experience in health insurance management or operations, apparent conflicts of interest between CCIIO advisors and loan recipients, and other indicators of inadequate management.

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Immigration bill would spend $50 million to advise illegals

2013-04-18T05:52:00.003-04:00

The Senate’s Gang of Eight immigration bill offers $50 million in taxpayer-funded assistance to help illegal immigrants file for the multi-stage amnesty offered by the controversial bill.

The proposed spending is intended to help illegals get “registered provisional immigration status,” which is the first stage of the legalization process.

The money can be given to activist groups to support immigrants who need help “completing applications and petitions, including providing assistance in obtaining the requisite documents and supporting evidence … applying for any waivers for which applicants and qualifying family members may be eligible,” according to Section 2106, beginning on page 131 of the complex 844-page bill.

The very long bill also includes language granting the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to spend the money on other priorities.

The money can be used for “providing any other assistance that the Secretary or grantees consider useful or necessary to apply for registered provisional immigrant status,” the bill says.

Also, in more good news for illegal immigrants, the $50 million may be just a down payment.

Section 2106(d)2(A) of the law provides a five-year authorization to congressional appropriations committees to spend even more taxpayer funds to help activist groups guide illegal immigrants in their quests for green cards as well as access to taxpayer aid and welfare programs.

“In addition to the amounts made available under paragraph (1), there are authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be necessary for each of the fiscal years 2014 through 2018 to carry out this section.”

The money is to be distributed by the secretary first “to eligible public or private nonprofit organizations.”

Paragraph B excludes for-profit companies from the task. Instead, it only allows “a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization, including a community, faith-based or other immigrant-serving organization, whose staff has demonstrated qualifications, experience, and expertise in providing quality services to immigrants, refugees, persons granted asylum, or persons applying for such statuses.”

A variety of Democratic-leaning organizations would meet those requirements. They include La Raza and Casa De Maryland, both of whom are strongly promoting the new amnesty and guest-worker bill.
If the bill passes, eligible activist groups will likely apply for the funds.

At least 11 million people are expected to apply for the multi-stage amnesty if the bill becomes law.

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Focus on Gun Control and Immigration Reform Diverted After Boston Bombings

2013-04-17T05:55:00.000-04:00

What was billed as a pivotal week for gun control and immigration reform on Capitol Hill has turned into a mourning period for those killed and injured in the bombings in Boston.

Tuesday’s much-anticipated press conference to unveil the first major immigration overhaul in decades was postponed “out of respect for the victims of the terrible tragedy in Boston,” wrote Sen. John McCain of Arizona on Twitter. Gruesome scenes from the finish line of the Boston Marathon have replaced images of the victims of the Newtown school shootings and their families on the front pages.

“Major national calamities like this tend to freeze everything else,” said David Axelrod, a former White House adviser to President Obama. “The focus will be on Boston for days, crowding out other news. Immigration reform, which was on the launching pad, will have to wait for a few days. As for the gun debate, proponents of background checks will delay action because, with nearly 90 percent on their side, they'll want the full attention of the nation on that vote.”

A president who has grappled with a recession and two wars now faces the challenge of juggling his response to the violence in Boston with a crowded domestic agenda. In a striking example of the balancing act, Obama held a Tuesday morning press conference on the bombings and was scheduled to meet later in the afternoon with Sens. McCain and Chuck Schumer of New York on their new immigration bill.

Until more details about the bombings come to light, until officials learn whether they were the work of a lone perpetrator or a foreign terrorist cell, it’s unclear how much time and attention will be demanded from the administration.

“You have to be ambidextrous in the White House,” said Mike McCurry, who served as press secretary under President Clinton. “Every White House has to contend with multiple crises happening at the same time.”

President George W. Bush’s first term in office was dominated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaving ambitious plans to overhaul immigration law and Social Security until his second term. “Domestic issues were always important, but the focus was on keeping the country safe,” said Sara Fagen, who served as White House political director under Bush. When the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed on April 19, 1995, President Clinton was still reeling from the 1994 midterm election that cost Democrats control of Congress. Health care reform had been a colossal failure.

“Clinton was at a much different starting point, in that there were articles being written about whether the office of the presidency was even relevant,” McCurry said. “The speech he gave when he went down to Oklahoma City many people credit with shifting the focus back to the bully pulpit and its possibilities. The bombing changed the equation in a significant way and gave Clinton some momentum going into the budget fights that occupied most of 1995.”

Indeed, one of the most pivotal roles of a president during a national tragedy is to rally the country. In his nationally televised briefing, President Obama praised the marathon runners, emergency responders, and hospital personnel who tended to the wounded.

“The American people refuse to be terrorized,” he said. “So if you want to know who we are, what America is, how we respond to evil -- that’s it. Selflessly. Compassionately. Unafraid…. The people of Boston will continue to respond in the same proud and heroic way that they have thus far -- and their fellow Americans will be right there with them.”

Though the president cautioned against speculation, finger-pointing is inevitable in a highly charged political arena. Rep. Steve King of Iowa told National Review that Congress shouldn’t rush into immigration reform in the aftermath of the bombings.

“Some of the speculation that has come out is that yes, it was a foreign national and, speculating here, that it was potentially a person on a student visa,” King said. “If that’s the case, then we need to take a look at the big picture.”

He added: “If we can’t background-check people that are coming from Saudi Arabia, how do we think we are going to background-check the 11 to 20 million people that are here from who knows where?”

McCain, one of the sponsors of the immigration bill, said he disagreed with drawing a connection between the bombings and the bill.

“I don’t think it’s related,” he said. McCain also suggested that if the culprits turned out to be in the country illegally, the bill would address the problem head on. “In fact, our provisions are to secure the border more,” he said. “I think it’s an argument for quick passage of it.”

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Congress Guts Key Provision from Government Insider Trading Law

2013-04-16T05:03:00.000-04:00

Last week, the House and Senate passed a bill that would gut a key provision of the popular STOCK (Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge) Act that bans congressional insider trading and increases financial transparency for lawmakers, members of the executive branch, and their staffs.

The bill passed last week strikes down the STOCK Act’s requirement that financial records of some 28,000 federal officials—which are already publicly available in paper form—be made available online via searchable databases. Government watchdog groups say this provision would have increased transparency and helped root out potential financial conflicts of interest and cronyism in government deals, grants, and contracts.

Federal workers fiercely opposed the transparency measure. In a dramatic letter, a bipartisan roster of former senior federal officials warned that making records that are already public record accessible in a digitized, searchable format posed a dangerous threat to national security that could be a “jackpot” for “enemies of the United States intent on finding security vulnerabilities they can exploit.”

Government watchdog groups slammed the gutting of the STOCK Act, claiming the reversal of the act was based on scaremongering and was an effort by Washington insiders to protect one another and keep taxpayers in the dark.

“Continuing to obscure the contents of these reports by eliminating the database requirements is unnecessary and uncalled for,” said Dan Auble of the Center for Responsive Politics. “The filings of federal employees are and for many years have been available as part of the public record."
"In this day and age, publicly disclosed should mean available online,” he reasoned.

Lisa Rosenberg of the Sunlight Foundation agreed: “Security through obscurity as a justification to repeal the transparency provisions of the STOCK Act starts us down a slippery slope where any government action or information could be taken offline in the name of safety.”

Overwhelming bipartisan support for the STOCK Act emerged in 2011 after the publication of the book Throw Them All Out by Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer revealed that members of Congress were using nonpublic information to enrich themselves.

Schweizer’s book prompted a 60 Minutes investigation that produced an explosive exchange between CBS veteran reporter Steve Kroft and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over a Visa IPO she and her husband gained access to. The investment helped the Pelosis bag a 203% rate of return on a $1 million to $5 million purchase of Visa stock (politicians are required to report investments in ranges, not exact amounts).

Pelosi denied any wrongdoing in the deal.

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