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A Libertarian Turn on Marijuana Legalization, Same-Sex Marriage and Gun Rights

Are Americans becoming more libertarian on cultural issues? I see evidence that they are, in poll findings and election results on three unrelated issues — marijuana legalization, same-sex marriage and gun rights.

Start with pot. Last November voters in the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana, by a 55 to 45 percent margin in Colorado (more than Barack Obama’s margin in the state) and by 56 to 44 percent in Washington.

In contrast, California voters rejected legalization 53 to 47 percent in 2010. These results and poll data suggest a general movement toward legal marijuana.

State legislatures in Denver and Olympia have been grappling with regulatory legislation amid uncertainty over whether federal law — and federal law enforcers — override their state laws.

But marijuana has already become effectively legal in many of the states that have reduced penalties for possession of small amounts or have legalized medical marijuana. You can easily find addresses and phone numbers of dispensaries on the Web.

Same-sex marriage, rejected in statewide votes between 1998 and 2008 and most recently in North Carolina in May 2012, was approved by voters in Maine and Maryland in November 2012, and voters then rejected a ban on it in Minnesota.

Since then, legislators in Delaware, Minnesota and Rhode Island have voted to legalize same-sex marriage. A dozen states and the District of Columbia now have similar laws that would have been unthinkable two decades ago.

I have yet to see signs of political backlash. Polls show that support for same-sex marriage is well nigh universal among young Americans, but it has also been rising among their elders.

To some it may seem odd to yoke together marijuana and gay rights, generally thought of as causes of the left, with gun rights, supported more by the political right. Yet in all three cases Americans have been moving toward greater liberty for the individual.

One landmark was the first law, passed in Florida in 1987, allowing ordinary citizens to carry concealed weapons. Many, including me, thought that the result would be frequent shootouts in the streets.

That hasn’t happened. It turns out that almost all ordinary citizens handle guns with appropriate restraint, as they do with the other potential deadly weapon people encounter every day, the automobile.

Concealed-carry laws have spread to 40 states, with few ill effects. Politicians who opposed them initially, like former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, have not sought their repeal.

In contrast, voters have reacted negatively to gun control proposals, even after horrific events like the Newtown massacre. That was apparent in the Senate’s rejection of the Toomey-Manchin gun registration bill.

What about the cultural issue that most pundits mention first, abortion? Attitudes have remained roughly the same: Most Americans think abortion should be, in Bill Clinton’s phrase, safe, legal and rare.

Young Americans, contrary to their libertarian leaning on same-sex marriage, are slightly less pro-abortion rights than their elders. They’ve seen sonograms, and all of them by definition owe their existence to a decision not to abort.

And from the point of view of the unborn child, abortion is the opposite of liberating.

Back in the conformist America of the 1950s — a nation of greater income equality and stronger labor unions, as liberals like to point out — marijuana, homosexual acts and abortion weren’t political issues. They were crimes. And opposition to gun control measures in the 1950s and 1960s was much less widespread and vigorous than it is today.

Is this libertarian trend a good thing for the nation? Your answer will depend on your values.

I’m inclined to look favorably on it. I think the large majority of Americans can use marijuana and guns responsibly. Same-sex marriage can be seen as liberating, but it also includes an element of restraint. Abortions in fact have become more rare over a generation.

But I do see something to worry about. In his bestseller “Coming Apart,” my American Enterprise Institute colleague Charles Murray shows that college-educated Americans have handled liberating trends of the 1970s like no-fault divorce with self-restraint.

But at the bottom of the social scale we have seen an unraveling, with out-of-wedlock births, continuing joblessness, lack of social connectedness and civic involvement.

In conformist America the old prohibitions provided these people with guardrails, as The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger has written. In today’s more libertarian America, the guardrails may be gone.

Michael Barone, senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

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The Project to Restore America

Every email is important to us. We can’t always respond individually, but we read and consider everything. Please email your question, comment or complaint to john@theprojecttorestoreamerica.com or wendy@theprojecttorestoreamerica.com.

To encourage you, the House has put a hold on more DHS ammo purchases until they can be, ummm... a little more transparent: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/house-votes-to-stop-dhs-from-new-ammo-purchase-contracts/. – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: This is a great update on the Senate’s actions related to DHS ammunition purchases. Thanks for passing this along.

Re: Obama speaks with forked tongue (when doesn’t he??!!!). Why isn’t news like this headlined in every paper in America? I’m aware that most of our press is in Obama’s pocket, but still... thousands do not have computers and hence aren’t exposed to such very important political facts of life. Too bad... too sad. God save America!!! - Helen

Bidwell comment: We are a growing organization, so our information reaches more people than it did six months ago. Please feel free to forward these emails to your friends and family, put it out on social media, etc. It is true that the many Americans without computers cannot easily get this information. My goal is to do our best reaching the people we can.

Liberalism is Bankrupt

The high priests of liberalism must be tossing and turning in their organic cotton bedding and downing more small-batch artisan whisky each night trying to cope with the abject failure of their cause.

They know, even if the masses do not yet fully understand, that their worldview no longer makes sense in light of the scandal after scandal in Washington and that the end result could be a great, if slow, deconversion on the scale of the millions who no longer believe in the Christianity its philosophy replaced.

Government, they have told us, is inherently good, like the people it helps. Its largesse helps the poor, its inclusiveness expands rights for all and fairness motivates it. And it is intrinsic to individual success – as the hypothetical “Julia” portrayed in Barack Obama’s recent presidential campaign tried to prove. (See http://www.barackobama.com/truth-team/entry/the-life-of-julia/.)

This worldview diagnoses government problems as merely a question of bad management or lack of funding, which is why federal government workers and contractors have become in the past decade some of the most highly educated and best paid people in America. And it is why programs which fail to meet goals expand and quality is almost always measured by “inputs” – how much money is spent, how many people are signed up, how many training courses are completed, for example -- instead of “outputs” like knowledge acquired and people living independent, productive lives.

But the Internal Revenue Service abuse of conservative groups and revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) is cataloguing every phone call and email Americans make don’t mesh with the prevailing view of government benevolence. Neither do revelations that the Justice Department criminalizes reporting nor those that show high ranking State Department leaders quashed investigations of prostitution and drug abuse among its ranks synch with that outlook. And it clashes with the promise newly elected Barack Obama made in January 2009 that he would, “hold myself as president to a new standard of openness... Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

With respect to the NSA and press monitoring revelations it seems the only right to privacy Barack Obama’s administration recognizes is the right to kill unborn children without restrictions with taxpayer dollars.

This unhinging of the administration from recognizable liberal ideals is the end result of progressivism, which knows no law except “forward.” As Philip Rieff wrote in his brilliant 1966 “The Triumph of the Therapeutic,” “We believe we can live freely at last, enjoying all our senses – except the sense of the past – as unremembering, honest and friendly barbarians all, in a technological Eden.”

But to admit that once sacred principles are obsolete would be political suicide for a man who fulfilled the promises of the great 20th century liberal causes -- civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, workers’ rights – for millions of Americans. So Mr. Obama is struggling to maintain the old order by making it seem the omnipresent monitoring of email and tracking of phone records of Americans are really just “modest encroachments” on privacy that are perfectly legal and nothing new.

True believers will cling to his words. But the scales have fallen from the eyes of a media that protected the administration it believed in, and it is only a matter of time before any American who cares to look will see the disconnect between the personal fulfillment and liberation promised by big government and the evil it delivered in the name of safety.

Given that decades of Americans have been steeped for their full lives in the doctrine of government as the solution and savior in public schools, colleges and culture, to what will they turn when liberalism’s lie hits them? I don’t know. But its undoing will give the timeless principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution a fighting chance against a “forward” that looks more like a backward totalitarian state than the utopia John Lennon sang about in “Imagine.”

Marta H. Mossburg writes frequently about national affairs and about Maryland, where she lives. Write her at marta@martamossburg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @mmossburg.

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The Project to Restore America

FOIA: 301 IRS Agents Working Full Time on Union Work, Not Government Business

In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Americans for Limited Government, the Internal Revenue Service revealed this month that 201 of its employees work full-time on union activities... The redacted list of 201 IRS employees, whose names have been blacked out, features only those employees who are entirely engaged in union work. The list does not include employees who spend part of their time on government work and other portions on union work, according to ALG. http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/13/foia-201-irs-employees-work-full-time-on-union-business/

IG: More Than 1,000 IRS Employees Misused Government Charge Cards; Wrote 325 Bad Checks

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in a recently released audit report that in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 Internal Revenue Service employees misused government charge cards issued by Citibank

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ig-more-1000-irs-employees-misused-government-charge-cards-wrote-325-bad-checks - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: Deceptive titles, excessive salaries, corporate credit cards, big government furthering big government. I wonder how many other government employees are living this way.

The forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.” -Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Samuel Kerchival, 1816 - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: It is as though Thomas Jefferson is speaking directly to us. I wonder what Jefferson would think of our endless state of quantitative easing. It will most definitely turn out to be a source of wretchedness and oppression.

We’re Only Spying on Ourselves

Last week President Obama claimed he welcomed the public debate over recently revealed government surveillance programs that track personal information about millions of innocent Americans. But if it were up to him, the debate never would have happened, since the programs would have remained secret. And if his administration is true to form, it will treat the whistleblower who made the debate possible as a criminal.

The truth is that Obama does not think a debate is necessary, because top government officials have already considered all the relevant points behind closed doors and arrived at the perfect formula for sacrificing privacy in the name of security. You will have to take his word for it, however, because the formula is classified. This is Obama’s idea of open and transparent government.

As a presidential candidate, Obama rejected “a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.” As president, he admonishes us that “you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy” because “there are some tradeoffs involved.” Although Obama “came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs,” he said last week, “My team’s assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks.” Things look different once your hands are on the reins of power. Suddenly safeguards aimed at protecting civil liberties don’t seem so important.

Don’t get Obama wrong. He does not mean “to suggest that you just say: ‘Trust me. We’re doing the right thing. We know who the bad guys are.’” If that’s what you thought he was saying, you may have his surveillance program confused with his assassination program, under which all the deadly decisions are made within the executive branch. In this case, Obama said, members of Congress are “fully briefed” and “federal judges are overseeing the entire program.”

But according to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., a longtime ally of the president, the information shared with Congress is sketchy. “To say that there’s congressional approval suggests a level of information and oversight that’s just not there,” he told The New York Times.

What about those judges? Obama was referring to members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, who rule in secret, do not have much leeway to second-guess the administration’s demands for data and almost never do.

Under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the basis for the recently leaked order requiring Verizon to provide telephone records — possibly including location data — for all of its customers, the government need only “specify” that the information it wants is part of “an investigation to protect against international terrorism.” It also has to aver that it is following guidelines approved by the attorney general and is not targeting a U.S. citizen or legal resident “solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment.”

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the basis for the National Security Agency’s Internet-monitoring PRISM program, the government “certifies” that it is not targeting U.S. citizens, legal residents or people located in the United States. But the government need not identify its targets, and it may “incidentally” gather information about Americans — including, according to The Washington Post, “audio and video chats, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs.”

Innocent people who are subjected to NSA snooping have no way of challenging it, or even knowing about it. Before he took up residence in the White House, Obama called that sort of unaccountable surveillance power “just plain wrong.” Now it’s a “modest encroachment” that “the American people should feel comfortable about,” even if they are not privy to the details.

Addressing Ohio State University’s 2013 graduates last month, Obama mocked people who “warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.” As he explained in another speech a month earlier, “suspicion about government” makes no sense because “the government is us.” If so, the government should be replaced, because none of us knows what we’re doing.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @jacobsullum.

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The Project to Restore America

Take a look at who is #1: http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/10-journalists-you-dont-want-to-fight-on-twitter_b106769

Bidwell comment: Make sure you scroll down to the bottom… You will see that Ric Grenell has been named the Mike Tyson of internet fighting. He is also The Project’s first fellow, so you will receive more of his perspective in the weeks and months to come – just be sure to be vigilant in opening your daily updates.

I will greatly welcome receiving Project to Restore America newsletters (there is probably a more worthy description, but identifying it fails me!) – Laura

Bidwell comment: Welcome to The Project, Laura. In your opinion, what would a better description convey? I’m curious and always open to suggestions. We are trying to come up with a new name for the updates new members receive for the first few days. Your input will greatly help us.

Obama Speaks with Forked Tongue on Surveillance

It’s bad enough the federal government spies on us. Must it insult our intelligence too?

The government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaks about the National Security Agency’s secret monitoring of the Internet and collection of our telephone logs is a mass of contradictions. Officials have said the disclosures are (1) old news, (2) grossly inaccurate, and (3) a blow to national security. It’s hard to see how any two of these can be true, much less all three.

Can’t they at least get their story straight? If they can’t do better than that, why should we have confidence in anything else that they do?

Snowden exposed the government’s indiscriminate snooping because, among other things, it violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and he had no other recourse.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says Snowden should have used established channels to raise his concerns, but there are no effective channels. Members of the congressional intelligence committees are prohibited from telling the public what they learn from their briefings. Two members of the Senate committee, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, for years have warned — without disclosing secrets — that the Obama administration is interpreting the Patriot Act and related laws far more broadly than was ever intended by those who voted for those pieces of legislation. Their warnings have made no difference.

A court challenge wasn’t open to Snowden either. Glenn Greenwald, who published Snowden’s leaks in the Guardian, notes that for years the ACLU has tried to challenge the surveillance programs in court on Fourth Amendment grounds, but the Obama administration has blocked the effort by arguing that the ACLU has no standing to bring the suit. It’s a classic Catch-22. Since the surveillance is secret, no one can know if he has been spied on. But if no one knows, no one can go into court claiming to be a victim, and the government will argue that therefore the plaintiff has no standing to challenge the surveillance. Well played, Obama administration.

The administration should not be allowed to get away with the specious claim that telling its secrets to a few privileged members of Congress is equivalent to informing the people. It is not. It’s merely one branch of government telling some people in another branch. Calling those politicians “our representatives” is highly misleading. In what sense do they actually represent us?

Equally specious is the assertion that the NSA can’t monitor particular people without court authorization. The secret FISA court is a rubber stamp.

When Obama ran for president in 2008, he said Americans shouldn’t have to choose between privacy and security. Now he says that “one of the things that we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy? Because there are some tradeoffs involved.”

What do you take us for, Mr. President? Do you say whatever serves your momentary interest?

It’s outrageous for Obama to say he welcomes this debate — when his regime is plotting to capture and prosecute the heroic whistleblower who made it possible.

The debate would be bogus anyway. No one has a right to make a security/privacy tradeoff for you. Our rights should not be subject to vote, particularly when a ruling elite ultimately will make the decision — out of public view!

Americans have learned nothing from the last 40 years if they have not learned that the executive branch — regardless of party — will interpret any power as broadly as it wishes. Congressional oversight is worse than useless; it’s a myth, especially when one chamber is controlled by the president’s party and the other chamber’s majority embraces big government as long as it carries a “national security” label.

Obama says, “If people can’t trust not only the executive branch but also don’t trust Congress and don’t trust federal judges to make sure that we’re abiding by the Constitution, due process and rule of law, then we’re going to have some problems here.”

That’s wrong. If the politicians’ only response to revelations that they’re violating our privacy is to ask for trust, then we already have problems.

Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va. (www.fff.org).

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The Project to Restore America

I have an excellent network of email friends and contacts. We keep each other apprised of the political and social landscape. A person whom I trust, that founded PANDA (People Against the National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA), has sent me an update from Conservative Action Alerts. As you will see the legislation introduced and passed by the House is only a temporary measure to appease citizens... Sincerely, Tom

Bidwell comment: Thank you, Tom. This is unfortunate news... According to the June 7 Conservative Action Alert, “... the House – through this bill – is now requiring that the DHS submit a report (per section 567(a)) justifying and explaining its need for ammunition. This report is due before the president submits his next budget.”

The DHS just has to submit a report before it gets bullets. I am curious whether the reports will be made public and if they will be easily attainable.

Wow. Even Hollywierd is turning on the Obama police state. 50 seconds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3ux1hpLvqMw#t=2s

Oh yes. It’s Tuesday, and time for the latest Obama admin corruption report! Federal employees were given advance notice of an April 1 Medicare decision worth billions of dollars to private insurers. And in the weeks before the decision was officially announced, shares in those firms spiked. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hundreds-in-government-had-advance-word-of-medicare-action-at-heart-of-trading-spike-probe/2013/06/09/044944d0-cec7-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html

Bidwell comment: As always, thank you for passing along this valuable information.

According to the Washington Post article, Hundreds in government had advance word of Medicare action at heart of trading-spike probe, “The discovery that sensitive information was so widely disseminated could complicate the forensic task for investigators trying to determine who may have leaked confidential information, and it brings further attention to the government’s handling of policy details valued by Wall Street traders.”

We must consider amidst these scandals whether the government agencies can handle confidential information that Wall Street traders would benefit from knowing. All signs say they can’t.

A Simple, Perfect Lie for Politicians

Peak Oil was a fantastic lie.

The idea was that our ability to discover and produce higher amounts of hydrocarbon-based energy had peaked and would be forever in decline. This “inevitable” decline in energy production would destroy the modern world, as all the luxuries and technologies that we enjoy today (such as cheap electricity and automobiles) rely on these fuels.

I believe historians will look back and marvel over how we could imagine the world would run out of oil... and the incredible mania that thinking produced in the oil markets in the mid-2000s.

And as I’ve said before, I believe having a correct understanding of these issues is critical... perhaps the single most important economic issue of the next several decades.

Peak Oil was a terrific lie because it enriched so many powerful constituencies.

Oil and gas promoters used the theory to scare the public into investing huge amounts of capital into oil and gas exploration. Globally, the oil and gas industry’s annual capital investment budget soared, from a little more than $100 billion in 1999 to an all-time record $1 trillion in 2012.

The promoters’ pitch was intoxicating. Their siren song was the idea of the last barrel in the world. What would the world’s last barrel of oil be worth? After all, if supplies could never be increased, then the price of oil and gas would soon reach unimagined heights. All this speculation drove oil prices to more than $150 per barrel in the summer of 2008.

Peak Oil was such a simple lie, even politicians could understand it. It was perfect for them because Peak Oil was a problem with no possible solution. When something can’t be fixed, politicians claim all sorts of powers to regulate the issue. That’s when the real trouble started.

The idea that we were going to quickly run out of oil played into the same guilty narrative that many politicians were telling about global warming. Not only were hydrocarbons bad for the environment, consuming them was tantamount to impoverishing our children and dooming them to a future without affordable transportation and electricity.

These ideas were used as cudgels by politicians to discredit the oil and gas industry. They justified all kinds of massive and stupid government-led investments into supposed alternatives.

None of these alternatives had the capacity to replace our country’s massive energy infrastructure (which is based almost completely on hydrocarbons). But that wasn’t really the point. These huge public-sector investments mostly served to enrich politicians (like Al Gore) and their lobbyists and backers.

We estimate that to date, the government has spent, wasted, or simply lost roughly $500 billion on absurd energy investments. That’s roughly twice as much as it lost on the housing bubble.

This has fueled a huge binge of crony capitalism. Just look at solar-energy company Solyndra... Here, the government lost half a billion dollars on one company. No one has gone to jail. No one has been kicked out of office. That’s because the politicians weren’t lining the pockets of their supporters, right? No, they nobly were trying to “solve” global warming... and forestall Peak Oil.

Sure.

The irony is... long before the shale oil and gas boom started... we had more than enough evidence to completely discredit Peak Oil.

The theory’s main flaw is that it assumes our knowledge of oil and gas reserves is complete. The truth is plainly the opposite. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated in 1994 that the recoverable amount of oil and gas in the North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation totaled 151 million barrels.

Today, about 15 years later, producers in the Bakken are extracting 255 million barrels each year – about 100 million more barrels annually than were supposedly to be in the entire basin.

Harold Hamm, the CEO of the largest Bakken producer, Continental Resources, says the Bakken has at least 24 billion barrels of recoverable oil. His firm is currently producing more than 40 million barrels per year. If Hamm is right, the Bakken could be four times larger than the biggest oilfield ever discovered in the continental U.S. – H.L. Hunt’s giant elephant field, known as East Texas.

Peak Oil’s second main flaw is that it assumed recovery methods would forever be limited to extracting about 10% of the oil contained in a conventional reservoir. But as technology improves, most knowledgeable industry experts predict that ultimate recovery rates will exceed 40%. So even if we never discovered any additional oil reservoirs, we might still only be halfway toward Peak Oil.

Consider Denbury Resources, one of the best companies in the world at “renovating” existing oilfields by using new, advanced recovery methods. Denbury can take an old conventional oilfield and increase the average recovery rate from 10% to 25%.

Applying new technologies to existing oil reservoirs is a very good business, by the way. Denbury’s shares have soared from around $0.50 in the late 1990s to more than $40 at the peak of oil prices in the summer of 2008. Clearly, if Peak Oil was real, Denbury’s entire business model wouldn’t have worked. Not only did it work, it worked incredibly well because Denbury’s strategy eliminated the main capital risk of oil production – dry holes.

Here’s the fascinating thing...

Enhanced production techniques were pioneered by the firm Kinder Morgan in the 1990s and then copied by dozens of companies, like Apache and Denbury, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The actual results of these businesses made it clear that the assumptions of Peak Oil were simply wrong.

They weren’t sometimes wrong... They were always wrong. They weren’t merely wrong in theory... They were completely wrong in practice.

Regardless, the widespread belief in Peak Oil caused billions of dollars to flow toward oil and gas exploration and production companies. These companies, in turn, have used that capital to find and produce vastly more oil and gas than almost anyone thought was possible. That’s how the free market works: Demand drives savings and investment, which increases supply... until prices fall.

Since hitting a bottom in mid-2005, total annual energy production in the U.S. has grown 10%... from 62.6 trillion cubic feet equivalent (tcfe) to more than 69 tcfe.

But this doesn’t tell the real story.

Total energy production in the U.S. includes coal and petroleum from the North Slope of Alaska. When you look at only the lower 48 states and take out coal... you see the real trend.

Oil production in the lower 48 states is up a stunning 75% and dry gas production is up 35% over the past eight years.

These increases are on a scale we haven’t seen in more than 50 years. They are huge increases in production that most people believed could never happen again.

These unprecedented increases have finally laid bare the self-serving lies of Peak Oil theorists.

Editor’s note: If you’d like more insight and actionable advice from Porter Stansberry, consider a free subscription to DailyWealth. Sign up for DailyWealth here and receive a report on how to prosper despite the Fed’s inflationary policies. This report will show you how to protect your hard-earned money from what Porter has dubbed the “End of America.” Click here to learn more.

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The Project to Restore America

Lawmakers voted late Wednesday for limits on the amount of ammunition that can be purchased by the Department of Homeland Security. The measure — a proposal to amend the DHS spending bill — came by way of Republican Rep. Mark Meadows and passed 234-192, The Associated Press reported. The amendment prohibits taxpayer dollars from being sent to DHS for ammunition buys unless the agency first sends a report to Congress detailing its previous like purchases. The report must also include the agency’s past ammunition usages, AP reported. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/6/house-votes-limit-homeland-securitys-gun-ammunitio/

Bidwell comment: To raise awareness in mid-April, we hosted a survey on social media called, “What is the DHS Doing With All Those Bullets?” We are glad to see a proposal to amend the DHS spending bill has been passed in the House of Representatives.

The Senate does nothing in general. For instance, while the House Ways and Means Committee is diligently investigating the IRS scandal, the Senate does nothing. We plan on launching a new survey on social media to put pressure on the Senate to pass similar legislation as the House with this DHS bullets purchase amendment. I will let you know when it is up on Facebook so you can weigh in if you want.

I have a bit of a problem with perhaps the intent of the article, it admits the cause of the problem has existed for some time, but then seems to address it as if it were a new problem even though it alludes to far earlier congressional knowledge. There having been plenty of warnings as to what may or may not be allowed under the Patriot Act seemed to be ignored under the Bush administration and now it is different. Media seems to handle it no different than congress, try to place blame on the other party, instead of identifying the problem and fixing it, that surely explains the gridlock for all parties. – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: Marta Mossburg's article on Friday was excellent. However, you make a great point. Now that we are aware how much information the NSA collects, we should figure out whether or not this data collection is critical to thwart terrorist attacks. If it is, we should measure how helpful the data has been in preventing attacks. With more information, we can make a more informed decision as to how to ensure our civil liberties during a time of war. Instead of having this conversation though, our lawmakers are using the news about the NSA collecting massive amounts of Americans' data for political gain.

The Fruition of 9/11

News reports from the past month reveal a chasm between Americans’ perception of their freedom and their actual freedom.

To those who thought the rule of law still protected them, the IRS targeting conservative groups for special scrutiny and Justice Department (DOJ) monitoring journalists’ phone records should have been enough to disabuse them of that notion.

But then came news Wednesday shredding any scintilla of evidence America is the land of the free with reports that the National Security Agency is monitoring every phone call made on Verizon’s network. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court signed an order on April 25 requested by the FBI allowing the government to collect information through July 19 on a daily basis from one of the nation’s largest phone companies on seemingly everything except the content of communication.

As the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez told The Guardian, the British newspaper that broke the story, “We’ve certainly seen the government increasingly strain the bounds of ‘relevance’ to collect large numbers of records at once — everyone at one or two degrees of separation from a target — but vacuuming all metadata up indiscriminately would be an extraordinary repudiation of any pretence of constraint or particularized suspicion.”

Glenn Greenwald, the reporter who wrote the story, should consider himself permanently wiretapped. He should also expect that no one in the government will speak to him in the future knowing his communications are monitored. His only hope is to have a sympathetic government spy on the other side like East German Stasi agent Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler in the brilliant 2006 film, “The Lives of Others” – if he doesn’t end up in federal prison.

To think many were appalled by Congressional testimony earlier this week by John Eastman, the chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, that the IRS leaked confidential tax forms of his organization to the group’s main political opponent, Human Rights Campaign. That seems so small fry in comparison to this.

A few Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee have spoken publicly for years about how the government is using secret interpretations of the 2001 Patriot Act – passed six weeks after September 11, 2001 -- in a way that would astound Americans. On March 15, 2012, Democratic Senators Ron Wyden (OR) and Mark Udall (CO) went so far as to write Attorney General Eric Holder a letter about “this problem of secret law.”

They said they thought most Americans would be “stunned” to learn how the government is interpreting a portion of the Patriot Act. They added, “As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”

Mr. Holder does not think DOJ overreach in monitoring journalists warrants a major overhaul of his organization. He told NBC Wednesday that, “I’m a little concerned that things have gotten a little out of whack. ... I think we can do a better job than we have. We can reform those regulations, reform those guidelines to better reflect that balance.”

But I wonder how he and President Barack Obama will answer to the Verizon revelations. Does blanket monitoring amount to things being “a little out of whack”? Are better (secret?) regulations all that are needed to prevent a mass violation of the Constitution’s protection against illegal search and seizure not only against journalists but all Americans?

If the IRS and journalist scandals are chilling, the Verizon court order is absolute zero. The 9/11 terrorists would be proud. They brought down planes, buildings and killed nearly 3,000. But in birthing the Patriot Act they helped to kill America from the inside out.

Marta H. Mossburg writes frequently about national affairs and about Maryland, where she lives. Write her at marta@martamossburg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @mmossburg.

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The Project to Restore America

-Anonymous

Bidwell comment: U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove is front and center of today’s Wall Street Journal. In case you don't already know, it wasn’t just Verizon Communications Inc.’s phone records that were monitored by The National Security Agency. In fact, the article says, “The National Security Agency’s monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency’s activities.”

http://bit.ly/ZSPrlq - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: This powerful opening statement by Rep. Trey Gowdy at the House Oversight Committee’s Hearing on excessive conference spending by the IRS is a must-see… Thank you for sharing with us.

The Incompetent Susan Rice Gets Promoted

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice will be the next National Security Advisor to President Obama. Her appointment from President Obama does not require the approval of the U.S. Senate. As the President’s National Security Advisor running the National Security Council, Rice will be responsible for settling bureaucratic disputes between the Department of Defense, the State Department and other U.S. government agencies. The job requires someone willing to speak up and make decisions based on facts. Susan Rice will undoubtedly be a failure – we have seen her struggle with these same issues in her current role all too much.

While most Americans will only remember Rice as the face of the Sunday shows where she spun the tale about a YouTube video as the reason radical Islamists attacked U.S. embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa on the anniversary of 9/11, she has a long history of failing to lead or even speak up on important issues.

While the national media debates whether or not she knowingly misled the public on the Sunday shows, her failings and shortcomings before the Benghazi terrorist attacks have not received the attention they deserve.

Here are 30 reasons (that have nothing to do with Benghazi) why Susan Rice should not have received the promotion she did this week:

1.	failed to call an emergency meeting of the Security Council after the 2010 Haiti earthquake
2.	skipped the Security Council debate and vote to add new UN Peacekeepers in Haiti after the earthquake
3.	led the US during the most inactive Security Council since 1991 during her first year as Ambassador
4.	held her first press conference with the UN Secretary General on the pressing international issue of texting while driving
5.	failed to speak out when Col. Gaddafi’s Libya was elected to the UN Human Rights Commission
6.	waited 17 months before voting on the one and only UN resolution on Iran passed during her tenure
7.	dismissed by Hillary Clinton from negotiating most of the Iran resolution with the French
8.	lost the support of more nations on her one Iran resolution than the previous five Iran resolutions combined
9.	took 103 days to move the Security Council to issue a statement after a North Korean submarine sank the South Korean ship that killed 46 sailors
10.	took 18 days to lead the Security Council to action after a North Korean nuclear test (it took John Bolton 5 days in 2006)
11.	failed to support the Iranian opposition during their Green Revolution
12.	failed to speak out when Iran was elected to the UN Women’s Commission
13.	skipped the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting on the Gaza flotilla crisis
14.	snubbed Israel to the point they skipped President Obama’s 2010 UN speech
15.	took more than 2 years to find someone to head America’s UN reform team
16.	failed to address the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to ascertain how erroneous scientific claims were added to official UN reports
17.	painfully slow in getting a UN resolution on the Sudan-South Sudan referendum
18.	ignored Canada’s pleas for help in getting elected to the Security Council
19.	negotiated with the UN’s Arab Group to condemn Israel’s settlements
20.	failed to lead the Security Council during Tunisia’s Arab Spring protests
21.	didn’t speak out on the Libya crisis until the French, British and Arab League had done so
22.	failed to attend the first Security Council meeting on the Arab Spring protests
23.	failed to get the support of allies India, Germany and Brazil on the UN’s Libya resolution
24.	failed to lead the Security Council during Egypt’s Arab Spring protests
25.	failed to lead the Security Council during Yemen’s Arab Spring protests
26.	failed to lead the Security Council to confront Bashar al-Assad’s brutal violence where US resolutions received an unprecedented three vetoes on three different votes
27.	agreed to send former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to Syria where he failed miserably
28.	skipped the last open meeting before the planned UN vote to recognize Palestinian statehood
29.	failed to speak out when Iran was elected Vice President of the Global Arms Treaty negotiations
30.	delayed Security Council action and the UN report on Rwanda

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The Project to Restore America

"Almost half of Americans say President Barack Obama isn’t telling the truth when he says he didn’t know the Internal Revenue Service was giving extra scrutiny to the applications of small government groups seeking tax-exempt status, according to a Bloomberg National Poll." Mike Dorning reports. – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: I want to keep you abreast of what we are doing concerning the IRS scandal. Yesterday I delivered a letter to Congressman Issa’s office that said this:

On behalf of The Project to Restore America -- a non-partisan group dedicated to solving our national economic problems through education and advocacy -- we formally ask that you subpoena the records of IRS Official Lois Lerner and Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, as well as their administrative assistants.

We are frustrated this wasn’t done as soon as the American public became aware of these two individuals’ involvement in targeting conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. We know they were involved, but we don’t yet have the full story.

The Project to Restore America believes it is time our lawmakers in Washington, D.C. do their jobs, or face the consequences. We demand that you get to the bottom of the IRS scandal quickly, figure out who is at fault and ensure that this does not happen again. We want this issue to be resolved so that we, as a country, can focus on reducing the deficit and crafting a FY2014 budget. – Wendy Bidwell

We must keep the pressure on so that this doesn’t linger on and fade into obscurity. Our lawmakers must know that this is our expectation and demand. We want to find out what happened, deal with it so it doesn’t happen again, and move on with the important work we have in front of us.

We are starting a campaign today to get as many Americans as possible to sign a petition demanding these high level IRS executives’ records are subpoenaed. Stay tuned, and I will let you know how it goes.

Look at Hannity TV show this Friday Eve for a full hour of the TEA party and other victims that have suffered the IRS and progressives’ wrath. You might have to contact the Hannity show to get the exact time and date for your town.

Bidwell comment: I’m putting this update together on a train to New York City, where I should see the folks from Hannity. I will ask about this and let you know the details in tomorrow’s update.

The Prevailing Theme Amidst Highly Emotional Testimonies

You all probably saw snippets of yesterday’s IRS hearing on the mainstream news. From these clips of coverage, however, you could not easily decipher the feeling in the room, which is what I would like to discuss...

Porter Stansberry has said he believes there could be a war between the individuals funding the government programs and the recipients of these programs. I wholeheartedly agree with him.

I have been covering these hearings and following this IRS scandal closely. Yesterday, I felt a revolution brewing within the nation’s capital.

Almost half of American voters are dependent on the government. These voters repeatedly vote themselves benefits, and while doing so, grow the size of government. They vote for new government agencies and bureaucracies. Taxpayers pay the salaries for the employees of these new agencies and bureaucracies. We pay to strengthen the old agencies and bureaucracies too.

Let's take a look at an important facet of the IRS conference news you have probably been hearing about... You may not realize that 30% of IRS employees went to the conferences. Evidently they were all newly hired or recently promoted employees. My questions is, “How was the IRS able to hire or promote 30% of its workforce during a time when the rest of us were experiencing “The Great Recession?"

Taxpayers are funding the growing, big government. We keep working and paying our taxes, even when times are tough. We don’t like what the country is turning into, so we attempt to organize in our communities to sound the bell. We want our activities for doing good to be tax-exempt, just like the progressive groups doing the same thing. However, you have a representative like Jim McDermott (D-WA) who believes we do not have the right to receive tax-exempt status.

The individuals paying all the bills already carry a heavy load. We are already at a disadvantage because the large population that will always vote itself benefits has the equivalent to an army (the government workers) working on its behalf. But conservative groups cannot receive the same tax-exempt status as progressive ones because of their views?... Many of these groups formed to educate fellow Americans on the intended essence of America. Oh how far we have come...

The six representatives from conservative organizations targeted when applying for 501(C)(4) status shared their stories in yesterday’s hearing. The testimonies were riveting, and by the end, I believe these individuals won a small victory for all of us. Here is what happened...

The room was silent as Becky Gerritson of Wetumpka, Alabama explained that the IRS was trying to stifle a point of view across the country during the time in which the Wetumpka Tea Party was formed. She said, “I am a born-free American woman – wife, mother and citizen – and I’m telling my government that you have forgotten your place. It is not your responsibility to look out for my well-being or monitor my speech. It is not your right to assert an agenda.”

According to Chairman of the Board of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) Dr. John C. Eastman, the IRS leaked confidential NOM donor information to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the “principal opponent in the political battles over the redefinition of marriage.” HRC and other organizations published the information on their websites.

“The willful unauthorized public disclosure of NOM’s 2008 Schedule B by the IRS or its employees is a violation of federal law... Indeed, it is a serious felony punishable by a $5,000 fine and up to five years in federal prison, penalties that apply both to IRS and other government employees and third parties.”

The Democrat Representatives expressed their condolences to the six representatives and said the IRS was wrong to target them. They repeatedly explained that the real problem is the essence of the tax-exempt status for organizations conducting social welfare. These groups raise money, support certain candidates, and influence elections, while these activities are being paid for by tax payers.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) said, “But as I listen to this discussion, I’d like to remind everyone what we are talking about here. None of your organizations were kept from organizing or silenced. We are talking about whether or not the American taxpayers would subsidize your work. We are talking about a tax break.

“I get the feeling that many of you and my Republican colleagues don’t just believe you should be free from political targeting, but that you should be free from scrutiny of any kind.

“The purpose of C3 and C4 tax exemptions is to enable easier promotion of public good, not political work. It is the responsibility of the IRS to determine which groups are choosing the correct exempt status and which are trying to manipulate the system to avoid taxes and hide political organizations and their campaign donors.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) followed with, “I am going to deviate from my original question in response to what I just heard.” The crowd clapped and cheered. He proceeded to reiterate that these groups were targeted for their political beliefs, and that groups applying for the same tax-exempt status with something like “progressive” in its name didn’t receive scrutiny.

Six individuals lit a lantern yesterday that illuminates our path today. We can’t give up... We must continue our work, now more than ever.

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The Project to Restore America

What is this?

Heffern comment: The “Ama-Gi” has meant many things over time. Often times it is considered the first written expression of the concept of liberty. It is a Sumerian word. Literally translated, it means “return to the mother.” Additionally, the symbol is used as a logo by the Instituto Político para la Libertad of Peru.

*** I’m really turning inside out. We’re supposed to contact our elected officials to make our voices heard and to let them know how to be the voice of the people who put them in office. I send emails and faxes and get replies telling me how I’m wrong and how they see gun control or all of these bills pending as positive. I mean they write responses that basically tell me I’m wrong and they’re right. I’m from New Jersey. I did not vote these people in, I voted for the other candidate yet they are my representation. They won’t budge. They are dug into the path of ruin. Now what? I want America to be America again. – Laurie

Bidwell comment: Laurie, I am sorry to hear about this. You are not “wrong” to want to preserve your 2nd Amendment rights as outlined by the Constitution. If there is anything in particular I can do, please let me know. Hold your head high and know that real change comes from concerned citizens like you standing up for their rights.

Update on the ‘End of America’

Bear with me...

Today’s Friday Digest addresses what I believe is the core financial issue of our generation. These concerns are so important, they dwarf all other financial considerations. Unfortunately, few journalists have any idea what these things mean. That means you likely haven’t heard of most of these things. So please... allow me a bit of basic reporting.

Last April... in a little-noticed move... Australia announced it was transferring 5% of its currency reserves from the U.S. dollar to the Chinese yuan. The deal was part of a broader currency agreement between the two countries that allows Australia’s leading banks to handle trade settlements between the two countries without the use of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.

As CBS Marketwatch explained, “The agreement does away with the need for companies and currency traders to first convert their Australian dollars or yuan into U.S. dollars.”

Similar direct-exchange agreements, swap lines, and bilateral trade agreements have now been established between China and virtually every major economy in the world: Japan, Brazil, Russia, India, Britain, and France – not to mention every economy in Asia. These agreements will allow China, the world’s dominant consumer of commodities, to completely avoid using the U.S. dollar in virtually all of its raw-material sourcing.

Similar “dollar exclusion” agreements have been formed by Russia with its major trading partners. London-based HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, now predicts that by 2015, the Chinese yuan will equal the U.S. dollar and the euro in cross-border transaction volume.

In December 2008, I began warning about the risk that the U.S. could lose its “world reserve currency status,” something I termed the “End of America.” It’s worth looking at what I wrote almost five years ago because so much of what I feared would happen has come true. Here’s precisely what I wrote in my Investment Advisory in the days following the huge crash of the stock market and the near-collapse of the world’s banking system...

It seems redundant at this point to tell you massive changes are taking place worldwide in the structure of capitalism. It is difficult to know what impact these changes will have on stocks, but I believe in general they will drive up stock prices…

The United States, has become fantastically indebted at every level of society. Entire industries exist today purely because of the widespread availability of easy credit – a trend that has ended. U.S. consumers have refused to save any significant portion of their earnings for more than a decade. This trend was unsustainable and has come to an abrupt end.

As I've covered previously, fueling the debt and consumption binge in America were phony insurance schemes (AIG's bogus default swaps), record-high levels of mortgage debt, and global investors (primarily Asian) buying American mortgage paper. In the most basic analysis, China and Japan lent us endless sums of money so we could keep buying their exports. America's real estate bonds became the world's collateral, supporting ever-greater amounts of borrowing. This global game of credit expansion has come to a crashing halt because the creditworthiness of American consumers and financial firms collapsed…

With a currency and a budget process totally untethered to any reality, nothing limits the amount of foolish spending Congress can (and will) authorize… It controls the world's only reserve currency – meaning it is the only country in the world that can print money to cover all of its debts, bar none. And yet, for all of this power, [the U.S. dollar] is still doomed. It is only a matter of time now before our creditors realize America's government is just as bankrupt as Iceland's.

We are witnessing the end of the paper-dollar standard.

Like every experiment with paper money in history, our paper dollar will be destroyed in an all-out attempt to paper over deficit spending, bad investments, and war debts…

Federal spending is now up 48% over last year. I hope for your sake you understand this is completely unsustainable. At some point, America's creditors will balk.

In addition to the Treasury's vast increase in spending, the Federal Reserve has opened the monetary floodgates…

By the end of November (2008), the Fed had purchased almost $900 billion worth of questionable assets via its new "Maiden Lane" facility. It also increased its lending to banks (and, for the first time ever, brokers) to more than $700 billion, up from a mere $481 million in November 2007. The result has been a truly fantastic expansion of the Fed's total assets, from less than $900 billion to more than $2.1 trillion. [Editor's note: As we know now, the Fed also lent tens of billions to European banks without disclosing these actions to the American people, or even to Congress.]

What you must understand is these assets form the basis of our currency. As the Fed's balance sheet expands, so does the lending capacity of the money-center banks. At the moment, they're not lending. But sooner or later, these resources will find their way into the economy. (The money will most likely be recycled back into Treasury bonds.) This huge increase to our money supply and the inevitable huge, new stimulus spending plan by the Obama administration, positions our economy for cataclysmic inflation…

Folks worried about a lasting deflation (as opposed to a temporary liquidity crisis) simply don't understand there are no limits to the amount of money and credit the Federal Reserve can create at will… No other central bank in the world wields this amount of power. The Fed is the ultimate source of the world's money and credit because the dollar is the world's reserve currency.

The huge inflation underway right now will be what I call the "End of America." I don't mean an end to our political union. I mean an end to the special role America has played in the global economy since World War II. The coming great inflation will destroy America's economic leadership. It will lead – eventually – to the return of settling international obligations in gold instead of paper dollars. And this will happen much faster than anyone expects.

By the time Obama leaves office, you will not be able to exchange dollars for any sound currency in the world without permission from the U.S government. The price of gold will be well over $2,500 per ounce. Most importantly, commodities will no longer be priced in dollars either, but instead in the currencies of the leading producer. Americans haven't experienced anything like this since the Great Depression.

As you now know, almost everything I foresaw in December 2008 has happened. The Fed went on to print and spend more than $3 trillion. The prices of stocks and commodities soared. The dollar fell versus sound currencies around the world. And the prices of U.S. goods and services, even domestically made products, soared.

Now, some folks who have followed my research from the beginning might point out that I predicted the U.S. would begin suffering from severe inflation as early as 2009. With the consumer price index hovering around 1%, isn’t that inflation overdue?

If you look beyond the government’s manipulated numbers and focus on the real prices people are paying... you’ll see price inflation is here and getting worse...

As I’ve written extensively... inflation is found everywhere in our economy, except in the government’s statistics. Corn, the most important food crop in America, is up 75% since 2008. Gasoline is up from $2.25 a gallon to more than $3 a gallon – an increase of more than 30%. The nationwide minimum wage is up by 40%. Rents are up by 25% nationwide and up 40% in most urban markets.

And my favorite example, the base price of a Ford F-150, the best-selling passenger vehicle in America, has gone from $18,225 to $23,670 – a 30% increase. That’s a domestically sourced and manufactured product... something whose price is completely dominated by the value of the U.S. dollar.

Meanwhile... the government says there is no inflation... and that continuing to print $85 billion to buy government and mortgage debt is merely “interest-rate policy by other means.” What could go wrong?

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has sagely warned that buying all of those bonds and manipulating interest rates to stupidly low levels will prove to be much easier than selling them. The fact is, the moment our central bank begins to sell U.S. Treasury bonds, the whole world will follow. After all, our dollars aren’t needed in trade for most of the big commodity countries. So the free ride will be over. All the traders who’ve enjoyed the free ride on the back of the Fed’s buying will surely change course the moment it starts to sell.

And what, you might wonder, have our noble leaders done with all the money and credit they’ve created? Mostly, they have expanded the welfare state at the fastest pace in history, creating more dependency in your fellow citizens than has ever existed before in the history of our country. There are now almost 100 million people collecting food stamps, disability, or long-term unemployment. Barely 60% of the adult population of America bothers to go to work, even on a part-time basis.

On the backs of the poor schleps in America who paid their mortgages and still go to work, a gargantuan pile of debts and obligations have been piled higher and higher over the last five years. Total debt now approaches $60 trillion. Federal debt has nearly doubled in the last five years, from $9 trillion to $17 trillion. And our governments (state, local, and federal) continue to take up more and more of our economy – comprising more than 40% of our roughly $15 trillion gross domestic product (GDP) today.

It seems completely obvious that none of this is sustainable. The few Americans who still work and pay taxes can’t possibly support the income demands of nearly 40% of the population... especially considering the debt load our economy suffers under. We cannot possibly afford our existing debts, if we were to pay them back at a fair rate of interest in sound money.

And so... we race toward a day of reckoning when the Fed cannot continue to print new dollars to bail us out because our trading partners have abandoned our currency.

Of course, not every American is an economist. Most people don’t understand why the real value of their wages continues to fall, even as the government swears there’s no inflation. I doubt even one in 100 Americans understands the risks our country faces as we attempt to manage total debts (public and private) that represent about 400% of GDP (not counting any of the future costs of the entitlement programs) while our trading partners abandon our currency as the reserve standard.

But... most people know something is wrong.

Gun ownership in America now stands at 47% of all adults – that’s near the highest percentage ever recorded by Gallup. It marks a significant increase since 2008. The percentage of self-described liberals who own guns has grown from 30% to 40% in that period. So even folks who don’t believe you should own a gun have been buying them.

I believe most people know that something isn’t right... that we can’t go on like this forever... printing money day after day. Most people simply know that far too many people are on the dole. And they can see that our Treasury has fallen into the hands of the voters, a fact that has spelled doom for every democracy in history.

So while they might not fully understand all the factors that I’ve written about here... they can see the hallmarks of a crisis. And that’s why... despite the central banks’ efforts to manipulate the paper price of gold down... there are never any gold coins left to buy. That’s why the price of farmland has soared (as I predicted it would). That’s why more and more wealthy people are leaving America. And that’s why... I firmly believe... this ongoing bull market will end very, very badly.

Many people who read my End of America warnings over the years replied that it would take decades for America to lose its world reserve currency status. But if you simply look at the data on cross-border currency exchanges, you’ll find that so far this year, more than 40% of the exchanges involved the euro. Only 33% involved the dollar.

Today, more than 60% of bank reserves around the world are still held in U.S. dollars. Mark my words: In less than a year, the dollar will no longer make up even a majority of these reserves.

The End of America isn’t coming. It is here.

If you would like to subscribe to S&A’s Digest Premium and receive more information like this, click here...

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The Project to Restore America

Thomas Sowell’s article was great and right on the money. It’s a true shame that the combination of tax-takers (as opposed to tax payers), uneducated fools that are allowed to vote and can be so easily swayed, and true believers in Socialism/Communism can come together and repeatedly elect members of congress of the quality of Carl Levin and his ilk. We’ve certainly come a long way from the intent of the Founders. This is still a great country, but our current direction is changing that and not for the better. Please continue to publish articles of the quality of Thomas Sowell’s. Unfortunately, I am afraid that you are “preaching to the choir”, as the persons that could benefit most from your presentations are the least likely to read them.

The following letter to Sowell’s was, I thought at first, a put on. No one could really be that stupid and lacking in accurate facts. To accuse the right of racism, among other things, is an old saw and if true, then how was Obama elected in a country where blacks are 13.1% of the population, according to the US Census Bureau. I was born on Georgia, graduated from an Ivy League University, and voted for Herman Cain when he ran for the Republican nomination of Senator from Georgia against Johnny Isakson, who went on to win. I would vote for him again. The vast majority of my friends and acquaintances are conservative and vote for the person they feel best represents their views, regardless of color or ethic group. The left needs to get off these divisive talking points about race if they are truly interested in racial harmony, which I doubt. Just look at the actions of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, both “preachers” and tell me how they are anything other that race pimps.

I could obviously go on with this subject, but you get the idea. – Dave

Bidwell comment: I agree with you that the left uses race to divide our nation. The best Stansberry Radio show I have ever heard was with C.L. Bryant, a Baptist Minister and creator of the independent film documentary, Runaway Slave, a movie about the race to free the Black community from the slavery of tyranny and progressive policies. The film is excellent. If you never listened to the show, you can still tune in by clicking here.

As for reaching those people who could use the preaching more than the choir, if you encounter them, thanks to Sowell and our other writers, you have the information you need to influence them.

If the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed? ~ James Madison, Federalist Papers 62 – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: I agree we have too many laws and regulations. We never know what is coming next.

We have a government that is too massive in size and scope. It is trying to grow even bigger… The Founding Fathers warned us that a massive government breeds tyranny. All of the recent scandals… the IRS scandal, the AP wire taps, the Department of Justice wielding its power to accomplish a political agenda… These incidences demonstrate the inevitable tyranny to which a massive government will always be subject.

The Bullying Pulpit

We have truly entered the world of “Alice in Wonderland” when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to “a worrisome federal deficit,” according to Senator Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has.

Because of “gimmicks” used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, “children across the country won’t get early education from Head Start. Needy seniors will go without meals. Fighter jets sit idle on tarmacs because our military lacks the funding to keep pilots trained.”

The federal government already has ample powers to punish people who have broken the tax laws. It does not need additional powers to bully people who haven’t.

What is a tax “loophole”? It is a provision in the law that allows an individual or an organization to pay less taxes than they would be required to pay otherwise. Since Congress puts these provisions in the law, it is a little much when members of Congress denounce people who use those provisions to reduce their taxes.

If such provisions are bad, then members of Congress should blame themselves and repeal the provisions. Yet words like “gimmicks” and “loopholes” suggest that people are doing something wrong when they don’t pay any more taxes than the law requires.

Are people who are buying a home, who deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages when filing their tax returns, using a “gimmick” or a “loophole”? Or are only other people’s deductions to be depicted as somehow wrong, while our own are OK?

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out long ago that “the very meaning of a line in the law is that you intentionally may go as close to it as you can if you do not pass it.”

If the line in tax laws was drawn in the wrong place, Congress can always draw it somewhere else. But, if you buy the argument used by people like Senator Levin, then a state trooper can pull you over on a highway for driving 64 miles per hour in a 65 mile per hour zone, because you are driving too close to the line.

The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it. That is when “public servants” become public masters. That is when government itself has stepped over the line.

Government’s power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us. When Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department started keeping track of phone calls going to Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen (and his parents) that was firing a shot across the bow of Fox News — and of any other reporters or networks that dared to criticize the Obama administration.

When the Internal Revenue Service started demanding to know who was donating to conservative organizations that had applied for tax-exempt status, what purpose could that have other than to intimidate people who might otherwise donate to organizations that oppose this administration’s political agenda?

The government’s power to bully has been used to extract billions of dollars from banks, based on threats to file lawsuits that would automatically cause regulatory agencies to suspend banks’ rights to make various ordinary business decisions, until such indefinite time as those lawsuits end. Shakedown artists inside and outside of government have played this lucrative game.

Someone once said, “any government that is powerful enough to protect citizens against predators is also powerful enough to become a predator itself.” And dictatorial in the process.

No American government can take away all our freedoms at one time. But a slow and steady erosion of freedom can accomplish the same thing on the installment plan. We have already gone too far down that road. F.A. Hayek called it “the road to serfdom.”

How far we continue down that road depends on whether we keep our eye on the ball — freedom — or allow ourselves to be distracted by predatory demagogues like Senator Carl Levin.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

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The Project to Restore America

I highly doubt that you are old enough for Alzheimer’s, yet you carry on as if you recall NOTHING about the Bush years of treason & tyranny.

But to Obama, clearly you hate not having a real scandal to tear him down. It’s probably simply that you are racists.

He had nothing to do with the Republican led IRS issue, which was merely the result of the Tea Party groups – including that big fat LIAR Rove – claiming an agenda of Social Welfare but ILLEGALLY spending all their money on politics.

Obama called the Benghazi attack “terrorism” the very next day. But you loonies love to beat dead horses.

But how about that traitor Bush whom you give such a free pass to -- he gave us 911, murdering 3000 Americans. He falsely invaded Iraq and caused the murder of hundreds of thousands of INNOCENT Iraqis. He LIED about yellow cake. He LIED about his going AWOL from his cushy bought reserve duty. He LIED about Ken Lay and permanently shut him up. He kept John Kennedy Jr from running for congress – oops, it would have threatened his majority -- with which he siphoned $30 TRILLION from our economy ... and you howl about Obama’s $16 Trillion To keep us out of a profound DEPRESSION. EVERY WORD OUT OF bush’s mouth was a lie – and they all cost this nation greatly.

It’s a joke that you think more of such evil corruption can “restore” America.

Bidwell comment: I am not old enough to have Alzheimer’s... you are correct. You say President Obama had nothing to do with the IRS scandal; however, Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House 157 times during the Obama Administration, 118 of which were during the period when Conservative groups filing for tax-exempt status were being targeted. The President's most trusted cabinet member did not visit him this often... It looks like President Obama might have been orchestrating the IRS scandal after all... It is yet to be determined.

Do you not believe that educating Americans on their inalienable rights as outlined by the Constitution is social welfare? Considering this country is so different than the way it was intended, we most definitely need education groups informing Americans of their real rights and responsibilities, since they obviously are uninformed.

Please send me a clip or some kind of documentation of President Obama calling the Benghazi attack “terrorism” the next day... I missed that.

Lastly, The Project to Restore America was not in existence when George W. Bush was in office; however, he received his fair share of flak from the American public. I believe it is worth reminding you of a few facts I read in yesterday’s Diary of a Rogue Economist:

1.	During Obama’s first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 US presidents combined.

2.	The US national debt is now more than 23 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

Great article about Rick Perry doing his thing trying to get businesses to move to Texas. – John

Bidwell comment: Since we are headquartered in Baltimore, MD, where the business climate is nearly the opposite of Texas, we enjoy following this… Rick Perry is doing a great job recruiting businesses to the already-rich state of Texas. Make sure to check this out if you have the time...

New boss, same as the old ‘Boss’

For those looking for insight on the scandals engulfing the Obama administration, read “Boss,” Mike Royko’s classic 1971 biography of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.

The IRS targeting of conservative groups and the Department of Justice (DOJ) criminalizing reporting will make more sense after understanding how the infamous Chicago Machine, the one that birthed President Barack Obama, worked.

It’s the one where honest police “were distinguished by their rank, which was seldom above patrolman.” It’s the one where millionaires were allowed to “contribute to the party, serve on advisory boards, take on time-consuming appointments and help elect Machine Democrats to office.” And it’s the one where everyone knew their role without being told. In order to be elected one had to make it through the system, “beginning as doorbell ringers, working in the jobs their sponsors got for them, pushing the ward book, buying the tickets, doing the favors, holding the coats, opening the doors, putting in the fix... “

Obama did not rise through the Machine like Daley or his son Richard, Mayor of Chicago from 1989 to 2011. He adopted it, by moving to Chicago for good after Harvard Law School.

As he told the Hyde Park Herald in 1995, “I came home in Chicago... I began to see my identity and my individual struggles were one with the struggles that folks face in Chicago.”

The man who had never been a ward committeeman or moved up the patronage job ladder originally saw himself as above its parochial maneuverings. But he learned the hard way after U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush decimated him in a 2000 primary that he would get nowhere as the proverbial “nobody nobody sent.”

So he embraced it, ingratiating himself with the proper pastors, politicians and now- Commerce Secretary nominee Penny Pritzker, the billionaire whose family founded Hyatt Hotels and who raised millions for him. And life was good. He moved from Illinois state senator to U.S. Senator under their tutelage.

Schooled in its powers, he moved key sections of the Democratic National Committee to Chicago in 2008 so that it could be fully integrated into his campaign, thereby Chicago-fying national Democratic politics. And its imprint can be found all over the scandals even if Obama’s official fingerprints aren’t.

It can be seen in Lois Lerner, the head of the section at the IRS that handles tax-exempt applications, declaring that she broke no law and did nothing wrong before she took the Fifth. And it can be seen in the focused auditing of conservative groups, the coordination across multiple federal agencies of audits, inspections and investigations of some and in one case, the release of IRS records to a group’s political opponent. Like exemplary patronage employees who worked their way up the local Democratic ladder by following its rules, she and her managers methodically accomplished party goals, the only law they knew.

When President Obama’s reelection campaign said “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records” are donating to his political opponent Mitt Romney, they used their power to audit them! When the president berated Supreme Court justices sitting in front of him at the 2010 State of the Union speech for making it easier for corporations to donate to political causes, they targeted groups, hundreds of them, funded by the new cash flowing through the political system, for special scrutiny, delayed their tax-exempt applications for years and coordinated the operation across the country like a well-oiled ... machine. When Obama in 2010 called Fox News “destructive to [America’s] long-term growth”, Eric Holder’s Justice Department took it one step further by labeling one of its reporters a criminal co-conspirator in a national security investigation.

The Obama administration keeps acting as if they knew nothing about the yin to their yang. The distancing has become so scripted it was almost comical when on May 15 President Obama took to the airwaves to announce the firing of the acting IRS commissioner without mentioning his name, as if he was so far removed from the operations of the organization he didn’t know its leader.

That posture didn’t work for an embattled Daley in his second term. As Royko writes, “But since everybody took orders from him, nobody was impressed by his pose... “ Daley fixed his problems by launching a public relations program and was soon on top again, “treated like a hero and a reformer.”

There are no government heroes in this story, however. Only people who deserve the full consequences of a rule of law that applies to everyone, even them.

Marta H. Mossburg writes frequently about national affairs and about Maryland, where she lives. Write her at marta@martamossburg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @mmossburg.

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The Project to Restore America

http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/29/irss-shulman-had-more-public-white-house-visits-than-any-cabinet-member/ – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: This is a valuable new development to the IRS scandal. Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House 157 times during the Obama Administration, 118 of which were during the period when Conservative groups filing for tax-exempt status were being targeted. There is still more for us to learn, but this article introduces new information about which we should hear more in the weeks to come.

All I can say to the article is “Amen”. I’ll go further. Production taxes, especially progressive income taxes, are unfair, unjust, immoral, and just plain stupid. Yet we accept these conditions as necessary or useful. It is a madhouse!

That is why the Framers of the Constitution prohibited such taxation, before amendment by the “wise authoritarians” of the early 20th century like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

I don’t think it is possible to recover from these epic failures of judgement. I don’t think our citizenry has the intelligence or focus to reverse the course. Regards. – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: If our government quit taxing us altogether, I would be ecstatic.

If we can simply move the needle, it will be a great accomplishment. Moving the needle is precisely what we are trying to do here at The Project. We want a flatter, more fair tax code and a country in which more Americans have skin in the game... Besides, just imagine filing out your taxes on a postcard.

Abolish the IRS — and the Income Tax with It

The Internal Revenue Service has been caught engaging in political profiling while processing applications for tax-exempt status. In this case it was against organizations with “tea-party” or “patriot “ in their names and other right-wing groups. Next time it could be libertarian or left-wing antiwar and pro-civil-liberties groups. No dissenter can ever rest assured he is safe from the arbitrary power of the IRS.

Nothing will have been learned from this scandal if all that happens is the firing of some IRS administrators and the issuance of new guidelines on 501(c)(4) applications. That is not nearly enough.

Obviously, tax exemptions exist only because individuals and some organizations are subject to income and other forms of taxation. Congress levies a tax on incomes, then in its “wisdom” chooses to exempt certain activities but not others. This is social engineering, with Congress seeking to encourage some kinds of organizations — while not forgoing more revenue than necessary. The IRS then writes rules to carry out the directions of Congress.

Where possible, people will naturally strive to qualify for exemption by pushing the boundaries of the regulations. That incentive will always be strong because a nonprofit organization that is exempt from taxation will have more resources with which to pursue its mission. Since the language of statutes and regulations is inevitably vague, the IRS will have room to interpret when ruling on who qualifies and who doesn’t qualify for exemption. The line between vigilance and harassment is not bright, and the potential for abuse is great.

It should be apparent that this power, which is inherently arbitrary, ill suits a society that sees itself as free.

Take the current controversy. The IRS says that to qualify for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, a nonprofit organization must “be operated exclusively to promote social welfare.” To do that the “organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community (such as by bringing about civic betterment and social improvements).”

What exactly constitutes the common good and general welfare of the people of the community, or civic betterment and social improvements? The IRS will let you know. What does “primarily” mean and how does it relate to the seemingly contradictory exclusivity requirement? This is subject to a “facts and circumstances” test — that is, the IRS will decide. Approved activities are generally regarded as educational, but how broadly or narrowly that term is interpreted is left to the IRS and, if challenged, to the courts. Lobbying for “legislation germane to the organization’s programs is a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes.” However, direct or indirect participation in political campaigns is not regarded as promotion of social welfare — although an organization “may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity. However, any expenditure it makes for political activities may be subject to tax.”

As this demonstrates, once government undertakes to tax income, it acquires even more power through its authority to define “income,” “taxable income,” subsidiary terms, and the rules of exemption. There is no escape from arbitrariness and caprice.

One might propose to remove the government’s arbitrary power by ending tax exemption. But that would make the tax burden worse. And besides, politicians aren’t likely to agree, because they would be giving up the power to dispense favors that manipulation of today’s tax code affords.

There’s a better way to go that’s demanded by liberty and justice. Since taxation is nothing less than the confiscation, under threat of force, of what belongs to productive individuals, it has no place in a free society. In other words, everyone should be exempt from income and other taxation. (Americans lived without income taxation for more than 125 years.) If something can’t be accomplished through consent, contract, and cooperation -- without aggressive force -- we should ask whether it is worth doing.

When the income tax was first proposed in America years ago, opponents always had the same word of warning: inquisitorial. How right they were.

Sheldon Richman is vice president and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va. (www.fff.org).

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The Project to Restore America

It seems that the scandals between the IRS, Benghazi, and the White House are getting worse and worse. How long are thesescandals going to last? My opinions are: to get rid of these IRS employees who are responsible for causing all this trouble, and as far asBenghazi concerns: four people were killed which this is a great shame for America and I am sorry to say that President Obama should beimpeached and also those are involved for examples: Eric Holder the Attorney General should resign and also Hilary Clinton should not be run for President in 2016.

I do hope that America will someday get back in the way it should be. Sincerely,Sheila

Bidwell comment: Sheila, I understand your concerns. This administration vowed to be the most transparent administration ever... However, it has failed to measure up to the standard it set for itself. In response to a feedback I received explaining that the IRS was able to target individuals through a .gov.whitehouse web site, and that Congressman Stockman’s office might know more, last week I mentioned I would get in touch with his office. Here is the full story, according to Stockman’s office...

Responding to the e-mail from Erich in today’s report:

He’s right... not too many people ‘get it’!

I’m in my 5th year of having an HSA and the balance is starting to get substantial. I have at least 15 more working years ahead of me and plan to have this as the anchor of my Health Insurance plan when I start considering retirement (though I am not sure I will ever truly retire). Since the plan is mine, I control the money and so, will always get to pick and choose what services I pay for and with whom. I suspect that if faced with the prospect of a quadruple-bypass heart procedure in the US, which may cost up to $300K+ I might be able to negotiate with my then insurance company for services elsewhere for, let’s say $50k, and even put $$ into my pocket by saving us both $$. This is the true power of an HSA... to control the money! If everyone started switching to this type of plan (which many already have) it would start to revert the power of the insurance industry to the individual people who own the plans (i.e. “the money”) and things would start to change.

When changing employers last year I talked with Charles Schwab about a roll-over option and they have not set up an HSA roll-over plan but are in the process of evaluating doing so. This will be a powerful movement once people can roll their HSAs into an HSA brokerage roll-over account like a 401K. As I’ve always maintained, if you take away the money, you can begin to get change. This is why I have been a long-time advocate of a federal balanced budget amendment with an ‘out’ only via a 2/3 or ¾ approval vote and borrowing limits. I understand that the PTRA effort is along a similar vein and that is why I support your efforts.

Next time you go to your doctor ask them what type of insurance plan they use. I have yet found one that has not already switched to an HSA.

“He who owns the money has the power”. Once individuals have enough of the money, we, the people, will have the power. Regards, Keith

Bidwell comment: In case you haven’t already heard, Marco Rubio has joined many in saying the IRS scandal is a reason not to support Obamacare. The further we move away from healthcare as a free market good just like any other, the more doctors and hospitals will prefer plans like health savings accounts. The primary reason is because HSA’s are free market real money. They are free of the bureaucracy that Obamacare (or any other socialist health insurance programs) require to implement.

Thank you very much for sending us your story full of your own experiences. This is how we all learn. Thanks again for your involvement.

The Devils Koch

If the Tribune Company were Biblical Egypt, the Koch brothers buying its papers would be the 11th plague. They are probably behind billions of red, bulgy-eyed cicadas poised to swarm the East Coast this year, too. Or so think many liberals.

So bad is the perception of the pair of billionaire industrialists known for their support of libertarian causes that the Pavlovian revulsion triggered by uttering their names makes the collective leftist disapproval of Ronald Reagan seem like an inaudible "boo."

Take this typical response to them by "Hangover" actor Zach Galifianakis. Last year he told The New York Daily News, "I disagree with everything they do. They are creepy and there is no way around that. It's not freedom what they are doing."

Never mind that they have underwritten the Cato Institute, whose scholars support gay marriage and drug legalization, two causes of many on the left. (Full disclosure, my first job out of college was as an intern at Cato.) They have also given tens of millions to arts and medical institutions in addition to conservative political causes, including Americans for Prosperity, so hated by liberals. A doorman cited in a 2012 documentary claims David Koch is a bad tipper. Being stingy is mean. But no one needed that tidbit to hate him.

Charles and David Koch, who control privately owned Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, have reached that special status where knowing anything about them is not necessary for condemnation. For those in a certain crowd mentioning "the Koch brothers" grants permission to listeners to suspend critical thought in the same way that saying "George Soros" triggers a mental meltdown for those on the right.

That is the take of Progressive Maryland, which in an email to supporters last Friday wrote, "We have a major problem brewing here in Maryland. Our only statewide daily newspaper, The Baltimore Sun, is in grave and immediate danger of being bought by a pair of wealthy members of the 1% club, the notorious Koch brothers."

New Executive Director Kate Planco Waybright added, "There's no other way to put it, the Koch brothers ... . would ruin The Baltimore Sun" and "further conservative corporate control of mainstream media, paralleling Rupert Murdoch's ideological print and broadcast empire as showcased by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and many more."

The first LGBT director of the organization, according to her bio, urges supporters to email and call Tribune board members to voice their disapproval of a sale to them. Rupert Murdoch—Chairman and CEO of News Corp. -- is interested in purchasing a part of Tribune, by the way, but for some reason he isn't as scary to Progressive Maryland and other groups around the country, including the staff at the Los Angeles Times, another Tribune paper. Half of them reportedly indicated at a meeting in April they would quit if the Kochs bought it. Only a few said they would if Mr. Murdoch did, maybe because The Wall Street Journal has not fallen apart under his leadership. Not to be outdone, a Los Angeles City Councilman introduced a motion in April to remove pension money invested with the firms that own the Los Angeles Times unless it is sold to buyers who support "the highest terms of professional and objective journalism."

Before all these people rush to condemn the Kochs, maybe they should wait to see what they do with Tribune – if they buy it. Making money will require them to earn the trust of the generally liberal communities in which Tribune operates. Besides, if they run the papers as ideological mills the company will become a very expensive vanity project read by people who already share their views. That will not help spread a free market ethos – one of their main goals -- or their bank accounts.

Watching the scandals unfold in Washington should make Koch skeptics wonder, too, how more people who don't hold government in such high regard might break more stories about government corruption. They may not be very likeable people. And they may be really dumb thinking they can make money off of newspapers. But they should be allowed to try just like other potential buyers.

Marta H. Mossburg writes frequently about national affairs and about Maryland, where she lives. Write her at marta@martamossburg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @mmossburg.

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The Project to Restore America

Every email is important to us. We can't always respond individually, but we read and consider everything. Please email your question, comment or complaint to john@theprojecttorestoreamerica.com or wendy@theprojecttorestoreamerica.com.

Regarding your article today, "Low-skilled Worked Get Raw Deal Under Obamacare", I would recommend the book, "The Freedom Plan", by Dr. John Perry. It is available on Amazon in a Kindle version. I will gladly "gift" it to you if you would like. – Mike

Bidwell comment: In case you missed yesterday's article, you can still check out Low-skilled Worked Get Raw Deal Under Obamacare. I have a Nook, not a Kindle... But if you can find it in Nook format, I am happy to read it. Thank you.

Michael Barone has it dead right.

I had a really hard time convincing my in-laws that my $5,000 deductible health plan with a Health Savings Account attached gave me the exact same financial protection and potentially much more than their full coverage plan.

That is because instead of pre-paying for medical services that I may not even need I pay only for those that I do need and save the rest with tax assistance no less. Yet, in case that I do get seriously sick I am protected at a total outlay that is still less than their total insurance premium.

To demonstrate, the typical employer sponsored plan cost $14,000 annually. A 35 year old could purchase a $5000 H.S.A. plan for around $1,200 in premiums, that makes for a worst case out of pocket cost of $6,200. But the savings doesn't stop there. If he puts up to $2,600 into an H.S.A. account, he can subtract this amount from his taxable income and save it tax free as long as it is used for medical expenses. Why this alternative isn't more widely popular is beyond me and points to a lack of education on the subject by Congress and the insurance industry. The latter is understandable, why would they promote you paying them less?

This is the real answer to Obamacare. Dr. Ben Carson alluded to it but was widely criticized. I used it, but am now forced onto Medicare because of my age.

Thank you, Erich

Bidwell comment: Erich, I agree. I also contribute to an HSA, which covers all my routine visits and medications. Health care should be a free market good just like anything else. Every American should be responsible for his/her own health care coverage. This is the only way for every American to get the best health care possible.

Low-skilled Worked Get Raw Deal Under Obamacare

Would you like to have a "skinny" health insurance policy? Probably not. But if you're employed by a large company, you may get one, thanks to Obamacare.

That's the conclusion of Wall Street Journal reporters Christopher Weaver and Anna Wilde Mathews. They report that insurance brokers are pitching and selling "low-benefit" policies across the country.

You might be wondering what a "skinny" or "low-benefit" insurance plan is. The terms may vary, but the basic idea is that policies would cover preventive care, a limited number of doctor visits and perhaps generic drugs.

They wouldn't cover things such as surgery, hospital stays or prenatal care. That sounds similar to an auto insurance policy that reimburses you when you change the oil but not when your car gets totaled.

You might ask how Obamacare could encourage the proliferation of such policies. It was sold as a way to provide more coverage for more people, after all.

And people were told they could keep the health insurance they had.

As Weaver and Mathews explain, Obamacare's requirement that insurance policies include "essential" benefits such as mental health services apply only to small businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

But larger employers, they write, "need only cover preventive service, without a lifetime or annual dollar-value limit, in order to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty." Low-benefit plans may cost an employer only $40 to $100 a month per employee. That's less than the $2,000-per-employee penalty for providing no insurance.

"We wouldn't have anticipated that there'd be demand for these type of Band-Aid plans in 2014," the Journal quotes former White House health adviser Robert Kocher. "Our expectation was that employers would offer high-quality insurance."

Oops. It turns out that Friedrich Hayek may have been right when he wrote that central planners would never have enough information to micromanage the economy.

It's probably true that businesses trying to attract and retain high-skill employees for long-term positions have an economic incentive to offer generous and attractive health insurance. Otherwise they'd lose good people to competitors.

But the kind of businesses mentioned in the Journal story — restaurants, retailers, assisted-living chains — tend to employ lower-skill workers who typically work there only temporarily.

In a high-unemployment economy they may not need to offer gold-plated health insurance to get the workforce they need.

Such employers would have to pay a $3,000 penalty for each employee who buys insurance on Obamacare's health insurance exchanges. But it seems likely that many workers, especially young ones, would opt not to pay the hefty premiums for that.

The problem here is that Obamacare's architects seem to misunderstand the concept of insurance.

People buy insurance to pay for low-probability, high-cost and undesirable events. It doesn't make sense to hold onto enough cash to replace your house if it burns when you can buy an insurance policy that will cover that unlikely disaster.

But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has a different idea of what insurance is.

In response to an American Society of Actuaries report that health insurance premiums would rise 32 percent under Obamacare, she said, "Some of these folks have very high catastrophic plans that don't pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus."

Her idea apparently is that insurance should pay for just about every health care procedure.

In her defense, the World War II decision to make the cost of health insurance deductible for employers and nontaxable for employees has moved things in that direction. Many people have come to expect that.

But as the Daily Beast's Megan McArdle commented, "Coverage of routine, predictable services is not insurance at all; it's a spectacularly inefficient prepayment plan."

Some Obamacare architects, including its namesake, want to move toward a single-payer system in which government would pay all health care costs.

Many Obamacare opponents want a bigger role for markets, allowing consumers to choose insurance that covers catastrophes and paying for routine costs with tax-free (and in some cases subsidized) dollars.

But if large numbers of employees are enrolled in "skinny" health insurance plans, as the Wall Street Journal article suggests, Obamacare will have produced an unanticipated outcome no one wants.

People stuck with these policies will have insurance that pays for the equivalent of oil changes (up to six a year!) but not for the equivalent of a wrecked car. Just the opposite of real insurance.

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The Project to Restore America

I read your blog regarding your double audit by the IRS. I just received an email from Congressman Steve Stockman's office. They are requesting us to report stories of individuals who were targeted by the IRS.

He is calling for a full investigation of the IRS/White House. Apparently, the IRS was able to target individuals through a .gov.whitehouse web site. That means this scandal leads directly to the White House!

Please contact Congressman Stockman's office as soon as possible or call me if you have any questions! – Theresa

Bidwell comment: I will contact Congressman Stockman's office as soon as possible to learn more about this possible connection with the White House. The American public must know what went on in this scandal.

Writing in The Washington Post Wednesday, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2013/05/22/the-insiders-a-special-prosecutor-in-the-irs-matter-is-inevitable/ Ed Rogers related the story of how far up the chain of command the scandal went before being shielded from Obama's delicate eyes.

Per the Post article, White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the impending IRS inspector general report, but of course the White House chief of staff did not tell the president (perhaps he was on the green on the 16th hole and couldn't be interrupted?)

Rogers, a former White House administration official wrote: "I sat in a White House chief of staff's office every day for more than two years. The only reason the legal counsel would tell the chief of staff about an impending report or disclosure would be so the chief of staff could tell the president... There are many valid reasons why the chief of staff would tell the president, but I can't think of a reason why he and the legal counsel would both agree that this news nugget would go no further. It's very odd." – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: This is the best tidbit of information on the IRS scandal as of yet. I agree with Ed Rogers... The reason White House Counsel Kathryn Ruemmler told the White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough about the impending IRS inspector general report was so that he would relay the information to the President.

There is still so much more to this story... We must keep the pressure on so that this story doesn't fade into oblivion. America has the right to the full story.

IRS and AP Scandals Cast a Big Chill on Free Speech

Chilling effect. That's the term lawyers and judges use to describe the result of government actions that deter people from exercising their right of free speech.

There have been plenty of examples in the past 10 days.

The Obama administration's Justice Department issued a sweeping demand for two months of office, cellular and home telephone records from multiple Associated Press reporters and editors to investigate an alleged breach of national security.

The AP story in question, on a foiled terrorist plot, had been withheld for days at the request of the CIA. It finally went out on the wire on a Monday, after the AP was told that administration spokesmen would officially announce it the next day.

That tends to undercut Attorney General Eric Holder's claim that the story was based on one of "the top two or three most serious leaks that I have ever seen" and "put the American people at risk, and that is not hyperbole."

I don't think enough facts are known to conclude that Holder was wrong. But it does seem likely that the AP material was less damaging to national security than some stories The New York Times ran despite pleas from the George W. Bush administration.

Those were not followed by the kind of intrusive investigation launched in this case. You might not know it from reading much of the press, but Obama's administration has been much more aggressive in investigating leaks than Bush's ever was.

Another chill came from the targeting of conservative organizations by Obama's Internal Revenue Service. IRS agents were selectively refusing to give tax-exempt status to organizations with "tea party" and "patriot" in their names.

Anti-abortion groups were asked to pledge that they would never picket Planned Parenthood clinics. Organizers were asked numerous personal questions, including what they said in their prayers. If that's not chilling, I don't know what is.

The acting director of the IRS was told about this activity in May 2012, and the chief counsel and deputy secretary of the Treasury Department were informed in June 2012.

Did they pass the information along to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner? Did he tell the president? Did the president ever ask?

The excuse given in some quarters is that in some cases IRS agents acted on their own or contrary to instructions. That may be plausible.

As my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy Carney has pointed out, personnel at the IRS are heavily Democratic. That's probably true of most domestic government agencies.

But that's a reason why a Democratic White House should be especially alert for evidence that civil servants are targeting political opponents for unfavorable treatment. Especially when, as here, there were plenty of reports in the press and the blogosphere indicating that it was going on.

But maybe this Democratic White House didn't want to know. Or didn't understand the need for vigilance. Maybe someone figured, hey, let's not have this come out before the election.

The chill threatens to get even colder. It turns out that Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as head of the IRS office handling tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012 — when the targeting was going on — is now head of the IRS division in charge of the IRS office policing Obamacare.

She's a career IRS lawyer, and it's not known whether she was aware of the targeting — though it would be a little surprising if she wasn't.

She'll have a big job. The IRS is assigned a lot of work by the Obamacare law. It will impose penalties on Americans who can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it.

It will impose penalties on companies with more than 50 employees who work 30 hours a week and don't provide government-mandated policies.

It will give tax credits to non-affluent purchasers of health insurance on state exchanges. The IRS says it can also give tax credits to such people in states that have federally run exchanges, though many argue the law does not authorize that.

In other words, the IRS is going to possess and process a large amount of information not only on your income but on your health insurance and perhaps your health.

The IRS was given these tasks by the drafters of Obamacare because no other government agency had the capability to gain access to people's personal financial information. They may have thought that taxpayers would trust an agency that they had gotten used to dealing with.

That level of trust may not be as high as it was 10 days ago. Chilling effect, indeed.

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The Project to Restore America

Obama brother tax-exempt foundation doesn't even EXIST at listed address. Charles C. Johnson wrote today at http://joemiller.us/2013/05/tax-exempt-obama-foundation-doesnt-exist-at-listed-addresses/#ixzz2TzFYLknz:

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.

All I can say is I sure am glad they took the time to audit Billy Graham's group, as well as Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse, and not waste their time on some 2 bit fraud organization that doesn't even exist at the address it claims to be at!!! NY Post also has a short article on the IRS scam worth reviewing, if you have the time. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/connect_dots_to_obama_XTSvuIurzvkQtKhoN6KqTJ – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: Thank you for sharing with us. I reached out to Richard Grenell, a contributor for Fox News who primarily focuses on the liberal bias in the media. He tweeted this information out today and has this to say...

The idea that some liberal leaning organizations that support Democratic Party causes get fast tracked at the IRS while the conservative leaning ones get trapped in red-tape is very disturbing. This isn't how a democracy works; this is what happens in countries headed by dictators. The Obama team has yet to answer how this could happen? Who thought of it? Who knew about it? President Obama's IRS agency cannot be trusted. Now we wonder who they are targeting for audits. Who is being picked on because of their political beliefs? The media had better start asking tougher, probing questions because the people are really upset. – Richard Grenell

I agree and like your long term goals. Thank you for your efforts. – Carol

Bidwell comment: The best way for us to work towards our long term goal is to let our voices be heard on the current issues. This should propel us closer to our long term goals. In case you missed Monday's update, I made this important announcement...

Seeing as there have been no repercussions to the Obama administration for incorrectly reporting the Benghazi terrorist attack to the American people, we are launching a petition drive telling Congress to subpoena all high level executives and their assistants for phone conversations and email correspondence. This is the only way we can really know who is at fault here. If there was any communication between the IRS and Obama's re-election campaign, Watergate will begin to look like a walk in the park.

We have some strong "arm muscle" behind our petition drive, and many people are helping us get the responses we hope for. Make sure to open your emails this week, as there will be a link so that you can sign our one-click petition and weigh in on an event that will go down in history...

How We Will Hold the IRS Accountable

On Friday, Members of the House Ways and Means Committee sought answers into who at the IRS targeted conservative groups, and why the IRS lied to Congress throughout a two year investigation of the matter. Former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller testified before the committee.

Certain IRS employees used words like "tea party" or "patriot" to identify applicants for 501(c)(4) status, and these applications went to a special queue to be scrutinized and handled separately. These individuals also targeted religious groups like Baptist and Jewish organizations. While two Internal Revenue Service employees, Steven Miller and Joseph Grant, have been asked to resign, the public still does not know who initiated or carried out the malicious targeting.

Miller, who was forced to resign from his position as Internal Revenue Service Commissioner on Wednesday, was questioned extensively on Friday. Yet, his answers were incomplete and vague, and little new information was uncovered as to who initiated or carried out the malicious targeting. Most likely, you have been following this story throughout the weekend and you have probably seen some clips from the hearing.

In my opinion, Miller made an important admission, and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Rep. David Nunes (R-Calif.), and Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) made some excellent points that might shape where the investigation goes from here...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) asked Miller why he didn't tell Congress about the targeting in a July, 2012 hearing, since Miller had known about it since May of last year. Miller said he told the truth... Ryan berated him since not telling the whole truth is the same thing as being untruthful.

Miller admitted to planting a question at the American Bar Association's big annual meeting last Friday. The IRS was trying to let the information out before the story broke in the news. He conceded that when Celia Roady asked Lois Lerner for an update on the IRS's review of applications from conservative leaning political groups seeking 501(c)(4) status, they had planned the exchange ahead of time. He conceded that when Celia Roady asked Lois Lerner for an update on the IRS's review of applications from conservative leaning political groups seeking 501(c)(4) status, they had planned the exchange ahead of time.

When asked why he hadn't notified the House of Representatives before announcing it at a Bar Association conference considering he had not been forthcoming in the July hearing when he knew at that point, Miller said he had called and tried to get a meeting on the calendar.

Rep. David Nunes (R-Calif.) asked some very pointed and important questions... He asked if Miller has had any communication with Organizing for Action, which is President Obama's re-election campaign. The answer sounded like a no. Nunes asked if he has had any communication with ProPublica, and the answer was more like a yes. According to the non-partisan news organization, ProPublica, the IRS released to them nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups.

Rep. Nunes (R-Calif.) asked Miller to release his emails and phone conversations from the last four years. To this, Miller said he would talk to others at the IRS about that... "We could subpoena those records," Nunes replied sternly.

After the meeting, Camp explained his frustration that such a high power person from the IRS wasn't more forthcoming with information. He has been making his case for the need for tax reform since the meeting adjourned. On yesterday's Meet the Press, he said he believes many people think the tax code is broken.

The GOP and Senate counterparts have had the first hearings together on this in the last 70 years. He is using the scandal as a reason for a flatter, simpler tax code.

Camp also thinks there is a lot more to learn, and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Saturday, he suggested Congress might need to subpoena IRS officials for their phone conversations and email communications to uncover the truth.

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The Project to Restore America

If you are concerned about IRS harassment of conservative groups you should be enraged by the Federal Campaign Act relegating people to second class participants while elevating commercial media to State approved press!

The Newspaper Preservation Act was touted as a relief measure to allow multiple newspapers competing in the same market to cut costs, thus ensuring that no one paper could have supremacy in the market by driving the other(s) out of business. In fact, President Richard M. Nixon initially opposed the passage of the act (as had his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson) as being antithetical to the essential practices and character of free market capitalism. He reversed himself upon receiving a letter from Richard E. Berlin, CEO of the Hearst chain of newspapers and magazines. In the 1969 letter, Berlin intimated that failure of the law to pass would carry political consequences, and hinted that support from Nixon would conversely help the President and his allies. The Nixon Administration supported the Act's passage, and in the 1972 Presidential Campaign, every Hearst newspaper endorsed Nixon for reelection. – Above is sourced from Wikipedia

The newly minted campaign laws should have chastised the 4th estate as well as Nixon.

Instead, shamefully, the Federal Election Campaign Act, to address serious financial abuses in the 1972 Presidential campaign, amended the FECA in 1974 to set limits on contributions by individuals, political parties and PACs.

And adding insult to injury, the Federal Election Campaign Reform Act exempted corporate media from campaign laws and created the "State Approved Press":2 USC 431 (9) (B) (i) The term "expenditure" does not include any news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the facilities of any broadcasting station, newspaper, magazine, or other periodical publication, unless such facilities are owned or controlled by any political party, political committee, or candidate;

Giant media corporations are allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money influencing the political process because their political communications are said to have no value.

But there is no difference between a newspaper or network endorsing a candidate or issue and a PAC, 527 or 501 corporation doing the same. Editorials and slanted news stories are merely State approved violations of unconstitutional campaign laws that abridge the rights of citizens to participate.

This is contrary to the 1st Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

To restore citizens 1st Amendment rights and return the Federal Government to Constitutionally proscribed boundaries, Call your Senators and Congressman and demand they add 'citizens and citizen's groups' to the language of the press exemption. - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: You make some great points… Thank you for sharing with us. Most of us do not realize the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 has this kind of effect on our First Amendment Rights today.

As the Obama administration is hit by scandal after scandal, it was revealed that Verizon wireless handed over private data belonging to journalists with the Associated Press last year without any hesitation or questions asked. Interestingly, the Associated Press said the decision to publish the article that reportedly sparked the investigation was only made after consulting the White House and the CIA. This latest news came as congressional critics said the investigation damaged press freedom and the White House claimed they were ignorant of the investigation. The Justice Department acknowledged the surveillance of AP journalists earlier this week.

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that at least two AP reporters' personal cellphone records "were provided to the government by Verizon Wireless without any attempt to obtain permission to tell them so the reporters could ask a court to quash the subpoena," citing an AP employee. This was no small probe. Indeed, it involved the seizure of over 20 separate phone lines assigned to AP staff in April and May of last year, according to the AP. Ryan Gallagher of Future Tense points out that one of the most controversial aspects of this situation is that "the AP was not given advance notice of the seizure, which is considered the usual protocol when the government is seeking to obtain journalists' records."

Full story at http://www.thedailysheeple.com/verizon-secretly-handed-over-phone-records-of-ap-reporters-to-the-federal-government_052013 - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: Thank you for this synopsis explaining Verizon's involvement... In case you missed it, the CEO of AP was on Face the Nation yesterday, explaining how they are already feeling the effects… Sources are bowing out of opportunities to speak with AP because they don't want government officials to hear their conversations.

Oops, maybe government is tyrannical

Less than two weeks ago President Obama stood in front of graduates from The Ohio State University and told them to reject those who warn of government tyranny.

"Unfortunately, you've grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems," he said.

To young, idealistic people his words likely sounded insightful -- until last week. That's when it became officially impossible to deny that the government abuses its power for political gain.

Practically overnight people labeled conspiracy theorists by the elite were proven prescient interpreters of how big government operates when news broke last Friday that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny in their tax-exempt applications. The media pile on against the administration is so ferocious Fox News could run live feeds from its competitors without losing a beat.

It should be so because the partisan treatment of hundreds of groups is stunning.

Ginny Rapini saw the IRS in action firsthand. The volunteer coordinator for the NorCal Tea Party applied for 501(c)(4) status for her group in July 2009. In the spring of 2010 the IRS asked for more information. She sent in the information immediately but didn't hear from the IRS again until January 2012, she said. At that point the agency sent the group a list of 19 questions, including a request for the names of donors, every email the group sent and minutes of each board meeting, with the requirement that everything be returned within two weeks or the agency would consider the application void, she said. She sent the IRS 3,000 pages of information prior to the deadline – but did not include the names of donors. "I think they wanted to intimidate me, but instead they made me mad," said Rapini.

After Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) spoke about NorCal's problems with the IRS on the floor of the House and wrote to the agency, she got a favorable response to her application in the summer of 2012 – three years after the initial request, not unlike many other organizations treated to years of silence in between harassing questions.

What makes the IRS's actions even worse is that top officials knew about the inappropriate questioning of conservative groups since 2011 but didn't say anything about it to Congress. Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, was fired earlier this week, and should be the first of a long line of people held accountable for the agency's flagrant mistreatment of political opponents by one of the most powerful government agencies.

On top of the IRS scandal, the Department of Justice (DOJ) last week admitted to secretly taking records of incoming and outgoing calls on work and personal phones of Associated Press (AP) reporters, its main lines in New York, Washington and Hartford, CT., and for the AP number in the House of Representatives. It took records on more than 20 lines in total in April and May of 2012 – lines used by more than 100 journalists.

Asked by National Public Radio how many other news media phone records the DOJ had taken Attorney General Eric Holder said, "I'm not sure how many of those cases... I have actually signed off on... I take them very seriously."

So, confidential sources are not confidential if the government wants to know who they are. Whistleblowers beware.

That all of this is happening as the IRS is in the middle of hiring potentially thousands of new employees to write and enforce ObamaCare regulations should make everyone afraid. It is also happening while the IRS is in the middle of creating a giant information center with other federal agencies called the Data Services Hub to assist with rolling out ObamaCare (http://cciio.cms.gov/resources/factsheets/ffe.html ) that will provide one stop shopping on everything but what color underwear someone is wearing for the day.

The government promises, "Protecting the privacy of individuals remains the highest priority." But after the last week, Americans should know there is no guarantee of personal privacy with the government or impartiality in how their information is used. It should also put Americans on notice that their political party could determine the quality of their health care. Welcome to the real world, Ohio State graduates.

Marta H. Mossburg writes frequently about national affairs and about Maryland, where she lives. Write her at marta@martamossburg.com. Follow her on Twitter at @mmossburg.

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The Project to Restore America

I have one problem with today's article "The Outlaw Tax Collector". The National review editors place the blame on Jack Lew, but wasn't he just installed as the treasury Secretary this past February? It seems to me that the bulk of the criminal behavior occurred under Tim Geithner's watch. While they acknowledge that most of what happened, happened prior to his tenure, why aren't they indicting Tim Geithner? - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: According to the National Review editors, "The IRS is a bureau of the Treasury Department, which means that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew bears some responsibility here, though the bulk of the misdeeds seem to have been done before his tenure." Barack Obama appointed Tim Geithner to Secretary of the Treasury in November, 2008. Geithner served until Obama appointed Jack Lew in January, 2013. So you are correct. Most of this occurred on Geithner's watch.

Make sure to open your email on Monday... I am in the IRS hearing today and will let you know what I find out first thing next week.

Hi Wendy. I read somewhere that the IRS is actually a "division" of the IMF. Could you or the author of the article confirm that?

Enjoy reading all the stuff from you guys. Be Well, Ed

Bidwell comment: The IRS is a bureau of the Treasury Department. I don't give credence to this belief that the IRS is a part of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or associated with Great Britain.

An Outlaw Tax Collector

On March 22, 2012, IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman testified under oath before the House Oversight Committee, which was inquiring as to whether the agency was targeting tea-party groups and other conservative organizations filing for tax-exempt status. He firmly and repeatedly denied that any such thing was happening. "There's absolutely no targeting," he said. A little over a year later, the IRS confirmed that it was in fact improperly targeting not only tea-party groups but also Jewish religious nonprofits and organizations inspired by Glenn Beck's 9/12 Project.

Lori Lerner, the IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations, told reporters on Friday that her superiors had been unaware of the actions, which she blamed on a handful of low-level employees in a Cincinnati office. But the next day, the Associated Press confirmed that well before Shulman's substantially untrue testimony before Congress, the IRS had convened a meeting with its chief lawyer to discuss the very thing the commissioner said was not happening. In early 2012, the IRS adopted a new variation on the policy, flagging the applications from, among others, organizations "educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights," according to an internal report.

The IRS's explanation was perfectly Washingtonian: "Mistakes were made."

But the agency's actions do not appear to be mere mistakes; they give every indication of being misconduct with malice aforethought, a campaign of intimidation conducted by political partisans misusing government power and government resources. If so, those actions are not only unethical but criminal.

The organizations that were improperly targeted were subject to inquisitorial questioning in violation of IRS policies and practices. The IRS improperly demanded that conservative groups disclose lists of donors — 501(c)(4) donors can remain anonymous under the law — as well as political literature, contacts with political figures and activists, even activities of friends and family members not related to the organizations in question. Jewish groups were quizzed about their theological beliefs and their opinions on Israel.

There are at least three separate categories of wrongdoing here. The first is the targeting of groups that were believed to be critical of the Obama administration or the federal government in general. The second is the demanding of information that was irrelevant to the tax-status questions at hand, which would have been wrong even if the practice had been applied evenhandedly across the political spectrum. The third is the misleading of Congress and the public about these practices.

The IRS is one of the most powerful agencies in the federal government, with fearsome powers that the Department of Homeland Security can only dream of having. (Does DHS subject Americans to mandatory annual questioning about their personal lives, family arrangements, finances, business practices, travel, etc.?) It has a history of being used as a tool of political retaliation, not only by the Nixon administration but at least as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt. An agency with that kind of power, with access to sensitive information on every individual, business, church, charity, and school in the country, must conduct itself according to the very highest standards. The IRS does not.

This episode is not the only reason we have had to question the rectitude of the IRS's conduct in recent years. Somehow, Mitt Romney's tax returns managed to be leaked, as did documents from American Crossroads, the organization associated with Republican strategist Karl Rove. The misuse of confidential IRS documents is a crime, and a serious one.

To target individuals and organizations because of their political and religious beliefs is a serious offense to our constitutional order. To use federal employees, offices, and records to do so is the misappropriation of government funds and other resources.

The IRS is a bureau of the Treasury Department, which means that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew bears some responsibility here, though the bulk of the misdeeds seem to have been done before his tenure. Rather than disclosing these actions voluntarily, the IRS has attempted to hide them and to obscure the culpability of its employees. Lois Lerner told National Review on Friday that no disciplinary action had been taken against any employee, and then retracted that statement, saying that she would not discuss the subject. But disciplinary action — at least — is clearly called for. The IRS's failure to be fully forthcoming on this issue, and the lack of satisfactory steps toward reform and transparency, must weigh substantially upon our evaluation of Lew's leadership.

This is a matter for congressional investigation, which will be forthcoming, but also for criminal investigation, which to our knowledge is not yet under way. President Obama and his Treasury secretary owe the country a full and honest explanation of how this was allowed to happen. But if Benghazi has shown anything, it is that this administration cannot be counted upon for such assessments. It therefore falls to the relevant oversight committees in the House and the Senate to flush out the truth of this matter, and to recommend legislative reforms to bring this outlaw agency to heel.

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The Project to Restore America

I am so glad all the lies about Benghazi are coming and now the truth can be told. I guess anybody will say anything to get re-elected to the Oval office. 8 months later... .better late than never. – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: I am surprised... Even with the truth about what happened in Benghazi out in the open, the American public doesn't seem to care. Interestingly, this IRS scandal is different. According to a recent Rasmussen pole, 57% of Americans want IRS offenders jailed or fired. I will let you know what transpires in the hearing on Friday as soon as I learn the details.

More from the folks running Obama's Nixon-esque "enemies" list – which of course includes him also tapping phones of the press, as now known. No doubt, Billy Graham will be declared a "terrorist" soon – perhaps soon to join those 9 yr old girls selling lemonade on street corners in Alcatraz. Short story at http://www.redstate.com/toddstarnes/2013/05/14/billy-graham-evangelistic-assn-targeted-by-irs/ – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: This IRS scandal is something that would have happened in the Communist Soviet Union, not the United States of America. This incident demonstrates just how far our government organizations are overreaching. I believe we will move forward with investigations and we will find out the wrongdoers in this. I am already concerned though, that the wrongdoers will get off the hook in the end without much punishment. We, as Americans, must make sure justice prevails.

Lies About Libya

There can be honest differences of opinion on many subjects. But there can also be dishonest differences. Last week's testimony under oath about events in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 makes painfully clear that what the Obama administration told the American people about those events were lies out of whole cloth.

What we were told repeatedly last year by the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the American ambassador to the U.N., was that there was a protest demonstration in Benghazi against an anti-Islamic video produced by an American, and that this protest demonstration simply escalated out of control.

This "spontaneous protest" story did not originate in Libya but in Washington. Neither the Americans on duty in Libya during the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, nor officials of the Libyan government, said anything about a protest demonstration.

The highest American diplomat on the scene in Libya spoke directly with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by phone, and told her that it was a terrorist attack. The president of Libya announced that it was a terrorist attack. The C.I.A. told the Obama administration that it was a terrorist attack.

With lies, as with potato chips, it is hard to stop with just one. After the "spontaneous protest" story was discredited, the next claim was that this was the best information available at the time from intelligence sources.

But that claim cannot survive scrutiny, now that the 12 drafts of the Obama administration's talking points about Benghazi have belatedly come to light. As draft after draft of the talking points were made, e-mails from the State Department pressured the intelligence services to omit from these drafts their clear and unequivocal statement from the outset that this was a terrorist attack.

Attempts to make it seem that Ambassador Susan Rice's false story about a "spontaneous protest" was the result of her not having accurate information from the intelligence services have now been exposed as a second lie to excuse the first lie.

Despite Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's loudly proclaimed question "What difference, at this point, does it make?" the difference is between an honest mistake and a calculated lie to deceive the American people, in order to win an election.

Barack Obama's election campaign oratory had proclaimed the death of Osama bin Laden as an accomplishment of his administration, as part of a general defeat of Al-Qaeda and other terrorists. To admit that these terrorists were still in action, and strong enough to kill an American ambassador and three other Americans in a well-coordinated military style attack, would be a politically devastating admission during the election campaign.

Far better, politically, to come up with a story about a protest demonstration that just got out of hand. This could be presented as an isolated, one-time event, rather than part of a continuing pattern of terrorism by groups that were still active, despite President Obama's spin suggesting that they were not.

The problem with telling a lie, or even a succession of lies, is that a very small dose of the truth can sometimes make the whole thing collapse like a house of cards. The State Department's own foreign service officer Gregory Hicks was in Libya during the attack, so he knew the truth. When threats were not enough to silence him, it was then necessary to try to discredit him.

After years of getting glowing job evaluations, and awards of honors from the State Department for his work in various parts of the world, Mr. Hicks suddenly began to get bad job evaluations and was demoted to a desk job in Washington after he spoke with a Congressman about what he knew. The truth is dangerous to liars.

The Obama administration's excuse for not trying to get help to the Americans in Benghazi while they were under attack — namely, that it would take too long — is as shaky as its other statements. A small fighting unit in Tripoli was ready to get on a plane to Benghazi when they were ordered to "stand down." Other fighting units located outside of Libya are designed precisely for fast deployment — and nobody knew how many hours the attack would last.

But it will take more investigations to determine who gave the order to "stand down," and why. How many new lies that will generate is another question.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

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The Project to Restore America

Judge Jeanine Pirro – her summary of Benghazi. Succinct... and damning http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=urkBqOoL3n4#t=134s(11:46 min) – Anonymous

Bidwell comment: This is the best synopsis of Bengazi I've seen. This clip only lasts about twelve minutes.

Last week, I mentioned we were going to speak with Foreign Affairs expert Richard Grenell, who wrote 30 Reasons Susan Rice Should Not Get Promoted late last year... Grenell believes the most incriminating part of last week's Bengazi hearing was the phone call Mr. Hicks received from Cheryl Mills, the chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. On the call, Mills told Hicks not to relay what had happened in the attack to Rep. Jason Chafetz (R-UT) during his visit after the attack.

If you are wondering why the major media networks didn't notify the American public of the upcoming hearing before the House Oversight Committee last week, this short video of Grenell on Fox News might shed some light on the subject...

If we want to Restore America we had better pool our groups and resources and try to inflict as much to that as we can, and soon. Everyone seems scattered and poorly organized and more looking for money than getting to it in a massive well organized push… - Jim

Bidwell comment: I wholeheartedly agree. We work with many other groups, and getting a coherent message for us all to push is extremely difficult. Every group has its own key issues. But we would get further if we could choose a few issues and work on them in unison. We must also start leaning on technology to collaborate and spread a positive message.

College Bubble Bursts After Decades of Extravagance

Markets work. But sometimes they take time.

That's the uncomfortable lesson that proprietors of America's colleges and universities are learning.

For many years, market forces didn't seem to apply to them. There was a widespread societal consensus that a college education was a good economic investment.

Politicians gave lip service to the idea that everyone should go to college. No one should be stopped by a lack of money.

There was historic precedent. The G.I. Bill of Rights vastly expanded college populations and helped build prosperous post-World War II America. Putting even more through college would make us even more prosperous.

So Congress passed student loan and grant programs to make it easier for people to pay for college and university tuitions. That increased potential higher education revenues.

Surprise! Over the last three decades, tuitions rose faster than the economy grew.

For a long time, that didn't seem to be a problem. College still seemed like a good investment during the quarter century of low-inflation economic growth from 1982 to 2007. You could pay off those loans with earnings increased by your degree.

Meanwhile colleges and universities — and not just the highly selective ones — competed for students whose test scores would improve their ratings in the U.S. News College Guide by giving "scholarships" that actually were discounts on the tuition list price.

To attract these students, the educational institutions built fancy dormitories, gymnasiums and student centers. And they vastly increased the number of administrators, to the point where colleges and universities had more administrators than teachers.

Government helped to produce an ever-increasing demand for higher education. So higher education administrators saw no need to compete on price. Higher tuitions just gave your school more prestige.

Now the higher education bubble has burst. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that that the average "tuition discount rate" offered incoming freshmen last fall by private colleges and universities has reached an all-time high of 45 percent.

At the same time, their "sticker price" tuitions have increased by the smallest amount in the last dozen years. Tuitions for in-state students at public four-year colleges and universities also increased by the smallest amount during that period.

Applicants are negotiating bigger discounts than they used to. Market competition has kicked in.

What has happened is that in a recessionary and sluggish economy, potential customers have been figuring out that a college diploma may not be a good investment — particularly if it entails six-figure college loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

The Millennial Generation that voted so heavily for Barack Obama — 66 to 32 percent in 2008, 60 to 37 percent in 2012 — has had a hard time finding jobs, even with diplomas in hand. Especially if their degrees are in gender studies or similar fields beloved of academics.

In even worse condition are those students who never get a degree, a disproportionate number of whom are blacks and Hispanics admitted under affirmative action programs who prove unable to keep up with the pace of instruction at schools where most students enter much better prepared.

We see in higher education something like what we saw in housing. Government programs aimed at increasing college education and homeownership, particularly among minorities, turn out to hurt many of the intended beneficiaries.

The intentions of the people who created these programs were good. The results — well, not so much.

Home ownership is a good thing generally, but it's not good for everybody. The young and transient, for example, are often better off renting.

Higher education is a good thing generally too, but again not for everyone. People whose talents are more artisanal than academic are often better off getting a job or vocational training than seeking a degree that guarantees them student loan debt but not a job.

College and university administrators are not used to being disciplined by market forces. For years, they thought they were above all that.

Many got into the habit of producing a product that didn't serve their consumers' interests well. In a prosperous and growing economy, there seems to be no penalty for doing so.

In more straitened circumstances, they are discovering that, sooner or later, markets work. Their old business model is no longer working.

Colleges and universities have been doing a good job of meeting their administrators' needs. Now, in the new normal economy, they're scrambling to serve society's needs, as well.

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The Project to Restore America

Every email is important to us. We can't always respond individually, but we read and consider everything. Please email your question, comment or complaint to john@theprojecttorestoreamerica.com or wendy@theprojecttorestoreamerica.com.

http://www.newsdaily.com/article/8f9776387ce9abd7e7f421d149028bc2/us-diplomatic-security-back-in-focus-at-benghazi-hearing In case your news station did not give the date and time. (Most Likely!)

"An official inquiry into the incident released in December concluded that "leadership and management failures" in two State Department bureaus led to a security posture "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."

Wednesday's hearing is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. EDT./1530 GMT." - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: The testimony by Mr. Hicks was riveting. There is no doubt in my mind that the Bengazi tragedy was a cover up to ensure President Obama’s re-election. I am in Los Angeles, on my way to meet with Richard Grennell, a gentleman who knows far more than I do about foreign affairs. He was George W. Bush’es top spokesman at the United Nations. Next week, I will fill you in on what we says about what happened in Bengazi…

Rep. Cummings justifying the deaths at Benghazi: "Death is part of life" and they "sadly passed away." Wonder if he made the same speech to Trayvon Martin's parents, or the parents of the Sandy Hook victims? But, hey… anything to justify the corrupt Obama administration. Anything.

Democratic Rep. Cummings on Benghazi murders: "Death is Part of Life": http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/05/08/democratic-rep-on-benghazi-murders-death-is-part-of-life-n1591078

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZgxcMair08&feature=player_embedded If this sounds familiar, it's because Cummings said the same thing to the mother of murdered Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry two years ago during a hearing about Operation Fast and Furious. Because really, what difference at this point, does it make? Right, Hillary? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AR3XTOjZPfg

Oh yes. Has anyone found that $1.6 billion Obama crony/money bagman, former Dem. Senator and NJ governor Jon Corzine lost? Just asking…. - Anonymous

Bidwell comment: I was outraged than during Rep. Cummings’ (D-MD) comments at the Bengazi hearing on Wednesday. He blatantly defended the Obama Administration and demanded we sweep the cover up under the rug to protect his cohorts.