On this date in 1773, Samuel Adams and his Sons of Liberty hosted their original tea party in Boston Harbor. Two hundred thirty-six years later, CNBC’s Rick Santelli refreshed the movement from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and its momentum continues. So happy birthday, Tea Party – federal judge Henry Hudson provided a fitting gift by declaring ObamaCare’s core mandate unconstitutional based on your underlying principles.
In his opinion declaring ObamaCare’s central provision (the individual mandate) unconstitutional, United States District Judge Henry Hudson today vindicated the core concept of individual freedom that provides the foundation of our constitutional republic. More than that, however, Judge Hudson provided a refreshing break from that loathsome parade of shameless judges who have insulted Americans’ intelligence through recent decades by mangling the English language beyond any logical recognition.
Namely, Judge Hudson rejected the Obama Administration’s central argument that economic inactivity somehow amounts to “economic activity.” On Page 11 of his ruling, Judge Hudson neatly summarized the Administration’s core logic: “Critical to the Secretary’s argument is the notion that an individual’s notion not to purchase health insurance is in effect ‘economic activity.'” Just as neatly, he rejected that Orwellian illogic in terms that should be etched permanently as a reminder on Obama’s teleprompter: “This broad definition of the economic activity subject to Congressional regulation lacks logical limitation and is unsupported by Commerce Clause jurisprudence.”
Individual freedom and linguistic logic won a historic victory today. For if inactivity was somehow contorted to constitute “commerce,” then there is no limit whatsoever to Congress’s reach.
The fight continues, but we should also stop to savor this important moment.
This week, CFIF formally petitioned House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman-Elect Darrell Issa (R – California) to investigate the Obama Education Department’s continuing campaign against for-profit colleges.
Career colleges have flourished because of their ability to nimbly respond to our evolving economy, offer an education focusing on hands-on occupational training, and excel at serving non-traditional students who often have children, are working, are typically older and are more diverse than their peers at traditional schools. This is particularly important during the current period of job scarcity and worldwide economic competition. The Obama Education Department, however, seeks to foist a proposed “Gainful Employment” rule that would declare academic programs ineligible for federal aid if some specified proportion of their graduates failed to meet an arbitrary income-to-loan payment ratio.
The natural consequence of such a rule: vital for-profit career colleges would be eliminated.
The need for Congressional investigation became even more obvious this week. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) withdrew, then revised and republished a defective study originally released last summer in which it sent undercover “students” to several schools to capture information on recruiting policies, promises of post-graduation pay, federal and other funds for tuition and expenses, and more. That GAO report had been cited as vital evidence for the Education Department and a Senate committee as they prepare to promulgate the Gainful Employment rule, and even the Washington Post (whose parent company owns one of the largest for-profit schools) ran an article exposing that defective report. The GAO’s numerous revisions are all clearly slanted in one direction – the original report inaccurately cast career colleges in an unfavorable light, while the revisions indicate that the GAO’s undercover students may have intended to entrap career college admissions personnel. By the GAO’s own estimate, only 1 percent of reports are corrected, so an inquiry into the reasons behind this particular revision – with its original report clearly biased – is justified.
That news comes on the heels of allegations that Education Department officials communicated with short-sellers to inform them of their intentions, providing certain traders with inside information potentially allowing for illegal financial advantage. The cooperation, however, was allegedly a two-way street. According to media accounts, these same short-sellers may have concocted elaborate schemes to cast a negative light on career colleges, helping them rationalize the proposed rule. These allegations are sufficiently serious that Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) have formally sought an investigation.
At a minimum, an alarming pattern has emerged that points to the Department of Education specifically working to inflict economic harm upon career colleges, while possibly collaborating in the shadows with the very short-sellers on Wall Street who would most likely benefit from such activity.
Remember how ObamaCare was furiously crafted behind locked doors, despite Obama’s assurances it would be “on C-Span?” The public revolted against those tactics, but Obama’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) apparently thought it all went pretty well. Look no further than its secrecy in concocting its latest “Net Neutrality” draft, despite FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski’s own promises of “transparency.”
In this way, “Net Neutrality” imitates ObamaCare beyond the broader fact that it seeks to commandeer 1/6 of the American economy. Like ObamaCare, it is strongly opposed by the public and judicially suspect, and proponents know that exposing its manufacturing process to the sunlight would only help doom it. Accordingly, Chairman Genachowski appears intent on concealing his “Net Neutrality” proposal as long as possible before dumping it on the public later this month.
Why all the secrecy? What do Chairman Genachowski and “Net Neutrality” proponents fear so much? Instead of secrecy, they should follow Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker’s call to immediately make the draft public. Apply the same “openness” that you claim to desire for the Internet, Chairman Genachowski.
Remember “Climategate,” which exposed the flawed and doctored data behind global warming alarmists’ partisan agenda?
We may have a new equivalent with the Obama Administration’s persecution of for-profit colleges. A “Collegegate,” if you will.
CFIF has detailed the Education Department’s unjustified demonization of for-profit colleges, which provide working Americans the opportunity to improve their educations, obtain critical job skills and make themselves more marketable amid a tight employment market. We also detailed how Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) have inquired into allegations that the Education Department “may have leaked the proposed regulations to parties supporting the Administration’s position and investors who stand to benefit from the failure of the proprietary school sector.”
Now, compounding the shamefulness of this federal persecution, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just admitted that its August 4, 2010 report alleging undercover recruiting violations was defective. This is significant, because only 1% of GAO reports receive revisions, suggesting substantial error in this particular instance. Predictably, the GAO says that it stands by it’s “central finding,” but so did the United Nations and other global warming activists following the Climategate disclosures. The implications are serious enough that Senator Mike Enzi (R – Wyoming) has written GAO chief Gene Dodaro regarding “a number of troubling questions” that “undermine many of the allegations” that the GAO has leveled in its campaign against for-profit colleges.
So on top of a transparently partisan Obama Administration attack against career colleges and allegations of insider trading, we now have the federal government admitting that its supposed “sting” report was defective. It’s time to get to the bottom of this debacle, which is already humiliating for the Obama Administration. It appears as though it’s only about to get worse…
Credit to comedian Kathy Griffin for performing in a VH1 salute to the troops at Miramar Marine base, but even more credit to the Marines who booed loudly once she viciously attacked Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol.
Referring to Bristol’s strong performance on “Dancing with the Stars,” Griffin said, “She’s the only contestant in the history of the show to actually gain weight.” Despite the Marines’ hostile response, Griffin persisted by saying, “She’s like the white Precious,” referring to the morbidly obese Academy Award nominee in last year’s film.
Fortunately for Griffin, the Marines were too polite to grab the microphone and say, “Bristol Palin isn’t the white Precious, but you are the female Carrot Top.”
Moments ago, the Labor Department announced that the nation’s unemployment rate, which had stagnated at 9.6% for three consecutive months, actually rose to 9.8%.
Alarmingly, this means that unemployment has now stood above 9% for 19 consecutive months, a post-World War II record. Analysts had predicted 150,000 new jobs for October, but it turned out that only 39,000 were added, far below the number necessary to reduce the unemployment rate.
No American should take pleasure in others’ blight, but we simply must face the fact that the Obama-Reid-Pelosi Keynesian economic agenda has failed, and a course correction is critical. In the 20 months since Obama signed the budget-busting $1 trillion “stimulus,” unemployment has only risen from 8.4% to 9.8%. In contrast, in the 20 months following the effective date of the Reagan tax cuts, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.3%. The facts speak for themselves. It’s time for remedial free market action.
Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel famously said that we mustn’t allow a “crisis to go to waste” in foisting such things as ObamaCare upon an unwilling nation. But what if there’s no “crisis” in the first place?
This month, Gallup released a scientific survey that is a critical component in any health care policy discussion. In what must come as a devastating shock for those who defend ObamaCare, an astonishing 82% of Americans rate their health care as “good” or “excellent.” Some 40% place their health care in the “excellent” category, which exceeds the previous high of 38% and the long-term average of 34%. Even those who don’t possess health insurance (which must be distinguished from actual health care) rate their health care “good” or “excellent” by a 53% majority.
Clearly, there is no health care “crisis,” only a lot of ObamaCare “waste.”
Sign of the times from today’s New York Daily News: “Federal Workers Rage Over President Obama’s Two-Year Wage Freeze.”
Let’s see… Federal employment has grown 17% since 2007, and federal employees’ total compensation has risen 37% in the past decade (compared to 9% for private sector employees), according to The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Further, average federal employee compensation reached $123,000 in 2009, more than twice the $61,000 earned by the average private employee.
So in what moral universe are federal workers justified in reacting to a very modest two-year wage freeze proposal with “rage” and by labeling it a “slap” when they haven’t faced the brutal layoffs, salary reductions and cuts in health coverage their private counterparts must endure? A majority of Americans surveyed favor federal workforce reductions and salary cuts, so perhaps they should behave less like spoiled Greek, French and English rioters and instead express gratitude to American taxpayers who continue to subsidize their relative good fortune.
Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her show “Your Turn.” Today’s star guest lineup includes:
4:00 p.m. CST/5:00 p.m. EST: Bruce Herschensohn, Foreign Policy Expert – North Korea
4:30 p.m. CST/5:30 p.m. EST: Pete Sepp, National Taxpayers’ Union (NTU) – Bush Tax Cuts, Obama’s Federal Salary Freeze
5:00 p.m. CST/6:00 p.m. EST: Ashton Ellis, CFIF – Wikileaks, Janet Naplitano/Eric Holder/Charles Schumer
5:30 p.m. CST/6:30 p.m. EST: Steve Milloy, Junkscience.com – U.N. Global Warming Conference
Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here. You won’t want to miss it today!
For-profit colleges provide an invaluable tool for everyday Americans to climb the ladder and improve their skills, particularly during a period of high unemployment when every little advantage matters. That’s one reason why, according to estimates, enrollment at for-profit colleges has increased over 20% even since the recession began. Despite this, such colleges find themselves in the crosshairs of the Obama Administration, whose Education Department seeks to impose suffocating restrictions on loans to students who wish to attend them.
Stop for a moment and imagine the outcry if the Bush Administration had pursued such targeted restrictions, which hit poorer and minority enrollees disproportionately hard.
Now, however, there’s even more disturbing news. Senators Tom Coburn (R – Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (R – North Carolina) sent a letter to the Education Department last week citing public documents indicating that it “may have leaked the proposed regulations to parties supporting the Administration’s position and investors who stand to benefit from the failure of the proprietary school sector.” The Senators’ letter comes on the heels of a lawsuit whose evidence includes emails between Education Department advisers and short-sellers.
The Obama Administration’s mindless attack against these important colleges for working Americans is bad enough, but allegations of corruption and insider trading obviously exacerbate that looming disaster. We’ll be following these alarming developments in coming days, as should anyone who cares about the American workforce maintaining its edge amid fierce global competition.
By a two-to-one margin, Americans reject “Net Neutrality” Internet regulation efforts. A unanimous Court of Appeals has rejected the FCC’s claim to authority to impose it. Bipartisan groups of Congressional Democrats and Republicans have written letters to the FCC explicitly opposing it.
So how does Obama’s FCC react in the face of these unequivocal signals? Apparently, by steering full-speed ahead to impose it anyway.
For those still unfamiliar with “Net Neutrality,” it is very simply a far-left effort to regulate Internet service. Yes, the same Internet that has prospered to date and revolutionized our lives precisely because of the absence of big-government regulatory interference allegedly needs to be “fixed” by “Net Neutrality” regulation. One need only consider the forces that favor “Net Neutrality” to recognize its destructiveness. Chief among those activist forces is Free Press, whose founder Robert McChesney unapologetically advocated a government takeover of the Internet to something called the “Socialist Project“:
What we want to have in the U.S. and in every society is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility. We want an Internet where you don’t have to have a password, and that you don’t have to pay a penny to use. It is your right to use the Internet.”
Simply put, “Net Neutrality” is ObamaCare for the Internet. Please take a moment to contact your Representative and Senators to demand that they stop the rogue FCC from suffocating private Internet investment and innovation with its toxic “Net Neutrality” agenda.
Every so often, someone captures the proverbial lightning in a bottle. Today, it was Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens and his commentary entitled “Obama’s Air Guitar.” Stephens’s weekly commentaries are always a must-read, but today’s perfectly portrays the growing sense among the American electorate, more sober observers and now world leaders that Barack Obama is simply in over his head:
His administration has now been chastised or belittled by everyone from the Supreme Leader of Iran to the finance minister of Germany to the president of France to the dictator of Syria. What does it mean for global order when the world figures out that the U.S. president is someone who’s willing to take no for an answer? The answer is that the United States becomes Europe. Except on a handful of topics, like trade and foreign aid, the foreign policy of the European Union, and that of most of its constituent states, amounts to a kind of diplomatic air guitar: furious motion, considerable imagination, but neither sound nor effect. When a European leader issues a stern demarche toward, say, Burma or Russia, nobody notices. And nobody cares.”
Since he first began flirting with a White House campaign, Obama has long created the impression that he considers the presidency a video game, or a pickup game of hoops with himself at point guard taking a three-pointer on every possession. But now we have a description that perhaps captures the Age of Obama better than any other to date: Obama as air guitarist.
Join CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee Giachino today from 4:00 p.m. CST to 6:00 p.m. CST (that’s 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. EST) on Northwest Florida’s 1330 AM WEBY, as she hosts her show “Your Turn.” Today’s star guest lineup includes:
4:00 pm (CST) Virginia Scharff, author of “The Women Jefferson Loved”
4:30 pm (CST) Susan Ferrechio, Chief Congressional Correspondent for The Washington Examiner, New Congress
5:00 pm (CST) Sheriff Larry Dever, Immigration
5:30 pm (CST) Timothy Lee, Center for Individual Freedom, Deficit/Economy/Judges
Please share your comments, thoughts and questions at (850) 623-1330, or listen via the Internet by clicking here. You won’t want to miss this!
Our Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, this week includes the commentary “A Balanced Budget Amendment Doesn’t Have to Mean Higher Taxes – CFIF’s ‘One More Vote’ Proposal Doesn’t.” In that column, we note that the White House deficit commission’s fundamental flaw is that it takes for granted 2010 federal spending levels as its baseline:
The overriding problem with the commission’s plan is that it accepts the 2010 fiscal year as its spending base, thereby locking in the alarming spending increases of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid regime. That includes the failed “stimulus” that attempted to spend our way to prosperity, the bailouts, the pet projects and everything else they’ve heaped into our budget. Since 2008, federal spending has surged from approximately $25,000 per household to $30,000 per household, and jumped during that two-year span from its historical average of 20% of gross domestic product (GDP) to approximately 25% of GDP. Richard Rahn points out that, “Federal government spending and revenues in 1968 as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) were almost identical to the levels in 2008.”
Unfortunately, it’s actually even worse than that. The commission also leaves in place ObamaCare, which is already driving up healthcare costs and adding to the deficit (despite promises that it would have the opposite effect). As James Capretta from National Review Online observes, we shouldn’t be surprised given the commission’s composition:
None of this is all that surprising, given how the commission was formulated. It’s not really a bipartisan commission at all; it’s an Obama commission. It was created by the president and stacked with Democratic appointees. Two-thirds of the 18 members were picked by the president or Democratic congressional leaders. Only six were appointed by Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell. The president says the public doesn’t want to “re-litigate” the health care war. He’s wrong. As last Tuesday’s exit polls make clear, a strong plurality wants exactly that. The American people know that the ill-advised law was railroaded through Congress and is a colossal mistake. The fundamental problem here is that it is not possible build a bipartisan budget framework on a foundation that includes a partisan health-care plan with sweeping implications for future spending levels.
Americans cannot be asked to accept the commission’s findings when they take as a given current spending levels and an ObamaCare atrocity that must be replaced.
One month ago, we sat down with famed climate realist Bjorn Lomborg and published our commentary “‘Cool It’ – Bjorn Lomborg’s New Cinematic Rebuke to Global Warming Alarmists.” Well, the movie’s debut finally arrives this week, and all of us who believe in individual freedom and oppose the worldwide effort to limit freedom and prosperity in pursuit of the extremist climate change agenda should make sure to see it. The film is a remarkable rebuttal to, and debunking of, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” and we guarantee you’ll both enjoy and appreciate it.
It is important to support those who, like Lomborg, place their careers and even safety in pursuit of truth, so please take your friends along. We’ve seen the film, and can guarantee you won’t regret it. You can view the brief trailer, and locate cities and theaters here. Enjoy!
We have illustrated the dramatic difference between the pro-growth Reagan Recovery and the ongoing Obama Malaise, which a side-by-side comparison of economic data makes clear. In addition to the lopsided data differential, the uninspiring and self-pitying rhetoric to which Obama treats us provides another sad contrast. Consider the following exchange from Obama’s “60 Minutes” interview this week:
STEVE KROFT: Do you get discouraged? Are you discouraged now?
OBAMA: I do get discouraged. I mean, there are times where I thought the economy would’ve gotten better by now. One of the things I think you understand as president is, you’re held responsible for everything. But you don’t always have control of everything, especially an economy this big. There are limited tools to encourage the kind of job growth that we need.
Such “woe is me” dejection can be self-fulfilling (see, e.g., Jimmy Carter’s “Malaise Speech”), and would have been unimaginable coming from Reagan, who faced even higher unemployment rates, interest rates and inflation than Obama. But here’s a tip, Mr. President: nobody wants or expects you to “have control of everything.” You do, and that is the problem. As shown by your more optimistic predecessors, getting yourself out of the way would be the best first step toward “the kind of job growth that we need.”
Today, the Labor Department announced that the unemployment rate remained at 9.6% for the third consecutive month. When President Obama signed his nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” in February 2009, the unemployment rate stood at 8.2%. In the 20 months since that date, the rate has increased to 9.6% despite White House projections that it would top out at 8% fully one year ago.
Once again, a comparison to the Reagan recovery is profoundly instructive. In the same 20 month span following the effective date of the Reagan tax cuts in January 1983, unemployment plummeted from 10.4% to 7.3%. Also instructive is the following headline from today’s Wall Street Journal: “European Central Bank Parts Ways With U.S. on More Stimulus.” It is a sad state of affairs when even the spendthrift Europeans are providing economic guidance to Obama.
Liberal Keynesians have had almost two years to prove the validity of their economic agenda. It has failed, their rationalizations have grown stale, and their desperate efforts to resist corrective action will only prolong the nation’s misery.
In this week’s Liberty Update commentary “2012 May Be Even Brighter for Conservatives Than 2010,” we note that there are reasons why 2012 might bring even more conservative change than this week’s results regardless of the political climate two years from now. In the Senate, Democrats must defend 23 seats, many of those in red states like Montana, whereas Republicans need only defend 10 (most of which are in red states like Wyoming, Utah and Texas). And in the House, post-census redistricting in states that elected Republican governors and legislatures this week may add even more seats to the 60+ they won two days ago.
Here’s another encouraging (and related) factor for conservatives. The same post-census realignment that will facilitate more conservative wins in the House will also alter the Electoral College, thereby affecting the 2012 presidential race. How significant that effect will be one cannot yet say, but every point will count if that White House contest is as close as two of the previous three have been.
By all accounts, American voters have regained sobriety and will deliver resounding victories for conservatives today. This date in history, however, provides a cautionary tale for anyone even thinking of not voting because they assume that victory is in the bag.
Today in 1948, political pundits were so certain of a Thomas Dewey victory over Harry Truman that the Chicago Tribune prematurely published its infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline. Need another cautionary tale? How about the 2008 Minnesota Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken? There, Franken and his election attorneys somehow contorted an election night deficit into a narrow recount victory, possibly with the help of felon voters. Nobody’s laughing now that the chronically unfunny Franken routinely makes a mockery of his Senate seat.
So don’t take anything for granted. Too many people have fought and died to protect your right to affect this nation’s course, and too many people have worked too hard to provide alternatives to the bland “same ol’, same ol'” choice. You don’t want to be kicking yourself tomorrow.
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