Obamacare’s Tax Hike Train Wreck

Americans For Tax Reform

The most destructive Obamacare tax increases are just around the bend

Asked about Senator Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) recent “train wreck” comments, President Obama today said, “A huge chunk of it [Obamacare] has already been implemented.” Unmentioned was the wave of destructive Obamacare tax increases that will begin to hit Americans during the next tax filing season and beyond:

Starting in tax year 2013:

Obamacare Surtax on Investment Income:  A new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This tax hike results in the following top tax rates on investment income:

	Capital Gains	Dividends	Other*
2013+	23.8%	43.4%	43.4%

*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations.  It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income.  It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. (Bill: Reconciliation Act; Page: 87-93)

Obamacare Medicare Payroll Tax Increase:

	First $200,000 ($250,000 Married) Employer/Employee	All Remaining Wages Employer/Employee
Pre-Obamacare	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self employed
Obamacare	1.45%/1.45% 2.9% self-employed	1.45%/2.35% 3.8% self-employed

(Bill: PPACA, Reconciliation Act; Page: 2,000-2,003; 87-93)

Obamacare Medical Device Tax:  Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year.  In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will make everything from pacemakers to artificial hips more expensive. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,980-1,986)

Obamacare High Medical Bills Tax: Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI).  Obamacare now imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI.  Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income. According to the IRS, 10 million families took advantage of this tax deduction in 2009, the latest year of available data. Almost all are middle class. The average taxpayer claiming this deduction earned just over $53,000 annually. ATR estimates that the average income tax increase for the average family claiming this tax benefit will be $200 - $400 per year. To learn more about this tax, click here.  (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,994-1,995)

Obamacare Flexible Spending Account Tax:  The 30 - 35 million Americans who use a pre-tax Flexible Spending Account (FSA) at work to pay for their family’s basic medical needs face a new Obamacare cap of $2,500. This will squeeze $13 billion of tax money from Americans over the next ten years. (Before Obamacare, the accounts were unlimited under federal law, though employers were allowed to set a cap.) Now, a parent looking to sock away extra money to pay for braces will find themselves quickly hitting this new cap, meaning they would have to pony up some or all of the cost with after-tax dollars.

Needless to say, this tax will especially impact middle class families.

There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. Nationwide there are several million families with special needs children and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education. This Obamacare tax provision will limit the options available to these families. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 2,388-2,389)

Starting in tax year 2014:

Obamacare Individual Mandate Non-Compliance Tax:  Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance – as defined by President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services -- must pay an income surtax to the IRS. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that six million American families will be liable for the tax, and as pointed out by the Associated Press:  “Most would be in the middle class.”

In addition, 100 percent of Americans filing a tax return (140 million filers) will be forced to submit paperwork to the IRS showing they either had “qualifying” health insurance for every month of the tax year or they obtained an exemption to the mandate.

Americans liable for the surtax will pay according to the following schedule

	1 Adult	2 Adults	3+ Adults
2014	1%AGI/$95	1%AGI/$190	1%AGI/$285
2015	2%AGI/$325	2%AGI/$650	2%AGI/$975
2016	2.5%AGI/$695	2.5%AGI/$1390	2.5%AGI/$2085

(Bill: PPACA; Page: 317-337)

Obamacare Employer Mandate Tax:  If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2,000 for all full-time employees.  This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3,000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer). (Bill: PPACA; Page: 345-346)

Obamacare Tax on Health Insurers:  Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year.  The tax phases in gradually until 2018.  Fully imposed on firms with $50 million in profits. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,986-1,993)

Starting in tax year 2018:

Obamacare Tax on Union Member and Early Retiree Health Insurance Plans:  Obamacare imposes a new 40 percent excise tax on high cost or “Cadillac” health insurance plans, effective in 2018. This tax increase will most directly affect union families and early retirees, who are likely to be covered by such plans. This Obamacare tax will be levied on insurance policies whose premiums exceed $10,200 for an individual and $27,500 for a family.  Middle class union members tend to be covered by such plans in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  Higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family) for early retirees and high-risk professions. CPI +1 percentage point indexed. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,941-1,956)

Click here for a printable PDF

Read more: http://atr.org/obamacares-tax-hike-train-wreck-a7587#ixzz2S0BaLA25
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The STOCK Act Gets Gutted; Here’s Why You Should Care

From Yahoo Finance

A year ago President Obama signed the so-called STOCK Act. The point of the act was to allow the public to see for themselves if members of Congress and their employees were trading on material, non-public information. "The STOCK Act: Bans Members of Congress from Insider Trading" was the bolded headline at the top of a lengthy and self-congratulatory press release.

Last Monday the White House website took the guts out of the STOCK Act in one run-on sentence under the headline "Statement by the Press Secretary on S. 76." Those so inclined are invited to read the memo themselves. The gist is that disclosures will no longer be practically available for all employees but only for the elected officials, which means staffers, lobbyists, employees, aides and anyone who works for or is close to a serving politician can do whatever they want. Corrupt officials could theoretically still dish insider info with little fear of discovery — it's just hard for them to trade off of the information themselves.

The idea of transparency is to remove doubt about conflicts of interest and malfeasance, real or imagined. When the rules are quietly changed to such a degree, it defeats the purpose entirely.

Hank Smith of Haverford joined Breakout to discuss this backtracking. "We only have ourselves to blame because we're the ones voting these clowns in," notes Smith in the attached video. It's a fair point, but the government doesn't make it easy for the public to see these flip-flops. The STOCK Act passage was on the front page. When it got de-fanged, the announcement was so buried that only the most hardcore of wonks could find the news.

Smith thinks the existing regulations are deeply flawed but more than sufficient to level the investing playing field if the same rules applied to everyone and were enforced consistently. When the laws are baffling and when those entrusted by the public to look out for citizens quietly carve out exemptions for themselves, the STOCK Act and everything of the sort is little more than a cynical attempt to con the unwitting.

It is our responsibility, as voters, to raise our collective voice against the double-dealing sleaze like the phony STOCK Act and its quiet neutering. If you've read this far, take it to the next level: Let your Congressperson know you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore.

Statement by the Press Secretary on S. 716

On Monday, April 15, 2013, the President signed into law:

S. 716, which eliminates the requirement in the STOCK Act to make available on official websites the financial disclosure forms of employees of the executive and legislative branches other than the President, the Vice President, Members of and candidates for Congress, and several specified Presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed officers; and delays until January 1, 2014, the date by which systems must be developed that enable public access to financial disclosure forms of covered individuals.

Obama & Clinton’s Benghazi Lies Exposed

Frontpage Magazine

A searing new Interim Progress Report released by the GOP chairmen of five House committees reveals the disturbing extent of the Obama administration’s deceit and manipulation over the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As the 43-page document details, not only was gross incompetence to blame for the success of the attack that cost four Americans their lives, but a concerted effort at the highest levels of government was undertaking to cover up the debacle, deceive the public and shield officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama, from responsibility.

Ranking Democrats on the same five committees, who said they were not included in writing the report, dismissed it as politically motivated. “You are sacrificing accuracy in favor of partisanship,” they said in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

Hardly. Dividing the timeline into three sections — before, during and after the attack — the report paints a damning picture of the Hillary Clinton-led State Department, which knew “the threat environment in Benghazi was high and that the Benghazi compound was vulnerable and unable to withstand an attack, yet the Department continued to systematically withdraw security personnel.”

The smoking gun revealed in the report — contrary to Hillary Clinton’s congressional testimony that requests for additional security in Benghazi never reached her — was that “an April 2012 State Department cable bearing Secretary Hillary Clinton’s signature acknowledged then-Ambassador Cretz’s formal request for additional security assets but ordered the withdrawal of security elements to proceed as planned.” A Senate report, “Flashing Red: A Special Report on the Terrorist Attack at Benghazi,” released on December 31, confirmed the lack of security, citing ”extremely poor security in a threat environment that was ‘flashing red.’”

President Obama was blamed for the lack of security as well, in that he “failed to proactively anticipate the significance of September 11 and provide the Department of Defense with the authority to launch offensive operations beyond self-defense.” The report noted that the Intelligence Community was not to blame for anything, in that they “collected considerable information about the threats in the region, and disseminated regular assessments to senior U.S. officials warning of the deteriorating security environment in Benghazi, which included threats to American interests, facilities, and personnel.”

The 2013 report’s most scathing assessments concern the post-attack response by the Obama administration that “willfully perpetuated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative that the attacks evolved from a political demonstration caused by a YouTube video.” The report excoriated the administration’s so-called “talking points,” revealing that

after a White House Deputies Meeting on Saturday, September 15, 2012, the Administration altered the talking points to remove references to the likely participation of Islamic extremists in the attacks… removed references to the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya, including information about at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi.

Furthermore, the report states, “Senior State Department officials requested–and the White House approved–that the details of the threats, specifics of the previous attacks, and previous warnings be removed.”

The timeline following the attack reveals a carefully orchestrated disinformation campaign that began with the president, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice peddling the YouTube video story, even as government emails surfacing six weeks later revealed that both the State Department and the White House were told during the attack that terror group Ansar al-Sharia took credit for it. The video charade continued until September 19, when Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first administration official to label Benghazi a terrorist attack, even as Obama continued to push the video lie a day later. On September 24, during a taping of “The View,” the president still refused to label Benghazi a terrorist attack. “We’re still doing an investigation,” he said.

As the facts became known, Clinton blamed ”the fog of war” for her initial lies, while White House spokesman Jay Carney claimed the White House was giving out the best information it had at the time, but the information had “evolved.”

Other lies by the administration are also forcefully rebutted in the 2013 report, including claims that the talking points were altered to protect classified information of the FBI investigation, noting that the FBI itself  “approved a version of the talking points with significantly more information about the attacks and previous threats than the version that the State Department requested,” and that even “limited due diligence” of an Intelligence Committee (IC) report would have made it clear that “the situation was more complex than the narrative provided by Ambassador Susan Rice and others in the Administration.”

The final post-attack conclusions noted that the administration’s decision to conduct an FBI investigation, as opposed to one by military or other intelligence sources, “contributed to the government’s lack of candor” and “significantly delayed U.S. access to key witnesses and evidence and undermined the government’s ability to bring those responsible for the attacks to justice in a timely manner. ”

That delay was underscored by the reality that 15 days after that attack, it was reported by CNN that the FBI was still waiting to get access to the area. That would be the same CNN that found ambassador Christopher Stevens’ journal on the floor of the unsecured compound — three days after the attack.

Unsurprisingly, the White House pushed back Wednesday, accusing Republicans of creating a political distraction. White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden claimed that the report goes over old ground and that some of its conclusions conflict with those reached during an internal investigation conducted by the State Department itself. “The State Department’s Accountability Review Board–the independent body charged with reviewing the attacks and evaluating the interagency response–released its report which specifically found that the interagency response was ‘timely and appropriate’ and ‘helped save the lives of two severely wounded Americans,’ while also making important recommendations to improve security that we are in the process of implementing,” she said.

Hayden is, unfortunately for the Obama administration, misrepresenting reality. The thrust of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board’s report was completely different. “Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department … resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” it said.

Hillary Clinton supposedly took ”full responsibility” for those deficiencies –responsibility best described by Clinton herself in a testy exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, when he accused her of blaming non-existent protests for the deaths of four Americans. “What difference at this point does it make?” Clinton asked.

Furthermore, the four officials ostensibly terminated because of their mistakes leading up to the attack remained on the State Department payroll. And while spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Clinton “has accepted [Assistant Secretary of State] Eric Boswell’s decision to resign as assistant secretary for diplomatic security, effective immediately,” she neglected to mention that Boswell gave up only the presidential appointment as assistant secretary, not his other assignments. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) illuminated reality. “State Department officials proclaimed …that heads would roll…Now we see that the discipline is a lie and all that has happened is the shuffling of the deck chairs.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney defended Clinton, contending that her signature on the damning cable mentioned above was standard procedure for all diplomatic cables, essentially meaning that any State Department cable has the head of the Department’s signature on it. ”In this way, Secretary Clinton and others before her signed hundreds of thousands of cables” as secretary, he said. “Efforts to politicize this have failed in the past and they are not helpful to the broad national security interests we share.” Neither is the fact that Carney is apparently suggesting that Clinton signed something she didn’t read, despite the deadly consequences that occurred as a result.

Regardless, the Republican chairmen weren’t buying it. ”An April 19, 2012, cable bearing Secretary Clinton’s signature acknowledged requests for additional security, but nevertheless ordered the withdrawal of security assets to proceed as planned,” they said in a letter to the White House. “Given the gravity of this issue, we request that you immediately make the April 19, 2012, State Department cable public.” So far the White House has not responded.

Despite the stonewalling, House Republicans will press on. On Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced that the investigation into Benghazi will continue next month. This part of the investigation is likely to become compelling, because it will include testimony from whistleblowers within the administration. “Next month, the Oversight Committee will convene a hearing on the Benghazi terrorist attacks to examine evidence that Obama Administration officials have attempted to suppress information about errors and reckless misjudgments,” said Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA). “The American people still don’t have the full truth about what happened both before and after the murders of four brave Americans.”

Adding fuel to Issa’s fire are the allegations made by former special ops forces that the revelations contained in the current report don’t go far enough, especially regarding why the administration seemingly abandoned its responsibility to protect those who came under attack. “As a former soldier it pains me to think that for hours upon hours and more hours they waited in vain for someone to come to their rescue,” retired Special Forces Col. Jamie Williamson told the Washington Free Beacon. 

Williamson is the cofounder of OPSEC, a non-profit organization that protects US special ops forces and intelligence operatives from “political exploitation and policies, and the misuse of classified information, that unnecessarily exposes them and their families to greater risk and reduces their effectiveness in keeping Americans safe.” The group is asking critical questions that remain unanswered, such as “why were no U.S. military assets immediately deployed in response?” and “why did the commander of Africom tell a member of Congress that he had available assets but was never given order to deploy them?”

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 7, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey insisted assets could not have reached the scene in time. Yet Panetta and Dempsey were not alerted about the attack until almost an hour after it began, and they didn’t raise the issue with Obama until their previously scheduled 5 p.m meeting, one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began. Moreover, Africom commander Carter Ham told Rep. Jason Chaffetz he was never given the order to secure the consulate in Benghazi. And according to Fox News, neither was a Special Operations team in Sigonella, Italy, despite being only two hours from Benghazi.

OPSEC also illuminated another potential hazard for the administration, claiming that the 20-30 survivors of the attack have been intimidated into remaining silent. “They’re afraid and reasonably so,” said Williamson, who says his group has had direct contact with them. “It appears there has been overt or subtle intimidation and they’re afraid to come forward with their stories.”

A March 1 letter sent to Secretary of State John Kerry by Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Jim Gerlach (R-PA) demanded the names and contact information for “as many as 30” Americans that were injured in the attack “so that we can make appropriate arrangements.”

OPSEC and other like-minded organizations are calling for a Watergate-like select committee to investigate. Rep. Wolf has been the primary advocate for such a committee, and has garnered the support of 120 lawmakers who believe that such a committee, which would have the power to issue subpoenas compelling key officials to testify, is vitally necessary.

Four dead Americans, 20-30 survivors, and every other American frustrated with the media-abetted lying perpetrated by the Obama administration deserve nothing less. Those on the left who deride the effort to get to the bottom of this scandal have certainly demanded much more for far less serious transgressions. That they would reject the same effort here reveals a level of ideological bankruptcy and hypocrisy that is nothing short of appalling.

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER PROVIDES COVER FOR JIHAD APOLOGISTS

From Breitbart

The Southern Poverty Law Center has taken a lead role in the institutional left's attempt to unilaterally intellectually disarm America on the issue of Islamic terrorism. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, it's worth looking at how the group has attempted to silence critics of Islamic extremism, often by poisoning the well to discredit any examination of the possible dangers posed by Islamists.

The SPLC was started over forty years ago as a legitimate civil rights organization to combat the violent racist actions of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but has become part of the vast web of organizations--many funded by George Soros's Open Society Institute--that work together to smear conservative voices in order to advance a leftist agenda. 

One way to think of the institutional left is as a body where different organs perform different functions but all function together to form a whole; your stomach signals your brain that it wants food, so your feet walk you to the fridge, your hand opens the door, and so on. With the institutional left, many different groups work in concert to promote the wider agenda of radicals, such as diminishing America's security. 

The role that the Southern Poverty Law Center plays is to be an "objective" source to brand conservative entities as "hate groups" for the purpose of stopping debate and discussion on important issues. The well-heeled SPLC--with financial reserves of over$200 million--does this through their Hate Watch blog and a quarterly magazine but, more ominously, by also reporting their findings directly to the FBI. 

The Southern Poverty Law Center has explicitly targeted people like Atlas Shrugs blogger Pam Geller, author Robert Spencer, 60s radical-turned-conservative David Horowitz, and the Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney. By lumping these authors and speakers in with violent groups like the Aryan Brotherhood or Ku Klux Klan and then reporting them to law enforcement as "hate groups," the SLPC is trying to create a chilling effect on investigation into what we've learned time and again are legitimate dangers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center's impact is magnified because other institutional left groups pick up on the SPLC's reports and regurgitate them; these circular references are then used to give the reports legitimacy. First, let's look at a few examples of the intimidation campaign that the group runs. 

In their Intelligence Files section, the SPLC has a section on Anti-Muslim Groups (complete with a photo of Pam Geller) where they claim:

Muslims are depicted as a fifth column intent on undermining and eventually replacing American democracy and Western civilization with Islamic despotism. Anti-Muslim hate groups allege that Muslims are trying to subvert the rule of law by imposing on Americans their own Islamic legal system, Shariah law.

The Southern Poverty Law Center clearly wants to paint anti-jihadists as kooky, but that allegation might hold more water were it not for a memorandum introduced at trial by the U.S. government in the 2007 conviction of five organizers of what was (at the time) America's largest Islamic charity, the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, on charges of sending millions of dollars to terrorist organization Hamas. 

The document is called An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America, and it reads in part:

The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Proecess" with all the word means. The Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. 

Actually, just the mere fact that organizers of the largest Islamic charity in the United States were convicted of funneling millions of dollars to overseas Islamic terror groups might give one pause but, to the Southern Poverty Law Center, pointing out things like that can get you labeled as a hate group.

In the 2011 SPLC article "Jihad On Islam," they continue to make the case that only right-wing extremists are concerned about the stated intentions of Islamists: 

Like the communists that an earlier generation believed to be hiding behind every rock, infiltrated "Islamist" operatives today are said to be diabolically preparing for a forcible takeover.

You'll note the use of the word "Islamist" in scare quotes; apparently even the use of the word Islamist is enough to remove one from the realm of serious intellectual consideration. Never mind the fact that the word "Islamist" is used around the world by major newspapers and, more importantly, by Islamists themselves. It's actually used to differentiate Muslims who seek to establish an Islamic state. 

The SPLC's efforts are Orwellian. Like the attempt to manipulate the language of immigration by removing the term "illegal alien" from accepted use, if leftist groups can remove the word Islamist from politically correct vocabulary, they have defined Islamic extremism out of existence. These campaigns to reframe the debate are an important part of the institutional left's arsenal of intellectual dirty tricks. 

The SPLC doesn't work on its own, however. Its vague conclusions and targeted smears are amplified by other Soros-funded groups, such as Media Matters for America. Since the Marathon bombing, these coordinated attacks have kicked into overdrive. 

For example, in the recent "In The Wake Of Boston Marathon Attack, Fox Turned To Anti-Islam Commentators" hit piece from Media Matters, they quote their cousin organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a number of times as proof.

SLPC: Frank Gaffney Is "The Anti-Muslim Movement's Most Paranoid Propagandist." A Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) profile of Frank Gaffney stated that "Gaffney seems to have snapped" at some point in the decades since his service in the Pentagon and founding of the "hawkish but once-respectable" Center for Security Policy (CSP). In recent years, Gaffney has been the key proponent of the conspiracy theory alleging that the Muslim Brotherhood is working toward a U.S. government takeover...

SPLC: Rep. King's American Muslim Radicalization Hearings Were "Loathsome." A March 8, 2011 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) blog post, recounted how Rep. Peter Kings (R-NY) American Muslim radicalization hearings were "loathsome," concluding that "[t]he reality is that King's hearing are about demonizing Muslims, and they are, unfortunately, very likely to accomplish that goal." [Southern Poverty Law Center, 3/8/11]...

SPLC: Gabriel Is "Prone To Sweeping Generalizations And Exaggerations." A Summer 2011 Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Intelligence Report profile of Gabriel described her as being "prone to sweeping generalizations" about Islam...

SPLC: Gabriel Has Conflated Muslims With Terrorists. In the Fall 2011 edition of its Intelligence Report, the SPLC described how Gabriel's organization, ACT! for America, was attempting to moderate its language. The article described Gabriel's penchant for conflating Muslims and terrorists:

That's just in one Media Matters for America article. They brand critics of radical Islam as cranks, kooks, and people to be ignored. It must be true since the SLPC said so.

The tactics of institutional leftist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are crude and predictable, but in the wake of the Boston Marathon and Benghazi, they are increasingly dangerous. The left's goal is to silence voices like Geller, Gaffney, Spencer, and Horowitz, not because they are wrong about the threat posed by Islamic extremism, but to keep their liberal audience in the dark about just how right they are.

Flying the Government Skies

WSJ

The 4% FAA spending cut that somehow delays 40% of flights.

As travellers nationwide are learning, the White House has decided to express its dislike of the sequester—otherwise known as modestly smaller government—by choosing to cut basic air traffic control services. We wrote about this human- rights violation on Tuesday in "Flight Delays as Political Strategy," but the story gets worse the closer we look.

Start with the Federal Aviation Administration, better known as the Postal Service without the modern technology. Flyers directly fund two-thirds of the FAA's budget through 17 airline taxes and fees—about 20% of the cost of a $300 domestic ticket, up from 7% in the 1970s. Yet now the White House wants to make this agency that can't deliver what passengers are supposedly paying for even more dysfunctional.

Ponder this logic, if that's the right word: The sequester cuts about $637 million from the FAA, which is less than 4% of its $15.9 billion 2012 budget, and it limits the agency to what it spent in 2010. The White House decided to translate this 4% cut that it has the legal discretion to avoid into a 10% cut for air traffic controllers. Though controllers will be furloughed for one of every 10 working days, four of every 10 flights won't arrive on time.

Enlarge Image

Reuters

Airline passengers at San Francisco International Airport on Monday

The FAA projects the delays will rob one out of every three travellers of up to four hours of their lives waiting at the major hubs. Congress passed a law in 2009 that makes such delays illegal, at least if they are the responsibility of an airline. Under President Obama's "passenger bill of rights," the carriers are fined millions of dollars per plane that sits on the tarmac for more than three hours. But sauce for the goose is apparently an open bar for the FAA gander.

The White House claims the sequester applies to the budget category known as "projects, programs and activities" and thus it lacks flexibility. Not so: This is a political pose to make the sequester more disruptive. Legally speaking, the sequester applies at a more general level known as "accounts." The air traffic account includes 15,000 controllers out of 31,000 employees. The White House could keep the controllers on duty simply by allocating more furlough days to these other non-essential workers.

Instead, the FAA is even imposing the controller furlough on every airport equally, not prioritizing among the largest and busiest airports. San Francisco's Napa Valley airport with no commercial service will absorb the same proportion of the cuts as the central New York radar terminal, which covers La Guardia, JFK and Newark International, as well as MacArthur, Teterboro, New Haven, Republic and other regional fields.

Anyone who has flown in or out of those terminals knows that they are hardly models of efficiency, and one reason is the pre-modern U.S. traffic control system. The FAA still uses ground radar and voice-based communications that were the best technology the 1950s had to offer. Many planes are now equipped with advanced avionics that enable more direct and precise flight paths, but they aren't allowed to fly these faster, safer routes because the FAA can't track their navigation methods.

For more than a decade the FAA has promised to modernize and make the civil aviation system more efficient and reliable, but the only things it has reliably generated are delays or cost overruns or usually both. The project, known as NextGen, is four years off schedule with no end in sight.

The FAA's troubles are the result of bad management and a lack of oversight, according to multiple Department of Transportation Inspector General audits. A 2011 investigation found that one part of NextGen ran $330 million over budget—or half of the FAA sequester—and then the FAA paid the contractor responsible $150 million in bonuses that were supposed to be an incentive for making the budget targets. The overruns are now approaching $500 million, and that's merely one item.

Meanwhile, ever since Al Gore launched a training initiative to increase the productivity of air traffic controllers in 1998, productivity has continued to fall. A larger workforce is now in charge of a smaller workload as the number of flights has dropped by 23%. As the Inspector General reports, "FAA data suggest that its overall staffing may not be optimal."

A rational government would use the sequester to improve on this sorry record. But instead this White House is responding to the FAA's failures by making the flying experience for millions of Americans even more unfriendly. It is actively creating even more delays, cancellations and missed connections in order to incite a public outcry on behalf of bigger government.

All of this deserves to backfire, and it will if Republicans break from their circular immigration firing squads and explain what Mr. Obama is doing. For all of its rough edges, the sequester is proving to be educational. It is showing Americans how broken so much of government is, and it is revealing how our politicians refuse to distinguish between essential services and needless waste.

A Day Based on Misplaced Fears

From Townhall

• 
 
• Carol Platt Liebau 
  Blogger, Townhall.com

The first Earth Day was observed on April 22, 1970 -- but the "celebration" was rather, well, funereal.  That's because the solons of the age predicted a global apocalypse was imminent -- and like the solons of today, they demanded government control to avert a certain disaster . . . that never happened.

To add some perspective to today's hysterical claims of global warming, behold earlier predictions of environmental catastrophe  cataloged by the Washington Policy Center:

“...civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind,” biologist George Wald, Harvard University, April 19, 1970.

By 1995, “...somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” Sen. Gaylord Nelson, quoting Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, Look magazine, April 1970.

Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “...the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.

“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journalEnvironment, April 1970.

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.

“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

“...air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich, interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.

Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

“By the year 2000...the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America and Australia, will be in famine,” Peter Gunter, North Texas State University, The Living Wilderness, Spring 1970.

If you notice, these confident predictions of doom have little in common with those of today's climate cassandras -- except for their utter certainty that doom is upon us.  Oh, and it's beginning to look like they have something else in common . . . the spectacular inaccuracy of their apocalyptic predictions.

Reasonable people agree that humans are called to be responsible stewards of the earth.  Where agreement stops is when climate alarmists start using hysterical prophecies of disaster as a pretext for significant power grabs -- and where the most vociferous proponents of "green living" (for everyone else) somehow fail to practice what they preach.

Happy Earth Day.

Gosnell Trial Witness: Baby Abortion Survivor Was 'Swimming' in Toilet 'Trying to Get Out'

From CNS News

By Elizabeth Harrington

Dr. Kermit Gosnell, charged with 7 counts of first-degree murder, killing babies reportedly born alive at his abortion office in West Philadelphia, Pa. (AP)

(CNSNews.com) – On the last day of testimony before the prosecution rests in the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, a former worker at Gosnell's clinic testified that she saw one late-term baby who survived an abortion "swimming" in a toilet and "trying to get out."

Kareema Cross, a “medical assistant” who worked at Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society clinic for four-and-a-half years, testified in a Philadelphia court today, telling of the horrors of babies who survived abortions only to have their necks snipped with scissors.

“Did you ever see those babies move?” asked Prosecutor Joanne Pescatore.

“Yes, once in the toilet,” said Cross.

The baby “was like swimming,” she said.  “Basically, trying to get out.”

Adrienne Moton, an employee at the clinic, then took the baby and snipped the back of its neck while the mother was still in the room.

Cross told the jury that when Shayquana Abrams came into the clinic in July 2008 she was pregnant, “and she was big.”

“That was the largest baby I ever saw,” Cross said.

When the baby was born alive, Abrams was sleeping.  Cross said Dr. Gosnell took the baby boy, which she described as 12 to 18 inches long, and put him inside a plastic container the size of a shoebox.

“The baby was still breathing,” she said.  “He didn’t cut the neck right there.”

The baby was too big for the plastic container, with his arms and legs hanging over the sides.

“The Doctor cut the back of the baby’s neck but didn’t do suction—normally Dr. Gosnell would do suction … to suck the brains out,” Cross said.

“I called people over to come see it [the baby] and we took pictures,” she said.

Baby Boy A, allegedly killed after being born alive and then having his spinal cord cut at the abortion office of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. (AP)

The baby boy had curled himself into the fetal position and laid on his side in the box.  An image of the baby taken by Cross was shown to the court, showing him laying lifeless on his side.  (the photo of the infant, Baby A, is included in the Grand Jury Report and is posted in this article.)

“It was supposed to go upstairs in the freezer, but it was still there the next day because the janitor complained,” Cross added.

She said Dr. Gosnell told her “the baby is big enough that it could walk to the store or the bus stop.”

Eventually the baby boy went in the freezer, Cross said.

Abrams was 17 when she went to the Women’s Medical Society for a late-term abortion on July, 12, 2008.  Earlier in the trial, Abrams testified that she was 29 weeks (slightly more than 7 months) pregnant and that the abortion sent her to the hospital for two weeks with complications, including a blood clot in her heart.  Abortions after 24 weeks are illegal in Pennsylvania.

Cross also testified that she witnessed Steven Massof, an unlicensed medical school graduate who worked at the clinic, snip babies necks (spinal cords) 25 to 30 times.

Cross said she saw babies that were still breathing after botched abortions at least 10 times.  Dr. Gosnell would cut the back of their necks with scissors, she said.

“He just said they’re not breathing,” Cross said.

The abortion clinic, Women's Medical Society, operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell at 3801-05 Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, Penn. (Grand Jury Report)

“Linda’s baby,” as described by the prosecution, was also still alive following an abortion, moving its arm back and forth.  Cross said the baby was breathing for 10 to 20 minutes before its neck was cut with scissors.

On another occasion, Cross said she heard a “soft whine,” or whimper coming from a baby in another other room.

Cross took photographs of the clinic in 2008 out of concern.  The photographs, shown in the courtroom, depicted over 50 jars filled with baby’s feet stored at the clinic, which Gosnell said he was keeping for “DNA purposes.”

More photos showed bloody equipment, and Gosnell’s cat sleeping on a chair at the clinic.  The cat would roam freely, even in the procedure rooms, and go to the bathroom on the first and second floor, Cross said.

The trial of Gosnell, 72, in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas is currently in its fifth week.  He is charged with seven counts of first-degree murder (seven babies), one count of third-degree murder of a mother, as well as infanticide, conspiracy, abortion at 24 or more weeks, abuse of a corpse, theft, corruption of minors, solicitation and other related offenses.

Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown

From Reuters

Steam and other emissions rise from a coal-fired power station near Lithgow, 120 km (75 miles) west of Sydney, July 7, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Daniel Munoz

By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle

OSLO | Tue Apr 16, 2013 6:25am EDT

(Reuters) - Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow, starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring out the causes and determining whether the respite will be brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists say they expect a revival of warming in coming years.

Theories for the pause include that deep oceans have taken up more heat with the result that the surface is cooler than expected, that industrial pollution in Asia or clouds are blocking the sun, or that greenhouse gases trap less heat than previously believed.

The change may be a result of an observed decline in heat-trapping water vapor in the high atmosphere, for unknown reasons. It could be a combination of factors or some as yet unknown natural variations, scientists say.

Weak economic growth and the pause in warming is undermining governments' willingness to make a rapid billion-dollar shift from fossil fuels. Almost 200 governments have agreed to work out a plan by the end of 2015 to combat global warming.

"The climate system is not quite so simple as people thought," said Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" who estimates that moderate warming will be beneficial for crop growth and human health.

Some experts say their trust in climate science has declined because of the many uncertainties. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to correct a 2007 report that exaggerated the pace of melt of the Himalayan glaciers and wrongly said they could all vanish by 2035.

"My own confidence in the data has gone down in the past five years," said Richard Tol, an expert in climate change and professor of economics at the University of Sussex in England.

Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius first showed in the 1890s how man-made carbon dioxide, fromcoal for instance, traps heat in the atmosphere. Many of the exact effects are still unknown.

Greenhouse gas emissions have hit repeated record highs with annual growth of about 3 percent in most of the decade to 2010, partly powered by rises in China and India. World emissions were 75 percent higher in 2010 than in 1970, UN data show.

UN PANEL SEEKS EXPLANATION

A rapid rise in global temperatures in the 1980s and 1990s - when clean air laws in developed nations cut pollution and made sunshine stronger at the earth's surface - made for a compelling argument that human emissions were to blame.

The IPCC will seek to explain the current pause in a report to be released in three parts from late 2013 as the main scientific roadmap for governments in shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energies such as solar or wind power, the panel's chairman Rajendra Pachauri said.

According to Pachauri, temperature records since 1850 "show there are fluctuations. They are 10, 15 years in duration. But the trend is unmistakable."

The IPCC has consistently said that fluctuations in the weather, perhaps caused by variations in sunspots or a La Nina cooling of the Pacific, can mask any warming trend and the panel has never predicted a year-by-year rise in temperatures.

Experts say short-term climate forecasts are vital to help governments, insurers and energy companies to plan.

Governments will find little point in reinforcing road bridges over rivers, for instance, if a prediction of more floods by 2100 doesn't apply to the 2020s.

A section of a draft IPCC report, looking at short-term trends, says temperatures are likely to be 0.4 to 1.0 degree Celsius (0.7-1.8F) warmer from 2016-35 than in the two decades to 2005. Rain and snow may increase in areas that already have high precipitation and decline in areas with scarcity, it says.

EXCEPTIONS AND CHALLENGES

Pachauri said climate change can have counter-intuitive effects, like more snowfall in winter that some people find hard to accept as side-effects of a warming trend. An IPCC report last year said warmer air can absorb more moisture, leading to heavier snowfall in some areas.

A study by Dutch experts this month sought to explain why there is now more sea ice in winter. It concluded melted ice from Antarctica was refreezing on the ocean surface - this fresh water freezes more easily than dense salt water.

Some experts challenged the findings.

"The hypothesis is plausible I just don't believe the study proves it to be true," said Paul Holland, an ice expert at the British Antarctic Survey.

Concern about climate change is rising in some nations, however, opinion polls show. Extreme events, such as Superstorm Sandy that hit the U.S. east coast last year, may be the cause. A record heatwave in Australia this summer forced weather forecasters to add a new dark magenta color to the map for temperatures up to 54 degrees Celsius (129F).

(Reporting By Alister Doyle, extra reporting by Gerard Wynn in London; editing by Janet McBride)