From American Exceptionalism to American Deceptionalism

Largely misunderstood or misused today, American Exceptionalism refers to the unique and exceptional form of governance created by the American Constitution with respect to individual power, liberty and freedom.

Prior to the creation of this nation, all forms of governance had been tyrannical, that is, total power and liberty were held by a monarch — or a czar, a dictator, a military conqueror, or a tribal leader — who in turn gave limited power, freedom and liberty to the individual.  Under the framers' historically new and "exceptionally" American form of constitutional governance, power, liberty, and freedom flowed from the Creator directly to each individual, who in turn gave limited power and liberty to the state (i.e., government).

In an interesting essay, Professor Ben Voth argues that today "[w]e are besieged by an intellectual elite intensely committed to a grand design of American Deceptionalism," whose four characteristics he defines as follows (below are excerpts only):

1. American is not exceptional. For our epistemic elite composed of Hollywood storytellers, jaded journalists, professional activists, and reactionary academics it is a cardinal rule that America is exceptional in only one respect: guilt. America is exceptionally guilty of any moral violation that the mind can conjure up — whether selfishness, bigotry, hatred, imperialism, greed, murder, genocide, sexism and on it goes — no nation has committed greater sins than this one.
2. The general American public is incredibly stupid and ignorant. The stupidity of Americans necessitates and justifies all kinds of rhetorical manipulations aimed at raising them up out of their failure to follow the example set by the higher beings inhabiting the East and West Coast and select urban centers. The deception spoken of by [MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan] Gruber was not unusual and is in fact normative for American elite. There is consequentially a voracious paternalism among the armies of Grubers that care for the American public through elite institutions.
3. Christianity, Judaism and religiosity contribute to the stubborn bad character traits of Americans. If Americans would stop clinging to religion, the nation could progress and lean forward. ... A breed of secular Pharisees takes us on a new shining path ... Religious people need to 'coexist' and cooperate with the secular Pharisees provided to them by American deceptionalists. 
4. American deceptionalism is a bipartisan movement. The elite of the Republican and Democratic Parties have a shared contempt for the general public. ... Ethics are a vulgar notion held among populists. They have no place in deceptionalist governance.

The author concludes:

Because American deceptionalists abhor individual rights, they attack individuals to isolate them and force broader adherence to group identity politics and politically correct thinking designed by the elite.  They seek to manipulate, control and limit notions of individual heroism.  The individual is inherently construed as a threat to social order.  Americans can and should challenge argumentatively, the assumptions noted above -- whether in classrooms, national cathedrals, boardrooms, council meetings, or rallies. Aspects of an American renaissance are already in the making, but the convictions of American deceptionalists are stubborn and persistent. They will require heroic resistance to fully defeat and return the nation to an appreciation of individual liberty.

Source: American Deceptionalism, Ben Voth, American Thinker

Jackie's Gang Rape Story: Early Lessons

Any woman with an ounce of estrogen in her body had to be seething as she read the Rolling Stone story of “Jackie’s” gang rape by nine University of Virginia frat boys. A reader’s desire to punish those men – in some creatively vile ways not fit to put on paper – would have been palpable.  In hindsight, that estrogen-infused, brain-deprived reaction appears to be exactly what the author and the magazine sought to achieve with the now-discredited story.

Jackie’s story began falling apart when others, exercising basic journalistic skills, discovered there was no party at the fraternity house on September 28, and the fraternity rushed in the spring, not the fall – two simple facts neither the author nor the magazine made any attempt to check. Rolling Stone issued a lame quasi-retraction, and Jackie’s own friends began backing away from her story. Now we learn that Jackie herself tried to withdraw from the story before it was published.

No doubt more will come out as the larger story unfolds, and it should. The innocents deserve exoneration, and the guilty deserve condemnation.  All of them.

In the meantime, we can draw a few early lessons from Jackie’s story.

One, liberal-progressives lie, distort, exaggerate, and emotionally manipulate with complete abandon to achieve their nefarious objectives.  The manufactured ‘war on women’ is one example.  Others include Jonathan Gruber’s candid (even proud) admissions of the public lies told by liberal-progressives to win passage of Obamacare, and IRS officials’ lies surrounding abuse of conservative organizations and individuals.  Lying worked in each case, but only for a time (a really short time in Jackie’s case).  Truth eventually raises her beautiful head and overcomes.  

Two, liberal lies cause real harm to the country and to innocent people.  Obamacare is the most extreme example.  A law now, the Affordable Care Act is a policy nightmare that has cost millions of people their health insurance and their health care providers, with more pain to come if implementation proceeds. With the truth of this disaster now obvious, a majority wants it repealed and replaced. 

Jackie’s story has caused harm to innocents, too.  The immediate damage is to the reputations of the men accused of such a reprehensible act and to their fraternity. The long-term damage will be felt by future rape victims who fear having their veracity doubted if they report the crime. 

Three, liberal college administrators are justifiably reaping the bitter fruit they have sown. They have been complicit in hyper-sexualizing campuses with co-ed dorms and bathrooms, bowls of free condoms, sex shows and Vagina Monologues plays, and titillating sex courses of no academic value. Add a generous supply of alcohol, and the situation becomes combustible.  A “sexual assault crisis” on campus?  Whatever did they expect?

Four, feminists have completely lost their minds, along with any moral grounds on which to speak for women. After Jackie’s story was called into question, feminist Zerlina Maxwell argued in the Washington Post that the facts [read truth] didn’t really matter because the story “helped dramatize what happens when the claims of victims are not taken seriously.” She’s wrong; facts and truth do matter above all else.

After decades of advocating that women play the non-committal hook-up sex game with men, feminists find women aren’t faring very well. So they’re petitioning the federal government for new Title IX regulations to tilt the campus sex-playing field in favor of women: to force colleges to adopt policies that presume the honesty of an accuser and the guilt of an accused. 

“It’s no coincidence that the Rolling Stone article spent a great deal of time advocating for the expansion of federal involvement in higher education via Title IX of the Civil Rights Act,” Jonah Goldberg points out; “regulations that would erode the presumption of innocence in rape cases on campus.”  God help the University of Virginia men if such regulations were already in place.

As we stand with and defend the innocents, whatever residual outrage we feel from reading Jackie’s story should be redirected to the guilty:  liberals who try to avoid the consequences of their incessant dishonesty.


Update:
U-Va Students Challenge Rolling Stone, T. Rees Shapiro, Washington Post
Rolling Stone and Random House Deserve Defamation Lawsuits, Leslie Loftis, thefederalist.com
Why the Media's Fact Problems are Way Bigger Than Rolling Stone, Mollie Hemingway

Reforming Anchor Baby Citizenship

"Any serious immigration reform considered in the next Congress should revisit the concept of birthright citizenship (namely that all children born on U.S. soil are citizens, regardless of their parents' status), or what is sometimes referred to as the 'anchor baby' issue," writes Heritage Foundation's Genevieve Wood. She gives the following rationale:

• Birthright citizenship incentivizes illegal immigrants to have children on U.S. soil in hopes it will allow them, the parents, to gain legal status;
• It fuels "chain migration," the process whereby one legal family member, once 21 years of age, is able to apply to bring in parents, siblings and in-laws. According to one study, 747,413 (or 66.1%) of the 1,130,818 immigrants granted legal permanent residency in 2009 were family-sponsored immigrants.
• It is costly to the U.S. taxpayer. While illegal immigrants themselves do not qualify for welfare, they can obtain Medicaid and food stamps on behalf of their U.S.-born children. (One study found that "nationwide, 40% of illegal alien-headed households receive some type of welfare.")
• And last but not least, birthright citizenship, as currently understood, is arguably unconstitutional.

Wood explains the constitutional issue this way:

For America’s first 100-plus years, the idea that just because someone was born on U.S. soil made them a U.S. citizen was disavowed. But a Supreme Court decision in 1898 (yes, there was judicial activism back then, too) that broadly and wrongly interpreted the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause changed all that.

The original intent of the Citizenship Clause was to ensure former slaves were given citizenship status.  It was never intended to give such status to children born here because their parents were living here as foreign ambassadors, diplomats or consuls, or simply because their non-citizen parent(s) had a baby while visiting or residing, legal or otherwise, in the U.S.

Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky puts it this way:

It is just plain wrong to claim that the children born of parents temporarily in the country as students or tourists are automatically U.S. citizens. They do not meet the 14th Amendment’s jurisdictional allegiance obligations. They are, in fact, subject to the political jurisdiction (and allegiance) of the country of their parents. The same applies to the children of illegal aliens because children born in the United States to foreign citizens are citizens of their parents’ home country.

Source: Not All Kids Born in the US Should Be Made Citizens, Genevieve Wood, The Daily Signal, The Heritage Foundation

Poll: Race Relations Worsening During Obama's Leadership

A Bloomberg poll finds the following:

President Barack Obama had hoped his historic election would ease race relations, yet a majority of Americans, 53 percent, say the interactions between the white and black communities have deteriorated since he took office, according to a new Bloomberg Politics poll.

Those divisions are laid bare in the split reactions to the decisions by two grand juries not to indict white police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.

 

Source: Most Americans See Race Relations Worsening Since Obama's Election, Bloomberg

Barnett: How to Finally Kill Obamacare

Law professor Randy Barnett, who directs Georgetown University Law School's Center for the Constitution, writes in USA Today that "there is now a clear path to repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act next year."

• There is now a serious financial risk to the ACA now that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear King v. Burwell, which challenges the legality of the IRS ruling that — contrary to the law's specific language — permits federal subsidies in states that have not built their own state exchanges.
• Opponents of ACA should begin to develop — and have ready — a viable alternative law, one that has gone through the regular order legislative process.
• As a rule, Supreme Court justices are reluctant to invalidate a law on which many relied. It will be far easier for the justices to enforce the law's existing language if they know there is a viable alternative that can be enacted by both house of Congress and signed by the president within a week of their ruling.
• The alternative law should:
• completely repeal, in its first line, each and every word of the ACA;
• restore the private insurance market using actuarially-based insurance priced according to risk;
• restore consumer choice to buy true private insurance limited to the terms they want to pay for, including policies insuring only catastrophic costs, and medical savings accounts;
• increase competition among insurers by allowing state regulated policies to be sold across state lines so people don't have to change insurance when they move; and
• increase equity by extending tax benefits now available only to employer0based insurance.

By having a legislatively-vetted replacement in the pipeline and in the public discussion before oral arguments are held in March, Barnett argues, Obamacare's opponents can make a favorable ruling against the law much more likely.

O's Immigration: Illegals Lose Public Support, States File Lawsuit

"Seventeen states are involved in a lawsuit filed Wednesday challenging President Obama's executive actions on immigration," reports Breitbart. "Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Caroline, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and the governors of Mississippi, Maine, North Carolina and Idaho filed the suit in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas."

The lawsuit argues:

• The executive action on immigration conflicts with the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” The Take Care Clause limits the scope of presidential power and ensures that the chief executive will uphold and enforce Congress’s laws – not unilaterally rewrite them under the cover of “prosecutorial discretion.”
• The DHS Directive failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act’s required notice and comment rulemaking process before providing that legal benefits like federal work permits, Medicare, and Social Security be awarded to individuals who are openly violating immigration laws.
• The executive action to dispense with federal immigration law will exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.

Polls also find public support for illegal immigrants is falling.

• Quinnipiac reported "that support for immigrants is at its lowest level" ever measured by the poll:  48% now say illegals should be allowed to stay, compared to 57% a year ago.
• A post-Obama Economist/YouGov poll found that only "47% now favor providing those here illegally having a path toward citizenship ... In February, more than half favored some sort of pathway to citizenship."

Sources:
17 States File Lawsuit Challenging Executive Amnesty, Caroline May, Breitbart
Quinnipiac University Poll press release, Nov 25, 2014
Only Democrats Support Obama's Executive Order on Immigration, Kathy Frankovic, Economist/YouGov Poll, Dec 2, 2014

Why the Middle Class is Hurting

"The American middle class has absorbed a steep increase in the cost of health care and other necessities as incomes have stagnated over the past half decade, a squeeze that has forced families to cut back spending on everything from clothing to restaurants," reports the Wall Street Journal, which provides this chart on changes spending and income in middle class households since 2007.

Source: Basic Costs Squeeze Families, Ryan Knutson and Theo Francis, Wall Street Journal

Obama's Amnesty Impact on Social Security

The long-term financial condition of Social Security and Medicare will vastly worsen as a result of Obama's executive order legalizing an estimate 5 million illegal immigrants.

• Most workers pay into the programs for their working careers, between 40 and 50 years. But millions of Obama's newly legalized are working-age adults with children, so many could be in their 40s or older.  Thus they could pay FICA taxes for the next, say, 15 or 20 years — less than half the average American worker — and be eligible for the full array of Social Security and Medicare benefits.
• In addition, most will be lower-income workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that foreign-born, full-time workers earn about 80% of native-born Americans ($33,500 vs. $41,900).  Social Security is a social insurance program and is structured to provide disproportionately more benefits for lower-income workers. Medicare pays the same regardless of how much a worker pays in.
• Given the demographic unknowns, estimating the amnesty's financial cost to our retirement programs — and so to U.S. taxpayers — can only be approximate. But using a basic simulation model, we believe the government will receive about $500 billion in payroll tax revenue (including Part B and drug premiums), and expect it to pay out some $2 trillion in benefits over several decades. 
• In one executive order Obama may have created his biggest income transfer scheme yet, and imposed the worst financial challenge to our two already-struggling retirement programs. And millions of Americans can expect to see their taxes go up in the future to pay for it.

Source: Obama's Amnesty Will Create a Fiscal Nightmare for Entitlements, Merrill Matthews and Marke E. Litow, Investor's Business Daily

Univ of Illinois Could Lose $4.5 Million for Hiring Terrorist

A wealthy donor will withhold a $4.5 million planned gift to the University of Illinois if the school goes forward with its plan to pay a convicted murderer and domestic terrorist as a professor, reports Eric Owens @ the Daily Caller.

Last month, the statewide board of trustees cleared the way for the flagship campus in Urbana-Champaign to rehire 1970s-era Symbionese Liberation Army terrorist James Kilgore, a convicted murderer who participated in a 1975 bank robbery during which bank customer Myrna Opsahl was shot and killed.

The 42-year-old mother of four bled to death on the bank floor.

Now, Chicago businessman Richard Hill has notified officials at the University of Illinois at Chicago that he will rescind a pledge to donate $6.5 million to the UIC bioengineering department, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Hill, the retired CEO of Novellus Systems, has already given $2 million. However, he has vowed to withhold every last dime of the remaining $4.5 million if school officials allow Kilgore to teach courses in Urbana-Champaign.

“I no longer wish to be associated with University of Illinois,” the retired CEO wrote in a letter to school officials. “The Academy at the University of Illinois has clearly lost its moral compass.”

Thank US Fracking for Low Gas Prices

"Global energy markets have been upended by an unprecedented North American oil boom brought on by hydraulic fracturing," reports Bloomberg.  With crude oil prices collapsing worldwide (at about $70 a barrel today), Russia and the OPEC cartel are the losers, while American consumers and European economies are among the winners.

The winners:

• With average gas price at $2.77 a gallon, every day American consumers are saving $630 million on gasoline compared with what they paid in June prices.
• Every penny the price of jet fuel declines means a savings of $40 million for Delta Airlines.

 The losers:

• Many OPEC members need oil prices to stay at or near $100 a barrel to break even: $161 for Venezuela, $131 for Iran, and $98 for Saudi Arabia, for example.
• Russia's break-even cost is $105 a barrel. With 50 percent of its revenue from oil and gas, it can no longer relay on the same revenue to rescue its economy already suffering from European and US sanctions.

Meanwhile, "[t]he International Energy Agency estimates most drilling in the [US] Bakken formation — the shale producers that OPEC seeks to drive out of business — return cash at $42 a barrel," reports Bloomberg. According to one expert cited, US shale oil producers may break even at $40 a barrel or less.

Sources:
Oil at $40 Possible as Market Redraws Politics From Caracas to Tehran, Gregory Viscusi, Tara Patel and Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg
Saudis Risk Playing With Fire in Shale-Price Showdown as Crude Crashes, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, U.K. Daily Telegraph
As Oil Prices Plunge, Wide-Ranging Effects for Consumers and the Global Economy, Steven Mufson, Washington Post

Obamacare's Hidden Taxes on Jobs, Wages

Many have already felt the pain of Obamacare's impact on their health insurance coverage and medical care, but that's only half the story. The other half is the negative, long-term impact Obamacare has on jobs and the opportunity for personal career advancement, as University of Chicago economics professor Casey Mulligan explains in the November Imprimis.

The key is Obamacare's "tax distortions," i.e., those changes in behavior on the part of businesses and households for the purposes of reducing their costs (tax burdens) or increasing their subsidies (tax benefits). These tax distortions "create all kinds of productivity problems and will have visible and permanent effects on the economy."

Obamacare effectively creates three new hidden taxes on full-time employment and business expansion via the employer mandate and the federal premium subsidies:

• Since the employer mandate applies to full-time employment, Obamacare effectively penalizes (or taxes) employers who offer full-time employment to workers and rewards employers who offer part-time employment to workers.
• Since the employer mandate applies only to employer with 50 or more employees, Obamacare effectively discourages (or taxes) businesses that grow and expand, hurting employees who would have advanced financially as a small business grew into a larger, more profitable business.
• Since state exchange premium subsidies (tax breaks) are progressive and based on worker earnings — the more a worker earns, the less he/she receives in government tax breaks — Obamacare effectively creates a new hidden tax on wages.

"In conclusion," writes the author, "I can make you this promise: If you like your weak economy, you can keep your weak economy."

Source: Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Economic Productivity, Casey Mulligan, Imprimis.

US Welfare Spending Second Only to France

"We Americans pride ourselves on not having a 'welfare state'," writes Robert Samuelson. "We're not like Europeans."  In fact, our 'welfare state' is bigger than all European countries but one.

Call it a massive case of national self-deception. Indeed, judged by how much countries devote of their national income to social spending, we have the world's second-largest welfare state -- just behind France.

This is not just conjecture. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) -- a group of wealthy nations -- has recently published new figures on government social spending. Covered is unemployment insurance, disability payments, old-age assistance, government-provided health care, family allowances and the like. ...

But wait. Direct government spending isn't the only way that societies provide social services. They also channel payments through private companies, encouraged, regulated and subsidized by government. This is what the United States does, notably with employer-provided health insurance (which is subsidized by government by not counting employer contributions as taxable income) and tax-favored retirement savings accounts.

When these are added to government's direct payments, rankings shift. France remains at the top, but the United States vaults into second position with roughly 30 percent of its GDP spent on social services, including health care. We have a hybrid welfare state, partly run by the government and partly outsourced to private markets.

Below are the OECD rankings, courtesy AEI's James Pethokoukis:

Piketty's Progressive Economic Policies Fall Flat

French economist Thomas Piketty was the darling of the Left last year as the champion of progressive policy proposals — including an "80% tax rate on high incomes and progressive tax on great wealth" — to eradicate economic inequality.  He may have sold a lot of books, argues Michael Barone, but "his policies don't seem to be selling well anywhere."

There were no campaign ads calling for Piketty taxes this fall. Raising the minimum wage got some attention, but, writes Barone,

It is only slightly hyperbolic to say that an increased minimum wage is a transfer of income from fast-food customers to fast-food workers minus those who are replaced by kiosks. That's not a very effective way to sock it to the top 1 percent. ...

America already has lots of economic redistribution. American voters evidently sense that more redistribution would sap economic growth. They're willing to throw a little to minimum wage earners, but they don't want to kill the geese laying the golden eggs.

Piketty's progressive policies are faring no better in other nations.

Even in Brazil, with near-zero growth and mush greater inequality than the U.S., incumbent President Dilma Rousseff saw her percentage slip from 56 percent in 2010 to 52 percent this October.

In Britain, facing an election next May, there are calls within the Labour Party to oust leader Ed Miliband, who has called for freezing energy prices and a tax on "mansions," which would hit Londoners hard.

Piketty confesses he has seldom left Paris in his adult years. But even there his policies are in trouble. The job approval of Socialist President Francois Hollande, who imposed a top income tax rate of 75 percent, currently hovers just above 10 percent.

Politicians opposing massive economic redistribution have a hard time coming up with appealing rhetoric. But there seems to be something more powerful working in their favor — a widespread if 8unspoken understanding that government attempts to "spread the wealth around" (as candidate Obama once told Joe the Plumber) tend to destroy it instead.

SNL Ridicules Obama's Immigration Order

Almost no one believes President Obama's claim that his executive order "legalizing" half the illegal immigrant population is constitutionally sound. Even Saturday Night Live ridiculed his action in a parody based on Schoolhouse Rock's "I'm Just a Bill" this week:

Strassel: The Next Prez and the Obama Way

Wall Street Journal Washington correspondent Kimberley Strassel lets her imagination run wild in a brilliant fantasy staff memo to the next Republican president outlining a plan — using Obama's  executive order precedent — to usher in a conservative agenda in his first four months in office.

What really counts in this town is precedent. And the ace news is that your predecessor blew up about 230 years of it. We’ve attached an 87-page list (check your spam box) of President Obama ’s unilateral actions: altering the ObamaCare statute; refusing to enforce federal drug laws; granting waivers to education reforms; using Justice Department suits to impose new industry rules; drafting agency regulations to go around Congress. Don’t forget 2014, when he rewrote federal immigration law. Like, all of it. By himself.

And here’s where it gets sweet. We’ve been analyzing the Obama team’s justifications. Some are p-r-e-t-t-y creative, but they boil down to this: Whenever a law is “unworkable,” or inadequately “funded”—and Congress won’t do anything—the president gets to act!  ... That’s you, boss. That’s you.

So here’s our plan for getting your entire agenda done—all of it!—by May:

Prosecutorial discretion: Love this. Your top item? Cutting taxes. We have two words and one number for you: Tax Code, 73,954 pages. Is there a more unworkable law? ROFL! We’ve got an executive order ready instructing IRS agents not to enforce the code on any person or company who refuses to pay more than our new rates. Goodbye Alternative Minimum Tax, death tax, capital gains, restrictions on nonprofits. Hello, flat tax on a postcard.

Speaking of taxes, do remember to thank Chief Justice John Roberts for declaring the ObamaCare individual mandate a tax. Not enforcing that one, either! That’s O-Care repealed. Check. You ran on reducing the regulatory burden. We’re sending a list of rules under major laws that you can instruct agencies and the Justice Department to no longer uphold. You know, the damaging stuff buried in the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Labor Relations Act, Dodd-Frank, McCain-Feingold. All unworkable!  [snip]


Agencies: Justice now has time on its hands, so we’re setting up a task force to bring criminal charges against slippery characters (folks who, bonus, Americans love to hate): trial firms, union shops. Obama showed with his banking and BP suits that if we go big and ugly, we won’t even have to test legal theories; the targets will roll, and agree to new restrictions. That’s tort and labor reform done. And we’re already directing your agencies to start authorizing moves that Congress won’t: drilling off the East Coast and in ANWR; health insurance across state lines; school vouchers. Sky’s the limit!

The fantasy memo closes with this:

We could do the right thing; arguably should.  Then again, who will they be to complain if we don’t?

Obama Adds More Foreign Workers to US Than New Jobs Since 2009

"President Barack Obama's unilateral amnesty will quickly add as many foreign workers to the nation's legal labor force as the total number of new jobs created by his economy since 2009," reports the Daily Caller.

Foreign Workers = 6,000,000  *

• Obama previously provided or promised almost 1 million extra work permits to foreigners
• His reported plan, to be announced today, will distribute 5 million more work permits to illegal immigrants

U.S. Jobs Created Since 2009 = 5,977,000

• Total U.S. jobs in 2009 = 139,894,000
• Total U.S. jobs in 2014 = 145,871,000

*Note: This number does not include the normal inflow of legal immigrants granted work permits.

Source: Obama's Amnesty Will Add As Many Foreign Workers as New Jobs Since 2009, Neil Munro, Daily Caller

Top 20% Pay Almost Everybody's Share

Based on the latest Congressional Budget Office annual report, the top 20% of American households in income pays the federal tax load that subsidizes almost all of the other 80% of American households, according to analysis by AEI economist Mark J. Perry.

Here is his chart:

And the numbers:

"We hear all the time [from the Left] that 'the rich' aren't paying their fair share and need to be taxed more," writes Perry. "We might want to start asking if the bottom 60% of  'net recipient' households are really paying their fair share."

Source: New CBO Study Shows That 'The Rich' Don't Just Pay Their 'Fair Share', They Pay Almost Everybody's Share, Mark J. Perry, American Enterprise Institute
Data Source: The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, Congressional Budget Office, November 2014

'Net Neutrality' - Don't Buy the Con

If you love smooth-streaming music and HD movies or videos over the internet, chances are you will hate 'Net Neutrality' — a government internet regulation proposal that is as big a con in packaging as 'The Affordable Care Act'.

As explained here and here, the proposed Federal Communications Commission's Net Neutrality regulations will force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all internet traffic equally, giving the same priority and speed to text, video, audio, and interactive content, whether consumers like it or not. 

• Net Neutrality is a bad deal for consumers.  Because internet bandwidth space is finite, ISPs must pay for every megabyte of bandwidth their consumers use. ISPs currently pays those bandwidth costs by offering higher-priced product differentiation packages to on-demand video services such as Amazon and Netflex so that the end users (you and me) can enjoy fast lane, smooth movie streaming at a relatively low cost without slowing down their neighbours' internet connections. 
  
  If Net Neutrality becomes law, ISPs won't be allowed to do that, and movie viewing is likely to become a choppy, unhappy experience. Worse, if ISPs can't charge big user companies like Amazon and Netflex for bandwidth use, ISPs will likely begin charging consumers (you and me) for the bandwidth they actually use, just as cell phone carriers charge consumers for data they use.   

• Net Neutrality is a bad deal for web companies.  ISPs shouldn't be forced to treat all web companies equally. Currently the bigger, established companies are paying a greater share of the cost because they use far more bandwidth than smaller, less established companies. However, "Net Neutrality effectively forces startups to subsidize the bandwidth requirements of established companies, by equally distributing the cost of service to everyone, even those who do not benefit from faster speeds."  

For more, read:

Here's What 'Net Neutrality' is ... and What to Think About It
Rebutting the President on Net Neutrality

New Labor Dept Rules Would Hit Working Women Hardest

The Department of Labor's proposed new rules on overtime pay would significantly hurt working women's ability to negotiate workplace flexibility tailored to their personal and family needs, argues economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth.

• The new rules would apply to several million new female workers who are currently classified as executive or professional, many of whom now enjoy highly valued workplace flexibility.
• The new rules would prevent women from negotiating "comp" arrangements in which they take additional time off in exchange for extra time worked.
• The new rules would have a chilling impact on women's opportunity to telecommute and/or work from home, since employers will be required to keep careful track of worker's hours to avoid being sued for overtime violations. Working mothers, in particular, find these flexible work arrangements highly beneficial when a child becomes sick or a babysitter cancels.

A better solution for working women, argues the author, would be to leave undisturbed the workplace flexibility that many millions of women have already successfully negotiated.

As for "comp" arrangements, she argues another proposal — the Working Families Flexibility Act of 2013, which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last year — would be a more woman-friendly solution:  offering "workers who worked more than 40 hours a week a choice of 1.5 hours of comp time per overtime hour worked, rather than overtime pay." 

Source: Obama's War on Working Women, by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Manhattan Institute.

Hasson: Five Lessons 2014's Conservative Women Taught MSM

The smashing victories of conservative women on election night "make this a teaching moment" for the mainstream media, argues Mary Hasson, who should adjust their stylebooks to these five lessons:

1. "Women" does not equate to "liberal women." Conservative women are women too. (Example: Don't say "women voters" when you really mean "liberal women voters.")
2. Delete "women's issues" from your lexicon. (Note: "women's issues" is a misnomer for the demeaning "lady parts" agenda of liberals who think women's priorities begin with birth control and end with abortion.)
3. Ditto the meaningless "war on women." (See the losing campaigns of "Mark Uterus" and John Foust.)
4. Do not say "women's rights" when you mean "abortion rights." (Iowas Senator-elect Joni Ernst and Virginia Representative-elect Barbara Comstock champion issues important to women — and passionately oppose abortion. Losing candidate Sandra Fluke champions abortion rights, not the rights of liberty-loving women.)
5. To take the pulse of women voters, try interviewing ordinary, hard-working women. (Hint: They don't loiter in pricey Manhattan gyms or at glitzy Democrat fundraisers in Los Angeles. Try the grocery store, in flyover country, at the end of a long workday.)

Read What 2014's Victories From GOP Taught Us for the lessons Hasson believes the GOP should have learned.

What Illegal Immigration Costs You

Some have warned that legalizing millions of illegal immigrants – as President Obama is threatening to do by executive order – will be a huge financial burden this nation's families cannot afford.  In a new policy paper, Heritage researcher David Inserra offers some shocking numbers to buttress this warning:

The government services system is highly redistributive:  In 2010, in the whole US population,

• households with college-educated heads received an average of $24,839 in government benefits, while paying $54,089 in taxes (a net loss of $29,250 per household);
• households headed by persons without a high school degree received an average of $46,582 in government benefits, while paying $11,469 in taxes (a net benefit of $35,113 per household).

The typical unlawful immigrant has only a 10th grade education. Half of unlawful immigrant heads of households don’t have a high school degree, and another 25% have only a high school degree.  In 2010,

• the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services, while paying some $10,334 in taxes (a net benefit of $14,387 per household).

The typical unlawful immigrant is 34 years old. If granted amnesty,

• this individual would be eligible for Social Security, Obamacare, Medicare, and over 80 means-tested welfare programs, including Medicaid, food stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, public housing, Supplemental Security Income, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families;
• this individual will receive government benefits for 50 years;
• over a lifetime, the up to 11.5 million former unlawful immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and services, while paying only $3.1 trillion in taxes — creating a lifetime fiscal deficit of $6.3 trillion.

Inserra writes:

Under President Barack Obama, immigration laws are unilaterally ignored, waived, or changed … The result of such lawlessness is that the rule of law suffers and more illegal immigration is encouraged, imposing large financial and security costs on the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. immigration system is broken because of the executive branch’s decision not to faithfully execute existing immigration law.

Inserra outlines 10 steps the next president can take to fulfill his duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" — the first step in fixing the U.S. immigration system.

How Progressive Tax Policies Hurt Families

"Before families can understand how tax reform would help them, they need to know how the current tax system is hurting them," writes Curtis S. Dubay in How Tax Reform Would Help American Families. He argues that that most families have no idea the damaging effects of the current progressive tax system, which are largely hidden from view.

Dubay catalogues the many problems in the progressive tax system, including (a) rates that are too high, that are too biased against saving and investment, and that wrongly pick winners and losers.

Showing how substituting the current investment/income tax system with a consumption tax system — i.e., the traditional flat tax, a consumed-income flat tax, a national retail sales tax, or a combination of these methods — would benefit families and the nation's economy, Dubay concludes:

Clearly, all of these effects would substantially benefit families. According to the Tax Foundation, the economy could grow as much as 15 percent more over 10 years because of tax reform. After those 10 years, the average American family’s wages would be almost 10 percent higher. That would mean an extra $5,000 in the pockets of families making $50,000 per year (roughly the median income in the U.S. today).  

Read his full Heritage Foundation report.


For those not familiar with how the current progressive tax system punishes work and investment — and pits neighbor against neighbor — here's a short YouTube video by PragerUniversity that explains it rather well:

Liberalism's Self-Serving View of Compassion

As the self-appointed champions of the "politics of kindness," liberal activists and publicists have "successfully weaponized compassion" and regularly wield that weapon against conservatism as the "politics of cruelty, greed, and callousness" when conservatives question the efficacy — or oppose expansion — of the welfare state. So argues William Voegeli in The Case Against Liberal Compassion.

Census Bureau data puts total federal, state and local government welfare spending at $3 trillion in 2011, or just under $10,000 per American, "much of it spent on the many millions of American who are nowhere near being impoverished, insecure, or suffering," writes Voegeli.

If the point of liberalism were to alleviate suffering, as opposed to preening about one's abhorrence of suffering and proud support for government programs designed to reduce it, liberals would get up every morning determined to reduce the proportion of that $3 trillion outlay that ought to be helping the poor but is instead being squandered in some way, including by being showered on people who aren't poor.

Delving into the definitions of "compassion," Voegeli points to the fatal flaws in the politics of kindness's focus on empathy at the expense of outcomes:

• Empathizers can "feel" better about "doing" something to alleviate another's suffering even when the sufferers do not "fare" any better.  The "politics of kindness" has little interest in accomplishing results for the sufferers.
• Empathizers can "acquire a vested interest in the study, management and perpetuation ... of sufferers' problems" for their own self-regard and esteem. When that happens, "the helpers and the helped are endlessly, increasingly co-dependent."
• Empathizers can begin to value compassion in terms of the self-validation it offers to them as good, decent and admirable people, wholly ignoring the inefficiency of programs in reducing the suffering of others. In the "politics of kindness," once they've voted for, given a speech about, written an editorial endorsing, or held forth at a dinner party on the salutary generosity of some program to 'address' someone's problem, their work is done, and they can feel the rush of their own pious reaction.

The question conservatives should be asking is, why aren't the "liberals who build, operate, defend, and seek to expand this [welfare] machine" outraged that it works so poorly to alleviate poverty and suffering?  Don't they care?

For more, read Voegeli's article in the October 2014 Imprimis or his book, The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.

Conservative College Student Saira Blair Makes History

Eighteen-year-old conservative college student Saira Blair made history this week when she was elected, by a 63% to 30% margin, to the West Virginia House of Delegates. Fox News interviewed this articulate young woman on Fox & Friends:

Cracks in the Liberal-Progressive Coalition

Further signs of disaffection within the liberal-progressive coalition:

1. Three urban Chicago black men make the case that the true oppressors of the black community are liberal black leaders:


2. Comedian Bill Maher seriously challenges Ben Affleck's thinking about the "religion of peace:"


3. In deeply blue-state Oregon, voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum that would have granted driver's licenses to illegal immigrants -- a measure Hispanic leaders were counting on to bolster the legalization/amnesty effort. As Mickey Kaus points out, several senators who voted for or supported "Chuck Schumer's Senate 'Gang of 8' legalization + immigration increase bill" lost their bids: 

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas voted for the Gang of 8 bill. He’s GONE.

Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina voted for the Gang of 8 bill. GONE.

Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado voted for the Gang of 8 bill. GONE

Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska voted for the Gang of 8 bill. Almost certainly GONE

Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana voted for the Gang of 8 bill. She will probably be GONE after a January runoff.

Alison Grimes supported the Gang of 8 bill in Kentucky. DEFEATED

Michelle Nunn supported the Gang of 8 bill in Georgia. DEFEATED

Greg Orman supported the Gangof 8 bill in Kansas. DEFEATED

Bruce Braley supoorted the Gang of 8 bill in Iowa. DEFEATED

Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Warner of Virginia voted for the Gang of 8 bill and BARELY SURVIVED against longshot challengers.

Do you sense a pattern in there somewhere? Schumer would probably be chairman of the lucrative Banking Committee if he hadn’t pushed his amnesty bill.

Even if the press intentionally misses this message, the pols and their advisers won’t. Do you think that, say, Oregon’s Democratic Senator Ron Wyden will be eager to vote on the Son of Gang of 8 next year? He’s up in 2016. Yesterday, his state’s voters rejected a bill to provide drivers’ licenses to illegals — it lost by a margin of 68 to 32, with more votes cast against it than were cast in favor of any candidate.  It lost big in Democratic areas and lost in Republican areas. I don’t think Wyden wants to vote for another “comprehensive” bill.

Harsanyi: Obama Era Myths Debunked

David Harsanyi debunks dubious assumptions about the Obama Era, among them:

• No, Voters Don't Hate 'Obstructionism' — "If anything, what we learned is that politicians are far more likely to be penalized by the electorate for passing unworkable and overreaching legislation that they are stopping it."
• There is No Revolt Against Washington (Yet) — American voters didn't oust all incumbents; they selectively punished only one party.
• Obamacare is Not a Political Winner — Approximately 36,000 anti-Obamacare ads were aired in Senate races in the three-week period from October 6 to 26. "It could be that the historic Republican gains had nothing to do with the most-discussed legislation in America. A far more plausible answer is that Obamacare has fathered two colossal wave elections by the GOP in four years. Which probably makes it the least popular federal policy in our lifetimes."

Lady-Parts Strategy Fail

Two women and one man who built their strategies almost exclusively around lady-parts failed to win public support yesterday in their bids for public office.

Sandra Fluke—the Georgetown University law student who became the face of the "free-contraception" movement—lost her bid for a California state senate seat, winning only 39 percent of the vote to her male opponent's 61 percent.

Wendy Davis—the face of War on Women messaging—garnered only 39 percent of the vote in the race for Texas governor.  Her opponent, Greg Abbott, even won the women's vote 52 percent to Davis's 47 percent.

U.S. Senator Mark Udall of Colorado—who was dubbed "Mark Uterus" during the election for his obsessive focus on lady-parts—won 44 percent of the vote to lose to his challenger, Cory Garner.

Another big loser was Planned Parenthood.  Writes Mollie Hemingway:

Planned Parenthood treated Mark Udall and Wendy Davis as their most important races, knocking on a million doors and making two million phone calls, they claimed, to drive votes to them.

A Good Day for Conservative Women

"Meet the new women," writes Ashe Schow @ the Washington Examiner:

• Senator-elect Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) — a sitting Congresswoman, she is the first woman to represent the state of West Virginia in the U.S. Senate.
• Senator-elect Joni Ernst (Iowa)-- the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Iowa.
• Congresswoman-elect Barbara Comstock (Va) — a sitting state house delegate, she defeated her opponent (and the Clinton machine that targeted her) in an increasingly liberal Northern Virginia district.
• Congresswoman-elect Elise Stefanik (NY) — the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, she faced multiple sexist remarks from her opponent and handled them with the grace and composure of a seasoned politician.
• Congresswoman-elect Mia Love (Utah) — she is the first black Republican woman in Congress, as well as the first Haitian-American representative.

Conservatives can also cheer a conservative gentleman: Senator Tim Scott (SC) — the first black senator elected to Congress from South Carolina is also the first African-American elected by popular vote in the South and only the fifth African-American elected ever, according to the Christian Science Monitor. 

Less-costly Alternative to Obamacare Insurance

"A fast-growing, short-term alternative to ObamaCare that allows customers to get cheap, one-year policies could put the government-subsidized plan into a death spiral," reports Fox News.

The plans, the only ones allowed for sale outside of ObamaCare exchanges, generally cost less than half of what similar ObamaCare policies cost, and are increasing in popularity as uninsured Americans grapple with the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The catch -- that the policies only last for a year -- is not much of a deterrent, given that customers can sign up for ObamaCare during open-enrollment periods if their short-term coverage is not renewed.

These short term plans, which have a typical premium of $100 per month, are less costly than Obamacare plans with an average cost of $271 per month, and they allow the patient to choose any doctor or hospital.

Health Insurance Innovations estimates that the short-term insurance industry as a whole has grown at 20-30 percent over the last year since ObamaCare was implemented. McLean, of eHealthInsurance.com, said the plans appeal to young people.

“They're particularly popular with young adults," she said. "Forty-six percent of our short term policy holders are between the ages of 25 and 34.”

One conservative youth advocacy group, Generation Opportunity, specifically endorses buying short-term plans as a way to get around ObamaCare.

“We think it is an excellent option for young people,” the group’s president, Evan Feinberg, said, though he added that it isn’t perfect.

“We don’t think this is an ideal way to do health insurance in general. People should be free to insure themselves both against short-term catastrophic costs and the long term need for permanent medical care,” he said. “Unfortunately there are people who take away that choice from us based on a misguided idea that they can run a healthcare system from Washington that meets the needs of hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Physicians Opting Out of Obamacare Plans

An estimated 214,524 American physicians will not be participating in ACA (Obamacare) health plans, according to a large 2014 survey of multi-physician medical practices by the Medical Group Management Association (survey summarized here).  Why?

• ACA's payment rates for services rendered are "financially unsustainable" for physicians.  "[W]here private plans pay $1.00 for a service, Medicare pays $0.80, and [Obamacare] plans are now paying about $0.60."
  
• ACA's high deductibles can leave patients owing thousands of dollars to physicians and hospitals for services rendered—money that doctors need to keep their doors open, but may not be able to collect from patients.
  
• ACA's premiums aren't cheap either, and if a patient stops paying the premiums, Obamacare rules give patients a 90-day grace period to get premiums caught up. If the patient doesn't pay up, Obamacare forces the insurance company to pay physicians and hospitals for any services provided day 1 through 30, but not for services provided from day 31 through 90. Doctors and hospitals are simply left holding the bag. 

With the deck stacked against them, doctors are simply avoiding Obamacare plans. As of January 2014, a estimated 70% of California's 104,000 physicians had already said no to participating in Covered California plans.

Another Legislative Response to Campus Sexual Assault

The SOS Campus Act has already been introduced in Congress, but one anti-domestic violence group, Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), has drafted legislation it believes will better serve victims of campus assault while ensuring basic confidentiality and privacy protections to those accused—and, particularly, acquitted—of campus assault. Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner writes:

The bulk of SAVE’s bill, titled the “Safety of Our Students Act,” requires colleges and universities that receive federal funding to leave sexual assault investigations to the professionals. The draft requires universities to encourage students who report a rape or sexual assault to go to the police themselves. It also requires administrators to report the matter to the police and share all evidence or information they have, whether the accuser follows up or not.

“All allegations of campus criminal sexual assault that are brought to the attention of campus security or the campus disciplinary committee shall be immediately reported and referred by the personnel or committee to local law enforcement officials,” the draft says. “Exclusive jurisdiction for investigation and adjudication of the complaint shall reside with local criminal justice authorities.”

The SOS Act — not to be confused with the SOS Campus Act, which has already been introduced — also requires universities to treat acquitted students with respect and provide confidentiality.

“Absent a criminal plea agreement or verdict of guilt, colleges and universities shall respect and maintain the presumption of innocence with regards to the accused,” the draft says. “The accused shall enjoy the same confidentiality and privacy protections as the identified victim.”

Barone: Information-Age Millennials

Social historian and political trend analyst Michael Barone writes:

The Harvard Institute of Politics has just released its latest survey of Millennials, and reports that among those who say they would definitely vote this year, 51 percent would prefer a Republican-run Congress and 47 percent a Democratic-run Congress. In contrast, in 2010, the IOP poll of Millennials showed that 43 percent favored a Republican-run Congress and 55 percent a Democratic-run Congress. [snip]

This is an information-age generation that wants to customize its own world, that seeks ways to earn success by drawing on their own particular interests and talents. The Obama Democrats have advanced industrial-age policies that have centralized experts making decisions for large masses of people who are treated as identical and very small cogs in a very large machine. That has seemed to me a bad fit. Evidently many Millennials are starting to feel the same way.

Feds Tax Collections Highest Ever

"The federal government collected a record amount of taxes in fiscal year 2014, topping $3 trillion in revenue for the first time in its history, according to Treasury Department numbers released Wednesday ..."

The federal government took in $3.020 trillion in FY 2014 (ending September 30) from individual taxes (which rose 6 percent) and corporate-income taxes (which jumped 17 percent).

Building a Better Social Security System

The New York Times started the discussion by "accidentally admitting" that the Netherland's privatized pension system is a more secure, reliable system than the American government-run system, and Dan Mitchell @ thefederalist.com carries it forward.

Under the Dutch system:

• each generation pays its own retirement costs through private savings and private investments in diversified, professionally-run pension funds (unlike the US, which is based on inter-generational redistribution);
• annual worker savings are government-mandated, typically about 18% of workers' pay (the American Social Security system is roughly 16.4%);
• government doesn't control—and can't access—any of those pension funds (unlike the American system which is wholly controlled and owned by the federal government);
• workers' incomes used to build retirement accounts are taxed only once (similar to American Individual Retirement Accounts):  no tax is levied on pension contributions, and pension funds' investment performance isn't taxed; pension benefits are taxed only when their owners receive them; and
• Dutch retirement plans are intended to amount to about 70 percent of workers' lifetime pay (compared to just 40 percent of American worker's income in retirement).

Mitchell argues, that while there are some things about the Dutch market-based system that could be improved,

I would gladly trade the U.S. Social Security system for the Dutch mandatory pension System. An imperfect system based on private savings is always a better bet than a perfectly terrible tax-and-transfer scheme. For more information, here's the video I narrated explaining why personal retirement accounts are far superior to government-run schemes such as Social Security.

Mitchell adds that, in his estimation, the best role model is Australia's pension system.

Are Women Hurting Women in the Workplace?

Women, not men, may be holding women back from achieving upper levels of management. A Gallup survey released this week finds that 39% of women — and only 26% of men — preferred to be led by a man.  This preference for males has held for the past 60 years of polling, says Gallup.

In reporting the survey, BusinessWeek adds that "a growing pile of evidence suggests that women mistrust, and can undermine, one another at work."

• "95% of working women felt they were undercut by another woman at least once during their professional life," according to a 2011 survey.
• A 2010 survey of legal secretaries found that not one preferred to work for a woman partner, although 47% had no preference.
• A 2008 study found that women working for female supervisors experienced more stress than those who had male supervisors.

The data suggest that even the millennial generation "would rather not have a woman in charge:"

Growing Number of Single Moms Really Victims of Patriarchy?

Despite readily available birth control, more single women are getting pregnant—but choosing not to marry to the biological father—than ever before, in part because the social stigma associated with unwed motherhood no longer exists and in part due to the lack of availability of economically-stable male spouses.

Two researchers claim that, while this coupled with the ranks of divorced mothers, is a mark of women's new-found independence, these single mothers are now even worse victims of the old male patriarchy. Why? According to the authors,

• College-educated men still have the greatest access to "the most influential and highest paying jobs" in large part because "women are still much more likely than men to drop out of the labor market when children come."
• The patriarchal system continues to extend to males "political power—the ability to secure laws reflecting male preferences and perspectives over female ones."
• The patriarchal system has made alimony and child support for women less common (especially to mothers who earn more than fathers), while at the same time awarding more shared custody to fathers.

The authors' conclusion is that there is no "new matriarchy" to celebrate:

The word “matriarchy” suggests power, and it is hard to see what power today’s struggling single mothers exercise. Their hard-won independence, in a world where they do not have the power to create better relationships or stronger communities, is under assault. They might be better off unmarried than married to unemployed boyfriends who still live at home with their mothers. But with children to raise, bills to pay and multiple jobs to go to, do they really have any other choice?

Americans Still Believe in Individualism, Capitalism

Breaking down the results from the latest Pew Research survey of global opinion, James Pethokoukis writes:

Let’s start with the US: 70% of Americans still think most people are better off under a free-market system, even if some people are rich and some are poor. That compares to 63% for the average advanced economy. What’s more, 73%  and 62% think working hard and getting a good education, respectively, are very important to getting ahead in life vs. 40% and 39% for the average advanced economy. (For France, by the way, it’s 25% and 24%.) Finally, just 40% think success is determined by forces outside out control vs. 51% for the average advanced economy.

No Gender Gap This Election?

Today's ABC News/Washington Post poll brings more bad news for the party of liberalism. "Even with the [economic] recovery to date, 77% are worried about the economy's future, and 57% say the country has been experiencing a long-term decline in living standards ..."

Barack Obama and his political party are heading into the midterm elections in trouble. The president's 40 percent job approval rating in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll is the lowest of his career — and the Democratic Party's popularity is its weakest in polling back 30 years, with more than half of Americans seeing the party unfavorably for the first time.

The Republican Party is even more unpopular. But benefiting from their supporters' greater likelihood of voting, GOP candidates nonetheless hold a 50-43 percent lead among likely voters for U.S. House seats in the Nov. 4 election. 

Women, who have long been counted on to lift liberals' fortunes, have lost confidence as well.  Among likely voters, "women divide evenly between Democratic and Republican House candidates," reports the poll. The gender gap this cycle is all male:

Ebola Travel Restrictions

According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Tuesday, 67% of Americans support restricting the entry into the US of those arriving from Ebola-outbreak nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, reports Newsmax.com. Only 29% oppose travel restrictions.

Ninety-one percent of adults in the survey said they want "stricter screening of people entering the United States who have been in African countries affected by the outbreak."

The results mirror an NBC News poll (October 7) that found "58% of Americans favored banning flights from countries hardest hit by the virus."

Some of the nation's leaders are listening; others are not, reports Newsmax in a related article.

Despite calls from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other Republicans, the Obama administration has repeatedly said there will be no travel ban from West African countries stricken by the Ebola virus outbreak.

'War on Women' Over: Women Won

Women aren't responding well to the oft-repeated liberal claim that conservatives are waging a 'war on women', according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, and Genevieve Wood cites these examples to explain why that may be:

• For every 100 higher ed degrees men got last year, women earned 140.
• The wage gap between men and women is now almost non-existent in apple-to-apple comparisons of males and females in similar jobs with similar education, experience, years in the work force and hours worked.
• Millennial women with no children who live in metro areas earned 8 percent more on average than men.
• Women control over 50% of private wealth in the US today and they make about 80% of all household spending decisions.
• Over 40% of the 3 million Americans making off $500,000 a year are women.

Lake says women find the term 'war on women' "divisive, political [and] they don't like it."  Wood suggests another reason: "more women now recognize that it's simply not true:"

In a recent Rasmussen poll, 52% of likely U.S. female voters said they believed the "war on women" slogan is primarily used for political purposes. And in Colorado, where one of the most closely watched Senate races is happening, a Magellan Strategies poll of female swing voters found 77% of respondents said they saw through the "war on women" messaging strategy.

Looks like the Left's "war on women" is over, and women won.

Reynolds: CDC and the Ebola Fight

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has lost sight of its mission, argues Glenn Reynolds in a USAToday editorial. Created to prevent malaria and other dangerous communicable diseases, the CDC has gotten into all sorts of 'side jobs', from playground safety to calisthentics to second hand smoke.

These other tasks may or may not be important, but they're certainly a distraction from what's supposed to be the CDC's "one job" — protecting America from a deadly epidemic. And to the extent that the CDC's leadership has allowed itself to be distracted, it has paid less attention to the core mission.

In an era where new disease threats look to be growing, the CDC needs to drop the side jobs and focus on its real reason for existence. But, alas, the problem isn't just the CDC. It's everywhere.

It seems that as government has gotten bigger, and accumulated more and more of its own ancillary responsibilities, it has gotten worse at its primary tasks. It can supervise snacks at elementary schools, but not defend the borders; it can tax people to subsidize others' health-care plans but not build roads or bridges; and it can go after football team names but can't seem to deal with the Islamic State terror group.

Multitasking results in poorer performance for individuals. It also hurts the performance of government agencies, and of government itself. You have one job. Try doing it.

Judge: IRS Obamacare Rules 'Abuse of Discretion'

"U.S. District Judge Ronald White concluded Tuesday that the IRS rule altering the Obamacare law and providing billions [of dollars] in subsidies is 'arbitrary, capricious and abuse of discretion'," writes Craig Bannister @ CNSnews.com.

"The court holds that the IRS rule is arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with law, pursuant to 5 U.S.C.706(2)(A), in excess of summary jurisdiction, authority or limitation, or short of statutory right, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(C), or otherwise is an invalidation of the ACA [Affordable Care Act], and is hereby vacated. The court's order of vacatur is stayed, however, pending resolution of any appeal from this order."

Oklahoma was the first of several states to challenge the IRS rule "that caused billions in subsidies to be paid out, despite Congress having never authorized those payments."

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt hailed the state's victory in its lawsuit challenging the implementation of the Affordable Care Act:

"Today's ruling is a consequential victory for the rule of law. The administration and its bureaucrats in the IRS handed out billions in illegal tax credits and subsidies and vastly expanded the reach of the health care law because they didn't like the way Congress wrote the Affordable Care Act. That's not how our system of government works."