Video: Employees Learn What Obamacare Will Cost Them

Pennsylvania TV station WTAE-PA sits in on a small business's meeting with employees to present their new health insurance package. The four-minute video presents a realistic look at how Obamacare affects real people of all ages in practice.

Malkin: Bullying Job Creators

The American Job Creator is under seige, argues Michelle Malkin, and the success-shaming, class-shaming, and wealth-shaming must stop.

Last week, a prominent self-made tech mogul dared to diagnose the problem publicly. His passionate letter to the Wall Street Journal decried the “progressive war on the American 1 percent.” He called on the Left to stop demonizing “the rich,” and he condemned the Occupy movement’s “rising tide of hatred.” [Note: his letter is reprinted below.]

The mini-manifesto was newsworthy because this truth-teller is not a GOP politician or conservative activist or Fox News personality. ...

The letter-writer is Tom Perkins, a Silicon Valley pioneer with an MIT degree in electrical engineering and computer science and a Harvard MBA. He started out at the bottom at Hewlett-Packard, founded his own separate laser company on the side, and then teamed up with fellow entrepreneur Eugene Kleiner to establish one of the nation’s oldest and most important venture-capital firms — Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.

Because he dared to compare the seething resentment of modern progressives to Kristallnacht and Nazi Germany, the grievance industry attacked Perkins and dismissed his message. His former colleagues at the venture-capital firm he founded threw him under the bus. Left-wing punk journalists immediately branded him “nuts” and a “rich idiot.”

Malkin argues the most dangerous threats to the nation's job creators doesn't come from left-wing punks. Rather, she writes,

...they come from the men in power in Washington who stoke bottomless hatred against 'millionaires and billionaires' through class-bashing rhetoric and entrepreneur-cursing policies ... It's high time to shame the wealth-shamers and their cowed enablers. Silence is complicity.

State of the Union Roundup

"How does one critique a speech like tonight's?" asks Bryan Preston.

President Barack Obama spent more than an hour sweeping between a laundry list of proposals, anecdotes to hid his failures, and what can only be called lies about the state of the union. ...

Obama stood before a joint session of Congress and told them that he was done with them. He told them that he intended to sideline them whenever he can. And the Democrats elected to that body, who are supposed to defend its constitutional responsibilities and powers, cheered. It was a ghastly sight, unworthy of our nation’s station as the world’s oldest functioning republic. ...

Obama seemed at times to be truly put out with whoever has been president these past five years. A majority of Americans would agree with him on that at this point.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker checked Mr. Obama's SOTU facts and calls into question a half-dozen of his more "fact-challenged claims." In similar fashion, Michael Cannon takes the president's Obamacare claims apart one by one and finds them lacking.

Scott Johnson found the president's speech "mind-numbing and soul-killing" and the response from the other side of the aisle less than encouraging:

Watching the muted reaction of Eric Cantor [R-VA] to Obama’s call for immigration reform made me think. House leadership must know how unpopular it is with those of us who make up the heart of the party. Taking it up is bad policy and worse politics. It would be a gratuitous act of self-destruction. Yet Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA] seems to agree that “it’s time.” In her response to Obama’s address, she said this:

And yes, it’s time to honor our history of legal immigration. We’re working on a step-by-step solution to immigration reform by first securing our borders and making sure America will always attract the best, brightest, and hardest working from around the world.

As for Republicans, you have to wonder. Does anybody really know what time it is?

Johnson's question may be on the minds of a lot of weary Americans who live beyond the Beltway. Only about 38 million watched (down from 43 million in 2013 and 48 million in 2012) — the same number of viewers who tuned in for President George W. Bush's final SOTU address.
 
UPDATE: Only 33.3 million people on 13 networks watched the SOTU address, according to Neilsen ratings — or about 20.7% of American households. "That was the lowest figure since former President Bill Clinton's final address to Congress in 2000, which had 31,478,000 viewers."

Supporting Dinesh D'Souza

In "First They Came for Indian Immigrant Documentary Filmmakers," John Hinderraker writes:

The Obama administration has unleashed a series of attacks on conservatives that at present has no end in sight. One of those attacks was the indictment of Dinesh D’Souza, whose anti-Obama film 2016 is the second biggest-grossing political documentary of all time. D’Souza is accused of contributing $20,000, more than the legal limit, to the Senate candidacy of his friend Wendy Long. The U.S. Attorney in New York announced a “zero tolerance” policy with regard to campaign finance, and D’Souza was arraigned in New York, handcuffed briefly, and released on $500,000 bond.

Consider that for a moment: the magnitude of his offense was $20,000 (less, actually, since his donation was legal up to the maximum), while bail was set at $500,000...

Hinderraker reminds readers that no charges were ever filed against the campaign finance violations of the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and that incidents of ballot fraud have been largely ignored.

He also suggests D'Souza deserves conservatives' support:

Dinesh D’Souza has had a tough year, both personally and professionally. He has also clashed, on occasion, with fellow conservatives, including some of us. But now more than ever, conservatives need to heed Benjamin Franklin’s injunction to hang together. Not all conservatives like the Tea Party, or D’Souza, or Chris Christie, or the Koch brothers, or whoever the next target may prove to be. But the Democrats have launched a broad attack against conservatives of all stripes, and they are willing to misuse all of the powers of the federal government to squash dissent. Conservatives can only counter this aggression by sticking together.

So we should support Dinesh however we can, beginning by questioning whether his indictment is a case of selective enforcement. We conservatives are in favor of enforcing election laws: let’s put all the pressure we can on Democrats to enforce them all, uniformly. And let’s go see Dinesh’s new movie, America, which will debut on the 4th of July.

Strassel: Congress's NSA Fail

The subheadline of Kimberly Strassel's lates Potomac Watch column is "politicians demand oversight over intelligence, then make it a point not to know what's going on." Writes Strassel:

One of the jokes of today's call for more intelligence oversight is that no country currently has a greater (or more debilitating) amount of it. No effective intelligence service can disclose its secrets to the public. Democracies handle this by entrusting the peoples' representatives—duly elected—with the solemn task of minding the spies.

Western European countries handle this oversight entirely within the executive branch. The U.S. doles it out to all and sundry: executive, legislative, judicial. If you live in Washington and have a pulse, you too can oversee intelligence.

This system was supposed to legitimize intelligence programs. All it has done is reduce accountability. The existence in particular of a court established in 1978 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (and public misperceptions about the FISA court's role) has allowed Congress to pass the buck, freeing politicians from the need to take ownership of intelligence matters.

Donatelli: The Administration's Sorry Record on Poverty

"President Obama’s State of the Union address will focus on “income inequality,” writes Frank Donatelli, a Luce Institute board member.

One can understand why he wants to change the subject from the very real problems America faces. His policies have made those problems worse. Obamacare has caused tens of thousands of Americans to lose their health plans and forced them into insurance exchanges that cost more and provide fewer doctor choices. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are still out of work and even more have stopped looking. ...

The president wants you to forget all that and now consider the plight of the poor. Sadly, he hasn’t done a very good job there either. That’s because his own actions as president have made the poor worse off. Reducing poverty has never been a major priority of this administration. It’s hard to point to a single major legislative achievement of his that has improved the lot of the poorest Americans. If anything, he has spent his first five years appeasing the key groups that make up the Democratic Party and his governing coalition.

Donatelli recounts this Administration's initiatives — the economic stimulus spending bill, Cash for Clunkers, the Obamacare nightmare, green energy "investments" to favored corporations, and his disdain for real economic growth initiatives such as the Keystone Pipeline — and concludes:

Economic growth offers a far better correlation to the poverty rate than temporary band-aids like minimum wage increases or unemployment benefits. Low growth for the five years of this administration has corresponded with an official poverty rate rise to 15 percent. It is even higher according to another calculation by the Census Bureau. As Timothy Smeeding, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty, notes, “The best policy is obvious. It’s a job that pays decent wages. The answer to poverty is never an income support program.”

This administration represents the triumph of ideology over common sense. Poverty does not exist because some people are successful at the expense of others, which is the most pernicious claim of a president who began his presidency grandly promising to bring people together. It exists because of government policies that ignore job creation and economic growth. The president would have been wise to make that the centerpiece of his speech.

Senators' Plan to Replace Obamacare

Senators Richard Burr (R-NC), Tom Coburn MD (R-OK), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) unveiled their plan to replace Obamacare. In an op-ed at Fox News, they argue it would:

• scrap Obamacare's rating changes and expensive mandates;
• allow small businesses to band together for coverage — like large corporations do — to negotiate a better deal for health coverage;
• offer individuals who are uninsured, self-employed or working at a small business a tax credit for health coverage;
• reform — but not expand — Medicaid; and
• give states dramatically more flexibility to provide their residents health care without Washington red-tape, micromanagement and uncertainty.

It isn't the free-market health care proposal conservatives would like to see. In his Washington Examiner op-ed, Philip Klein compares and contrasts the Senators' proposal to current Obamacare law, concluding:

Ultimately, the new Coburn-Burr-Hatch plan would not usher in a free market for health insurance in the United States, which would require fully ending the distortion of the tax code and removing far more regulations. What it does do is offer individuals more freedom than now exists under Obamacare.

Though it isn’t likely to become law anytime soon, the proposal provides a useful insight into how Republicans are attempting to grapple with health care policy in a world where Obamacare now represents the status quo.

Read More:

• A Republican Plan to Replace ObamaCare, Cover Pre-Existing Conditions and Lower Costs (Burr, Coburn & Hatch, Fox News, 1/27/14)
• GOP Senators Unveil First Health Care Plan in an Obamacare World (Philip Klein, Washington Examiner, 1/27/14)

Immigration Reform Concerns Spark Opposition

"Are House Republicans planning to pull a fast one on immigration?" asks Byron York.

... the Wall Street Journal stirred a lot of interest this weekend when it reported that GOP leaders are hoping to put one over on voters who oppose reform. The plan, the Journal said, is to delay a vote on a bill until after the deadline passes for primary challenges across the country. That way, a GOP lawmaker whose constituents oppose reform could lay low until the coast was clear -- no primary challenge! -- and then vote against his voters' interest. From the Journal:

House leaders hope to bring legislation to the floor as early as April, the people close to the process said, after the deadline has passed in many states for challengers to file paperwork needed to run for Congress. Republican leaders hope that would diminish chances that a lawmaker's support for immigration bills winds up sparking a primary-election fight.

If true, such a GOP strategy would certainly set off a lot of anger among conservative voters. But is it true?

York checked with his sources over the weekend and found that, although there is "no consensus" to move on the issue, House leadership would like to move on something.

Many conservative publications have voiced opposition to immigration reform, including the Weekly Standard ('Comprehensive' Immigration Reform? Just Say No) and Investor's Business Daily (An Unholy Alliance of Business, Congress Push Amnesty).

Now this from National Review Online: Don't Do It:

The House Republican leadership has been confronted by devilishly difficult tactical choices over the years. But what to do on the issue of immigration right now isn’t one of them. The correct course is easy and eminently achievable: Do nothing.  ...

The basic tactical reason not to act now is that the last thing the party needs is a brutal intramural fight when it has been dealt a winning hand on Obamacare. It is not as though the public is clamoring for an immigration bill. Only 3 percent cited immigration as the biggest problem facing the country in a Gallup poll earlier this month. In the key contests that will decide partisan control of the Senate, Republican candidates are much more likely to be helped than hurt by refusing to sign onto any form of amnesty. ...

For now, nothing worth having can pass the Democratic Senate or get signed into law by President Obama. Rank-and-file conservatives in the House should firmly reject the course that their leadership wants to take, and convince it to reconsider. We hope, in short, that they make a clarion call for inaction.

Imperial Presidency

In a surprising headline, the Christian Science Monitor asks, Is Barack Obama an imperial president?

Obama, a former constitutional law professor, was once skeptical of the aggressive use of presidential power. During the 2008 campaign, he accused President George W. Bush of regularly circumventing Congress. Yet as president, Obama has grown increasingly bold in his own use of executive action, at times to controversial effect.

The president (or his administration) has unilaterally changed elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA); declared an anti-gay-rights law unconstitutional; lifted the threat of deportation for an entire class of undocumented immigrants; bypassed Senate confirmation of controversial nominees; waived compliance requirements in education law; and altered the work requirements under welfare reform. This month, the Obama administration took the highly unusual step of announcing that it will recognize gay marriages performed in Utah – even though Utah itself says it will not recognize them while the issue is pending in court.

Early in his presidency, Obama also expanded presidential warmaking powers, surveillance of the American public, and extrajudicial drone strikes on alleged terrorists outside the United States, including Americans – going beyond Mr. Bush's own global war on terror following 9/11.

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional scholar at George Washington University in Washington, D.C, and an Obama voter, told CSM staff writer Linda Feldman:

"It's really the character of the actions, and their subject. In my view, Obama has surpassed George W. Bush in the level of circumvention of Congress and the assertion of excessive presidential power. I don't think it's a close question." [snip]

"President Obama meets every definition of an imperial presidency. He is the president that Richard Nixon always wanted to be."

Feldman lists several examples of the Obama Administration's "controversial power plays" using the regulatory changes. And she gives insight into why Washington is buzzing with the news that John Podesta, former chief of staff to Bill Clinton, has recently been brought on board Team Obama from the Center for American Progress:

Most important, his passion is climate change, and he's a big believer in executive action – by the president himself, as well as via agency rules and regulations. [snip]

"John is a guy who knows how to get things done," says Elgie Holstein of the Environmental Defense Fund and a former colleague of Podesta's in the Clinton White House.

The article is well worth reading in its entirety.

Hillyer: GOP May Rue Reince's Rules

"The Republican National Committee, falling back on its default option of centralizing power while trampling over grassroots activists, may have made a terrible mistake last week in condensing its presidential-nominating process," writes Quin Hillyer, "with a plan to schedule the convention for no later than July 18, rather than late August, as in 2012."

Front-running candidates with early access to big money will benefit, as will the entrenched consultants who bleed the party dry. Initial might, rather than staying power, will determine the victor, and the party could get stuck with a candidate whose flaws become manifest only after it’s too late for voters to wrest the nomination from his grasp.

In pushing the changes, RNC chairman Reince Priebus is making the mistake of re-litigating the last election, rather than learning from a broader sweep of electoral history. And that’s giving Priebus the benefit of the doubt for his motives. (A less charitable take would be that Priebus and the RNC insiders value their control of the party more than they prize the voters’ will.) [snip]

Conservatives worried about these changes can point to history. If these rules had been in effect in 1976, for instance, Ronald Reagan’s challenge to sitting president Gerald Ford — and perhaps his presidential career — would have died aborning, and the Republican party itself might never have achieved its greatest triumphs. [snip]

Virginia National Committeeman Morton Blackwell, a party-rules expert for more than 40 years and a legendary steward of the conservative movement, put it this way: “We need an adequate amount of time in order for presidential candidates to be tested.” The lesser-known candidates merit more time to make their case.

In an open letter to Preibus, Blackwell laid out further the risk of having too little time: “Front-loading increases the possibility that someone would win our nomination because of some short-term fluke.” In other words, somebody might nail down the nomination before being fully vetted, thus turning a flash in the pan into the party’s standard-bearer even though later developments could make him an almost sure loser in the fall.

There's still time for the Republican National Committee to reverse the primary-process mistake it made last week...

Work is Stupid, Says Welfare Recipient

This radio caller should make every working person think long and hard.

Lucy, a 32-year-old welfare recipient and mother of three, called in to KLBJ News Radio (Austin TX) to ask why should she get up every day to go to work when she's very comfortable with all the welfare benefits she receives. She says working is stupid, and she would be very happy to stay on welfare for the rest of her life. She admits, however, if the welfare benefits were cut off, she would go to work.

McArdle: Resolved: Obamacare is Now Beyond Rescue

"Last Wednesday, Scott Gottlieb and I debated Jonathan Chait and Douglas Kamerow on this proposition: Resolved: Obamacare Is Now Beyond Rescue," writes Megan McArdle.

I was feeling a little trepid, for three reasons: First, I’ve never done any formal debate; second, the resolution gave the “for” side a built-in handicap, as the “against” side just had to prove that Obamacare might not be completely beyond rescue; and third, we were debating on the Upper West Side. Now, I grew up on the Upper West Side and love it dearly. But for this particular resolution, it’s about the unfriendliest territory this side of Pyongyang. [snip] 

Given the various difficulties, we went in assuming that we would lose, so we were pretty surprised and pleased when we won.

What was the winning argument? We argued that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an unstable program that doesn't deliver what was expected. For a lot of people, that hardly needs proving, given all the recent technical and legal gyrations. But for others, it does, and because most of them weren’t at the debate, let me elaborate...

McArdle provides excellent debate prep for anyone needing it on this issue: the debacle of implementation, the lack of political legitimacy; and (perhaps most frightening) the worst that is yet to come. Well worth reading in its entirety.

Obamacare Traps to Avoid

"Of the four traps Republicans must avoid, two are already in the ACA: expanding Medicaid, and setting up state exchanges," argue authors of How the GOP Should Handle the Implosion of Obamacare. "The others are 'fixes' that will become popular talking points this year: increasing subsidy amounts and income cutoffs. Each of these is to convert ObamaCare into a wealth-redistribution system, whereby over time perhaps half of the U.S. population will pay for the other half."

Republicans will best serve the nation by resolutely standing on principle. ObamaCare cannot be salvaged, because government-run health care cannot work better than free markets. Government safety nets work only when relatively few people are in those nets. You cannot expand it to cover everyone and make it work.

President Obama will veto any comprehensive repeal legislation. If Republicans try to "mend it, not end it," as a compromise, expanding programs, payments and coverage while reducing penalties, or removing specific, unpopular mandates, they will become part of this problem, and some version of ObamaCare will always plague our nation.

2014 March for Life

Despite bitter cold temperatures and a government shut down by snow, thousands of pro-lifers gathered to March for Life this week in Washington DC.

Politico has a photo gallery, which shows large numbers of young people participating this year, not so surprising given Americans' trend toward life over abortion.

Michael Barone looks at the controversy and confusion that began with the Roe v. Wade decision, and Brit Hume offered this eloquent and insightful assessment on the moral case for defending life:




Kathryn Jean Lopez reports that, according to the new Marist poll, "an overwhelming number of Americans support restrictions on abortion."

• 74% favor a ban on abortions after 20 weeks except to save the life of the mother; 
• 53% believe life begins at conception; 
• 62% think abortion is morally wrong; 
• 80% support parental notification before a minor can obtain an abortion; 
• 79% support a 24-hour waiting period prior to having an abortion; 
• 76% oppose allowing abortions to be performed by non-doctors; 
• 62% want to change laws to allow for some restrictions on abortion; 
• 55% — including 6 in 10 Millennials — want continued debate on the abortion issue.

Strassel: IRS Targeting and 2014

"President Obama and Democrats have been at great pains to insist they knew nothing about IRS targeting of conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofits before the 2012 election," writes Kimberley Strassel at the WSJ. "They've been at even greater pains this week to ensure that the same conservative groups are silenced in the 2014 midterms."

That's the big, dirty secret of the omnibus negotiations. As one of the only bills destined to pass this year, the omnibus was—behind the scenes—a flurry of horse trading. One of the biggest fights was over GOP efforts to include language to stop the IRS from instituting a new round of 501(c)(4) targeting. The White House is so counting on the tax agency to muzzle its political opponents that it willingly sacrificed any manner of its own priorities to keep the muzzle in place.

...my sources say that throughout the negotiations Democrats went all in on keeping the IRS rule, even though it meant losing their own priorities. In the final hours before the omnibus was introduced Monday night, the administration made a last push for IMF money. Asked to negotiate that demand in the context of new IRS language, it refused.

Strassel points out that unions will have no such restrictions on their political activities.

And an IRS rule that purports to—as Mr. Werfel explained—"improve our work in the tax-exempt area" completely ignores the biggest of political players in the tax-exempt area: unions. The guidance is directed only at 501(c)(4) social-welfare groups—the tax category that has of late been flooded by conservative groups. Mr. Obama's union foot soldiers—which file under 501(c)(5)—can continue playing in politics.

Strassel reports that Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing targeted tea party groups, has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Treasury and the IRS "demanding documents or correspondence with the White House or outside groups in the formulation of this rule." Treasury has already said it won't comply until April, after the rule's comment period closes; and IRS has not responded at all.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) "has now authored stand-alone legislation to rein in the IRS, though the chance of Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) allowing a Senate vote is approximately equal to that of the press corps paying attention to this IRS rule." Concludes Strassel:

So that puts a spotlight on newly sworn-in IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who vowed during his confirmation hearing to restore public trust in the agency, and now must decide whether to aid in a new and blatantly political abuse of IRS powers. The White House is using the agency to win an election this fall. They gave the proof this week.

The 50 States Ranked

If you're young and mobile, you might want to check out a new report to see which states are in good fiscal shape and which aren't, especially since states in good financial condition tend to take a far smaller bite out of their residents' wallets than states in bad condition.

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University rates the 50 states in four categories—budget solvency, cash solvency, long-run solvency, and service level solvency—to arrive at this final Fiscal Condition Index.

The 10 states in the best fiscal condition (1st to 10th):

• Alaska
• South Dakota
• North Dakota
• Nebraska
• Wyoming
• Florida
• Ohio
• Tennessee
• Montana
• Alabama

The 10 states in the worst fiscal condition (41st to 50th):

• West Virginia
• Pennsylvania
• Hawaii
• Maryland
• New York
• California
• Massachusetts
• Illinois
• Connecticut
• New Jersey

Hanson: The Thin Thread of Civilization

"I've always hoped that these gloom-and-doomers were wrong about the Western paradigm," writes Victor Davis Hanson, "but some days it becomes harder." Hanson takes a somber look at the ironies, contrasts and themes of modern cultural life against the predictions of past philosophers.

Over 90 million Americans who could work are not working (the “non-institutionalized” over 16). What we take for granted — our electrical power, fuel, building materials, food, health care, and communications — all hinge on just 144 million getting up in the morning to produce what about 160-170 million others (the sick, the young, and the retired who need assistance along with the 90 million idle) consume. ...[snip]

A shrinking percentage of our population feeds us, finds our energy, protects us, and builds things we count on. They get up each morning to do these things, in part in quest for the good life, in part out of a sense of social obligation and basic humanity, in part because they know they will die if idle and thrive only when busy, and in part simply because “they like it.”

We can stack the deck against them with ever higher taxes, ever more regulations, ever more obligations to others, and they may well continue. But not if we also damn them as the “1%” and call them the agents of inequality and the fat cats who did not build what they built or who profited when they should not have.

You cannot expect the military to protect us, and then continually order it to reflect every aspect of postmodern American sensitivity in a risky premodern world. Filing a lawsuit to divert a river’s water to the sea during a drought is a lot easier and cleaner than welding together well-casings at sea. Last week, an off-duty armed correctional officer in Fresno intervened in a wild carjacking, shooting and killing the gang-member killer and thus limiting his carnage to one death and two woundings rather than five or six killings — at the very moment Harvey Weinstein — of guns-blazing Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction fame and profits — promised to destroy the NRA.

These contrasts say everything about the premodern, the postmodern and the innocent who pay the tab in-between.

Hanson's three-page essay, The Last Generation of the West and the Thin Strand of Civilization, offers a persuasive reminder that the preservation of civilization rests on each generation's shoulders.

Congress's Non-Priority Immigration Reform

"New polling data from Gallup shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans do not think handling immigration reform is even close to a top priority for 2014," writes Matthew Boyle at Breitbart. (See Gallup poll graphic below)

In fact, only three percent of Americans think the issue is a priority that must be dealt with this year.

Despite the fact that most Americans clearly do not think Congress or President Barack Obama should consider immigration issues a priority in 2014, House Speaker John Boehner and the rest of House GOP leadership are currently considering them a priority.

The immigration/amnesty legislative priority, argues IBD, stems from an unholy alliance of business (the 208 major U.S. companies in The Business Roundtable) and politicians in Congress ("including many in the GOP leadership").

It's hard not to be cynical about this. Businesses like cheap labor. And politicians like political contributions from business. So they've formed an unholy alliance to push the idea that the costs of amnesty for illegals would outweigh the benefits. But they don't.

Last year, economists Robert Rector and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation toted up the fiscal costs to U.S. taxpayers of unlawful immigrants and amnesty. They're staggering.

On average, the study found, the average illegal immigrant household costs U.S. taxpayers about $14,387 a year. All told, in 2010, the U.S. had a fiscal "deficit" — that is taxes collected vs. welfare spent — of $55 billion for illegal immigrant households.

Well, the argument goes, after amnesty they would become taxpayers, and those costs go away, right?

Wrong. In fact, the deficit per illegal household goes up to $28,000 after amnesty, or nearly $160 billion nationwide. And that's just for those illegals already here.

"Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, ObamaCare, Social Security and Medicare," the authors note. "The fiscal deficit for each household would soar."

Blame Harry Reid for DC Gridlock

That's the gist of a Brookings Institution report released this month. Couched in baseball sports terms, the left-leaning think tank found that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (pictured) and his Democratic Senate committee chairmen killed the vast majority of legislation in the 113th Congress. "If the House and Senate were sports teams, their managers would be fired," wrote the authors of the report in a Politico article.

Per the Washington Examiner:

The analysis opens with the observation that the House, contrary to expectation, passed twice as many bills as the Senate in 2013. Why? Because of the Senate committee process.

"When we look at this category, then, we begin to understand where the problem lies: even in the traditionally collegial Senate, 87 percent of bills die in committee," Molly Jackman and Saul Jackman, of Brookings, and Brian Boessenecker write in Politico. "While the filibuster may grab all the headlines, committees are a far deadlier weapon."

That observation undermines the conventional wisdom about Republican opposition to President Obama causing gridlock...

Investor's Business Daily editors were more direct:

The Brookings scholars note that the 113th Congress passed just 56 bills out of the 5,700 introduced, making it the least productive of any since 1947.

What they found, however, was that the Republican-run House actually passed bills at nearly twice the rate as the Senate under Harry Reid's leadership.

"The Senate," the authors wrote, "is not serving its intended function." And that's not because Senate Republicans keep filibustering bills."  [snip]

So if you want to grouse about Washington gridlock, direct your post cards, letters, emails or phone calls to the real cause: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Smart Phones: Profiling You for Businesses

It isn't only government invading your privacy, as Elizabeth Dwoskin explains in this WSJ article, What Secrets Your Phone is Sharing About You:

Fan Zhang, the owner of Happy Child, a trendy Asian restaurant in downtown Toronto, knows that 170 of his customers went clubbing in November. He knows that 250 went to the gym that month, and that 216 came in from Yorkville, an upscale neighborhood. And he gleans this information without his customers' knowledge, or ever asking them a single question.

Mr. Zhang is a client of Turnstyle Solutions Inc., a year-old local company that has placed sensors in about 200 businesses within a 0.7 mile radius in downtown Toronto to track shoppers as they move in the city.

The sensors, each about the size of a deck of cards, follow signals emitted from Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. That allows them to create portraits of roughly 2 million people's habits as they have gone about their daily lives, traveling from yoga studios to restaurants, to coffee shops, sports stadiums, hotels, and nightclubs. [snip]

Turnstyle's weekly reports to clients use aggregate numbers and don't include people's names. But the company does collect the names, ages, genders, and social media profiles of some people who log in with Facebook to a free Wi-Fi service that Turnstyle runs at local restaurants and coffee shops, including Happy Child. It uses that information, along with the wider foot traffic data, to come up dozens [of] lifestyle categories, including yoga-goers, people who like theater, and hipsters. [snip]

Viasense Inc., another Toronto startup, is building detailed dossiers of people's lifestyles by merging location data with those from other sources, including marketing firms. The company follows between 3 million and 6 million devices each day in a 400-kilometer radius surrounding Toronto. It buys bulk phone-signal data from Canada's national cellphone carriers. Viasense's algorithms then break those users into lifestyle categories based on their daily travels, which it says it can track down to the square meter.

Viasense doesn't gather personal information or know any of its users' names, but CEO Mossab Basir says it is simple to figure this out. A person who has enabled location services on an app in which they upload information publicly, such as Twitter is broadcasting their location and their identity—or at least their handle—at the same time. "People are probably unaware of how much they are making available," says Mr. Basir. "That's why it's a very delicate subject for us. It's kind of Big Brotheresque." [snip]

Places where people didn't think they were being watched are now repositories for collecting information, says Ryan Calo assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law. "Companies are increasingly able to connect between our online and offline lives," he says.

Youth Vote: A Millennial Speaks

"In the past year, failed policies and broken promises have caused Millennials to become increasingly disillusioned with the Obama administration, causing a shift on the political spectrum to the right among young voters," writes conservative University of Arizona student Julianne Stanford at CollegeFix.com.

The "never-ending economic recession" heads her to-do list for those wanting to capitalize on Millennial discontent. "They shoulder massive student loan debts and dismal job prospects."

Second, "offer viable suggestions to reverse the damage done to Millennials by the Affordable Care Act..."

Third, get with it in getting their message out. "This means candidates must use mediums that appeal to young voters, such as social networking, targeted advertisement, and hitting the pavement to meet voters in person."

Last, dump the "stodgy old men with sinister ties to big business" image, and find messengers that appeal to Millennials.

Millennials are presenting a great opportunity, she argues, and it shouldn't be squandered.

Read her full article.

Mitchell: What FBI Investigation of IRS?

"Let's all be very clear," writes DC attorney Cleta Mitchell, who has represented dozens of groups before the IRS over the years. "The FBI did not conduct an 'investigation' into the IRS scandal. Not unless there are new protocols for investigating potential unlawful activities which discard the quaint notion of speaking to the victims."

• What did the FBI do in terms of investigating the obvious lies to Congress in 2012 by assorted IRS officials who claimed there was 'no targeting' of conservative organizations? Last time I checked, it is a felony to lie to Congress (ask Roger Clemens).
• Did the FBI investigate why Catherine Engelbrecht in Houston was visited by the FBI seven times, was audited by the IRS both personally and in her family business, was visited by OSHA and ATF (twice), all within 18 months of her filing exempt organization applications with the IRS for two conservative groups?
• Did the FBI investigate whether there were illegal political considerations related to the audits of conservative organizations and donors nationwide — and the correlation of that widespread abuse of conservative citizens to the targeting of the conservative organizations?

In short, how can there be any semblance of legitimacy to an investigation when none of the victims were even interviewed?

Cleta Mitchell, pictured above with Institute president Michelle Easton (L), was the Institute's 2013 Woman of the Year.

Sommers: Masculinity More than a Mask

"Are school shooters and mass murderers born out of an aggressive emphasis on masculinity in our society?" asks Christina Hoff Sommers. "The trailer for filmmaker and feminist activist Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s new documentary, The Mask You Live In, would have us think so."

Sommers rejects the "males-are-toxic ideology" expressed in the trailer and suggests 5 ways in which the final documentary, due out later this year, could be improved to more accurately reflect "masculinity" and "how boys' nature can be distinctly good."  Here are her suggestions (although we urge readers to read her full Time article or watch her 3-minute video below):

1. Recognize that masculinity is more than a "mask" — much of the typical boy behavior, such as rough-and-tumble play, risk taking and fascination with gadgets rather than dolls, appears to have a basis in biology. 

Gallup: Govt Itself Cited as Top U.S. Problem

If conservatives are unhappy with their leaders, imagine how unhappy liberal/progressives must be at what Obama and Democrat politicians are doing to them and their big-government-solves-all-problems ideology.

Gallup released its most recent poll results yesterday, and this chart was among them. One year ago — before Obamacare was implemented — only 4% of Americans thought "healthcare" was the most important US problem. Today, 16% think so.

"Dissatisfaction with government/Congress/politicians; poor leadership/corruption/abuse of power" now leads the pack, with 21% believing it is the nation's greatest problem.

What Difference Does It Make, Hillary???

More, apparently, than the former Secretary of State was prepared to admit during her testimony before Congress. Reports the Washington Post,

A long-delayed Senate intelligence committee report released Wednesday spreads blame among the State Department and intelligence agencies for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Libya that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

“The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya — to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets — and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement. [snip]

The bipartisan report lays out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on Sept. 11 and 12, 2012, on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the Libyan city of Benghazi. It says the State Department failed to increase security at its diplomatic mission despite warnings and faults intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

The committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the diplomatic compound in an emergency.

The report does not answer questions on "the most politicized aspect of the incident" — whether the Obama Administration and the Clinton State Department deliberately played down the attack's terrorist origins.

Nor, apparently, does it explain what business the CIA outpost, kept secret from even the U.S. military, was conducting in Benghazi under such deep cover.

Solution to Income Inequality is Marriage

"Marriage inequality is a substantial reason why income inequality exists," writes Ari Fleischer in the Wall Street Journal, and he presents considerable research to make his case.

...among families headed by two married parents in 2012, just 7.5% lived in poverty. By contrast, when families are headed by a single mother the poverty level jumps to 33.9%. [snip]

Attitudes toward marriage and having children have changed in America over the past 50 years, and low-income children and their mothers are the ones who are paying the price. ... As the Heritage [Foundation] study states: "The U.S. is steadily separating into a two-caste system with marriage and education as the dividing line. In the high-income third of the population, children are raised by married parents with a college education; in the bottom-income third, children are raised by single parents with a high-school diploma or less." One of the differences between the haves and the have-nots is that the haves tend to marry and give birth, in that order. The have-nots tend to have babies and remain unmarried. ...

Given how deep the problem of poverty is, taking even more money from one citizen and handing it to another will only diminish one while doing very little to help the other. A better and more compassionate policy to fight income inequality would be helping the poor realize that the most important decision they can make is to stay in school, get married and have children—in that order.

IBD: FBI As Tainted as IRS

"The FBI says it won't prosecute anyone at the IRS for its admitted targeting of the president's political foes," write the editors of Investor's Business Daily in a scathing editorial. "This just as the agency claims the law is no longer its main mission. So it's a political goon squad now."

According to a leak to the Wall Street Journal, the Federal Bureau of Investigation "didn't find the kind of political bias or 'enemy hunting' that would amount to a violation of criminal law." And so, nobody was likely to be prosecuted for the most blatant politicization of a federal agency within memory.

Per Wall Street Journal reports, none of the several dozen IRS-targeted victim-clients of either Cleta Mitchell, a Washington DC attorney, or The American Center for Law and Justice has ever been interviewed by the FBI during its IRS investigation.

IBD editors conclude:

That the FBI won't get involved in this and is willing to wreck its reputation for apolitical probity suggests this investigation is leading to a place the bureau would rather not go — namely, the White House. [snip]

As for the FBI, its fall is even more disturbing. It was once was known for its squeaky clean image and willingness to enforce the law without fear or favor.

Today, it's slid so far into the Washington morass it no longer considers law enforcement its prime mission. About a week ago, it quite questionably declared its top mission "national security" — an abrogation of its congressionally mandated mission.

As such, can the public now trust the FBI or the IRS?

Obamacare's 'Young Invincibles' Demographic Disaster

Obamacare's early demographic numbers are out," reports conservativeintel.com, and "the 18-35 enrollment is a bust at just 24 percent — well below the 39% they said they needed. Okay, but that's only half the equation. Equally important is the question of precisely who is taking their place in Obamacare's demographic mix."

Here's the projected demographic mix necessary to make Obamacare financially viable, according to Kaiser's break down of the total universe of the uninsured:


Here's the actual demographic mix of Obamacare enrollees, using official Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data of people who had signed up as of Dec 28, 2013:



Obamacare's demographic mix would appear to be as disastrous as its website rollout. Concludes conservativeintel.com:

Children and the middle age groups hit their target precisely, but the 55-and-up crowd is double the estimate — 33% of enrollment, or double the Kaiser estimated representation. Th[is] means every missing youngster is being replaced by grandma. That could be very expensive.

In other news, talk of a taxpayer-funded bailout of insurance companies begins, to which the National Review editors respond, "hell, no."

Unlike the Wall Street bailouts, the insurance bailouts are not a one-time expedient instituted in the face of a crisis: They represent an open-ended claim on taxpayers’ resources and a transfer of risk from private, profit-seeking enterprises onto the government. Together, the provisions represent an important part of the Democrats’ agenda for transforming what we know as insurance companies into semi-public utilities managed by central planners in Washington. ...

It is a fight worth having — and if that fight should continue into November, the American public should be invited to take the opportunity to weigh in on whether it wishes to be permanently committed to future bailouts of large financial firms that use political favoritism to pass off their losses. We suspect that many Americans will find themselves quoting John Boehner, whether they realize it or not: Hell, no.

Year of Millennial Revolt

"Here’s a New Year’s prediction guaranteed to last longer than your new gym membership: 2014 will be the year of the millennial revolt," write Chris Beach and Alison Howard. "It will be the year that a majority of millennials become disillusioned with their allegiance to today’s liberal movement and look elsewhere for political relevance."

They argue "the shift is already underway" (see Harvard University's Institute of Politics survey showing millennials' approval of Obama at 41%) and "the Obama administration has brought this upon itself, through its policies and its juvenile and patronizing outreach to millennials."

Pajama Boy ("a far cry from the Marlboro Man"), The Life of Julia ("the campaign wanted to paint her as an 'independent' woman, but it only revealed her extreme dependency on all things government"), and Colorado's pro-Obamacare ads paint an unappealing picture of millennials:

These ads depict millennials as emotional, instinctive animals acting on appetites, impulses, and desires rather than moral and intellectual beings capable of acting according to reason and prudence. ...

For many millennials, the scales have fallen. They realize that the future of Obamacare depends on their signing up to pay higher insurance premiums and deductibles. In the era of iPhones and PS4s, they realize that a government that can’t design a website can’t be expected to manage the intricacies of the entire health-care industry. In the wake of the news that the NSA collects mountains of metadata, they also fret that the government that wants you to talk about health care could (with a warrant) listen in on that very conversation.

Citing data suggesting "millennials actually share more conservative views of government than the conventional wisdom, or even millennials themselves, would lead you to believe," the authors argue that conservatives have a a real opportunity "to win back millennials."

Rather than pander or talk down to them, conservatives must offer positive, uplifting solutions that emphasize upward mobility, opportunity, and personal liberty through education, job creation, and reforming the over-intrusive federal government."

Read the full article, Millennials Are Tiring of Liberal Failures.

'Youth Misery Index'

From the Young America's Foundation:

Young America’s Foundation has released its Youth Misery Index (YMI) numbers for 2013, and it’s a record high of 98.6. The Youth Misery Index (YMI) is calculated by adding youth unemployment, student loan debt, and national debt (per capita) numbers.  Young people are experiencing hardships like never before under the Obama administration, and this generation is plagued by the burden of massive government debt.

Youth unemployment in 2013 was 16.3 percent, with almost six million young people between the ages of 16 and 24 not in school or work.  Many young people are simply giving up on finding employment.

Student loan debt for 2013 rings in at a record-breaking $29,400 (29.4 on YMI).  Student debt has risen at an average of six percent per year since 2008.

National debt per capita for 2013 is the highest it’s ever been at $52,948 (52.9 on YMI).  Young people will be stuck paying for government debt they had no part in creating, and they’ll have to do it with less discretionary income than ever before because of record high levels of student loan debt.

Add it all up and the YMI comes out to an astonishing 98.6.  With the growing presence of government in our daily lives, there appears to be a statistically significant relationship between government expenditures and the YMI.  Under the Obama administration alone, the YMI has increased by 18.1 percent, the highest increase under any President, making Obama the worst President for youth economic opportunity—not quite the hope and change many young people were looking for.

How Muslims Believe Women Should Dress

Via NRO-Corner: The University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research conducted a study in seven Muslim-majority countries (Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Pakistan) on how women should dress in public.

Jacob Poushter of the Pew Global Attitudes Project visually recast the figures in the form shown here. ... Woman No. 4, whose hair and ears are covered by an amira, was overall far and away deemed the most appropriately dressed for appearing in public, with [a median] 44% of the vote, followed in a distant second place by the lighter hijab of woman No. 5 at 12 percent. No head covering at all [woman No. 6] found a measly 4 percent support.

The Michigan study concludes that "it would be hard to connect women's style of dress on the aggregate level to a country's level of development and modernity." Saudi Arabia, "which is economically more developed," has the most restrictive attitudes on women's attire. Concludes NRO:

To put it simply, what counts when it comes to women’s attire in public is values, not wealth. Phrased differently, Westernization is an inextricable part of modernization, whether that means democracy, Beethoven, or unveiled women.

FRC: Abortion Myths and Facts

The Family Research Council will host a family policy lecture at noon on Friday, Jan 15, to discuss Abortion Myths and Facts: New Research Challenges Abortion Advocates' Claims. Those outside the Washington DC area can attend via Live Webcast.

Among the research details previewed to the Washington Examiner:

• Almost 3/4 of abortions are to women who initiated sex at age 16 or younger.
• 40% of women who begin sexual intercourse very early (ages 12-13-14) will have abortions.
• Only about 1/6 of women have obtained an abortion — not 1/3 as commonly cited by abortion supporters.

IBD: Babylon on the Potomac

As the president discusses "income inequality," Investor's Business Daily editors put that inequality into sharp perspective:

As of New Year's Eve, Washington's wastrels have overspent $17.2 trillion of your money. In their deficit-spending orgy, many have gotten filthy rich, developing a taste for diamonds.

Last month we noted the latest Census Bureau data reveal that four of the five richest communities in America are now in Washington — not Manhattan or Silicon Valley or any other business hub derided by class warriors as cauldrons of greed.

In fact, the nation's wealthiest denizens live in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va., just outside the capital, with $121,250 in median income. ...

Here's another stomach-turning factoid: Beltway contractors based in Democrat Rep. Jim Moran's small Northern Virginia district recently reaped $43 billion in annual federal contracts — roughly as much as the entire state of Texas.

These are the real beneficiaries of President Obama's economic stimulus. All this cash sloshing around Washington has created a permanent class of well-heeled insiders who are even more out of touch with average Americans than the pols of old.

In the past decade, the Beltway added 21,000 households in the nation's top 1%. No other area comes close. Forget Stamford or the Upper East Side, this is where the real One Percenters live.

They're not rapacious Wall Street titans. They're politicians and bureaucrats, contractors and lobbyists, all feeding at the same public trough.

And you're paying their lucrative salaries and benefits. You're funding their lavish lifestyles. ...

What does it say about a nation when its seat of government is also its seat of wealth, when its richest citizens work for government?

It says that nation will soon bankrupt itself.

Malkin: Left-funded GOP 'Main Street' Groups

"What do George Soros, labor unions, and money-grubbing former GOP representative Steven LaTourette all have in common?" asks Michelle Malkin. "They’re control freaks. They’re power hounds. They’re united against tea-party conservatives. And they have all operated under the umbrella of D.C. groups masquerading as “Main Street” Republicans."

The New York Times shed light on LaTourette’s tangled web of Republican-establishment outfits last week. But that story just scratched the surface. As the paper reported, the Main Street Partnership is a nonprofit group that charges members up to $25,000 per year to rub elbows with Washington’s rich and powerful. The Main Street Advocacy Fund and the Defending Main Street super PAC are political satellites planning to amass $8 million to bolster Republican liberals and moderates facing tea-party challengers in 2014. ...

The Times notes that “corporations and lobbyists” fund the Main Street Partnership. But far-left donors provided seed money for these affiliated K Street fronts.

Malkin tracks the money — $50,000 from George Soros, $400,000 from two labor unions — that has funded the center-left "pro-bailout, pro-debt, pro-amnesty, anti-drilling" plans of these Main Street groups that include GOP Senators John McCain, Mark Kirk and Susan Collins.

Along with the anti-tea-party U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the “Main Street” fat cats and union leaders have banded together to help President Obama push through amnesty for illegal aliens. The payoff: cheap labor for big business, cheap votes for the Democratic party.

There’s nothing principled about their agenda. It’s not about “common sense.” It’s about the Benjamins. These statists in populist clothing are running a Washington incumbency-protection racket. Same as it ever was.

UPI reported this week on a Rasmussen Reports poll indicating "just 8 percent of likely voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job" while "66% rate its performance as poor." Perhaps voters are better at sorting the good guys from the bad than D.C. lobbyists think.

8 Behaviors Successful Professionals Avoid

"Observing people in action who are living fully on their terms and absolutely loving it, I've seen how they think, react, interrelate, problem solve, and lead," writes Kathy Caprino, who covers career growth, leadership and women's professional development at Forbes. "I've applied these lessons to my own life, and to those I coach."

Caprino lists "8 self-limiting, negative behaviors successful people avoid," and gives insight into each one. Check them out:

• Engaging in "below-the-line" thinking (i.e., "what's happening to you is outside your control and everyone else's fault").
• Mistaking fantastical wishful thinking for action.
• Remaining powerless and speechless.
• Putting off investing in themselves.
• Resisting change.
• Honoring other people's priorities over their own.
• Doubting themselves and their instincts.
• Searching for handouts and easy answers.

Check out how to recognize and avoid each in Successful People: The 8 Self-Limiting Behaviors They Avoid.

A New Product Called Mother

No, it isn't a joke. It's a new high-tech device unveiled by a firm called Sen.se at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, and it is designed to "replicate the sorts of things your mother used to needle you about: getting exercise, eating more slowly and brushing your teeth," reports WSJ's Geoffrey Fowler.

Mother’s potential use is intriguing: Each Mother unit talks wirelessly to a set of smaller tracking devices, dubbed cookies, that can sense motion and temperature. You can put cookies on things and people – on your body to gather data about how much you walk, on your coffee machine to track many espressos you drink, on your front door to track whenever it is opened, on your toothbrush to see how often and how long you brush … and so forth.

Whenever the cookies get close to the Mother unit, they wirelessly send back their data to the Internet.

The company says users of Mother, which is supposed to start shipping in the spring, will be able look at all their info at once, or drill down on certain topics. And if something is really important, you can have an alert sent to your phone when a sensor detects a change.

So what does all that data do for you? That’s a question that bedevils many Internet of Things gadgets on display here at CES. Mother’s makers say the data she tracks can help you gain peace of mind by answering specific questions in your life, such as, “Am I drinking enough water?” or, “Did somebody open my secret drawer?”

Unhooking from the Hook-Up Culture

"We live in a society that falsely tells us young women that we will be happy and cherished if we wear clothes that undermine our human dignity, think of ourselves and men as sexual objects only, and behave aggressively with men to achieve 'gender egalitarianism'," writes millennial Anna Maria Hoffman in Healing from the Hookup Culture. "We also live in a society that falsely tells young men they'll be content if they treat women and themselves like sexual objects, trade in their kindness for disrespectful behavior, and forget about being a gentleman around others."

The hookup culture is rooted "in a lack of love for ourselves and others," Hoffman argues, and "it's time for our generation to liberate itself from the emotional and psychological shackles" of it.

She offers a few ideas on how to unhook from the culture and to build healthy relationships that don't bruise and abuse one another:

• Cherish others for their dignity—develop relationships that value the uniqueness of the whole person rather than seeing each other as sexual objects to fulfill temporary desires.
• Personalize the consequences of the hookup culture to others—show how and why hooking up creates emotional and psychological pain and strains friendships.
• Use scientific facts to make a strong case against the hookup culture—know and share the research on the negative psycho-biological effects of the hookup culture.
• Be an example—show others how a life of not hooking up makes people more happy, fulfilled and confident.

Strassel: Washington Power Grab

"This past year will be remembered for many things," writes WSJ's Kim Strassel, "but let 2013 be hailed mainly for this: It was the year that the genius of George Orwell's Animal Farm became clear in America."

Strassel gives examples of  Washington DC's Orwellian behaviors, including:

• Congress and its staff wrote/passed Obamacare "in the name of equalizing health care. Yet it was Congress and its staffers who got special dispensation to keep a generous health subside—when no other Americans did."
• In April, the IRS was outed for targeting conservative political groups. The Obama administration in December issued new rules that will institutionalize this silencing of conservative free speech under the guise of regulating 501(c)(4) organizations. Unions, which file under a different IRS nonprofit category, will continue unmolested.
• Congressional Democrats advanced measures in 2013 to pile new taxes on fossil fuel companies. This, as the Energy Department continued to absorb the losses of Solyndra, A123 Systems, and other taxpayer-funded green-energy firms, some of which are owned by political donors to Mr. Obama.
• The EPA this summer conducted an armed raid of a mining facility in Alaska, over putative violations of the Clean Water Act. The Federal Trade Commission harassed a nonprofit representing piano teachers, over ginned up antitrust violations. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began cracking down on small, family farms, operations meant to be exempt from that agency's regulation. By contrast, the administration has yet to announce a single prosecution of a single individual at the IRS. Mr. Obama explained in December that IRS employees were simply victims of a "difficult law to interpret." Maybe like the Clean Water Act, or antitrust laws, or OSHA rules? Maybe not.
• While the federal government exempted crony wind companies from consequences of the many bald eagle deaths they cause, Maryland's government went into "full vice squad mode" over the killing of two bald eagles.

Strassel concludes:

There's plenty more, but you get the picture. In "Animal Farm" George Orwell set out to show how power inevitably corrupts, no matter how noble the intention. A group of animals initially centralize control over the farm to ensure that "All animals are equal." Yet the novel ends with the barnyard commandants—high on their righteousness—reducing the commandments to just one: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

Indeed, in ObamaWorld, many millionaires, health-care buyers, energy companies, subprime dealers, political groups, and bird killers are more equal than others. Our new elite is ever more defined by who has the best pull with the administration. So long as government grows, so too will this government-created inequality.

The McDonald's Diet

New Years often brings dieting resolutions to mind, so this USA Today story caught our eye: Eat McDonald's for Three Months, Lose 37 Pounds?

A high school science teacher in the Colo-Nesco School District in Colo, Iowa, says he lost 37 pounds in 90 days also by eating only McDonald's food — but he followed strict nutritional limits laid out by his students. That included limits of 2,000 calories a day and attempts to stick with daily recommended allowances for protein, carbohydrates, cholesterol and several other nutritional restrictions.

His mission was "to demonstrate to his students that it's how and what you eat — not where you eat — that matters most. During the three months, he says, his cholesterol dropped from 249 to 170."

"I'm the perfect example of a slob," says the teacher, John Cisna, in a phone interview on Monday. He insists that he ate a variety of stuff on the McDonald's menu — including Big Macs, Quarter Pounders and even desserts, including sundaes and ice cream cones.

He had two Egg White Delight McMuffins, a bowl of McDonald's Fruit & Maple Oatmeal and 1% milk for breakfast and, typically, a salad for lunch. Then, at dinner, he'd often have a more traditional Value Meal. He also adopted a new exercise regimen of walking 45 minutes daily.

McDonalds seemed pleased with the results. And Morgan Spurlock — the director of the film Super Size Me that a decade ago "skewered McDonald's for selling food that the hit documentary film claimed was not healthy..." — was not available for comment.

Backward Progressives

"There's nothing progressive about progressivism, just as there is nothing liberal about modern liberalism," write Investor's Business Daily editors.

Progressivism. It sounds positive and uncontroversial. After all, we all want progress, don't we?

But progressivism ... is not a road to progress or any attempt to make progress. It is a return to a tribal existence in which groups fight among each other for government-distributed resources.  Progressivism dates back to the late 19th century. Its animating objective is to use the power of government to design, order, mold and control society.

Under this idea, professional politicians and master bureaucrats identify what they believe to be societal flaws and use government to "fix" them. It results in the practice of unlimited government and the supremacy of the state, which has the duty, according to progressive political scientist John Burgess, to perfect humanity.

Burgess, who rose to influence in the late 19th century, also believed the state should have "original, absolute, unlimited, universal power over the individual subject, and all associations of subjects."

To realize their goal, progressives must reject the Constitution, the Founders, individualism, God-given freedom and, in fact, God himself.  
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The divide between progressivism and the march toward free people and markets could hardly be wider. One is a system of compulsion and threats, the other an order of voluntary associations in which individuals decide how much they want to participate.

In fact, no one has to participate at all. In a truly free society, all of us can choose for ourselves. But those who don't participate should not expect to receive benefits from those who do.

There's nothing progressive about progressivism, just as there is nothing liberal about modern liberalism. Neither promotes liberty. Both return society to a tribal status in which individuals are sacrificed to the collective. This is not the American ideal. It's something much more ancient and foul.

Read more Progressivism is a Move Backward, Not Forward.

Turner: 10 Obamacare Predictions for 2014

Despite Kathleen Sebelius's PR campaign to promote Obamacare, 2014 is not going to be a good year for Obamacare, argues Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute.  She suggests 10 ways "things will continue to deteriorate" for the law, among them:

• Many who signed up for OCare plans won't pay the premiums so will never be insured.
• Others who begin paying premiums early in the year will stop paying and drop out.
• Many uninsured won't bother enrolling at all.
• Tens of millions will see employer insurance plans cancelled beginning in 2014.
• Sicker and older OCare enrollees will outweigh younger 'healthies', thus pushing premiums even higher in 2015.
• Fewer insurance companies will participate in 2015.
• Court cases will continue.

Read  Ten Obamacare Predictions for 2014 @ National Review Online.