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 That’s O-Care repealed.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.