Sullivan Disgusted with Gay Activists

"The guy who had the gall to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000 has just been scalped by some gay activists," writes Andrew Sullivan.

Will he [Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who resigned under pressure] now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society.

If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

Rep Paul Ryan's 2015 Budget Proposal

Guy Benson offers a quick primer on the GOP 2015 budget proposal put forward by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Entitled "The Path to Prosperity," it (among other things) balances the budget within 10 years, reduces federal spending by $5.1 trillion by slowing spending growth, affords flexibility to states by block-granting Medicaid, strengthens work requirements for able-bodies adults receiving welfare and food stamps, and closes deductions and loopholes in exchange for a simpler tax system and lower tax rates for individuals and corporations. It also addresses social security and Medicare reforms. (Read Benson's primer for more.)

In contrast, Benson points out, the Senate Democrats have produced no budget proposal for 2015 whatsoever. President Obama's 2015 budget proposal never balances (ever), increases spending $1 trillion beyond the unsustainable current trajectory (more steeply and sooner than the above chart shows), raises taxes by $1.8 trillion, and makes no attempt at reforming Social Security and Medicare entitlements.

Benson concedes the budget proposal has "zero chance of becoming law, but its very existence makes clear that Ryan and his colleagues take their responsibilities — and the law — seriously."

Supreme Court Campaign Finance Decision

"On Wednesday, the Supreme Court released another ruling on campaign donations," writes Ashe Schow @ the Washington Examiner.

Naturally, those who fundraise off the idea that donating to campaigns equals more free speech for the wealthy were apoplectic.

So, for those screaming about “bribery” and “money in politics,” here’s a simple breakdown of the decision:

1. You can now donate to as many candidates, committees and PACs as you want.

2. You can still only donate $2,600 to each candidate.

The decision struck down the limits on total campaign donations - currently set at $74,600 for committees and PACs and a separate $48,600 cap on direct candidate contributions.

Why Large Employers Won't Be Hiring

From Paul Mirengoff @ powerlineblog.com:

"...it’s time for a sober look at the costs of [Obama's] signature program. Our friend Tevi Troy, head of the American Health Policy Institute (AHPI), provides that look in a study called “The Cost of the Affordable Care Act to Large Employers.”

The study is based on internal cost data from more than 100 large employers (10,000 or more employees each) doing business in the United States. ...The study’s main findings are that over the next decade:

Obamacare will cost large U.S. employers between $4,800 to $5,900 per employee.

Large employers expect overall Obamacare-related cost increases of between $163 million and $200 million per employer, or an increase of 4.3 percent in 2016 and 8.4 percent in 2023 over and above what they would otherwise be spending.

Based on these data, the total cost of Obamacare to all large U.S. employers will amount to between $151 billion and $186 billion, or 5.9 percent more than what they would otherwise be spending.

Tevi concludes that “these data demonstrate that the added mandates, fees and regulatory burdens associated with the ACA are increasing the cost of employer-sponsored health care plans, with implications for both employers and employees.” I’ll say.

Staffing decisions will, of course, be among the “implications.” If the estimates contained in the AHPI study are even close to accurate, Obamacare will likely prove to be a significant job-killer.

In a related story, Elizabeth Harrington reports @ the Washington Free Beacon:

Health care costs have already been increasing for large businesses, which spend $578.6 billion each year to provide health coverage for 170.9 million employees, retirees, and dependents. However, numerous studies suggest that Obamacare is adding to employers’ burdens.

For instance, a report by the Urban Institute found that Obamacare increased large employer health costs by $11.8 billion in 2012, and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the excise tax on high-cost plans would cost $32 billion from 2018 to 2019.

The novel survey by the American Health Policy Institute asked companies directly what their costs will be, rather than “speculating from the outside.”

Who Are the Biggest Campaign Donors?

"Big money in politics isn't two libertarian billionaires in Kansas," writes Kevin Williamson @ NRO.

Of the 20 largest current overall political donors, the majority favor Democrats, and favor them strongly: 62 percent of the biggest donors’s money goes to Democrats. They are, in descending order: 

1. a couple of hedge-fund guys who give 100 percent of their donations (more than $11 million) to Democrats, 
2. people associated with the city government of New York (84 percent to Democrats), 
3. the Democratic Governors Association, 
4. the National Education Association (89 percent to Democrats), 
5. the Carpenters and Joiners Union (79 percent to Democrats), 
6. the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal employees (100 percent to Democrats), 
7. the AFL-CIO (81 percent to Democrats), 
8. (our first GOP-leaning group comes in at No. 8) the National Association of Realtors (53 percent to Republicans), 
9. the electrical workers unions (97 percent to Democrats), 
10. AT&T (62 percent to Republicans), 
11. Lockheed Martin (61 percent to Republicans — you’ll notice a trend in the pro-GOP groups),
12. Comcast (58 percent to Democrats), 
13. the engineers union (79 percent to Democrats), 
14. Northrop (57 percent to Republicans), 
15. the American Association for Justice (i.e., lawyers, 96 percent to Democrats), 
16. Honeywell (58 percent to Republicans), 
17. Boeing (57 percent to Republicans), 
18. Votesane PAC (70 percent to Republicans), 
19. Every Republican Is Crucial PAC (100 percent to Republicans), and 
20. the laborers’ union (90 percent to Democrats).

KS and AZ Win Case to Require Proof of Citizenship for Voting

"Kansas and Arizona scored a big victory on ballot box integrity laws, one that the losing side is already appealing," reports Ken Kulkowski @ Breitbart.com.

In a 2013 case, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that state voting laws are generally preempted by federal law.

But in his opinion for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that federal law allowed states to request that the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—a federal agency created in 2002—include citizenship documentation items in any state’s customized version of the “Federal Form” designed by the EAC. ... Scalia noted that Louisiana had received such permission years ago; therefore, there was no good reason for denying it to Arizona or other states. He added that any state requesting a citizenship-proof requirement could sue if its request was denied.

Kansas and Arizona followed Scalia's roadmap, making requests to the EAC and subsequently suing after the EAC denied them.

Now they have won in federal district court in Wichita, Kansas. In a 28-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren ordered the EAC to grant the requests Kansas and Arizona made months ago.

“Judge Melgren’s decision is very carefully researched and well-reasoned,” [Kansas Secretary of State Kris] Kobach, who is also an accomplished law professor, told the media. “This is going to be a difficult decision for them to overturn on appeal.”... This case will now go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver.

In a related article, Bryan Preston writes:

Critics claim that the citizenship requirement is discriminatory, but Senior Legal Fellow of the Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky, who studies the impact of election integrity laws on elections and called that charge “silly,” noting that it’s a felony for non-citizens to vote in US federal elections. Therefore, verifying citizenship is just a matter of enforcing existing election law.

Von Spakovsky made his comments Tuesday evening on a conference call organized by True the Vote. The Houston, Texas-based organization is a grass-roots group dedicated to improving the security and integrity of elections across the United States. Its president and founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, moderated the conference call.

Von Spakovsky noted that the court found that the federal government acted well outside its legal powers, when it fought against requiring proof of citizenship and tried to force Kansas to change its own voter registration forms.

Interestingly, jury pool integrity is a secondary reason for requiring proof of citizenship when individuals register to vote, since jury pools are drawn from voter registrations. Klukowski reports Arizona's experience:

“There were over 200 people who swore on jury commissioner forms that they were not citizens who were found to have registered to vote,” Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne explained to another outlet. Noting that only ten percent of voters receive a jury summons, Horne reasoned that this means a bare minimum of 2,000 fraudulent registrations had occurred, and he noted that statewide races had been lost by fewer votes than that.

These 200 people admitted they were not citizens. One can only wonder if there have been others who lied about their citizenship status on jury commissioner forms and ended up casting a vote in a jury decision.

Why 7 Million Signups Won't Save OCare

Scoffing at Obamacare supporters for cheering 7.1 million Obamacare sign ups, Ben Domenech argues "the 7 million figure as salvation from supporters of the law is completely bonkers."

The reason the number of people signed up for Obamacare – via the exchanges or Medicaid – matters is that it is, unexpectedly, a much smaller number than originally anticipated. This is in part due to the failure of the approach, and in part due to failure of execution.  What is truly surprising is the degree to which the previously uninsured have not signed up for either program. We’re dealing with a far smaller magic number of beneficiaries than CBO expected:

The health care law’s stumbles out of the gate were unexpected, and it’s understandable that supporters would look for any silver lining as a sign of hope that this approach would be a success. But it is a mess. It will continue to be a mess. The winners are heavily outnumbered by the losers at the current moment, and there is no sign that a bend in the cost curve or a shift in premiums will change that dynamic. Supporters of the administration will try to find poll numbers that indicate avenues to success or achieve more support for the law. But the negatives of the law have eroded support among the very constituencies who were supposed to love it.

President Obama promised that under his law, we could keep our plans, we could keep our doctors, and our premium costs would go down. None of that has happened. And unfortunately for supporters of the law, that’s what people care about. All Obamacare had to do to be a popular success was to work – was to match up with the expectations President Obama and the Democrats set for it. If it did, they would be running on the issue for a generation – if it didn’t, the issue would be a weapon for the other side.

It hasn’t. They can’t. It is. And if you think I’m wrong, there’s a handy test for that this fall: it’s called the ballot box.