KT McFarland is the Luce Institute's 2015 Woman of the Year

KT McFarland was presented the Institute's 2015 Woman of the Year award at a luncheon in her honor on February 28, 2015.  (Pictured right: Michelle Easton (l) presents award to KT.)

A national security analyst for Fox News, KT is widely respected for her insight in the area of national security policy.  In her remarks to a large luncheon audience of leading women student activists from around the nation, KT discussed national security issues and offered advice on leadership. Her remarks can be watched on video on our YouTube channel or downloaded on audio at Podbean and iTunes.


Below: KT is congratulated on-air:

Irony: Obama's Amnesty for Illegals Undermines His Obamacare Law

"In the president's zeal to rewrite yet another area of law—immigration—he's sabotaged one of Obamacare's primary goals: expanding employer-sponsored health care," argue constitution law professor Elizabeth Price Foley and former Justice Department attorney David B. Rivkin Jr.

Obama's executive amnesty to 6 million illegals would give them work permits, but it would not allow them to qualify for Obamacare. As a result, they would become "ideal" workers for employers to hire if employers are trying to avoid the massive "employer responsibility tax" — a $2,000 to $3,000 per-employee annual tax imposed by Obamacare on employers for each of their workers who qualifies for Obamacare subsidies through state exchanges.

Because the 6 million immigration beneficiaries aren't eligible for Obamacare tax subsidies, hiring them reduces employers' chances of triggering the employer responsibility tax. Employers have a powerful financial incentive to hire them in place of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. The president's unilateral grant of work permits, combined with the fact that these workers cannot trigger the employer responsibility tax, makes those workers significantly more attractive.  ...  The inevitable result is that more workers will lack employer-provided health insurance coverage. [snip]

The president isn't a one-person lawmaker. He doesn't have the power in our constitutional regime to fix laws he thinks are broken. When a president does so, he not only intrudes on Congress' power, but also creates unpredictable repercussions for other laws. It's no small irony, that, by unilaterally attempt to fix our immigration law, Mr. Obama has undermined his own signature legislative achievement.

Read When Bad Obama Policies Collide.

Voters: Keep Passing Bills Even If Obama is Opposed

"A new Rasmussen Reports poll issued Friday found that 59 percent of voters 'think Congress should continue to pass legislation that most members of Congress support even if the president is opposed'," writes Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner. "Just 25 percent want Congress to cave into the White House and 16 percent are unsure."

Despite bipartisan support, Obama vetoed the Keystone bill this week, and is promising to use the veto pen much more in his last two years in office.

The poll of 800 likely voters taken this week could also strengthen the backbone of Republicans eager to use the Department of Homeland Security spending bill to punish Obama's decision last year to grant worker amnesty to some 5 million illegal immigrants.

ObamaCare before Supreme Court Wednesday

"On Wednesday, the fate of ObamaCare is in front of the Supreme Court again," writes former NY Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey. "At stake are the subsidies intended to make ObamaCare plans 'affordable'."

The letter of the law allows consumers to get subsidies only in the 14 states that set up their own exchanges, not in the rest that didn't. But the Obama administration is ignoring that and doling them out in all 50.

The administration claims that if the court rules against it in King v. Burwell, it will cause a national disaster. Don't believe it. The biggest losers will be insurance companies.

The losers, should the Court rule against the Obama Administration:

• about 5.5 million middle-class Americans who get questionable subsidies and who will see their insurance premiums quadruple if taxpayers are no longer required to pay three-quarters of their plans' actual costs; and
• big insurance companies who have seen their stock prices soar since the Healthcare.gov rollout — Humana up 66%, Cigna up 53% and Aetna up 52%.

The biggest winners, should the Obama Administration lose:

• people and businesses in the 36 non-exchange states:
• uninsured people would no longer be forced to pay the Obamacare penalty;
• 250,000 business with 50 or more full-time workers would no longer face Obamacare penalties; and
• job-seekers and part-timers hoping for full-time work from businesses that would no longer have an powerful incentive to keep their workforce below 50 full-time employees;
• the Rule of Law, if the Obama Administration is forced to "faithfully execute" his health care law; and
• the entire nation, "if Obama is forced to negotiate changes to his unworkable, expensive, overbearing law."

The court's decision, expected in June, will have no impact on the poor — about 90% of all Obamacare sign-ups — since the poor will continue to be subsidized through the federal Medicaid welfare program regardless of the court's decision.

Pity the Millennials!

Millennials were already hurting from the 2008 economic crash, which brought the U.S. economy to a standstill, and by the 2010 Obamacare law, which incentivised the creation of part-time jobs over full-time jobs. Now it appears Millennials will bear the economic consequences of dysfunctional immigration policies, too.

“Young Adults: Then and Now,” a recent Census Bureau report on how today’s 18 to 34-year-olds compare with their 1980 peers, is a discouraging set of statistics for Millennials today.
 
Despite rising educational achievement (Bachelor's degrees +6.6%), young people have lost ground economically and in terms of independence, as AEI economist Mark Perry’s summary chart (right) reveals. Compared with their 1980 cohorts, more Millennials are living under their parents' wings (+7.4%), slightly fewer live on their own (-0.4%), and substantially fewer are creating their own families (i.e., marrying -24.4%). Economically, fewer are employed (-4.3%), more live below the poverty line (+5.6%), and their median income is down (-$1,962/year).

The bigger news in the Census Bureau report, however, is in the stunning growth in the percentages of young adults who are foreign-born (6.3% in 1980 vs. 15.4% today), speak a language other than English at home (10.9% in 1980 vs. 24.6% today), and minority (21.6% in 1980 vs. 42.8% today).

The growth in "minority" percentages seems to be entirely due to the Hispanic population. The Census Bureau defines "minority" as all people classified as "Hispanic" and "all people who are races other than White."  Based on Census Bureau data (charted below), non-Hispanic "racial minorities" actually declined from 31.6 million in 1980 to 29.1 million in 2013, while "Hispanic minorities" grew substantially, from 14.6 million in 1980 to 53.9 million in 2013. (Census Bureau data doesn't tell us what percentage of the Hispanic minority is here legally vs. illegally. Perhaps it should.)

In 1986, Congress passed a law giving amnesty to those who had entered the nation illegally before 1982, and the beneficiaries of that law were mostly Hispanic. The law ushered in preferential go-to-the-head-of-the-line treatment to foreign relatives to legally migrate to the U.S. to join those who had received amnesty.

Prospective illegals read the immigration rule changes for what they were – a huge reward for lawless behavior – and the flow of illegals into the country continued unabated. Now President Obama is attempting another mass amnesty of illegals by executive order, although a federal court has blocked his attempt for the moment. [See update below.]

A new report by the business analysis firm IHS, headlined Hispanics Will Account for More than 40 Percent of the Increase in U.S. Employment in the Next Five Years, offers these predictions:

• Hispanic employment growth will average 2.6 percent per year over the next 20 years. 
• The Hispanic share of total U.S. employment will rise from 16% in 2014 to 23% in 2034. 
• By 2020, labor force growth is expected to slow to the point that the annual change in the labor force is roughly equal to the amount of net migration. 
• The number of foreign born Hispanics will grow from 22 million in 2014 to over 29 million in 2034. 

Now we learn from a Congressional Research Service memo obtained by Breitbart that illegal immigrants allowed to get Social Security Numbers as a result of Obama's executive amnesty actions could be eligible to file back tax returns and obtain up to four years of federal welfare benefits amounting to thousands of dollars: for a family with three children, the four-year federal welfare back payment would amount to $35,521.

Pity the Millennials, who were already facing stiff economic headwinds from poor public policy choices of the current and past administrations. If Obama's executive amnesty isn't stopped, they will be paying back their student loans, struggling to get their own careers going, AND paying for very generous new welfare payments to thousands of new amnestied illegals.

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UPDATE:  For more on what's at stake in this court case, see Immigration and the End of the Rule of Law, in which Jonathan Tobin writes, "The stakes in this argument don't merely revolve around the status of illegals. If liberal federal judges and the president are determined to trash the rule of law in this manner, we are on the verge of a full-blown constitutional crisis."

Understanding the Threat of ISIS

Graeme Wood's lengthy article in the March Atlantic magazine, What ISIS Really Wants, is an insightful primer for Westerners that helps explain what the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is, how it differs from al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups, and why the West and its leaders must understand its theology if it hopes to stop ISIS's bloodthirsty rampage. It leaves the reader with the sense that ISIS is intent on a 'holy war' with the world whether the world wants one or not.

Contrary to President Obama's puzzling assertion that ISIS is 'not Islamic', "the reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic," writes Wood. "The religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam" ... a distinctly medieval teaching of Islam with a "carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bring[ing] about the apocalypse."

• To achieve its objectives, ISIS must control territory and establish a caliphate, which is simultaneously a political government and a vehicle for salvation. This has already happened.  ISIS "seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom," writes Wood. "Where it holds power, the state collects taxes, regulates prices, operates courts, and administers services ranging from health care and education to telecommunications." (See map.) ISIS's "social-welfare program is, at least in some aspects," adds Wood, "progressive to a degree that would please an MSNBC pundit."
• ISIS's bloodbath — unrestrained executions, crucifixions, and beheadings — is a feature, not a bug. It seeks to purify the world by (a) killing vast numbers of non-believers and (b) purging the world of Muslim apostates, including Muslim heads of state who have put secular law about Sharia law by "running for office or enforcing laws not made by God." ISIS's medieval theology demands that it continue to "expand the caliphate" and "terrorize its enemies—a holy order to scare the shit out of them with beheadings and crucifixions and enslavement of women and children, because doing so hastens victory and avoids prolonged conflict." 
• ISIS is following a clearly defined Islamic 'Prophetic methodology'. The capture of the Syrian city of Dabiq was an important step in that methodology. "Now that it has taken Dabiq, the Islamic State awaits the arrival of an enemy army there, whose defeat will initiate the countdown to the apocalpyse. ... The Prophetic narration that foretells the Dabiq battle refers to the enemy as Rome. Who 'Rome' is, now that the pope has no army, remains a matter of debate. ... Islamic State sources suggest that Rome might mean any infidel army..."  After its victory at Dabiq, the prophesy goes, the caliphate will expand to cover the entire Earth, ushering in the end of time and the ultimate victory of Islam's God.

The holy war ISIS currently pursues is as much against apostate Muslims as Westerners. ISIS's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi "has said as much directly: in November he told his Saudi agents to "deal with the rafida [Shia] first ... then al-Sulul [Suni supporters of the Saudi monarchy] ... before the crusaders and their bases."

The good news for the West is that ISIS is currently at odds with al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban and other Muslim groups. ISIS demands of Muslims the total observance of, and submission to, the original medieval teaching of the Koran. In ISIS's eyes, other Islamic groups have committed apostasy by adopting aspects of the modern world (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood's participation in elections in Egypt), by seeking worldly goals (e.g., al-Qaeda's goal to expel non-Muslims from the Arabian peninsula, to abolish the state of Israel, to attack the United States), or by "innovations" to the Koran (e.g., the "roughly 200 million Shia [Muslims] are marked for death" because they have adopted "innovations" on the Koran's teaching). Yet ISIS's threat to the world could grow very rapidly if other Muslim groups and sects begin aligning with ISIS.

"The ideological purity of the Islamic State has one compensating virtue," argues Wood; "it allows us to predict some of the group's actions."

Wood discusses the potential value of a full-scale military ground war to defeat ISIS at Dabiq.  "Al-Qaeda is ineradicable because it can survive, cockroach-like, by going underground. The Islamic State cannot," writes Wood. "If it loses its grip on its territory in Syria and Iraq, it will cease to be a caliphate."  If the caliphate goes away, so does ISIS's emotional appeal and claim to doctrinal and intellectual superiority within the Muslim religion.

"And yet the risks of escalation are enormous," writes Wood. "The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself. ... An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists worldwide. ... Given everything we know about the Islamic State, continuing to slowly bleed it, through air strikes and proxy warfare, appears the best of bad military options."

However this unfolds, the world is in for a long bloody ride.

That the Islamic State holds the imminent fulfillment of prophecy as a matter of dogma at least tells us the mettle of our opponent. It is ready to cheer its own near-obliteration, and to remain confident, even when surrounded, that it will receive divine succor if it stays true to the prophetic model. Ideological tools may convince some potential converts that the group's message is false, and military tools can limit its horrors. But for an organization as impervious to persuasion as the Islamic State, few measures short of these will matter, and the war may be a long one, even if it doesn't last until the end of time.

What ISIS Really Wants, filled with insight from Wood's personal interviews of Muslim scholars and imams, is worth reading in its entirely.

Study: Millions of Illegals Not Permitted to Work Got Work Permits

About 70 percent of the 5.5 million work permits issued since 2009, the year President Obama took office, were given to illegals who aren't allowed by law to have them or whose qualifications to have them are not documented, according to a new report this month by the Center for Immigration Studies.

Data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reveal 3.86 million work permits issued were potentially or blatantly in violation of U.S. law:

• 1,200,000 work permits were issued to aliens not allowed to work in the U.S. (e.g., tourists, foreign students);
• 960,000 work permits were issued to aliens who crossed the border illegally; and
• 1,700,000 work permits were issued to aliens whose status was unknown, not disclosed or not revealed by USCIS.

Cautioning that Congress has both an opportunity and obligation to remedy this issue, the study concludes:

These statistics indicate that the executive branch is operating a huge parallel immigrant work authorization system outside the bounds of the laws and limits written by Congress.  It inevitably reduces job opportunities for Americans. In addition, allowing work permits to be issued to illegal aliens and temporary visitors damages the integrity of the legal immigration system and encourages illegal immigration.