Daily news sites

Commentary by James Shott

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) gave a speech on the Senate floor last week where he said this about the disastrous implementation of the Affordable Care Act: "Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue."

This abjectly stupid remark ignores the problems millions of the people Harry Reid serves as Majority Leader have encountered at the hands of this Democrat-created nightmare, some of them with life-threatening consequences.

Some say he really was alluding to claims made in ads paid for by the Koch brothers, about which he specifically commented shortly after that major gaffe, claiming the Kochs are trying to “buy America” through Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)(4) started by David Koch and Richard Fink.

He believes that the Koch brothers are the single greatest threat to liberty, “spending hundreds of millions of dollars telling Americans that Obamacare is bad for them.”

However, Koch Industries donated less than $3 million in the 2012 election cycle, earning 77th place on the Top Donor List of OpenSecrets.org. Americans for Prosperity is reported to have spent $40 million, but does not appear on the Top Donor List.

Top Donor organizations ahead of Koch Industries include: the National Education Association, #5 at $14.7 million; the United Auto Workers, #8 at $13.3 million; the American Federation of State/County/Municipal Employees, #10 at $11.4 million; the AFL-CIO, #14 at $9 million; and the Service Employees International Union, #18 at $6.6 million. Ten more labor unions beat Koch Industries in spending. Organized labor is “buying America” to a much larger extent than Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity combined.

Harry Reid misleads us on political spending, and lied to us during the 2012 campaign about Mitt Romney having paid no taxes for 10 years. He epitomizes the sordid aspects of partisan politics, and simply cannot be believed.

*****

On May 5, 2010 Latino students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California turned out to celebrate their Mexican heritage on Cinco de Mayo.

When some American students showed up at school wearing American-flag shirts, school officials ordered the American students to turn their shirts inside-out or go home, to avoid a repeat of the unrest that had occurred during past observances of this date.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld the action of school officials.

So, when students from Mexico attending American schools want to flaunt their Mexican-ness in the face of the American students by waving Mexican flags on a Mexican holiday, and some American students decide to show their patriotism by wearing American flag shirts, the school authorities believe that the American students are wrong, and the Mexican students are right, and a federal court agrees with them.

Disgusting!

Whacky, radical rulings like this one have earned the Court the nickname, “The 9th Circus.” The Mexican students should not be allowed to stir up sentiments by waving a foreign flag around to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. If they prefer Mexico to the U.S., perhaps they should just go back.


*****

Congressman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has produced a tax reform plan based upon three years of hearings and discussions with bi-partisan groups.

Hardly anyone who pays taxes will argue against reforming this overly complex system. The last round was in 1986, and at that time the tax code was more than 26,000 pages. Thirty years later, the tax system is a incoherent mess that negatively affects prosperity, job creation and investment, and is regulated by a tax code that has nearly tripled in size to roughly 75,000 pages.

Each year the tax code gets further complicated with more special interest loopholes, credits, and carve-outs.

Rep. Camp would make several changes to the code, like eliminating loopholes, reducing tax rates, whittling down the current seven tax brackets to three, and lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent, the highest in the industrialized world, to 25 percent.

In those 75,000 pages are goodies for numerous interests, and they will scream bloody murder if their special goody is on the chopping block. The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore notes that we can “expect the White House to lambast this plan as a ‘tax cut for the rich,’ but the evidence from history shows that lower tax rates are usually associated with higher overall tax receipts and more taxes paid by the rich. In the 1980s after two rounds of Reagan tax rate reductions, income tax receipts doubled, and the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent rose as the economy expanded.”

This plan simplifies the tax code by allowing millions of tax filers a larger standard deduction, meaning they don’t need to itemize and can use the EZ form. For those who do itemize, the mortgage and charity deductions remain.

While the Camp plan isn’t perfect, and produced quite a few knee-jerk criticisms, it has many advantages, and is certainly a good start toward finally transforming the current tax code into something that is sensible and easy to understand. Let’s hope Congress has the courage to follow through.

Cross-posted from Observations

A filibuster is a lengthy speech used in the U.S. Senate to delay or block legislative action, a mechanism with a long history.

The U.S. Senate Website explains that, “In the early years of Congress, representatives as well as senators could filibuster. As the House of Representatives grew in numbers, however, revisions to the House rules limited debate. In the smaller Senate, unlimited debate continued on the grounds that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary on any issue.”

Senate rules have permitted a senator, or a series of senators, to speak for as long as they wish and on any topic they choose, unless "three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn" brings debate to a close by invoking cloture under Senate Rule XXII.

The filibuster, thought by some to be an unconstitutional, unfair, historical relic, is thought by others to protect the rights of the minority against the tyranny of the majority. And only eight years ago prominent Democrats loudly defended the filibuster and lambasted the Republican majority for suggesting an end to it.

In 2005, then-Senator and now-President of the United States Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said, “What [the American people] don't expect is for one party, be it Republican or Democrat, to change the rules in the middle of the game so that they can make all the decisions while the other party is told to sit down and keep quiet. The American people want less partisanship in this town, but everyone in this chamber knows that if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.”

During the same debate then-Minority Leader and current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said, “Mr. President, yesterday morning I spoke here about a statement the Majority Leader issued calling the filibuster a ‘procedural gimmick.’ … No Mr. President, the filibuster is not a scheme. And it is not new. The filibuster is far from a “procedural gimmick.” It is part of the fabric of this institution. It was well known in colonial legislatures, and it is an integral part of our country’s 217 years of history. … It encourages moderation and consensus. It gives voice to the minority, so that cooler heads may prevail. … And it is very much in keeping with the spirit of the government established by the Framers of our Constitution: Limited Government. Separation of Power. Checks and Balances. Mr. President, the filibuster is a critical tool in keeping the majority in check.”

Other notable Democrats also supported the filibuster, which is known as "The Soul of the Senate." Joe Biden, then-Senator and now Vice President of the United States, former Senator and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Senator Diane Feinstein were part of the opposition. In the end, the idea of changing the rules was abandoned.

But that was then. Last week the Senate Democrat majority changed the very rule it so strongly defended in 2005.

In their assault on this well respected legislative device they strongly defended in 2005, when the majority shoe was on the other foot, the majority party changed it for presidential appointments, which now require only a simple majority. Their excuse: Republicans did not agree with the president’s nominations for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and administrative agency appointments.

The National Center for Policy Analysis opines that in addition to judicial positions “the change will almost certainly result in more confirmations of presidential nominees – for example, the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board tasked with controlling health care spending.” Which is interesting, given the potential for this issue to have been brought forth to distract the nation’s attention from the Obamacare debacle.

In 1975 the Democrat majority of the Senate reduced the majority vote needed to end a filibuster from two-thirds of the Senate (67 votes) to three-fifths (60 votes). Now it’s just 51 votes.

Senate Democrats decided that if they can’t get their way playing by decades-old rules, they could just change them. Yes we can!

It is important for the Senate to debate appointments so that people who are not qualified or whose agenda is narrow and ideological can be identified and defeated. That is precisely why the filibuster exists: to prevent the presidency from becoming a monarchy. Given the performance of the IRS, the NSA, the State Department’s gross failure in Benghazi, and the destructive actions of the EPA, there is more than enough evidence to warrant closely examining and perhaps blocking some of this president’s appointments.

Democrats like this new arrangement with a Democrat in the White House but, God willing, that won’t always be the case. The ability of a president to put questionable and even unqualified people on the federal bench and at the head of federal agencies just became much easier.

The Founders saw the dangers of a tyrannical majority party and built in safeguards to insure that Congress’ activities would be slow and difficult. Senate Democrats substantially gutted those safeguards a second time.

by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Liberty -vs- Tyranny

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spoke to the press on the vote to limit filibusters on presidential nominees on Capitol Hill on Thursday in Washington.

Hot Damn! I never really held with much of what ole Senator Harry Reid was pushing (most of it was snake oil) but on the Filibuster change I just gotta give the dude credit. He is spot on with using the nuclear option and precipitating the change of the rules of the Senate with regard to the Filibuster and the "super majority" BS. Remember folks (especially those inclined to power) the the sword of change and the benefits thereof work both ways.

Kudos to Senator Harry Reid on this one. When somebody gets it right for a change it is fitting they receive the acknowledgement for a job well done.

WASHINGTON — The curtailment of the filibuster, probably the most well-known aspect of the Senate in popular culture, came in a politically charged vote Thursday that had been years in the making. It will have significant ramifications for the Senate, as well as for President Obama and future presidents.

The decision represents a new curb on the Senate’s constitutional power of “advice and consent,” a power that Democrats said Republicans had been abusing in their determination to deny Mr. Obama his choices for the federal bench and high-level administration offices. Under the action precipitated by Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, opponents will no longer be able to require the majority to produce 60 votes to advance a judicial or executive branch nomination short of the Supreme Court.

“It’s time to get the Senate working again — not for the good of the current Democratic majority or some future Republican majority, but for the good of the country,” said Mr. Reid, who in the past had been reluctant to force through a rules change. “It is time to change the Senate, before this institution becomes obsolete.”

Skip

The change does not extend to legislation, which lawmakers can still resist and require supporters to gather 60 votes to pass. But given the new willingness to alter the rules, senators in the future could conceivably reach that point.

Inside the Senate, furious Republicans who portrayed the Democratic action as a blatant power grab will no doubt try to exact revenge by further slowing the chamber’s activities and making life as complicated as possible for Democrats. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader and an expert student of Senate rules, made it clear that Democrats would rue this day.

Skip

Many Democrats had been very hesitant to act, fearing that the move would boomerang when Republicans won back control of the Senate and the White House. But they say the level of obstruction had gone too far, including the unsuccessful filibuster of the nomination of Chuck Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, as defense secretary.

“The Senate now enters the 21st century,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “This is a good day for the Senate.”

Both parties had moved to the brink of rules changes over judicial nominations for the past eight years, but always stepped back out of fear of threatening the nature of the Senate and bringing Congress to a halt. The Democratic action on Thursday will now test whether anxiety about that scenario was warranted. [Full Article]

I for one will sleep better tonight knowing our republic is closer (again) to functioning as it was intended by the founders of our Great Republic.

Via: Memeorandum

Harry Reid, the Democrat Senator from Nevada who is the Majority Leader of the US Senate said this about Congressional Republicans opposition to President Obama in an interview yesterday:

“It’s been obvious that they’re doing everything they can to make him fail. And I hope, I hope — and I say this seriously — I hope that’s based on substance and not the fact that he’s African-American.”

Republicans are the ones who appointed the first two African-Americans to serve as Secretary of State (Colon Powell and Condoleezza Rice), elected the first African-American to the US Senate (Tim Scott), and appointed an African-American as US Ambassador to the UN (Alan Keyes) and the US Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas), to name a few African-Americans who have served their country as Republicans.

So I say to Harry – and I say this seriously – I hope your idiotic statement is based upon your being severely addled when you said that and not the fact that you are a complete and utter idiot.