Sweetness & Light

Holmes Norton: Strip NFL Tax Exemption Over Redskins

From the Washington Examiner:

Bill introduced to strip tax exemption from Redskins

By Susan Ferrechio | November 12, 2014

Washington D.C.’s non-voting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced a bill Wednesday that would strip tax-exempt status from professional sports teams that associate with the Redskins team name, which she said “has officially been found offensive." …

Good thing Ms. Holmes Norton’s constituents are reliably low information. Or they might vote her out of her phony baloney job for doing this. (By the way, exactly what "sports teams" are exempt from taxes? The NFL itself is, but the NFL is not a sports team.)

Norton, a Democrat, cited a recent decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to deny the renewal of the Redskins name, which is currently under appeal by team owner Daniel Snyder.

HHS Chief: Obamacare Should Be Available to DREAMers

From Red Alert Politics:

HHS Chief: Obamacare should be available to DREAMers

By Ashley Dobson | November 12, 2014

The Obamacare and immigration debates collided Tuesday as Health and Human Services chief Sylvia Burwell called for extending Obamacare benefits to DREAM-eligible illegal immigrants. Burwell was speaking on a public Google hangout with prominent Latina bloggers to promote Saturday’s opening of the Obamacare enrollment period when she shifted to her thoughts on immigration reform.

“DREAMers are not able to be covered in the marketplace. And this is an issue that I think is more than a health care issue — it is an immigration issue,” Burwell said in response to a question about whether families with mixed immigration statuses can get coverage.

“And I think everyone probably knows that this administration feels incredibly strongly about the fact that we need to fix that.

The Hill, Dem Strategists Applaud Obama’s ‘Veer To Left’

Obama veers left after red wave

By Justin Sink | November 13, 2014

President Obama has taken significant steps to the left since his party’s devastating losses in the midterm elections.

In a surprise, he announced a major deal on climate change with China during a trip to Beijing Tuesday. That followed another unanticipated move — a Monday statement pressuring the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new net neutrality rules for the Internet. The moves are helping to rally a dispirited Democratic base while re-establishing Obama’s political leadership after he was sidelined during the midterms.

What spin. Obama had put off these moves until after the elections because he knows the American public opposes them.

“He’s at his best when his back is against the wall,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum.

AP: New GOP Senators ‘Abandoning Hard Right Positions’

From a shameless Associated Press:

New GOP senators show moderated, cooperative tone

By CHARLES BABINGTON | November 12, 2014

WASHINGTON (AP) — New Republican senators who sometimes breathed tea-party fire as candidates are adopting a more moderate tone as they enter Congress.

A few of the 11 incoming GOP senators — the number could reach 12 — may still opt to battle party leaders, as some tea party-backed House Republicans have done. Thus far, however, they seem willing to cool their earlier rhetoric and work with senior colleagues to push a conservative mainstream agenda while confronting President Barack Obama.

Can anyone define what "a conservative mainstream agenda" is? Does that mean giving the Democrats only 90% of what they want?

Some who took hard-right positions on reproductive rights, for instance, have de-emphasized or abandoned those stands.

GOP Eyes Funding To Block Obama’s Executive Amnesty

From a seething Reuters:

Republicans eye funding to block Obama on immigration

By David Lawder | November 12, 2014

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A growing number of Republicans in Congress want to use government spending bills as leverage to prevent President Barack Obama from taking unilateral action to ease U.S. immigration policies.

This is somewhat promising. But we won’t get out hopes up. Still, that is how our system of government is supposed to work. That is why Congress was given the power of the purse.

Why would the Republicans give away their only leverage with Obama on amnesty and on all of the other radical things that he intends to do via executive order?

Senator Jeff Sessions, poised to lead the Senate Budget Committee next year, on Wednesday called on his fellow Republicans to press for a short-term spending bill extension into early next year and withhold funds needed to implement any "unlawful amnesty" for undocumented immigrants ordered by Obama.

Obama May Announce 10-Point Amnesty Plan Next Week

Source: Obama to announce 10-point immigration plan via exec action as early as next week

By Lucas Tomlinson | November 13, 2014

EXCLUSIVE: President Obama is planning to unveil a 10-part plan for overhauling U.S. immigration policy via executive action — including suspending deportations for millions — as early as next Friday, a source close to the White House told Fox News. The president’s plans were contained in a draft proposal from a U.S. government agency.

Who got them directly from La Raza. (The Race.)

The source said the plan could be announced as early as Nov. 21, though the date might slip a few days pending final White House approval… [T]he most controversial pertain to the millions who could get a deportation reprieve under what is known as "deferred action." The plan calls for expanding deferred action for illegal immigrants who came to the U.S.

NYT On Gruber: Everybody Lies To Get Legislation Passed

From the New York Times:

The Jonathan Gruber Controversy and Washington’s Dirty Little Secret

By Neil Irwin | November 12, 2014

Suppose that Congress decides that everyone in America should have an iPhone. There are two ways it can do this:
1) The government could allocate money to buy all Americans iPhones.
2) The government could require that everybody buy an iPhone but create a tax credit equivalent to the price of the phone.

To an economist, these things are pretty much identical. To a politician, they are very different. The first is a big-spending government giveaway. The second is a tax cut. And in that distinction lies the heart of the firestorm around comments by one of the intellectual godfathers of President Obama’s health reform law.

Gruber Bragged About Hoodwinking Public On Cadillac Tax

From the Daily Caller:

In Third Video, Obamacare Architect Talks About ‘Basic Exploitation’ Of American Voters

By Chuck Ross | November 12, 2014

A third video has surfaced of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber bragging about pulling the wool over the eyes of the American public in order to help implement Obamacare.

“It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012.

He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being.

In an effort to add a cost-control measure to Obamacare, former Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who Gruber called a “hero,” successfully pushed through a 40 percent excise tax on insurance companies for plans that cost more than $10,200 for individuals and $27,000 for families.

Rangel Claims ‘White Crackers’ Is A ‘Term Of Endearment’

From the Washington Times:

Charlie Rangel: Calling tea partyers ‘white crackers’ actually ‘term of endearment’

By Cheryl K. Chumley | November 11, 2014

Don’t take offense — referring to members of the tea party as “white crackers” is actually complimentary, said Rep. Charles Rangel, longtime Democratic lawmaker. That’s how Mr. Rangel explained away his widely criticized 2013 reference to the group during an interview with The Huffington Post in which he also seemed to suggest that tea party members were of the same vein as terrorists.

Mr. Rangel was first confronted with his 2013 statement, when he likened the tea party to the “same group we faced in the South, with the white crackers, the dogs and the police,” the video showed.

Here is the Rangel ‘cracker’ quote from an approving Daily Beast: “It is the same group we faced in the South with those white crackers and the dogs and the police.

Politico Hails Obama’s Coming Climate Change Onslaught

From a cheering Politico:

The coming climate onslaught

By Andrew Restuccia and Erica Martinson | November 11, 2014

The Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president’s environmental actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who think last week’s election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House’s “War on Coal.” …

Is this a "reality check for Republicans" or an anti-capitalist finally deciding to try to kill what’s left of the American economy once and for all?

President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive actions to combat global warming. And incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have few options for stopping the onslaught, though Republicans may be able to slow pieces of it…

Mr.

Climate Deal: US Cutting Now, China To Cut Later – Maybe

From the Agence France Presse:

China agrees to target emissions peak ‘around 2030′: White House

November 11, 2014

Beijing (AFP) – China and the US agreed ambitious greenhouse gas emission targets on Wednesday, the White House said in a statement, with Beijing setting a goal for its emissions to peak "around 2030".

It is the first time China — the world’s biggest polluter — has set a date, even approximate, for its emissions to stop increasing, and the White House said China would "try to peak early". At the same time the US set a goal to cut its own emissions of the gases blamed for climate change by 26-28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025…

Goodbye Mary Landrieu. And welcome, Joe Manchin to the GOP.

Gruber: GOP Trying To Confuse People About Obamacare

Jonathan Gruber: GOP Trying to ‘Confuse People’ About Obamacare

By Josh Feldman | November 11th, 2014 262

Jonathan Gruber… made another TV appearance today on WGBH in Boston and continued to defend the law.

Gruber doubted that the new Republican wave in Congress would be able to gut it that much, and said that the Republican strategy on the Affordable Care Act has been to “confuse people” about what’s in it “so that they don’t understand that the subsidies they’re getting is because of the law.” …

That is pretty rich, coming from the same man who said that the law was intentionally written to confuse the American public. (And the Supreme Court.)

It’s also from the same man who said that the Obama-Care tax credit subsidies would only be legal if they come from the states.

Gruber: Only States Can Give Out Obama-Care Tax Credits

From the July 2014 archives of Reason magazine:

Obamacare Architect Jonathan Gruber [Admitted] in 2012 That Subsidies Were Limited to State-Run Exchanges

Peter Suderman | July 24, 2014

Earlier this week [back in July], a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit Court ruled that, contrary to the Obama administration’s implementation and an Internal Revenue Service rule, Obamacare’s subsidies for private health insurance were limited to state-run health exchanges…

One of the law’s architects—at the same time that he was a paid consultant to states deciding whether or not to build their own exchanges—was espousing exactly this interpretation as far back in early 2012… Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who helped design the Massachusetts health law that was the model for Obamacare, was a key influence on the creation of the federal health law…

After the law passed, in 2011 and throughout 2012, multiple states sought [Gruber's] expertise to help them understand their options regarding the choice to set up their own exchanges.

Jonathan Gruber Apologizes, Another Video Clip Surfaces

From the Daily Caller:

Obamacare Architect Gruber: I Regret Calling American People ‘Stupid’

By Patrick Howley | November 11, 2014

Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber said Tuesday that he regrets saying that aspects of Obamacare needed to be concealed from the public due to the “stupidity of the American voter.”

“Do you stand by the comments in that video?,” MSNBC host Ronan Farrow asked Gruber, referring to a video of Gruber explaining how a lack of transparency helped Obamacare pass into law. “The comments in the video were made at an academic conference,” Gruber said. “I was speaking off the cuff and I basically spoke inappropriately and I regret having made those comments.”

More precisely, he regrets having been caught making those comments, which he clearly believes to this day.

Sessions: Do Not Give Up The Only Tool To Stop Amnesty

From Senator Jeff Sessions writing in the Politico:

No Surrender on Immigration

By SEN. JEFF SESSIONS | November 10, 2014

On Election Day, Americans roared in protest against the President’s open-borders extremism. They rallied behind candidates who will defend the rule of law and put the needs of American workers and families first. Exit polls were unequivocal. More than 3 in 4 voters cited immigration as an important factor in their vote, believed that U.S. workers should get priority for jobs, and opposed the President’s plans for executive amnesty… But President Obama made clear that he would attempt to void the election results—and our laws—by moving forward with his executive amnesty decree…

Laws written and passed by generations of elected representatives of both parties. Laws that were signed by Presidents from both parties.

« Front Page | To Top
« Previous Articles |