Only days ago, Obama gave a speech in which, rather than warn us against tyranny, he warned us against the people who go around warning us against tyranny.

The IRS revelations only get worse: From the Washington Examiner yesterday (via Ed Morrissey this morning), we learn that the IRS demanded of a pro-life group – under “perjury of the law”, the IRS staffer’s words – that it not engage in legal Planned Parenthood picketing. And required another pro-life group to furnish detailed plans on its constitutionally-protected speech activities.[1]

This is the same IRS that Obama has been beefing up to enforce Obamacare by demanding ever-greater private information of citizens.

The AP snooping scandal speaks for itself. Now from the GP comments, V the K reminds us of something Obama said in 2008:

We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.

Video here.[2]

In these disparate data points, I see a pattern: Obama wants to be a tyrant – while pretending not to. My question is, do liberals really not see the pattern?

I know that some liberals have begun seeing it – and will, for example, condemn the IRS actions – but others don’t. The other day, I noted Julian Bond saying that he thinks conservative groups deserve the IRS harassment. The execrable Bill Maher has joined the fun there.

Obama maintains his democratic pretense by periodically declaring the goodness of his intentions. For example: yes, the other day he called the IRS actions “inexcusable”.

But a troubled President Nixon, as well as actual tyrants like Chavez and worse, also frequently declared their own goodness. So many of Obama’s other words, policies, and actions of his underlings point in a direction opposite to his self-declared goodness. Do liberals really not see? Or are they part of the pretense; de facto pro-tyranny?

—————-
[1] (I don’t know the ins and outs of these tax-exemption laws, but I thought that as long as a group would refrain from electioneering for parties/candidates, it would get a pass.)
[2] Students of history will note that the Fascists also believed in having powerful civilian, national security forces, and will be troubled by the weird applause that Obama’s liberal audience gave him for proposing it.

For years, the Left has been trying to link the Tea Party with terrorism. Examples include:

• Vice President Biden agreeing with House Democrats that the Tea Party are terrorists. (Biden later denied it, but not convincingly.)
• Senate majority leader Harry Reid likening the Tea Party to “anarchists”.
• Semi-retired Congressional dumbass Barney Frank claiming that al Qaeda and the Tea Party are “aligned”.
• The New York Times accusing Tea Party-inspired Republicans of “economic vandalism” for opposing debt ceiling increases, the very stance that then-Senator Obama took famously in 2006. Other editorialists also referred to “hostage taking” and “terrorism”, or even called the Tea Party “totalitarian”.
• Media coverage in general showing great bias against the Tea Party. Some note that the media ignored real union violence, while covering imaginary Tea Party violence.
• The media repeatedly trying (and failing) to link the Tea Party to each new mass killer, such as: the Boston Marathon bombers, the Gabby Giffords shooter, the Aurora shooter (wherein ABC rushed to blame a certain Colorado Tea Party activist), the guy who tried to crash a plane into the IRS building in Austin (but who proved to be left-leaning), and more.

Given the climate of bias, hate and fear that our top leaders and media have sought to foment against the Tea Party for years, is it any wonder that self-important IRS bureaucrats would act unethically toward it?

UPDATE: As long as my list is, I know that I’ve missed some juicy examples of our top leaders and media fomenting bigotry against the Tea Party. Please feel free to add more in the comments.

UPDATE: Rick Santelli points out the logical endpoint of the IRS’ approach – namely, your Obamacare death panel Accountability Board saying “No stent for you!” based on your politics – and predicts that Obamacare will be altered partly to prevent such a nightmare.

UPDATE: How could I not mention how they’ve also tried to link the Tea Party with racism? Latest example: a top NAACP leader claims that America’s racist Taliban deserved the IRS scrutiny.

Something strange happened with the latest jobs report.  A few lamestream press outlets woke up from their Obama-induced daze long enough to recognize that although the unemployment figure is purportedly lower than it was in March, and lower than it has been in some time, things don’t seem quite right with the numbers.   Just seeing them grapple with the data and begin to recognize its implications has brought on my latest instance of Obamacare Schadenfreude.

Let’s begin with the National Journal.  Today its website ran a story entitled “Forget the Unemployment Rate: The Alarming Stat Is the Number of ‘Missing Workers.’”  The story begins by summarizing the “unexpected” state of affairs:

The federal government’s latest snapshot of the unemployment rate offered few bright spots Friday. The economy added 165,000 jobs in April—slightly better than March’s revised number of 138,000 jobs. Unemployment went down one-tenth of a percentage point to 7.5 percent; and health care, retail trade, and the food-services industry added positions.

The glaring caveat to this jobs report is the huge number of Americans who remain out of the workforce. Called the “labor force participation rate” in wonkspeak, that number held steady in April at 63.3 percent—the lowest level since 1979.

The story goes on to speculate about the causes behind the decreased labor force participation rate, explaining that some of the number–but by no means all–can be explained by the fact that the first of the baby boomers have now reached retirement age.  The article says that beyond retirees, “Roughly 3 million to 5 million of them left because they could not find jobs, economists estimate.”

But the article doesn’t stop there.  It recognizes that decreased labor force participation has serious economic implications for government because it decreases revenues coming in from taxes.  Suddenly, in other words, the decreasing labor force in the United States is much more of a matter of concern than it was a year ago when Obama was facing re-election, because it doesn’t bode well for the future of the economy or the budget (something that conservatives have been pointing out for years):

If these workers do not return to the labor market, their absence may alter the country’s budget picture. “One of the biggest problems we face with the baby-boomer bulge in retirement is having enough workers behind them to pay their bills,” says Harry Holzer, a professor at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.

Missing workers can translate to a decrease in tax revenue, coupled with an increase in the use of government benefits, such as food stamps and disability insurance. The number of Americans collecting food stamps hit a high of 47.8 million people in December 2012. A similar spike has occurred in enrollments for the Social Security disability payments.

Since the start of 2007, the percentage of Americans in the labor market has dropped from 66.4 percent to 63.3 percent. In the 1970s and 1980s, the number of working Americans grew—because of the dramatic increase in women holding jobs outside of the home.

Nancy Cook ends her article by quoting a very optimistic prediction that unemployment will eventually fall to around 5.5% by 2017, but then she notes, ominously, “Only then can economists gauge if people have left the workforce because of the downturn in the economy, or if they’ve left forever because the economy fundamentally changed. If that’s the case, the U.S. officially will become a place where the labor market has little use for millions of Americans.”

The National Journal article, though, isn’t the only such piece by a lamestream press outlet today.  None other than the Gray Lady herself suddenly woke up and noticed the missing workers: (more…)

‘Obamacare’ Poll Finds 42% of Americans Unaware It’s Law

Easy: As I’ve suggested before, Obama always wants to empower the State.

Howard Husock at Forbes writes about the Obama administration’s continuing attack on private charity. The attack is boringly technical because, naturally, the administration does not want people riled up:

The Administration has, since 2009, pushed unsuccessfully to allow only 28 cents on a dollar donated to charity to be deducted—even though the top tax rate for the wealthy donors who make most use of the deduction has been 35 percent. In the budget released today, the President again proposes to cap the charitable deduction at 28 percent—despite the fact that the top rate on the highest earners has increased to 39.6 percent.

So, a bunch of rich people wouldn’t see as much tax benefit from their charitable donations. “Who cares?”, says the lefty. Well, you should care, because:

When one taxes something more, of course, one gets less of it—and it’s likely that the current $168 billion in itemized charitable giving would decline…The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that the reduction in giving could be as high as $9 billion a year.

Husock’s piece is worth reading in full, for its good information. But I don’t think he quite grasps Obama’s motive.

The average private charity helps people better than government does. Usually, private charities are closer to the problem and spend money more efficiently. Leftists quietly hate the competition, in that they would rather see an expanded government program.

When the Left wants to take over (or destroy) something that private actors have been doing relatively well, the Left will propose some governmental program or rule change which seems small, technical, boring and even halfway reasonable, but which makes it harder for the private version to survive, and which sets a precedent for deeper changes to come. The slippery-slope approach.

That is why Obama keeps trying to get this tax change. If he can get this ‘reasonable’ change that only hurts rich people, he will have his bad precedent in place (for further steps to reduce or kill the charitable deduction).

In addition, he will have hurt private charities’ budgets, which means they will do less to help people, which means they will be a little bit less important in our society. I believe Obama prefers that, deep down. Because he always proposes the thing whose effects will make people more, rather than less, dependent on government.

I’ve not blogged or read political articles for the last 3 weeks, for several reasons. One reason was that I got a little overwhelmed by (disgust at) the sheer volume of the Obama administration’s negligence and dishonesty, on issue after issue. You just can’t blog it all.

Well “I’m back”, presently scanning the last few days’ news on HotAir. There it is again! The sheer volume of Obama negligence and/or dishonesty. Any of these could make a blog post.

• Obama lying about the budget “sequester”, trying to panic people with a nightmare vision of the effects of its small – no, paltry – cuts to spending. Why would I use the word “lie”? Because even the left-leaning Washington Post can’t get behind Obama’s claims.
• Obama showing his great leadership on the sequester, asking a reporter “What exactly do you want me to do?“
• Donna Brazile scratching her head about why her health care premiums are going up, a result that most intellectually honest observers knew would have to come from the Obamacare bill.
• Bob Woodward saying what others confirm, even including Clinton stalwarts: that the Obama administration actively seeks to intimidate reporters.

What, only four items? Here’s a bonus: What happens to your city, when Democrats run it for generations?

UPDATE: An Obama advisor allows, in tortured fashion, that the “sequester” cuts were their idea. So why have the Obama crew recently been pretending the opposite?

UPDATE: Via Ace and the New York Post, more tales of the Obama administration’s techniques for shaping reporters’ discourse:

“I had a young reporter asking tough, important questions of an Obama Cabinet secretary,” says one DC veteran. “She was doing her job, and they were trying to bully her. In an e-mail, they called her the vilest names — bitch, c–t, a–hole.”…

UPDATE: WaPo upgrades one of Obama’s sequester lies from two Pinocchios (run-of-the-mill political lie) to four (indisputable, big lie).

All the gory details are over at Watchdog Wire, North Carolina. 

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

Back in 2004, James Piereson coined the phrase “Punitive Liberalism” to describe a particular malady common in the days of severe Bush Derangement Syndrome.  James Taranto introduced many of us to the idea when he wrote:

Writing in The Weekly Standard, James Piereson offers a useful addition to the American political glossary: “punitive liberalism.” This “bizarre doctrine,” which found its fullest expression in the presidency of Jimmy Carter, holds that “America had been responsible for numerous crimes and misdeeds through its history for which it deserved punishment and chastisement.” Those who disagree “were written off as ignorant patriots who could not face up to the sins of the past.”  (Hat Tip: Ace; the original version of Taranto’s piece is only available currently at the Wayback Machine)

It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I describe some symptoms I have been experienced with increasing frequency over the last few months.

I first noticed the condition when I read, a few weeks after the election, that the Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania was cutting “the hours of 400 adjunct instructors, support staff, and part-time instructors to dodge paying for Obamacare.”

“It’s kind of a double whammy for us because we are facing a legal requirement [under the new law] to get health care and if the college is reducing our hours, we don’t have the money to pay for it,” said adjunct biology professor Adam Davis.

My reaction?  When I read that, I could hear (to borrow a phrase from Taranto) one of the world’s tiniest violins playing in the background. I actually laughed and felt relieved about something in the political world for what may have been the first time since the disaster known as the 2012 Presidential Election.  Yes, I thought, even the leftists in academia will not manage to avoid paying for the mess that is Obamacare, and it will cost some of them far more than they imagined.

Then just a few days ago, I had an even stronger reaction when I heard that some unions were petitioning the  administration for special subsidies to defray the high cost of insurance under Obamacare.  Rick Ungar writes in Forbes:

Unhappy that important improvements in insurance benefits resulting from the healthcare reform law will now cost employers with union workers a bit more—improvements such as no longer permitting insurance policies to place the yearly and lifetime caps on benefits that leave beneficiaries high, dry and broke should they suffer a serious and expensive illness—some labor unions are now asking the government to change the rules to allow low-earning union workers access to the government subsidies so that their employers will not be disadvantaged when competing with companies who have non-union employees.

Yes, you read that correctly.  Becket Adams at the Blaze elaborates further:

No, really, union heads are acting like no one warned them that costs would go up.

“We are going back to the administration to say that this is not acceptable,” said Ken Hall, general secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters.

“I heard him say, ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’” said John Wilhelm, chairman of Unite Here Health, the insurance plan for 260,000 union workers. “If I’m wrong, and the president does not intend to keep his word, I would have severe second thoughts about the law.”

Why? Why? Why didn’t anyone tell these leaders about the costs associated with “Obamacare”? (more…)

2013 is shaping up as a big year for me so far. 

In addition to hosting duties at MatchGame Monday Night and The GayPatriot Report on The 405 Radio Network, I’m also the new editor of Watchdog Wire, North Carolina.   Watchdog Wire is “a place for citizen journalists to connect with other like-minded people in their area and across the nation. It will also serve as a platform to post original content on issues that are often ignored by the media.”

My first article at Watchdog Wire-NC is now up…. please read and let me know your thoughts. 

Over the next 30 days, North Carolina is expected to become the site for the next battle over President Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Former Gov. Bev Purdue had begun to implement the state-based exchanges under the ACA, however the newly sworn-in Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has put on hold those plans, at least for now.

If you are in North Carolina and would like to be a contributor, please email me: bruce-at-gaypatriot-dot-org.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)

I found myself laughing last night when watching a report on a local newscast about the rising cost of health care despite the passage of the “Affordable” Care Act.  Perhaps, it would have sounded differently had I heard the newcaster’s voice instead of reading the closed captioning.  (Again I caught the news while doing cardio.)

I laughed because the individual reporting a story seemed incredulous that a government program designed to reduce cost had actual led to the increase.   Might have been nice had the journalist had some economics education, an education where they studied not just abstract theories as articulated by astute economists, but the real-world results of increases in government regulation.  He would then have known that enterprises pass the cost of increased regulations onto their customers.

In commenting on a New York Times article on rising health insurance rates, Glenn Reynolds asked in a seemingly rhetorical tone, “Who could have seen this coming?”  Who indeed.  Will be interesting to see just how many conservative bloggers, pundits and public figures predicted this.  And how many liberal pundits and Democrat politicians assured that such “right-wingers” were talking nonsense.

Interesting also to speculate whether the local reporters in Los Angeles would have picked up on this story had the New York Times not covered it.

Just learned nder the so-called Affordable Care Act, the cost of my monthly premium (that I pay for myself) is about to increase another 52%, meaning that it will have doubled in cost since President Obama signed tthat unpopular legislation.

I expect to write a strongly-worded letter to my soon-to-be Congressman Adam Schiff and to Senator Feinstein and Mrs. Boxer and expect them to express concern for my situation and then proceed to do absolutely nothing.

This is what happens when government meddles.

Oh, and Mr. Obama, Mrs. Feinstein, Ma’am Boxer, Mr. Schiff, this means that I now have less money to give to charitable causes.

Here’s the article, Obamacare Pre-Existing Condition Fee To Cost Companies $63 Per Person

SORT OF RELATED: Obama tax plan no small deal to small businessmen (Kudos to Yahoo! for including that in its top headlines: (more…)

“For the first time in more than three weeks,” reports David Kerley of ABC OTUS news, “President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face today at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.” Emphasis added.

It’s about time.

Wonder why the president dilly-dallyed so long, delaying this meeting.  This appears to be the first time since the election that the president met alone with the top Republican in Washington.

If he had been more serious about avoiding the fiscal cliff, he would have met more regularly with Boehner and other congressional leaders.  And have countered the Republicans’ offer made earlier this month.

The article goes on to note that “some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president’s demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff — a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.”  Kerley did not indicate what some of the president’s other demand were.

And now that Republicans are showing some flexibility about raising taxes, will Democrats show some sincerity about cutting spending–and not just cuts from increases anticipated by the president’s past budgets, but real cuts.

As one Democrat put it, “spending is the biggest part of this problem, and the biggest part of that problem is the fact that healthcare is growing at a faster rate than GDP.”  And this even after Democrats passed (what they called) the Affordable Care Act.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: WH Running Out Clock on Fiscal Cliff Negotiations? FYI, that article was posted before the Boehner/Obama meeting, but I read it only after posting this post.

“[S]hortly after a face-to-face meeting with President Obama at the White House to discuss Hurricane Sandy aid”, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie “vetoed legislation that would have established a state-run health care insurance exchange in New Jersey pursuant to the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act.”  (Bold in original.)

“Oh,” quips Hot Air’s Mary Katharine Ham, “the fall from Beltway media grace shall be sharp and swift for the country’s most popular Republican.”

. . .  to pay for Obama’s unpopular health care overhaul and tax hike?

Well, despite those cuts, this Prius-driving Democrat in Oakland was engaging in some “Mediscaring”:

Remind me again about the plan the Obama Democrats have to address the coming insolvency of this popular entitlement?

“Sometimes,” I blogged, quoting Amartel, a commenter from Ann Althouse’s site, “knowledge has to be obtained empirically“, that is, only when Obama’s are fully implemented, will people realize how bad they are — and become upset enough to vote his fellow partisans out of office.  (No wonder he delayed implementation until after the 2012 elections.)

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal‘s Stephen Moore, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spells out how Obamacare not just increases the expense of the federal government, but also how it creates complications for health care providers in his state:

Any tax and entitlement deal would likely leave unresolved the newest budget-busting entitlement: ObamaCare. “It’s the single worst piece of legislation that’s been passed in modern times,” Mr. McConnell says, “and the single biggest step in the direction of Europeanizing the country. It can’t possibly work.” Democrats don’t understand that now, he continues, but “people are going to be coming at us in hordes asking for us to revisit it” and fix the mounting problems.

He says that in the towns he visits in Kentucky, “the health-care providers who are dealing with patients on a daily basis—big hospitals, rural hospitals, nonprofits—are all freaked out about virtually every aspect of the Medicare cuts that affect today’s seniors and today’s providers. Seven of nine justices on the Supreme Court said the Medicaid part of it is genuinely optional. Smart states won’t take this additional burden.” Employers are dropping their coverage. He predicts the law will come apart on its own.

Emphasis added.  Sounds like we’ll have to wait until it’s implemented to see those people coming at us in hordes.  Read the whole thing; shows how reluctant the president is to work with Congress.

Wonder why that didn’t come out in the campaign.

Something about last week’s debacle has strengthened my fighting spirit.  I quickly fired back after seeing this image on Facebook:

I just googled to find that there’s a Papa John’s not far from me. After our GayPatriot steak dinner next Monday (now scheduled for Sizzler, given that the CEO donated to Mitt Romney’s campaign).

Like the Democrats who voted for Obama’s intrusive, unpopular and poorly designed health care overhaul and tax increase, many liberals seem clueless about the cost of doing business.  They simply assume an enterprise can absorb the costs of their well-meaning legislation.

Well, the cost of health insurance has gone up since Democrats passed the bill; it’s far less affordable than it was before the so-called “Affordable Care Act” was passed.

In the past, Democrats thought that they could boycott a politically incorrect industry.  But, conservatives are now in a different mood than we once were.  Look what happened the last time they tried to boycott a food chain that didn’t toe their ideological line.

Just click here to find a Papa John’s near you.

UPDATE: Government Health Plan Will Cost Businesses an Extra $1.79 per Hour per Full-Time Employee

Poring over the details in Resurgent Republic’s 2012 post-election survey, I came across this telling tidbit:

Voters continue to support repealing and replacing the 2010 health care reform law.  By a 54 to 38 percent margin, with a nearly identical margin among Independents (55 to 38 percent), voters support repealing and replacing the President’s primary legislative achievement. Just a narrow majority of Democrats oppose repealing and replacing the law (51 percent, while 39 percent support repealing and replacing the law), while Republicans continue to support repealing and replacing it, now by a 70 to 24 percent margin.

Emphasis added (though headline was in bold in original).  The more we look underneath the topline of the Democrat’s narrow victory, the more we see just how hollow it was.  He won not so much because people share his ideas, his vision, but because they like the image his consultants had crafted.

The Democrats and President Obama called their massive health care overhaul legislation, “the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. ” But, to those like myself who buy our own health insurance, it has made health care anything even less affordable; our insurance premiums have skyrocketed.  Mine have increased 45% since the legislation passed.  Other friends have seen even more steep increases.

That’s just one of the problems created by the unpopular legislation.  Some companies are now shifting to part-time workers in order to avoid the penalties imposed by the law:

Under the health care law, if an company has more than 50 “full time equivalent” workers, a combination of full and part-time employees, but doesn’t offer “affordable” coverage that meets the government’s minimum value standard, the company will have to pay a penalty. This penalty is determined by the number of full-time employees minus 30 full-time employees. So to reiterate a very important point: part-time workers are not part of the penalty formula. The health care law creates a perverse incentive to hire part-time versus full-time workers.

(Bold in original.)  Read the whole thing.

And drawing a smaller salary as part-time workers, these individuals will have even less money to spend on a product that has become more expensive, making health care even less affordable to them –as it is any American who buys his own insurance.

Bear this in mind today as you go to vote.  Mitt Romney has promised to repeal Obamacare.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: ObamaCare Exchange Policies May Hike Health Costs

From major newspapers across the country today.

-Bruce (@GayPatriot)