Congressman Trey Gowdy says that more Benghazi hearings are ‘coming quickly’ and they will be ‘explosive’.
When asked if it will include witnesses who were there but haven’t been allowed to come forward, he wouldn’t say directly because of confidentiality but told the Fox News host that she was ‘very warm’ and suggested it may include ‘direct testimony by eyewitnesses’:
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/Vm407JIsmgc”]
President Obama spoke on Friday at a Planned Parenthood event in Washington. President Obama waded back into the nation’s volatile culture wars on Friday as he assailed conservatives who have sought to restrict access to abortion and contraception, and promised women’s activists he would stand with them “fighting every step of the way.”
Addressing a meeting of Planned Parenthood, Mr. Obama singled out lawmakers in North Dakota, Mississippi and, by implication, the nation’s capital for proposing and in some cases enacting “absurd” laws that he said would return the country to the days before the Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing abortion rights.
“When you read about some of these laws, you want to check the calendar,” Mr. Obama said. “You want to make sure you’re still living in 2013. Forty years after the Supreme Court affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to privacy, including the right to choose, we shouldn’t have to remind people that when it comes to a woman’s health, no politician should get to decide what’s best for you.”
Mr. Obama was originally scheduled to address the group on Thursday but had to postpone his appearance to attend a memorial service in Texas for firefighters killed in a fertilizer plant explosion last week. Rather than pass off the obligation to another member of his administration, Mr. Obama asked the group to let him come a day late so he could speak out on an issue that galvanizes his liberal political base.
The president’s speech came at a time when several states have passed restrictive new abortion laws, and not long after a furor in Congress in which some Republicans objected to administration policies intended to ensure that insurance companies cover contraception.
North Dakota just enacted a law banning abortion when a heartbeat can be detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Arkansas this spring similarly banned most abortions at the 12th week of pregnancy. In Mississippi, conservatives tried to ban all abortions, only to have their effort rejected in a referendum in 2011. In Washington, some Republicans have questioned federal financing for Planned Parenthood because it provides abortion services, among other health care services.
Abortion opponents have also drawn attention lately to the trial of a Philadelphia doctor charged with killing viable fetuses during abortions. Three of seven murder charges against the doctor, Kermit Gosnell, were thrown out by a judge this week, but the grisly details of the case have, in the view of abortion opponents, highlighted the moral questions underlying abortion in the United States.
An antiabortion group said a local Planned Parenthood group had been aware of complaints about Dr. Gosnell but did not intervene. The Philadelphia Daily News quoted the local group’s leader as saying that women had complained to the group about conditions at Dr. Gosnell’s clinic, and that the group would encourage them to report their complaints to the health department.
“President Obama blatantly ignored this inconvenient truth about the abortion industry’s horrific lack of oversight and disparaged the pro-life advocates who wake up each morning with the goal of saving the lives of unborn children and women from the pain of abortion,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an antiabortion group.
Mr. Obama did not mention the case but condemned lawmakers who have targeted Planned Parenthood. “When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you, they’re talking about the millions of women who you serve,” he told the group’s gathering, at a Washington hotel. “And when they talk about cutting off your funding, let’s be clear they’re talking about telling many of those women you’re on your own.”
He pledged his loyalty to the group. “You’ve also got a president,” he said, “who’s going to be right here with you fighting every step of the way.”
April 25, 2013
CISPA is all but dead, again.
The controversial cybersecurity bill known as the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week, will almost certainly be shelved by the Senate, according to a representative of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
The bill would have allowed the federal government to share classified “cyber threat” information with companies, but it also provided provisions that would have allowed companies to share information about specific users with the government. Privacy advocates also worried that the National Security Administration would have gotten involved.
[READ: U.S. Military Writes Rules on Cybersecurity While Chinese Hacks Skyrocket]
“We’re not taking [CISPA] up,” the committee representative says. “Staff and senators are divvying up the issues and the key provisions everyone agrees would need to be handled if we’re going to strengthen cybersecurity. They’ll be drafting separate bills.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., chairman of the committee, said the passage of CISPA was “important,” but said the bill’s “privacy protections are insufficient.”
That, coupled with the fact that President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill, has even CISPA’s staunchest opponents, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, ready to bury CISPA and focus on future legislation.
“I think it’s dead for now,” says Michelle Richardson, legislative council with the ACLU. “CISPA is too controversial, it’s too expansive, it’s just not the same sort of program contemplated by the Senate last year. We’re pleased to hear the Senate will probably pick up where it left off last year.”
That’s not to say Congress won’t pass any cybersecurity legislation this year. Both Rockefeller and President Obama want to give American companies additional tools to fight back against cyberattacks from domestic and foreign hackers.
[READ: Lawmakers Who Pushed CISPA Were ‘Doxed’]
But cybersecurity legislation in the Senate, such as the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act of 2013, has greater privacy protections than CISPA does. Richardson says that bill makes it clear that companies would have to “pull out sensitive data [about citizens]” before companies send it to the government and also puts the program under “unequivocal civilian control,” something CISPA author Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., was unwilling to do.
Even if the Senate gets something done, Rogers and other CISPA supporters will likely have to compromise more than they’ve been willing to over the past year as Obama has made it clear he will veto legislation that doesn’t have more privacy protections.
“The way [Rogers] talks, [the House] has gone as far as they possibly can on privacy,” Richardson says. “I don’t know if that’s true and I’m not sure how they’ll respond when the Senate puts something back to them. But if they don’t figure out a compromise, they might not get any legislation at all.”
The commerce representative says that the Senate committee is “working toward separate bills” to improve cybersecurity, which are currently being drafted. But don’t expect these bills soon, as the Senate considers immigration, an Internet sales tax, the aftermath of the Boston bombing and the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control crisis in the wake of sequestration.
Richardson says she thinks it’ll be at least three months before the Senate takes a vote on any cybersecurity legislation.
“We need to be vigilant as the year moves on to make sure that whatever the next product is, it’s not CISPA-lite,” she says. “I think this is probably going to take the rest of the year.”
Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, was among the many GOP state executives who made national headlines this winter by endorsing Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, America’s government-run health insurance program for the poor. But what isn’t making headlines is that Michigan’s legislature, like its counterparts in Florida, Ohio, and Arizona, is not going along.
Expanding Medicaid, said Snyder on February 6, “makes sense for the physical and fiscal health” of Michigan. “It also puts Michigan, rather than Washington, in the driver’s seat in terms of implementation [of Obamacare], which allows us to better address Michigan’s specific needs.”
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/OxeBgU7xKpM”]
A fiscal windfall in the near-term, perpetual losses thereafter
There’s plenty of reason to disagree. It’s true that the state is likely to enjoy a short-term fiscal windfall if it expands Medicaid. But by 2020, the expansion will sink into the red, and lose money for the state thereafter.
The big factor in the Great Lakes State is that Michigan today has a very large mental health program for low-income state residents who aren’t eligible for Medicaid. By implementing Obamacare, Michigan can offload the cost of this program onto federal taxpayers. Indeed, according to estimates from the University of Michigan, the entire fiscal windfall that will accrue to the state can be accounted for by a reduction in state mental health spending ($885 million over five years) and a corresponding reduction in spending on health care for prison inmates ($234 million over the same period).
Overall, U of M projects that the state will make $1.1 billion off of the Medicaid expansion over its first five years, from 2014 to 2018. However, over the next five years, as more people sign up for the program, and the proportion of federal funding decreases, the state will lose $113 million. If you project out the next five years, assuming (as the university does) that Medicaid spending grows at 3 percent, while offsetting savings grow at 2.3 percent, with a 90 percent federal match, the state will lose $325 million over that period, with larger losses in future years.
State projections could be optimistic
And that’s based on a middle-case scenario. If more people than anticipated sign up for the program, or if costs are higher than projected, or if Congress decreases the federal match rate, or cracks down on state provider taxes, Michigan’s losses will be greater.
Gov. Snyder likes to call himself “one tough nerd”—it’s even his handle on Twitter—but it’s hardly tough to saddle Michigan taxpayers with perpetual deficit spending in order to collect a windfall while you’re in office. Snyder insists that he will sock away a portion of the near-term windfall to pay for future spending, but the history of entitlement programs should make us skeptical of that promise. Both Social Security and Medicare accumulated substantial surpluses in their early years, only to incur losses later on. The savings were not put away for a rainy day, but rather were frittered away on other priorities.
Today, even without Obamacare, Michigan spends 45 percent of its state budget on health care. That compares to 30 percent on education, 12 percent on jobs programs, and 6 percent on public safety—police, firemen, and the like. Health care is crowding out these other important state services, a problem that Obamacare will make worse.
State legislators’ skepticism will increase
The good news is that Michigan’s Republican-controlled legislature is displaying a responsible level of skepticism to Gov. Snyder’s proposal. In March, the House Appropriations subcommittee excluded funding for the Medicaid expansion from its relevant fiscal legislation. Rep. Matt Lori, the chairman of the subcommittee, actually supports the expansion, but his colleagues do not. “The short-term economic benefit is very appealing,” said Rep. Robert VerHeulen. “But I generally don’t support expansion of government.”
A big sticking point for VerHeulen is that the 1965 Medicaid law forbids states from asking Medicaid beneficiaries from contributing meaningfully to the cost of their own care. “Even if it’s 50 cents, it’s something contributing to one’s own health care or well-being,” says VerHeulen. “I think that’s a healthy objective.”
Lori, for his part, seems optimistic that he can persuade House Republicans to go along with the expansion. “People just need to be educated on the whole thing,” he said. “It’s very complicated.” “We don’t have the votes for what the governor put out,” said Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, “but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the votes to get something done that would expand Medicaid.”
It’s just as likely, however, that as Michigan legislators get more educated about the expansion, their skepticism will increase. That’s what’s happening in other GOP-controlled states.
Expansion founders in Ohio, Florida, Arizona
Last Thursday, the Ohio House of Representatives passed its biennial budget; like its counterpart to the north, the House excluded funds for the Medicaid expansion from the bill, despite the fact that Gov. John Kasich supports the expansion. (As with Michigan, there remains the possibility that the expansion could be funded in separate legislation.) The Florida House and Senate have also rejected the expansion, though they remain open to attractive market-oriented alternatives.
Arizona, another Republican-controlled state with a pro-expansion governor, is also a place where expansion is stalled. “The answer now is no,” saidArizona House Speaker Andy Tobin. “And I’m not putting the governor’s language up on the board.”
Arkansas, which has a Republican legislature and a Democratic governor, did pass an expansion bill last week; there, leading Republicans—naively, in my view—hope that they can make the Medicaid program function like private insurance does. Pro-expansion Republicans there have already broken their promise to pair the Medicaid expansion with tort and tax reform, bills that did not pass the legislature. The legislative session ends on Tuesday.
From a political standpoint, these state-level battles are playing out pretty consistently. On the pro-expansion side are the all-powerful hospital lobbies, who jump at any chance to grab taxpayer dollars; and the usual collection of progressive activists. But legislators in conservative districts are wary of endorsing Obamacare, and local Tea Party groups have made clear that they feel the same way.
“I am not a dictator,” President Obama has explained. “I’m the president.” So too it goes in state capitals, where Republican governors are finding that their endorsements of expanding Medicaid are, for now, facing strong resistance. The game is far from over—these state legislatures could change their minds—but expanding Medicaid has turned out to be far more challenging than many people once thought.
By George F. Will
America’s most interesting development since November is the Republican Party becoming more interesting. Consider the congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., who occupies the seat once held by Gerald Ford, embodiment of vanilla Republicanism.
Justin Amash, 33, may seek the Senate seat being vacated by six-term Democrat Carl Levin, who was elected in 1978, two years before Amash was born.
He absorbed a libertarian understanding of opportunity from the example of his father, who began his very successful business career by buying stuff from small wholesalers and selling it door-to-door. Amash graduated magna cum laude with an economics degree from the University of Michigan, then earned a law degree there. “Some of my views,” he says mildly, “were a little bit different from my Republican peers.” He began reading Friedrich Hayek and other representatives of the Austrian school of economics, and less than four years after he left Ann Arbor, he was in Michigan’s Legislature, where in his one term he cast the only “no” vote on more than 70 bills.
In foreign policy, “I’m a non-interventionist who believes there are reasons to wage war but defensive
reasons,” meaning “an actual or imminent — meaning immediate — threat.” Like his parents, Amash is an Orthodox Christian and pro-life. He believes marriage is a sacrament, but because others do not, perhaps “government should not be engaged in marriage at all.”He says, “Tell me how a Democrat is going to attack me on the social issues.” Republicans, however, might take up that task. Nevertheless, he thinks that he could win a Republican primary and that “my mix of positions is best for winning the general.”He adds, “Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”
Last month, when Paul was waging his 13-hour filibuster, Amash made his first visit to the Senate floor and was struck by the contrast with the House, which he says is “good fun” and “loud and boisterous.” The Senate would be more so with Amash inside, and Michigan Republicans, having lost six consecutive Senate elections, might reasonably want to try something new. But as Amash undertakes to “tear down the left-right paradigm,” he must consider how the delicate but constructive fusion of libertarians and social conservatives has served Republicans, and the sometimes inverse relationship between being interesting and being electable.
“Private business owners have enough challenges for success without having to compete against their government”, State Rep. Greg MacMaster said today, and that’s why he has introduced legislation to ensure Michigan allows anyone to bid on providing services or goods to the public.
The Kewadin lawmaker this week sponsored House Bill 4549 to put in place protections against government unnecessarily competing against private enterprise, with the exception of certain essential, necessary government functions, such as fire and police.
“Private business owners and entrepreneurs are the lifeblood and future of continuing Michigan’s economic resurgence so having clear limits on where government can compete with private enterprise will boost that growth, protect the future of our economic opportunities and ensure that government does not act beyond its function,” MacMaster said. “This bill creates a fair competitive playing field where all stakeholders in any type of business, including unions, can bid for the work.
“The bottom line is that if a company can be found in the Yellow Pages listings, the government shouldn’t be a monopolizing competitor.”
Earlier this month, after learning the Department of Corrections rejected three bids to competitively bid health care and food services, MacMaster, chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections, also began work to ensure all submitted bids are evaluated fairly and forthrightly.
The policies he wants to implement would clarify the state’s “request for proposals” process, which is the basis for the bidding system.
“The system needs some checks and balances so that proposal reviews are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges,” MacMaster said. “We are on top of this issue and doing everything we can to ensure that our government runs efficiently. The legislation and overseeing the procurement process for bidding of services is another reform we need to make so our hard-working taxpayers get the best value for their dollar in instances when the private sector can potentially provide services at a lower cost.”
HB 4549 has been assigned to the House Oversight Committee for consideration. MacMaster said the “request for proposal” language is being developed within the corrections budget legislation the Legislature expects to present to the governor in July.
This Sunday, April 21st, 2013 @ 4:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. – American Legion Hall – 131/S. Williams St. in Mancelona will host a “Pasta Dinner” to raise money for the newly formed “Antrim County Young Conservatives”!!!
Your choice of Spaghetti/Mostaccioli with homemade Italian Marinara sauce with Sausage/Meatballs, side salad, rolls with butter, and cookies or Red Velvet cake for desert. Choice of drinks or bottled water.
$5 per individual meal or $12 per Family,…Carry out dinners for $5 too!
Learn more about these fine Young citizens at their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/AntrimCountyYoungConservatives
Or, at this website link: http://acrpmi.org/acyc-2/
One Suspect in Boston Marathon Bombings Dead; Second Russian At Large
A Russian language social networking site bearing Dzhokar Tsarneav’s name paid tribute to Islamic websites and to those calling for Chechen independence. The author identified himself as a 2011 graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, a public school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He said he went to primary school in Makhachkala, capital of Dagestan, a province in Russia that borders on Chechnya, and listed his languages as English, Russian and Chechen.
His “World view” was listed as “Islam” and his “Personal priority” as “career and money”.
He posted links to videos of fighters in the Syrian civil war and to Islamic web pages with titles such as “Salamworld, my religion is Islam” and “There is no God by Allah, let that ring out in our hearts.”
He also had links to pages calling for independence for Chechnya, a region of Russia that lost its bid for independence after two wars in the 1990s.
Read more at this link: http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/boston-bombing-suspects/2013/04/18/id/500237
Click on this link for the video of President Obama’s remarks which start at the 4:50 minute mark;
“A Shameful Day for Washington” per President Obama
Hollywood, CA – Today the Republican National Committee passed the resolution proposed to the Resolutions Committee by Michigan’s Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema,…which passed UNANIMOUSLY!!!
The Republican National Committee confirmed GOD, Pro-LIFE, our natural rights to keep and bear ARMS, LEGAL IMMIGRATION and MARRIAGE is defined as between ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN!!!
Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema issued the following statement in response:
“Social Conservatives in recent weeks were disheartened by the rhetoric coming out of the Growth and Opportunity Project with regard to moderating our position on gay marriage. Simply put, if the party moderated its stance then many of our voters and social conservative leaders would have left the party.
We responded by bringing significant attention to this important issue and ultimately passing a resolution at the RNC that re-confirmed our party platform in favor of marriage being defined as being between a man and a woman.
I am pleased with our success in the face of unrelenting criticism from the left and want to thank national social conservative leaders who made their voices heard loud and clear in this process.
I hope that we can all now move forward and talk about other issues now that we have reconfirmed that our party supports traditional marriage. We have won the battle, and I will have nothing more to say on this matter.”
