Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Posts Tagged ‘Regulation’

If you’re opposed to the idolatrous cult of the Messianic Nanny State, beware…the Obama administration has you in their cross-hairs.

John Boyle writes at The Citizen-Times:

In a blistering letter to President Barack Obama, the Rev. Franklin Graham said the IRS targeted the two non-profits he heads with an audit last year after the organizations took out ads urging people to support biblical principles on marriage and in choosing political candidates.

In the letter, dated Tuesday, Graham said in light of recent revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names, he does not believe the audit was “a coincidence — or justifiable.” Graham, son of famed Christian evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham, now heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association based in Charlotte, N.C., and Samaritan’s Purse, a worldwide relief organization headquartered in Boone.

“I am bringing this to your attention because I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us,” Graham concluded in the letter. “This is morally wrong and unethical — indeed some would call it ‘un-American.’”

Read more at The Citizen-Times

Steven Ertelt writes at Life News:

James Dobson, the pro-life family advocate disclosed today that he was a victim of IRS discrimination, in a revelation that adds to the growing Internal Revenue Scandal.

Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, says he faced discrimination from the federal agency when trying to start a new group.

Family Talk Action Corporation is a Christian ministry that was formed for the purpose of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ; of providing Christ-oriented advice and education to parents and children; and of speaking to cultural issues that affect the family. Dobson is the president and CEO.

On September 2, 2011, Family Talk Action filed a Form 1024 with the Internal Revenue Service requesting § 501(c)(4) status. The attorney completing this form had submitted scores of similar applications over his 26 year career with none being rejected.

In January and February 2013, Family Talk Action’s counsel called the IRS reviewing agent, R. Medley (ID no. 52402), to inquire regarding when there would be a determination of the application. Her voice mail box was full on each of these calls so no message could be left. On March 6, he called Ms. Medley again and got routed to her voice mail again. This time, he was able to leave a voice mail message and requested a return call.

Medley did not call back until March 19. Family Talk Action’s attorney asked her when the IRS would issue its determination letter. Ms. Medley responded saying, I don’t think your Form 1024 (application for exemption) will be granted because Family Talk Action is “not educational” because it does not present all views. She continued, saying that Family Talk Action sounded like a “partisan right-wing group” because, according to Ms. Medley, it only presents conservative viewpoints.

She then added, “you’re political” because you “criticized President Obama, who was a candidate.”

Read more at Life News

Dobson and Graham weren’t the only targets during the 2012 campaign:

The Biblical Recorder, the official news journal for North Carolina Southern Baptists, found itself in the same situation in March – audited for the first time since the Baptist newspaper was founded in 1833.

The newspaper garnered national attention last summer after Editor Allan Blume published an interview with Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy. In reference to his support of the traditional family, Cathy said he was “guilty as charged.”

The Biblical Recorder also published the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s ads affirming traditional marriage.

And then – came the telephone call from the Internal Revenue Service.

“It raised some red flags and made me wonder why we were being targeted for an audit when we have been around since 1833 and have never been audited before,” Blume told Fox News. “Putting it all together made me wonder.”

Blume said the timing may have been coincidental – but “it didn’t seem that way.”

“There seems to be a very anti-Christian bias that has flowed into a lot of government agencies – oppression literally against Christian organizations and groups,” he said. “It makes you wonder what’s going on.

Blume said the newspaper was eventually cleared, but the audit consumed time and money.

“It was a lot of time and energy that we didn’t have,” he said. “It took some of our staff literally several weeks of doing nothing but that (the audit),” he said.

Read more at Red State

It’s also come to light that the IRS was targeting pro-Israel groups and pro-life groups:

IRS officials refused to grant tax exempt status to two pro-life organizations because of their position on the abortion issue, according to a non-profit law firm, which said that one group was pressured not to protest a pro-choice organization that endorsed President Obama during the last election.

“In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board’s signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood,” the Thomas More Society announced today. “Once the IRS received this letter, their application would be approved.”

Planned Parenthood endorsed Obama in 2008 and 2012.

The IRS also pressured another pro-life group about its religious activities. “The IRS withheld approval of an application for charitable tax-exempt recognition of Christian Voices for Life, questioning the group’s involvement with ’40 Days for Life’ and ‘Life Chain’ events,” according to the law firm. “The Fort Bend County, Texas, organization was subjected to repeated and lengthy unconstitutional requests for information about the viewpoint and content of its educational communications, volunteer prayer vigils, and other protected activities.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner

With this much coordination against his “enemies,” there’s NO WAY Obama didn’t know about it.

“Very Frightening”: Prominent Catholic Professor Claims IRS Audited Her After Speaking Out Against Obama And Demanded To Know Who Was Paying Her

Why Would the IRS Target Billy Graham?

Surprise!  Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor

IRS Admits To Targeting Conservative Groups For Harassment

IRS Tried to Swing 2012 Election Towards Obama

Why is the IRS Regulating Speech In The First Place?

At this point, I’m not the least bit surprised.

The Investors Business Daily editorial board observes:

[A]s details of the IRS scandal emerge, it’s increasingly giving the appearance of a wide-scale effort to tilt the playing field against conservative activist groups who might have been helpful to Republican candidates in the 2012 election, while at the same time coddling liberal groups helpful to Obama.

Consider what we now know the IRS did:

• Gave preferential treatment to liberal groups. On Tuesday, USA Today reported that while the IRS was hounding conservative groups and holding up their applications for tax-exempt status, it was quickly ushering liberal groups with names like “Progress Florida” and “Missourians Organizing for Reform” through the process.

USA Today found that in the 27 months after Feb. 2010, the IRS did not approve a single Tea Party application. Over those same months, however, dozens of applications submitted by liberal groups that were engaged in the same type of activities and were seeking the same tax status as the conservative ones sailed through the agency.

[...]   • Made unusual document requests. Not only did the IRS target conservative groups for extra scrutiny, it also asked for massive amounts of information that it couldn’t possibly need to determine tax-exempt status.

[...]   • Engaged in selective leaks. This week, ProPublica, a liberal-leaning nonprofit journalism organization, revealed that the IRS had leaked it nearly a dozen pending applications, including one submitted by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS.

Read more at IBD

Tea Party groups reported waiting up to 3 years to get approval for their tax-exempt status, while liberal groups were approved in a matter of weeks.   One Tea Party group claims that, after waiting for over a year with no response, they changed their name to one that sounded more “liberal” and were approved in 3 weeks.

Another Tea Party group in Ohio said that the IRS effectively shut down their efforts in the 2012 election:

Tom Zawistowski, executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, said donors stopped contributing to causes and candidates because of the confusion and fear that the IRS created.

“They succeeded in preventing us from doing what we were trying to do in 2012,” Zawistowski said. “Groups literally stopped fundraising in the summer of last year.”

The IRS is under investigation for the excessive scrutiny it gave conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, a practice that elicited complaints from the Portage County Tea Party and other groups during the 2012 presidential election campaign.

Read more at Newsmax

In addition, the IRS audited and intimidated large donors to Romney’s campaign, such as businessman Frank VanderSloot.  He says that he wasn’t the only one:

Billionaire businessman Frank VanderSloot, a major Mitt Romney super PAC donor who was subjected to three federal agency audits after being slimed by the Obama campaign, says he isn’t the only one of his peers who was audited after donating to Romney.

VanderSloot, who was also national co-chair of the Romney campaign’s finance committee, was described in an April 2012 Obama campaign Web posting as one of eight “wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.”

Shortly after the post appeared, VanderSloot was subjected to two Internal Revenue Service audits — one focusing on his personal finances, the other related to his business interests — and a Labor Department audit of one of his businesses. When asked about whether any of the other seven donors who appeared on the list were audited as well, VanderSloot spoke cautiously, but did say he “wasn’t the only one.”

“I talked to only a handful of them since,” VanderSloot said. ”I’ve reached out to all of them. But only got calls back from a handful and most of the responses were they’re just laying low, you know, they took their own beatings and they don’t want any more of it and they don’t want to even talk about this.”

Read more at the Daily Caller

We also know that the IRS leaked confidential documents which were used by Obama’s re-election campaign to attack Mitt Romney.

Conclusion: the IRS was turned into the mafia intimidation arm of the Obama campaign.

Are we finally ready to abolish a corrupt agency who’s powers can be so easily weaponized against innocent citizens?

Documents: IRS letters harassing conservative groups came from Washington, DC headquarters and from California offices, despite Inspector General’s focus on Cincinnati employees

IRS Admits To Targeting Conservative Groups For Harassment

Mark Levin: The Democrats are up to their eyeballs in this IRS scandal; their fingerprints are all over it

IRS Employees Donated Over Twice as Much to Obama in 2012

Romney Donor On Obama’s ‘Enemies List’ Now Harrassed By IRS, Labor Dept.

Obama’s Enemies List: Targeting Private Citizens Who Support His Opponents

Another day, another Obama scandal.

Erin McCann reports at Healthcare IT News:

The Internal Revenue Service is now facing a class action lawsuit over allegations that it improperly accessed and stole the health records of some 10 million Americans, including medical records of all California state judges.

According to a report by Courthousenews.com, an unnamed HIPAA-covered entity in California is suing the IRS, alleging that some 60 million medical records from 10 million patients were stolen by 15 IRS agents. The personal health information seized on March 11, 2011, included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment and other medical treatment data.

“This is an action involving the corruption and abuse of power by several Internal Revenue Service agents,” the complaint reads. “No search warrant authorized the seizure of these records; no subpoena authorized the seizure of these records; none of the 10,000,000 Americans were under any kind of known criminal or civil investigation and their medical records had no relevance whatsoever to the IRS search. IT personnel at the scene, a HIPPA facility warning on the building and the IT portion of the searched premises, and the company executives each warned the IRS agents of these privileged records,” it continued.

Read more at Healthcare IT News

John Hayward remarks:

How much money is on the line in this suit?  Oh, a mere $25,000 in compensatory damages.  Per violation.  Which adds up to “a minimum of $250 billion.”

Has Congress begun those emergency sessions to shut down ObamaCare yet?  What else do they need to hear?

Read more at Human Events

Lawsuit Accuses IRS of Stealing Medical Records of 10 Million Americans

Who Trusts The Scandal-Ridden IRS To Not Abuse Access To Confidential Patient Health Information?

Big Brother Healthcare: Obamacare Includes Random Health ‘Inspections,’ Mandatory Reporting Of Your Health Stats To Gov’t

Farewell, Personal and Medical Privacy: ObamaTax is Here

No, You Can’t Google My Private Health Records: Obamacare’s Intrusive Data Grab

New HHS Regulation Creates Government Database of Your Private Health Information

Barely a week ago, President Obama stood before a crowd of new graduates and told them to reject the voices which warned them to be wary of government tyranny and oppression.

His remarks are all the more ironic, given the explosion of scandals which have been exposed this week, not the least of which involves the Obama administration using the IRS to intimidate and harass political opponents.

The Associated Press reports:

The Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for what it acknowledged was “inappropriate” targeting of conservative political groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.

IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their exemption applications, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

Read more at AP

Conservative applicants were forced to answer bizarre and intrusive questions, provide mounds of paperwork, and wait as the IRS stalled on their applications for up to three years.   For some groups, these hurdles prevented them from fully participating in the 2012 election.

The criteria for targeted groups was expanded over time to include nearly anyone who dared disagree with Obama’s policies:

An IRS campaign to apply additional scrutiny to conservative groups went beyond targeting “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups to include those focused on government spending, the Constitution and several other broad areas.

[...]   The internal IG timeline shows a unit in the agency was looking at Tea Party and “patriot” groups dating back to early 2010. But it shows that list of criteria drastically expanding by the time a June 2011 briefing was held. It then included groups focused on government spending, government debt, taxes, and education on ways to “make America a better place to live.” It even flagged groups whose file included criticism of “how the country is being run.”

By early 2012, the criteria were updated to include organizations involved in “limiting/expanding government,” education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and social economic reform.

Read more at Fox News

It wasn’t just Tea Party groups being targeted.  The IRS also targeted pro-life groups, Jewish groups, and individuals who dared to challenge, question or criticize Obama or his policies, including Billy Graham, columnist Todd Starnes, news anchor Larry Conners, businessman and Romney donor Frank VanderSloot, and  Wayne Allyn Root, who describes the ugly ordeal:

I am the face of Obama’s IRS attacks. I am proof of how bad it is, when it started, that it was directed at individuals as well as groups, and that it did not involve only “low level IRS employees.”

[...]  Most importantly, I’m living proof it was directed at individuals — with the intent of ruining our lives. It almost ruined mine. This is important because the American public needs to see the faces of the targets. I have a wife and 4 children. I didn’t deserve this.

Here is my personal story. I’m a small businessman, but also a national media personality with a megaphone. I’m an outspoken critic of Obama. My views are seen by millions on Fox News Channel, and read at web sites like The Blaze and FoxNews.com. And in almost every media appearance its pointed out that I’m Obama’s Columbia Class of ‘83 classmate. You don’t think Obama noticed?

The result? In January, 2011 an unprecedented IRS attack was launched against me. My personal story of IRS attack was covered extensively by conservative media.

In 30 years of doing business, I’ve had a spotless tax record. And I had never heard a peep from the IRS. The attack was so over-zealous and out of bounds, I was forced to hire one of this nation’s top tax attorneys, who took my case to court where we won a 100% victory.

My relief at being vindicated lasted five days! Then the IRS announced a new tax audit against me.

My attorney had never heard of such a thing and, before me, assumed it wasn’t possible.

The many legal and accounting experts (who drained my savings)  all agreed this could only happen if I was on “Obama Enemies List.”

The attack was chilling and intimidating, affecting every aspect of my life. It was meant to bleed me dry, and teach me a lesson — if you dare to criticize Obama, get ready to lose everything.

Read more at Fox News

Former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld claims that the IRS has been used to retaliate against businessmen who dared to speak out, as well:

“Having been in the position of a chief executive officer, I can understand why a businessman might be reluctant to speak out against the actions of federal agencies that have the power to harm their enterprises,” he wrote in Rumsfeld’s Rules, which goes on sale Tuesday.

“By doing so, corporate leaders could expose themselves and their companies to government retaliation–from the IRS, the SEC, congressional committees, or the many other agencies of the federal government that regulate and oversee their operations,” he added.

Criticism of presidents, he said, is hard. “I suppose if more business leaders defended capitalism, there might not be quite as many smiling photos with politicians.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner

As if this weren’t bad enough, it appears that not only was the IRS targeting conservatives for additional scrutiny and investigation, but they were also handing over their confidential information to progressive groups that could use the information against them:

The progressive-leaning investigative journalism group ProPublica says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) office that targeted and harassed conservative tax-exempt groups during the 2012 election cycle gave the progressive group nine confidential applications of conservative groups whose tax-exempt status was pending.

The commendable admission lends further evidence to the lengths the IRS went during an election cycle to silence tea party and limited government voices.

Read more at Breitbart

It didn’t stop there:

A little over a year ago, I reported that, ”It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group.”

Now — on the heels of news the IRS’s apology for having targeted conservative groups — NOM is renewing their demand that the Internal Revenue Service reveal the identity of the people responsible.

“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brow, in a prepared statement. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”

Read more at the Daily Caller

Eric Holder’s corrupt Department of Justice has promised to investigate the IRS scandal.   Congressman Issa scoffed at the idea of the Executive branch legitimately investigating itself, promising a thorough and transparent congressional investigation.

The House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight is already demanding all IRS communications which contain conservative buzz words such as “tea party” or “patriot,” along with the names of anyone involved in the scandal.

With full Obamacare implementation only months away, who wouldn’t want the same agency that recently admitted to targeting dissidents to have access to all of your personal health info?

Repeal the 16th Amendment. Abolish the IRS.

The IRS Is The Internal Retaliation Service

Mark Levin Forces IRS Apology for Targeting Conservative Groups

IRS targeted conservatives as early as 2010. Read I.G. report.

IRS Intimidation Forced Founder To Shut Down Tea Party Group

IRS Lied to Congress about Targeting Tea Party

Republicans slam IRS targeting of Tea Party as ‘chilling,’ a form of intimidation

Ted Cruz: IRS Scandal “Harkens Back To The Days Of Nixon,” Proof Obama Keeps An “Enemies List”

A Reminder of How the Obama Government Has Repeatedly Targeted Conservatives

IRS Office That Targeted Tea Party Also Disclosed Confidential Docs From Conservative Groups

McConnell warned IRS was ‘demanding attendance lists, meeting transcripts, and donor information’ from tea party groups

Tax Audits Are No Laughing Matter: A president shouldn’t even joke about abusing IRS power

Chuck Todd on IRS targeting right-wing groups: “Why aren’t more Democrats jumping on this? It’s outrageous…”

George Will: If Bush Had IRS Going After Progressives ‘We Would Have All Hell Breaking Loose’

IRS Employees Donated Over Twice as Much to Obama in 2012

Obama’s Enemies List: Targeting Private Citizens Who Support His Opponents

Nice health care company you’ve got there…would be a pity if anything happened to it.

Welcome to pay-to-play health care.  It’s the Chicago way.

Sarah Kliff reports at the Washington Post:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has gone, hat in hand, to health industry officials, asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama’s landmark health-care law, two people familiar with the outreach said.

Her unusual fundraising push comes after Congress repeatedly rejected the Obama administration’s requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Care Act, leaving HHS to implement the president’s signature legislative accomplishment on what officials have described as a shoestring budget.

Over the past three months, Sebelius has made multiple phone calls to health industry executives, community organizations and church groups and asked that they contribute whatever they can to nonprofit groups that are working to enroll uninsured Americans and increase awareness of the law, according to an HHS official and an industry person familiar with the secretary’s activities. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk openly about private discussions.

[...]  Federal regulations do not allow department officials to fundraise in their professional capacity. They do, however, allow Cabinet members to solicit donations as private citizens “if you do not solicit funds from a subordinate or from someone who has or seeks business with the Department, and you do not use your official title,” according to Justice Department regulations.

Read more at the Washington Post

Guy Benson observes:

This has all the hallmarks of a shakedown.  DrewM at Ace of Spades snarkily summarizes: “Hi I’m HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. You may recall I have tremendous discretionary power over your company and entire industry. Would you like to donate to my favorite cause? You would? Thank you so much.”  Obamacare vests Sebelius with an enormous amount of regulatory power; she has the ability to make life exceedingly difficult for any company that crosses her (recall her “zero tolerance” quote).  “Friendly” requests for “voluntary” donations may not seem optional for companies who sense the HHS Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.   [...]

Harry Reid recently grumbled about Republicans’ refusal to pump more taxpayer money into Obamacare’s implementation phase.  The GOP has stood firm against committing even one more penny to the extravagantly expensive, enduringly unpopular and logistically shambolic program.  The administration’s apparent solution to this problem of their own making is to coerce private businesses into financing a bailout.

Read more at Townhall

Senator McConnell argues:

“That’s absolutely improper if not illegal. This administration will stop at nothing to get its way. It will do anything it can to silence its critics.”

Read more at Breitbart

Now begins the investigation into yet another Obama administration scandal:

House Republicans are starting a probe into Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius soliciting donations from companies her agency might regulate, to help sign up uninsured Americans for ObamaCare.

[T]he solicitations, through speeches and phone calls, have raised questions about whether a federal official can ask for money from groups he or she oversees.

The Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee began a probe by sending a letter Monday to Sebelius and groups that she might have contacted.

The letter to Sebelius asks her to provide several pieces of information by May 27 related to the solicitations, including names of those contacted “in this unusual fundraising pitch” as well as phone logs and whether other agency officials were involved.

Read more at Fox News

Committee Investigating HHS For Illegally Soliciting Funds

Sebelius Shakes Down Companies She Regulates for Cash to Implement ObamaCare

Sebelius Under Fire for ObamaCare Fundraising Bypassing Congress

GOP probing Sebelius’s fundraising push: “Clear appearance of a conflict of interest”

Lamar Alexander: Sebelius fundraising ‘arguably an even bigger issue’ than Iran-Contra

HHS Sticks Taxpayers With $20 Million Bill For Propaganda Promoting Obamacare

Sestak, Solyndra, Pigford, Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS targeting, AP phone records, HHS soliciting funds, and now the revelation of EPA double standards.

With this administration it’s just one lawless scandal after another. When will the American people finally say ENOUGH!?

Michael Bastasch reports at the Daily Caller:

The IRS may not be the only federal agency singling out conservative groups. Records suggest that the Environmental Protection Agency has made it easier for environmental groups to file Freedom of Information Act requests than conservative organizations.

According to EPA records obtained by the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute, since January 2012 the agency has granted fee waivers for 75 out of 82 Freedom of Information Act Requests sent by major environmental groups, denying only seven of them — meaning green groups saw their fees waived 92 percent of the time.

At the same time, the EPA frequently denied fee waivers to conservative groups. EPA records show that the agency rejected or ignored 21 out of 26 fee waiver requests from such conservative groups as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, and Judicial Watch — an 81 percent rejection rate.

[...]  “This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI senior fellow Chris Horner, author of “The Liberal War on Transparency.”

Horner described the EPA’s actions as “a clear pattern of favoritism for allied groups and “a concerted campaign to make life more difficult for those deemed unfriendly.”

Read more at the Daily Caller

Bryan Preston observes:

This kind of favoritism springs from a worldview. The EPA that authored this bias was the same EPA led by Lisa Jackson. She left office last year amid her own scandal involving the use of personal, secret email accounts to conduct agency business — the “Richard Windsor” scandal.

It’s time to ask a serious question. In light of the IRS targeting conservatives and the EPA denying conservatives at the same time, do liberals even believe that conservatives are due fair treatment under the law?

Read more at PJ Media

The EPA has become an unaccountable, tyrannical weapon wielded by unelected bureaucrats to abuse unconstitutional powers to advance their agenda.

It’s time for the EPA to be abolished, along with every other agency that doesn’t fall under the specific, enumerated powers granted in the constitution to the federal government.

Note To Republicans: Don’t Just Rein in the EPA, Abolish It

Report: EPA followed double standard for conservative groups too?

EPA waives fee requests for friendly groups, denies conservative groups

EPA Administrator Resigns Amid Investigation for Using Fake Emails to Hide Info

EPA’s Official Position On Oil Companies: “Crucify Them”

Just Freeze! EPA Says Burning Wood Is Bad, but so Is Natural Gas, Coal, Oil

EPA Punishes Companies For Not Buying ‘Green’ Fuel That Doesn’t Exist

EPA Uses Drones To Spy On Mid-Western Farms, Cattle Ranches

EPA power grab to regulate ditches, gullies on private property

Unreal! Late-term abortionist Leroy Carhart was caught on tape describing the grisly abortion procedure and lying to women about the dangers:

View on YouTube

John Hayward gives a chilling overview of the content:

The fourth undercover video in LiveAction’s “Inhuman” expose of late-term abortion brings us renowned abortionist Dr. LeRoy Carhart reassuring a pregnant woman that carrying a dead 26-week baby inside her womb for three days is no big deal.  ”It’s like putting meat in a Crock-Pot, OK?” he says.

Carhart also jokes that his tools for dismembering and removing a dead child include “a pickaxe” and “a drill bit.”  When advising the woman to allow nothing into her vagina for three weeks after the procedure, he says, “As I tell everyone, that includes fingers, friends, and fruit, OK?”

The famed abortionist begins telling his patient that she’ll be affected emotionally and psychologically by the procedure… but then he tries to portray it as a positive life experience, dismissing the notion of post-abortion depression.  [...]

Like other late-term abortion doctors and clinic staffers profiled in the “Inhuman” series, Carhart frantically instructs his prospective patient not to call 911 if she goes into labor during the procedure, because “they’ll take you to the hospital, right?  They won’t bring you to the clinic, so…”

Instead, he advises her to get in a car and drive to the clinic, or call him.  And this later segment of the video was made 7 weeks after Jennifer Morbelli’s death.  Put that in your Crock-Pot and slow-cook it.

Read more a Human Events

Undercover Video Exposes Dark Underworld Of Late-Term Abortions

Infanticide in America: it’s real, and it’s happening more often than you think

Abortion’s Underside: Kermit Gosnell is not the only seedy backroom abortionist operating in the age of Roe v. Wade

Planned Parenthood Argues For ‘Right’ To Murder Infants Already Born

Obama’s Twisted, Symbiotic Relationship With the Abortion Industry

Think Kermit Gosnell‘s barbaric practices are rare? Think again.

Live Action goes undercover to expose the barbaric reality of late-term abortions in the United States.

In this first video, a 23-week pregnant woman is told how her baby will be placed in a toxic solution to drown if he/she is born alive, and advised to “flush it” down the toilet if she happens to accidentally deliver at home:

View on YouTube

In the second video, a doctor explains how he tries to sever the umbilical cord to kill the baby in utero, then admits that he is legally obligated to help the baby if it happens to survive the abortion, but would allow him/her to suffocate instead:

View on YouTube

Lila Rose, founder of Live Action, spoke to Bill O’Reilly about the inhumanity that the abortion culture has led us to:

View on YouTube

Are there more abortion doctors like Kermit Gosnell? And do we want to know?

Late-term abortionist: saving infants born alive ‘the stupidest thing they could have done’

Abortion Clinic Workers Refuse To Help Mother Screaming to Save Live Child

Media Ignores Trial Of Gruesome Serial Killer – Because He’s An Abortionist

Planned Parenthood Argues For ‘Right’ To Murder Infants Already Born

Lila Rose Debates Abortion Activist Defending Infanticide Videos

DC Abortion Doctor: Pro-Lifers With Video Cameras Are “Terrorists”

Abortion Clinics Caught On Tape Arranging Illegal Sex-Selection Abortions

Caught On Tape: Planned Parenthood Assisting with Underage Sex Trafficking

Planned Parenthood exposed: hiding child abuse, lying to patients

Planned Parenthood CAUGHT lying to clients, giving birth control to children

Investigation of medical lies and manipulation at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin

Yesterday, the judge in the Gosnell trial dropped 3 murder charges against him:

The judge ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue the three first-degree murder charges against 72-year-old Gosnell, ABC reported.

[...]  ABC reports the judge didn’t immediately explain why there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue the three murder charges. The case against Gosnell appeared to suffer a setback last week when the chief medical examiner testified he couldn’t say for sure whether any of the fetuses found in Gosnell’s clinic were born alive.

Gosnell is accused of operating a filthy clinic, spreading venereal diseases by using dirty equipment and routinely killing newborns. The crux of his defense is that no babies were ever born alive in his clinic.

Read more at Business Insider

The “lack of evidence” they cite has to do with whether or not the babies were alive outside the womb before Gosnell killed them. As if biologically or ethically, the location matters! Inside or outside the womb, it’s STILL killing a live baby!  Our legal system is so messed up!

Today, the judge changed his mind about one of the charges:

The judge in the Kermit Gosnell murder trial admitted today he made an error when dropping one of the charges against the abortion practitioner.

Common pleas court Judge Jeffrey Minehart admitted he “erred” when dropping the murder charge for Baby C, who was killed in an abortion-infanticide when he was a victim of an attempted abortion but was born alive and tossed in a shoe box, with Gosnell staffers confirming they saw him breathing for 20 minutes.

Gosnell faces eight total murder counts — one for killing a woman in a botched abortion and seven for killing babies in abortion-infanticides that involved live-birth abortions and snipping their necks after birth. The judge received heavy criticism yesterday for dropping three of the murder charges.

Read more at Life News

Gosnell still facing 380 criminal charges, including five murder charges

Gosnell Worker: Baby Screamed During Live-Birth “Abortion”

Gosnell Trial Witness: Baby Abortion Survivor Was ‘Swimming’ in Toilet ‘Trying to Get Out’

Gosnell Worker: Baby “Jumped” When I Snipped Her Neck in Abortion

Worker at Gosnell Clinic: Baby’s Chest Moved After Neck Snipped

Abortionist Slit Necks of Born Babies in Front of Teenager; Told Assistant: ‘That’s What You Call a Chicken With Its Head Cut Off’

Nurses Share Stories of Witnessing Babies Born Alive After Abortions

‘This baby is alive!’: the heartbreaking story of Baby Hope

‘That’s not a baby. That’s an abortion!’: clinic workers describe babies born alive

‘This is so hard. Oh, God, it’s so hard!’: nurses tell of aborted babies born alive

Media Ignores Trial Of Gruesome Serial Killer – Because He’s An Abortionist

Mark Steyn: All atrocities are not created equal

The trial of the century is underway, but the media seating looks like this:

Why?  Because the man on trial is an abortionist.

Kermit Gosnell is a monster.

He drugged patients that came to him for late term abortions and would leave them for hours, waiting for their babies to be born so he could kill them by snipping their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.

He had a special waiting room just for white patients, while his minority patients waited in squalor.   His floors and medical charts were stained with blood.

He used and reused dirty instruments for multiple patients without sterilizing them, giving some of them STD’s.

He killed at least one woman, but did absolutely nothing to try to save her and abandoned her after the paramedics picked her up.

A former worker at the clinic testified that Gosnell’s gruesome practice of snipping babies’ necks “gave me the creeps.”   She knew the babies were still alive because she witnessed one baby “jump” when he was stabbed in the neck, and other who’s chest was still moving even after his spine had been severed.

Gosnell told one teenage assistant, “That’s what you call a chicken with its head cut off.”

Another former employee recalled a baby who screamed after surviving an abortion, only to be killed later.

Gosnell kept the remains of at least 47 babies in cat food containers and other receptacles around his office.  He kept their severed feet in jars.  Some of the babies were disposed of down the toilets, which would frequently back up from body parts.

The Pennsylvania Health Department deliberately ignored complaints and refused to investigate them for years.

His clinic went 17 years without a health inspection, until an FBI raid in 2010 revealed a gruesome sight:

They found moaning women covered in blood-stained blankets and jars with severed fetus feet, according to the 281-page grand jury report.

The grand jury report that lays out allegations against Gosnell has an entire section called “How did this go on so long?” The simple answer is politics.

Pennsylvania’s health department stopped routine inspections of abortion facilities in the state after Tom Ridge, a pro-choice Republican, became governor in 1995.

Health department lawyers “changed their legal opinions and advice to suit the policy preferences of different governors,” health department official Janet Staloski said in grand jury testimony. In this case, she said the state didn’t want to be “putting a barrier up to women” who wanted abortions.

Read more at at Business Insider

The reason they avoided inspecting abortion clinics is the same reason the media avoids reporting on their atrocities: they want to protect abortion-on-demand, no matter how many people get hurt or killed.

Because Gosnell was an abortionist whose victims were premature babies, the media covers up his atrocities as if they never happened. His crimes don’t serve their political agenda. His tortured victims are brushed under the rug.

Even Connor Friedersdorf from The Atlantic argues that this story should be front-page news:

The grand jury report in the case of Kermit Gosnell, 72, is among the most horrifying I’ve read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy – and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors,” it states. “The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels – and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths.”

Charged with seven counts of first-degree murder, Gosnell is now standing trial in a Philadelphia courtroom. An NBC affiliate’s coverage includes testimony as grisly as you’d expect. “An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions,” the channel reports. “Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.’ He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, ‘it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.’”

[...]  One woman “was left lying in place for hours after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon while trying, unsuccessfully, to extract the fetus,” the report states. Another patient, 19, “was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus. As a result of the delay, she fell into shock from blood loss, and had to undergo a hysterectomy.” A third patient “went into convulsions during an abortion, fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor. Gosnell wouldn’t call an ambulance, and wouldn’t let the woman’s companion leave the building so that he could call an ambulance.”

[...]   Inducing live births and subsequently severing the heads of the babies is indeed a horrific story that merits significant attention. Strange as it seems to say it, however, that understates the case.

For this isn’t solely a story about babies having their heads severed, though it is that. It is also a story about a place where, according to the grand jury, women were sent to give birth into toilets; where a doctor casually spread gonorrhea and chlamydiae to unsuspecting women through the reuse of cheap, disposable instruments; an office where a 15-year-old administered anesthesia; an office where former workers admit to playing games when giving patients powerful narcotics; an office where white women were attended to by a doctor and black women were pawned off on clueless untrained staffers. Any single one of those things would itself make for a blockbuster news story. Is it even conceivable that an optometrist who attended to his white patients in a clean office while an intern took care of the black patients in a filthy room wouldn’t make national headlines?

But it isn’t even solely a story of a rogue clinic that’s awful in all sorts of sensational ways either. Multiple local and state agencies are implicated in an oversight failure that is epic in proportions! If I were a city editor for any Philadelphia newspaper the grand jury report would suggest a dozen major investigative projects I could undertake if I had the staff to support them. And I probably wouldn’t have the staff. But there is so much fodder for additional reporting.

Read more at The Atlantic

One pro-abortion blogger was unusually candid about why she and her fellow leftists wouldn’t cover the story:

[T]hose of us who are pro-choice must worry that this will restrict access to abortion: that a crackdown on abortion clinics will follow, with onerous white-glove inspections; that a revolted public will demand more restrictions on late-term abortions; or that women will be too afraid of Gosnell-style crimes to seek a medically necessary abortion.

Read more at Live Action

What if Dr. Kermit Gosnell had snipped the spinal cords of puppies whose owners and brought them to him to be put down?   What if he had murdered teenage girls whose parents didn’t want them anymore, and stored their severed feet as trophies in jars?   What if he had used a gun as a murder weapon?  Would the media have ignored him then?

Consider how the media praised Dr. Tiller, a late-term abortionist who was murdered.   The only difference between Dr. Tiller and Dr. Gosnell was the location of the baby and the method of execution.  Dr. Tiller made sure the babies’ head stayed inside the birth canal as he punctured their skulls and vacuumed out their brain matter.   Dr. Gosnell delivered them live, and then severed their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.   What difference does it make?  Both inflicted excruciating pain and death on innocent, helpless infants.

Planned Parenthood, which pretends to condemn Gosnells’ actions, has already admitted that they support killing infants who survive abortion.  President Obama voted multiple times as a senator to deny medical care to babies who were born alive after a botched abortion attempt.

All of them deny a baby’s humanity and unalienable right to life.  The only difference is that Dr. Gosnell found an especially gruesome way to speed up the process.

The Left and the media (but I repeat myself) support infanticide both inside and outside the womb, at any and every stage of pregnancy and immediately after birth.   That is why they are trying to ignore the Gosnell story.  They secretly support him.  They consider him a warrior for the sacred cause of a “woman’s choice” to kill her own child.

They’ll throw him under the bus when it becomes politically necessary to do so, but make no mistake: they honestly see nothing wrong with what he’s done.   Their view of human life is no different than his…and that’s a very scary thought.

‘Infant beheadings, severed baby feet,’ but media still ignoring Gosnell trial

Prosecutor on Handling Abortionist’s ‘Stained’ Files: ‘You Might Want to Use Gloves

Mass Murder Trial of the Century: Media Blackout in Full Effect

Rep. Chris Smith: If Gosnell had shot seven infants with an AR-15, it would be national news

Congressman: Gosnell an Abortion Predator Who Must be Exposed

TweetFest: #Gosnell trends as Twitterers demand an end to the media blackout

*Must-See* Documentary About Gosnell Clinic:Tying Women To Bed, Forcing Abortions on Them, Dead Babies In Jars, And The ‘Special Room’ For The White Women

Nurses Share Stories of Witnessing Babies Born Alive After Abortions

Terry Moran: Gosnell Probably Most Successful Serial Killer in History

Four reasons why media isn’t covering Gosnell mass murder trial

Washington Post reporter explains her personal Gosnell blackout

Before the Gosnell Blackout, There Was Tiller’s

Obama’s new budget calls for $30 million more in abortion funding

You don’t have to be pro-life to be pro-medical-standards

The Philadelphia Horror: How mass murder gets a pass

Abortion Doctor Charged With Murder: The Gruesome Legacy of Roe v. Wade

Ex-Abortion Workers: Why They Quit

Why Prosecutors Fear the Abortion Industry

Obama Supports Infanticide

Welcome to the “new normal” under Obamanomics.  In Europe, where Keynesian economics and Democratic Socialism has dominated for decades, unemployment rates are in the 20′s.   For the younger generation, they’re even higher.    Yet, instead of learning from their mistakes, Obama and the Democrats insist on repeating them.    Millions of innocent people are being hurt in the process.

The Associated Press reports:

After a full year of fruitless job hunting, Natasha Baebler just gave up.

She’d already abandoned hope of getting work in her field, working with the disabled. But she couldn’t land anything else, either — not even a job interview at a telephone call center.

Until she feels confident enough to send out resumes again, she’ll get by on food stamps and disability checks from Social Security and live with her parents in St. Louis.

“I’m not proud of it,” says Baebler, who is in her mid-30s and is blind. “The only way I’m able to sustain any semblance of self-preservation is to rely on government programs that I have no desire to be on.”

Baebler’s frustrating experience has become all too common nearly four years after the Great Recession ended: Many Americans are still so discouraged that they’ve given up on the job market.

Older Americans have retired early. Younger ones have enrolled in school. Others have suspended their job hunt until the employment landscape brightens. Some, like Baebler, are collecting disability checks.

It isn’t supposed to be this way. After a recession, an improving economy is supposed to bring people back into the job market.

Read more at Fox News

Sadly, until we get rid of Obamanomics, the jobs won’t be coming back.  Business aren’t hiring because they never know when they’re going to be hit with a costly new regulation or tax.   Entrepreneurs aren’t willing to take the risk to start a new business in such a hostile business climate.

Donald Lambro at Human Events predicts that we’re in for “Four More Years of Pain“:

President Obama heads into the third month of his second term, still unable to find a cure for a sluggish economy, weak employment numbers and his own slipping job approval scores.

Second terms are usually challenging for presidents who have won re-election without having the slightest idea about what they will do over the next four years. And that’s what we are witnessing now with Obama, whose biggest problem is the anemic, job-challenged economy.

[...]  The depressing headlines of the past few days tell a sad tale of what the economy is like under his presidency:

– “Weekly Jobless Claims Get Weaker as Outlook Dims” was the gloomy headline over a Reuters news wire story Thursday morning on the CNBC website.

“The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose to its highest level in four months last week, suggesting the labor market recovery lost some steam in March,” Reuters reported.

– “Hiring Is Weaker at Private Companies,” a Washington Post headline blared Thursday.

“Companies hired at the weakest pace in five months in March as recent strong demand for construction jobs evaporated and growth in the vast services sector slowed, signs that the economic recovery could be hitting a soft patch,” the newspaper reported.

That’s the conclusion of the ADP National Employment Report Wednesday, which showed “that private employers added 158,000 jobs last month.” The ADP job survey said “the gain was the smallest since October.”

A separate report Wednesday on the services industry, the economy’s largest job sector, showed that employment growth “pulled back in March.”

You do not hear any of these reports on the nightly TV news because the networks cherry-pick reports that feed the White House line of a continuing economic recovery.

[...]  Thankfully, there are economic reporters who resist touting the White House line that everything is rosier under Obama’s policies.

“We’re approaching the four-year anniversary of the economic recovery, and it still doesn’t feel like much of one, what with the unemployment rate at 7.7 percent and wages stagnant over the past five years,” Neil Irwin, the Post’s veteran economic analyst, recently reported.

Read more at Human Events

Obama is so blinded by ideology that the tragic results of his policies on display all around him aren’t enough to convince him that his policies need to change.

The American workforce collapses on top of the young

Record 89,967,000 Not in Labor Force; Another 663,000 Drop Out In March

People Not In Labor Force Soar By 663,000 To 90 Million, Labor Force Participation Rate At 1979 Levels

Weak: Economy Adds Just 88k Jobs in March

Moody’s Chief Economist Previously Cited By White House Blames Obamacare For Jobs Numbers

Media Can’t Blame Dismal Jobs Report on the Sequester

Devastating Job Numbers Undermine Rationale for ‘Immigration Reform’

Hopenchange!

Wynton Hall reports at Breitbart:

Even as the Obama White House prepares for a star-studded White House concert featuring Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, and Justin Timberlake, figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that roughly 50 million Americans—one in six—now live below the poverty line.

Additionally, one in five American children have fallen below the poverty line; the last time poverty levels were this high, Lyndon Baines Johnson was president.

“In the last three years, there’s been a great change in the kinds of people we are serving,” said Director of Community Services at Catholic Charities of Baltimore Mary Anne O’Donnell. “There are increasing numbers of people who owned a home, lost their jobs, end up living in their car and are coming with children to our soup kitchen.”

The U.S. government defines a family of four earning under $23,021 as living in poverty. Income used to compute poverty status does not include non-cash benefits, such as food stamps and housing subsidies.

Welfare program enrollments have exploded under President Barack Obama. Americans on food stamps now outnumber the combined populations of 24 U.S. states, costing taxpayers more than double the amount spent on food stamps five years ago. In January 2009, 31.9 million Americans received food stamps. Today, that figure is 47.79 million.

Read more at Breitbart

U.S. sees highest poverty spike since the 1960s, leaving 50 million Americans poor as government cuts billions in spending

More American Families Reduced To Food Banks And Food Stamps

Why we are on the brink of the greatest Depression of all time

Peter Schiff Warns of the Coming Collapse of the Dollar: “We’re not even near the bottom yet”

Cramer: We‘re ’Two Stages From a Financial Collapse So Huge It‘s Hard to Get Your Mind Around’

‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ Author: I’m Preparing For Economic Collapse, Stocking Up on Food & Guns

The foundation for the housing crisis was laid with the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, where the government took it upon itself to encourage home ownership by pressuring banks to lend to lower-income buyers, often to meet arbitrary racial quotas. Obviously they haven’t learned a thing from where that got us.

Would it surprise anyone to learn that as a lawyer, Obama sued banks to force them to issue subprime loans?  He also worked for ACORN, which specialized in using the Community Reinvestment Act to shake down banks and pressure them to loan money to low-income minorities or face “discrimination” charges.

David Harsanyi reports at Human Events:

According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration is pushing big banks to make more home loans available to Americans with bad credit – the same kind of  government guidance that helped blow up the housing market:

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Think about this statement. The administration is asking banks – banks that Washington bails out; banks that Washington crafts regulations for — to embrace risky policies that put the institution and its investors (not to mention, all of us) in a  precarious position. So precarious, in fact, that banks have to ask government if they can be freed of any legal or financial consequences.

Read more at Human Events

What could possibly go wrong?

John Perazzo warns at Front Page Magazine:

These types of government policies initially emerged the mid-1970s, when “progressive” Democrats in Congress began a campaign to help low-income minorities become homeowners. This led to the passage, in 1977, of theCommunity Reinvestment Act (CRA), a mandate for banks to make special efforts to seek out and lend to borrowers of meager means. Founded on the premise that government intervention is necessary to counteract the fundamentally racist and inequitable nature of American society and the free market, the CRA was eventually transformed from an outreach effort into a strict quota system by the Clinton administration. Under the new arrangement, if a bank failed to meet its quota for loans to low-income minorities, it ran the risk of getting a low CRA rating from the FDIC. This, in turn, could derail the bank’s efforts to expand, relocate, merge, etc.  From a practical standpoint, then, banks had no recourse but to drastically lower their standards on down-payments and underwriting, and to approve many loans even to borrowers with weak credit credentials. As Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell explains, this led to “skyrocketing rates of mortgage delinquencies and defaults,” and the rest is history.

The CRA was by no means the only mechanism designed by government to impose lending quotas on financial institutions. For instance, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) developed rules encouraging lenders to dramatically hike their loan-approval rates for minority applicants and began bringing legal actions against mortgage bankers who failed to do so, regardless of the reason. This, too, caused lenders to lower their down-payment and income requirements.

Moreover, HUD pressured the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest sources of housing finance in the United States, to earmark a steeply rising number of their own loans for low-income borrowers. Many of these were subprime mortgages—loans characterized by higher interest rates and less favorable terms in order to compensate lenders for the high credit risk they were incurring.

Additional pressure toward this end was applied by community organizations like the pro-socialist ACORN. By accusing banks—however frivolously or unjustly—of having engaged in racially discriminatory lending practices that violated the mandates of the CRA, these groups commonly sued banks toprevent them from expanding or merging as they wished. Barack Obama, ACORN’s staunch ally, was strongly in favor of this practice. Indeed, in a 1994 class-action lawsuit against Citibank, Obama represented ACORN in demanding more favorable terms for subprime homebuyer mortgages. After four years of being dragged through the mud, a beleaguered Citibank—anxious to put an end to the incessant smears (charging racism) that Obama and his fellow litigators were hurling in its direction (to say nothing of its mounting legal bills)—agreed to settle the case.

Forbes magazine puts it bluntly: “Obama has been a staunch supporter of the CRA throughout his public life.” In other words, he has long advocated the very policies that already have reduced the real-estate market to rubble. And now he is actively pushing those very same practices again.

Read more at Front Page Magazine

Housing Crisis Redux: ‘Community Reinvestment Act’ that caused mortgage crisis is back, as if 2008 never happened

How Obama Enabled Unscrupulous Banks to Foreclose on Innocent Homeowners

How Government Caused The Mortgage Crisis

Democrats in their own words: Covering up the Fannie/Freddie scam that caused our Economic Crisis

The Free Market Was Framed: Government Intervention Caused The Financial Crisis

The Law of Unintended Consequences: How Government Created the Subprime Mess and Led Us to the Brink of Financial Disaster

Terrifying Chart Proves Obama’s Policies Lead Towards Catastrophic “Cloward-Piven” Orchestrated Financial Crisis

Obama Pushing Banks to Offer Sub-Prime Mortgages Again

Holder Launches Witch Hunt Against ‘Racist’ Banks That Won’t Lend To Minorities With Bad Credit

In Cyprus, politicians are trying to bail themselves out by stealing directly from people’s bank accounts.   In America, the government is more subtle.

It’s been stealing from us for years – through inflation.  Thomas Sowell explains:

One of the big differences between the United States and Cyprus is that the U.S. government can simply print more money to get out of a financial crisis. But Cyprus cannot print more euros, which are controlled by international institutions.

Does that mean that Americans’ money is safe in banks? Yes and no.

The U.S. government is very unlikely to just seize money wholesale from people’s bank accounts, as is being done in Cyprus.

But does that mean that your life savings are safe?

No. There are more sophisticated ways for governments to take what you have put aside for yourself and use it for whatever the politicians feel like using it for.

If they do it slowly but steadily, they can take a big chunk of what you have sacrificed for years to save, before you are even aware, much less alarmed.

That is in fact already happening.

When officials of the Federal Reserve System speak in vague and lofty terms about “quantitative easing,” what they are talking about is creating more money out of thin air, as the Federal Reserve is authorized to do — and has been doing in recent years, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a month.

When the federal government spends far beyond the tax revenues it has, it gets the extra money by selling bonds. The Federal Reserve has become the biggest buyer of these bonds, since it costs them nothing to create more money.

This new money buys just as much as the money you sacrificed to save for years. But more money in circulation, without a corresponding increase in output, means rising prices.

Although the numbers in your bank book may remain the same, part of the purchasing power of your money is transferred to the government. Is that really different from what Cyprus has done?

Read more at Investors Business Daily

Adam Taggart of Peak Prosperity blog warns:

Through the centuries – in historic cultures like that of Yap Island who used giant, immovable stone disks for commerce, to today’s United States, whose Dollar fiat currency exists primarily in digital form – “money” is able to be exchanged for goods and services because society agrees to accept it (at a certain rate of exchange).

But what happens when a society starts doubting the value of its money?

Fed, the Great & Powerful

The podcast goes into the mind-blowingly simple process by which new money is created in America by the Federal Reserve (or the “Fed”). That is to say:

1. The Fed holds a meeting
2. Those in the room decide how many more dollars they think the world needs
3. Someone walks over to a computer and adds that many dollars to the banks, with a few clicks of the keyboard

The banks then, if they want to, lend this new money out into the economy on a fractional basis, adding even more “thin air” dollars to the nation’s money supply.

This unique ability in America lends the Fed enormous power. The power to create new money from nothing. With no limit.

And with that power, the Fed can control and/or influence economies and markets the world over.

Should such power exist? And if so, should a single private entity owned by the major players in the banking system be allowed to wield it?

Such power certainly has its dangers.

[...]  Money is not wealth. It is merely a claim on wealth.

You can’t print your way to prosperity. History is abundantly clear on that.

With the clarity of hindsight, it’s now obvious how the Fed has now painted itself into a corner.

[...]  Cyprus has awakened the world to the reality that central planners can appropriate their money with the bang of a gavel. And while we don’t yet know with certainty how things will unfold in Cyprus, we can project that events there have shaken society’s confidence in the soundness of fiat currency in general. If we know it can be confiscated or devalued overnight, we are less likely to unquestioningly accept its stated value. This doubt that strikes at the very foundation of modern monetary systems.

Cyprus is meaningful in the way that it shines a light on both the importance of hard assets and the risk it poses to market stability. It certainly increases the risk of our prediction of a 40%+ stock-market correction by September, as investors begin to realize that current high values are simply the ephemeral effect of too much money, instead of a sign of true value.

At this point, prudence suggests we prepare for the worst (by parking capital on the sidelines, investing in our personal resilience, etc.) and add to our hard asset holdings (like precious metals bullion, productive real estate, etc.) as insurance to protect our purchasing power. The dollar may strengthen for a bit versus other currencies and perhaps the financial markets, but the long-term trend is a safer and surer bet: Dollars will be inflated. There will be more of them in the future than there are today. So, while our dollars still have the purchasing power they do, we should use the window of time we have now to exchange paper money for tangible wealth at today’s prices.

Read more at Zero Hedge

Fire Up The Presses! Fed Prepares To Print More Monopoly Money

Baby Boomers to Suffer From Dollar’s Decline

The Government Is Expropriating Private Wealth at a Rapid Rate

Politicians steal your money through inflation

The Immorality of Government Inflation

Fed Up with the Fed

In Europe, “green” policies to eliminate nuclear and coal power for “green” alternatives worked so well that desperate Greeks and Germans resorted to stealing firewood from local forests to keep warm this winter.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear that Obama’s nominee has learned from their mistake.   He insists that skyrocketing energy prices are just what we need to force people away from fossil fuels towards a gloriously “green,” utopian future:

Joel Gehrke reports at the Washington Examiner:

President Obama’s Energy secretary nominee regards a carbon  tax as one of the simplest ways to move the energy industry towards clean technologies, though he notes that government would have to come up with a plan to mitigate the burden this tax places on poor people, who would pay the most.

“Ultimately, it has to be cheaper to capture and store it than to release it and pay a price,” MIT professor and Energy nominee Ernest Moniz told the Switch Energy Project in an interview last year. “If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades, well, that could double; it could eventually triple. I think inevitably if we squeeze down on carbon, we squeeze up on the cost, it brings along with it a push toward efficiency; it brings along with it a push towards clean technologies in a conventional pollution sense; it brings along with it a push towards security. Because after all, the security issues revolve around carbon bearing fuels.”

Moniz position is not far from that of Energy Secretary Steven Chu before he took a job in the Obama administration. “We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Chu said in 2008. Last year, gas hit $9 a gallon in Greece.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

As if poor and middle class families aren’t hurting enough trying to make ends meet as it is.

Just Freeze! EPA Says Burning Wood Is Bad, but so Is Natural Gas, Coal, Oil

Energy Secretary Admits Lower Gas Prices Aren’t A Priority, Goal Is To Force Americans To Use ‘Green’ Alternatives

Report: Obama Plans To Impose Carbon Tax On Emissions

Obama’s war on coal hits your electric bill

Here Come Obama’s ‘Necessarily Skyrocketing’ Electricity Rates

Report: Smart Meters Will Record Personal Energy Use Habits

EPA Punishes Companies For Not Buying ‘Green’ Fuel That Doesn’t Exist

EPA’s Official Position On Oil Companies: “Crucify Them”

Note To Republicans: Don’t Just Rein in the EPA, Abolish It