Hillary’s ‘inevitability’: Is it her fault, or the media echo chamber?

The media drumbeat began the day after the 2012 election: Hillary’s inevitable.
It grew louder when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton sat for a joint “60 Minutes” interview: Hillary’s inevitable.
It grew louder still as she was plastered on one magazine cover after another: Time, the New York Times Magazine, and on and on.
It grew deafening when media polls showed her 60 points ahead of any potential Democratic challenger. And really, goes the journalistic refrain, what Republican is going to beat her?
She’s a juggernaut. She’s unstoppable. She’s the next president of the United States.
And now comes the carping: How dare Hillary project an aura of inevitability? Where does she get off? This is a huge mistake!
That’s right: the media, which have wrapped Hillary in the cloak of inevitability, are now echoing complaints that she hasn’t taken to the rooftops to shout: No I’m not!
This debate is crystallized by a story in Buzzfeed, which is a good piece of reporting in that it gets some Obama aides and strategists on the record in warning about Hillary’s strategy. But the underlying assumption is that the former secretary of State is mounting this huge campaign-like effort, when she insists she hasn’t made up her mind about running.
“Top advisers and former aides to Barack Obama say Hillary Clinton is repeating the mistakes she made in 2008, building a machine in lieu of a message and lumbering toward the Democratic nomination with the same deep vulnerabilities that cost her the nomination eight years earlier,” says Buzzfeed.
White House pollster Joel Benenson is quoted as saying: “I just don’t see any strategic value in stories positioning her as inevitable or the pre-emptive nominee, and I don’t think people who are out there talking about this help her, and I think she should make that clear.”
And 2012 Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt says: “Even if it is a well-known candidate — sometimes more so — activists, donors, and voters like to see candidates fighting for every vote.”
They have a point. Hillary’s top-heavy operation proved the media wrong in 2007 and 2008 as she blew an election in which she was overwhelmingly favored—and was upset by an upstart named Obama.
It’s also true that despite her occasional speeches, she doesn’t have a message. But that’s essentially because she’s not a candidate. And if she starts acting more like a candidate, she will be subjecting us to a three-year campaign and taking lots of incoming Republican fire.
Lots of other front-runners have laid low until they had to announce. But there’s never been anyone like Hillary: potentially the first female president, wife of a controversial ex-president, and a political persona that overshadows all possible rivals, even an incumbent vice president.
To underscore that point, a CNN poll showing her with a 55-39 lead over Chris Christie, after he had been leading her by 2 points in December. Of course, that has more to do with the governor’s bridge troubles, but it adds to the Hillary aura. She leads every other major GOP contender by at least 15 points. (Standard warning: such early polls are largely meaningless.)
Clinton is acquiescing as groups such as Ready for Hillary raise money on her behalf, but I doubt that’s the root of her problem since she can’t be legally involved.
She also has to retool for the Twitter age. One mistake that Clinton made in her last campaign was barely showing her warmer side. So she tries a joke--a Super Bowl tweet that tweaked Fox--and everyone goes bananas and overanalyzes it.
The biggest problem she will face, in my view, is that by 2016 many people will be sick of her. She will seem like a status quo incumbent, running for a third Obama term, while the Republicans are promising change. That’s why a lower-profile 2014 makes sense for her.
 In the meantime, the press will keep on saying Hillary is inevitable. And I can’t see how she muffles that.

Senator rebukes IRS over decision to reinstate 2013 employee bonuses

The IRS' announcement Monday that it will pay cancelled 2013 bonuses has infuriated Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who wants to know why an agency with employees who “inappropriately” targeted conservative political groups would reinstate the rewards.
“The IRS is accused of targeting conservative groups, with many of its employees having conducted themselves in a manner inappropriate for government officials, and the agency decides to reinstate employee bonuses?” asked Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. “This is outrageous.”
The announcement was made by new IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who said the performance bonuses were reinstated after agency employees repeatedly asked him about them during his first weeks on the job and after reaching a deal with the Union for Federal Employees.
The targeting scandal broke in spring 2013 when the agency revealed it had targeted for closer scrutiny Tea Party groups and other politically conservative organizations that were applying for tax-exempt status.
The revelations resulted in an inspector general report as well as FBI and congressional investigations. Though agency officials said originally the targeting was limited to a Cincinnati, Ohio field office, the probes revealed that higher-ranking officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters knew about the situation and that liberal groups also were targeted but to a lesser extent.
President Obama in May 2013 asked for the resignation of acting Commissioner Steven Miller. And Louis Lerner, the agency’s director of Exempt Organizations, resigned in Sept. 2013 after refusing to testify before Congress several months earlier.
“It’s hard to think of a group of people less deserving of bonuses than IRS employees,” Hatch said. “I understand that not every IRS worker was responsible, but this just is the wrong signal to send the American people who were rightly outraged by how this agency treated people for their political views.”
Koskinen said last year was an “extremely challenging budget year” because of sequestration so “a tough decision had to be made last summer to eliminate the bonuses.”
He also said that in light of the agency’s “continuing dire budget situation” the award payouts will be about 1 percent, less than the 1.75 percent provided in previous years.

‘Not even a smidgen of corruption’: Obama downplays IRS, other scandals

President Obama, in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, tried to put behind him the scandals that have hung over his second term, suggesting his administration did not mislead the public on the Benghazi attack and going so far as to say the IRS targeting scandal had “not even a smidgen of corruption.”
Obama addressed concerns over Benghazi, the launch of HealthCare.gov and the IRS, during the interview Sunday before the Super Bowl. He adamantly rejected the suggestion that the IRS was used for political purposes by singling out Tea Party groups seeking tax exemption.
“That’s not what happened,” he said. Rather, he said, IRS officials were confused about how to implement the law governing those kinds of tax-exempt groups.
“There were some bone-headed decisions,” Obama conceded.
But when asked whether corruption, or mass corruption, was at play, he responded: “Not even mass corruption -- not even a smidgen of corruption.”
He acknowledged that then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman had been to the White House more than 100 times but said he couldn’t recall speaking to him on any of those occasions.
Obama also downplayed the controversy over how the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attacks were described by the administration.
He said he considers any such strike an act of terror and that he was told by then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta at the time only that it was an “attack” -- and that the more important issue is whether security lapses have now been fixed.
“All of the security precautions that needed to be taken didn’t happen,” the president said. “The key is that we’ve implemented the reforms that have been recommended.”
He also said his administration didn't try to “hide the ball” regarding the attacks, in which four Americans were killed including Ambassador Chris Stevens.
“We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time,” the president said.
Obama also claimed that the attackers were made up of a mix of people, some affiliated with terror organizations and others who were just “troublemakers.” A recent report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, though, definitively declared that individuals tied to Al Qaeda groups were involved.
On the rocky launch of the health care exchange system, Obama said he anticipated problems with the rollout of ObamaCare in October, particularly with the HealthCare.gov website because computer programs have glitches.
“But neither I nor anybody else anticipated the degree of problems with HealthCare.gov,” he said.
The president argued that total enrollment is now just about a month behind schedule and that young people, key to making ObamaCare work, are enrolling at a good rate.
He would not answer when asked repeatedly why he kept Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on the job.
“I try to focus not on the fumbles but on the next play,” he said.

Thousands of ObamaCare site error appeals reportedly going unfixed

Thousands of people who tried to sign up for a health plan via the federal healthcare exchange website, Healthcare.gov, have seen their appeals to fix site issues go unanswered.
The Washington Post, citing internal government data, reports that approximately 22,000 Americans have filed appeals to try and get site errors corrected. The complaints range from being denied coverage altogether to being overcharged for coverage to being steered into the wrong program. 
So far, months after the site launched October 1, the appeals have been untouched. What's more, the Post reports, people who have tried to call the marketplace directly for assistance, have been told that the Healthcare.gov computer system is not yet allowing workers to correct enrollment records. 
In theory, error appeals can be filed through the site itself, by phone, or by mail. However, only the mail appeal is currently available. But according to the Post, the appeal by mail process only goes as far as scanning the seven-page forms and transferring them to a computer system, where they currently sit unread and uncorrected. 
A CMS spokesman told the Post "We are working to fully implement the appeals system." In the meantime, the paper reported, applicants are being told to go back to Healthcare.gov and start over, thought it is not clear how many of the 22,000 who complained of errors have done so. 
However, the lack of action on appeals means that some who signed up for plans taking effect January 1 have been stuck with health plans costing them too much. One of those, 27-year-old West Virginian Addie Wilson, told the Post she was paying $100 more per month than necessary for her insurance, with a deductible that's $4,000 too high.

Total Value of Government Waste: $36,986,404,949

$8 Million PR Contract To Promote Obamacare  - $8,000,000

The Obama Administration is spending $8 million of taxpayer dollars to promote Obamacare.

Christie pushes back against NY Times, former ally

 Bailey Comment: " If Chris is the best choice for the 2016 GOP presidential candidate, the Republicans are in trouble."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie fought back Saturday against new allegations regarding his involvement in the bridge-closing scandal, criticizing The New York Times and a former political ally-turned-accuser.
The embattled Republican governor defended himself in an email to friends and supporters in which he says former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey appointee David Wildstein “will do and say anything to save David Wildstein.”
The email -- titled “5 Things You Should Know About The Bombshell That's Not A Bombshell” -- was sent by the governor’s office and obtained by Fox News.
The scandal focused on the bridge closings of access lanes on the George Washington Bridge in September, causing massive traffic disruption. The closures appeared to be political retribution by Christie appointees at the Port Authority against a Democratic mayor who did not support Christie's successful 2013 re-election bid.
The New York Times story published Friday, based on a letter from Wildstein’s lawyer, suggested “evidence exists” that shows Christie knew about the lane closings, despite the governor vehemently and publicly saying he neither ordered them nor knew why others did.
The 5-point e-mail from Christie's office begins by targeting The Times, accusing the paper of shoddy reporting, subject to numerous corrections.
“A media firestorm was set off by sloppy reporting from the New York Times and (its) suggestion that there was actually ‘evidence’ when it was a letter alleging that ‘evidence exists,’ ” begins the email, obtained first by Politico.
The initial story said stated Wildstein in fact had evidence to prove Christie’s knowledge.
The email also argues that Wildstein, who has asked for immunity in the scandal, has past that includes people and newspaper accounts describing him as "tumultuous" and that he  created a “culture of fear” within the Port Authority.
Wildstein resigned in December after being sought for testimony by the Assembly committee investigating the lane closures.
Christie, a potential 2016 GOP presidential candidate, has been under attack by Democrats and others since revelations about the bridge closing surfaced, and was forced to hold a 2-hour-long news conference in January to deal with the scandal.

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Islamic group once tied to terror trial received thousands in farm subsidies, without growing crops

Bailey Comment: "What the h***'s wrong with our government, and how are we going to fix it"? 


An Islamic organization once listed by the Justice Department as a co-conspirator in a high-profile terror case is among many groups that have received thousands in federal farm subsidies, without producing any crops. 
The subsidies to the North American Islamic Trust are just a slice of the questionable payments that, as has been well documented, go to millionaires and non-farmers every year. But as Congress moves to rein in the program, these subsidies stand out considering the group's involvement in the Holy Land Foundation case of 2008. During the trial, the group's farm subsidies stopped, only to be reinstated after a federal judge cleared them.
Records show that since 1998, the North American Islamic Trust has received over $10,000 across 34 separate taxpayer-funded programs. NAIT's two relatively small land plots are tax-zoned as "agricultural" -- but they aren't developed.
The group has been able to obtain farm subsidies legally without producing any crops because it is a nonprofit "charity group" landowner -- so it received subsidies on top of being tax-exempt.
"Organizations with no history in agriculture are getting in on taxpayer-provided farm subsidies," said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of the transparency database OpenTheBooks.com and former Republican candidate for governor of Illinois.
He said the NAIT's subsidies are "probably legal," adding: "The federal farm bill has become so large that it has nothing to do with 'preserving the family farm' or 'creating a stable food supply'."
The North American Islamic Trust's history is complicated -- as the offshoot of the Muslim Students Association and its financial arm, NAIT was founded in 1973 by Middle Eastern-born college students. The majority of NAIT's founders were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the group continues to be backed by Saudi Arabia. NAIT uses Shariah-approved investing with its own company, Allied Asset Advisors, to buy and pool mosques and community centers. Former Allied Asset Advisor board member, Jamal Said, preached the most conservative forms of Islam and was specifically named as a co-conspirator in the terror-funding case.
In the Holy Land Foundation case of 2008, which prosecuted investors charged with sending  money to Hamas, NAIT was named by U.S. federal prosecutors as a co-conspirator and an entity that is or was "a member of the Muslim Brotherhood" (the parent organization of Hamas).
The Holy Land Foundation's five accused individuals were sentenced for funneling $12.4 million to the terror group, which controls the Gaza Strip and is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. NAIT never was formally charged in the case.
NAIT's sheer size may have worked against it. An estimated one in five mosques in the United States is owned by NAIT; those properties are estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Several of these mosques, though, have been places of worship for those convicted in terror activities.
But even before a verdict in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case had been reached, NAIT appealed their co-conspirator status, saying that they had "suffered injuries" from a "public branding."
In October of 2010, the Fifth Circuit Court overturned the group's "co-conspirator" status after NAIT's appeal and pressure from the ACLU. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said "if NAIT could have been accurately characterized as a joint venture," that "does not carry an inherently criminal connotation."
NAIT's farm subsidies stopped in 2008 during the trial and were first received again in 2011.
Every farm subsidy to the North American Islamic Trust has been received at the mailing address of the Islamic Center of Central Missouri Mosque, records show. The USDA lists the "farm location" as Boone County, Mo. But aerial searches of the "agricultural" properties owned by the North American Islamic Trust reveal that the plots are undeveloped, tree-dotted land combined to form just over 100 acres valued at about $59,000.
The North American Islamic Trust and the Islamic Center of Central Missouri did not reply to multiple requests for comment.
According to the USDA and OpentheBooks.com, about half of NAIT's subsidies were "Direct Payments," a program which costs taxpayers an annual $5 billion. By 2011, the North America Islamic Trust began obtaining subsidies under the auspice that it is a "church, charity, or non-profit organization."
The payment program in question, though, could be under the budget knife in the latest farm bill which passed through the House earlier this week.
The federal government began farm subsidies during the Great Depression, in part because farmers were producing surplus crops and could not sell to a struggling market. The total cost for farm pay-outs in 1995 was just over $8.1 billion, when planted farm acreage in the United States stood at roughly 260 million. By 2012, taxpayers were subsidizing farmers by nearly double when planted acreage had decreased by millions of acres.