Party of the rich: In Congress, it's the Democrats

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans are the party of the rich, right? It's a label that has stuck for decades, and you're hearing it again as Democrats complain about GOP opposition to raising the minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits.

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But in Congress, the wealthiest among us are more likely to be represented by a Democrat than a Republican. Of the 10 richest House districts, only two have Republican congressmen. Democrats claim the top six, sprinkled along the East and West coasts. Most are in overwhelmingly Democratic states like New York and California.

The richest: New York's 12th Congressional District, which includes Manhattan's Upper East Side, as well as parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Democrat Carolyn Maloney is in her 11th term representing the district.

Per capita income in Maloney's district is $75,479. That's more than $75,000 a year for every man, woman and child. The next highest income district, which runs along the southern California coast, comes in at $61,273. Democrat Henry Waxman is in his 20th term representing the Los Angeles-area district.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district comes in at No. 8.
Across the country, Democratic House districts have an average per capita income of $27,893. That's about $1,000 higher than the average income in Republican districts. The difference is relatively small because Democrats also represent a lot of poor districts, putting the average in the middle.
Democrats say the "party of the rich" label is more about policies than constituents.

During the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney declared, "We're not the party of the rich. We're the party of the people who want to get rich."

The famously wealthy Romney also uttered a more famous quote about the 47 percent of Americans who pay no federal income tax.

"My job is not to worry about those people," Romney said in a secretly taped speech at a private fundraiser. "I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

In the election, Romney carried only one income group: people making $100,000 or more, according to exit polls. But when it comes to Congress, the rich districts like their Democrats.

The 10 richest House districts:

___

New York 12

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, Democrat

Per capita income: $75,479

___

California 33

Rep. Henry Waxman, Democrat

Per capita income: $61,273

___

New York 10
Rep. Jerry Nadler, Democrat
Per capita income: $56,138
___
California 18
Rep. Anna Eshoo, Democrat
Per capita income: $ 54,182
___
Connecticut 4
Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat
Per capita income: $50,732
___
Virginia 8
Rep. Jim Moran, Democrat

Per capita income: $50,210

___

New Jersey 7

Rep. Leonard Lance, Republican
Per capita income: $48,556
___
California 12

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat

Per capita income: $48,523

___

New York 3

Rep. Steve Israel, Democrat

Per capita income: $47,991

___

Virginia 10

Rep. Frank Wolf, Republican

Per capita income: $47,281

___

Source: Census Bureau.

Debate over ObamaCare far from over as signup deadline nears

           The deadline to sign up for ObamaCare is Monday, but the roiling, years-long debate about enrollment numbers and practically every other aspect of President Obama’s signature health care law appears far from over in this politically-charged election year.
The White House said Thursday that more than 6 million Americans have signed up for private insurance plans since October 1 through the federal and state ObamaCare exchanges -- a major accomplishment toward the White House’s goal of 7 million enrollees by March 31, considering the disastrous start.
On Sunday, ObamaCare supporters were on television championing the law’s recent successes, particularly the late-enrollment surges, including 1.2 million visitors Saturday to the federal site.
“The law's working,” said White House senior adviser David Plouffe. “This was a seminal achievement.”
But as Plouffe told ABC’s “This Week” the number was really closer to 10 million when including Medicaid and children's health-care signups as well as Americans who went directly to private insurance companies, Republicans continued to question those numbers and why others have not been made public.
“They are cooking the books on this,” Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyoming, told “Fox News Sunday.”
Beyond questioning the publicly-announced numbers, Barrasso and fellow Republicans want to know why the administration has not released such information as whether premium costs will increase when enrollment resumes Nov. 15, and on how many younger Americans have enrolled to cover the health care costs of older enrollees. Other questions include how many enrollees have paid for their insurance premiums; will people be forced out of insurance deemed sub-standard by ObamaCare; will people be allowed to keep their doctors; and how many of enrollees were previously uninsured, consider a major goal of the law was to help them.
Barrasso’s seemingly hard-hitting remarks were in fact nothing new for Republicans, who have opposed the Affordable Care Act since Obama proposed it in 2008 and have since fought to both repeal the law, signed by Obama in 2010, and punish the Democrats who have supported it.
The relentless attacks appear to have taken their toll, despite what Democrats say.
“I think the Republican playbook of just repeal ObamaCare, repeal ObamaCare, repeal ObamaCare gets tougher as more and more people get health care,” Plouffe said Sunday. “I think smart Republicans understand that.”
However, the real possibility that Republicans will win six seats in November to take control of the Senate is largely the result of several incumbent Senate Democrats having to defend their support for ObamaCare.
And a Fox New poll released last week showed 56 percent of Americans surveyed oppose the law, compared to 40 percent who support it, numbers consistent with polls by The Associated Press and others.
Beyond the Republicans' repeated predictions that ObamaCare would be a drag on the entire economy, particularly on job-creating small businesses, the law’s first real problems began on October 1, the start of enrollment, when the high volume of prospective customers exposed glitches in the federal and several state websites, resulting in crashes, delays, lost applications, misinformation and a variety of other problems.
Though an all-out, 24-hour-a-day intervention finally got the federal site working several weeks later, several of the 17 state-run sites – particularly Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Vermont -- never fully recovered.
Early projections for those five states were to sign up a combined 800,000 Americans for private health insurance coverage by March 31, 11 percent of the Obama administration's original target for national enrollment.
Yet with just one day to go before the six-month enrollment period ends, achieving 25 percent of that target would be considered a success.
Officials in those states have botched their handling of the process so badly that they already are looking beyond Monday's deadline to the next enrollment period starting in November.
Overseers of Nevada Health Link, for example, have called that state's program a "full failure" and a "catastrophe."
Though the overall 6 million-plus number is close to the initial projection by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Republicans and other ObamaCare critics point out that the president has made dozens of changes to the law through waivers, deadline extensions and other executive actions including some that appear to go beyond the scope of his powers.
The most recent came Wednesday with the White House announcing that Americans who have unsuccessfully tried to enroll by March 31 now have until mid-April.
While Obama has aggressively sought out 18- to 34-year-olds, some of the more recent reports show most of the enrollees are 35 and older.
Yet the bigger question is perhaps whether the law has indeed helped insure at least some of the estimated 48 million Americans who previously did not have insurance or couldn’t get it because of a pre-existing condition.
The most recent finding by the often-cited McKinsey & Company show 27 percent of enrollees were previously uninsured and that roughly 75 percent of those who signed up for private insurance under ObamaCare have paid their premiums.
Five Senate Democrats including Mark Warner of Virginia, in a possible attempt to help themselves in difficult races, last week proposed fixes to ObamaCare.
In addition, Angus King, Independent-Maine, acknowledged on “Fox News Sunday” that the administration needs to be more transparent about the numbers and told Barrasso that he would co-sponsor legislation with him “so people can know exactly who is covered and who is not covered by the various policy options.”
Barrasso told Fox News: “What Angus is offering in his legislation only nibbles around the edges. It doesn't get to the fundamental flaws of the president's health care law. The Democrats are unnerved. .. I've looked at this 10 different ways. This health care law is not fixable.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Nuclear

GOP donors reportedly working to draft Jeb Bush for 2016 presidential run

     A group of top Republican donors have reportedly begun an intense effort to draft former Florida governor Jeb Bush into the race for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
A Washington Post report quotes one major donor as saying that the "vast majority" of the top 100 givers to 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney would back Bush in a nomination fight. 
The report also claims that a hard press has begun to get Bush into the race because conservative leaders and longtime Republican operatives are concerned about the electoral viability of New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul. Christie's standing and poll numbers, both nationally and among Republicans, have been damaged by the ongoing investigation into whether he knew of access lane closures to the George Washington Bridge ordered by his staff as apparent political retaliation. 
On the other hand, Paul's libertarian views on matters like surveillance by the National Security Agency and his perceived softness on foreign policy has also raised red flags in the GOP establishment. Paul's victories in straw polls at the Conservative Political Action Conference and the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference earlier this month may also have been a factor in the renewed push for a Bush candidacy. 
Earlier this week, Bush met privately with casino magnate and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson and addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition's senior members at a dinner held Thursday at Adelson's company airport hangar. The Post, citing a donor in attendance at the dinner, reported that the crowd of about 60 guests applauded when one told Bush, "I hope you run for President in 2016."
Bush, the brother of former President George W. Bush and the son of former President George H.W. Bush, served two terms as governor of Florida between 1999 and 2007. After leaving office, his name was put forward as a possible Senate candidate in 2010 and a presidential candidate in 2012. However, despite the rumors, Bush has remained out of political life.
Bush's advisers told The Post that the former governor was not actively exploring a candidacy and would not make a decision on running until the end of this year.

BEYOND REPAIR: Maryland expected to ditch $125M ObamaCare exchange

 A NEW REPORT SAYS Maryland will abandon its glitch-ridden ObamaCare website and replace the health exchange using technology from Connecticut's marketplace, with Gov. Martin O'Malley saying an announcement will be made next week on the future of the exchange.

Krauthammer: Obama's More Miss America Than World Leader on Russia

President Obama’s foreign policy naïveté is more like a Miss America contestant than the leader of the free world, says The Washington Post's Charles Krauthammer.
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has "run rings" around the United States, "from the attempted ingratiation of the 'reset' to America’s empty threats of 'consequences' were Russia to annex Crimea," Krauthammer writes.
Urgent: Do You Approve of Obama's Handling of Foreign Policy? Vote Here
Obama's Pollyanna approach to world matters fails to grasp Putin’s long-held anti-America beliefs, according to Krauthammer, and is only the latest in Obama’s international missteps.
The president has characterized Russia as a “regional power acting out of weakness,” a grave miscalculation.
“Where does one begin?” Krauthammer asks. “Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan were also regional powers, yet managed to leave behind at least 50 million dead.
“Numberless 19th- and 20th-century European soldiers died for Crimea. Putin conquered it in a swift and stealthy campaign that took three weeks and cost his forces not a sprained ankle. That’s ‘weakness’?
Obama's purported "consequences" for Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea are laughable, he opines. The defiant Russian leader is stuck in enmity of decades past, he says, noting that Putin's referenced the early 20th Century Russian Revolution in his railing speech following his country's seizure of Crimea.
And, Krauthammer says, Putin has made no secret of his next targets: Kharkiv and Donetsk and the rest of southeastern Ukraine.
Obama's minimization of Russia and the potential problems it could cause "makes his own leadership of the one superpower all the more embarrassing."
Not only does it allow Putin to make a mockery of the U.S., it diminishes America’s reputation at a time when credibility with other nations matters greatly, according to Krauthammer. Obama’s "fanciful thinking" of diplomacy over action could cost America dearly.
"What are the allies thinking now?" writes Krauthammer. "Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and other Pacific Rim friends are wondering where this America will be as China expands its reach and claims. The Gulf states are near panic as they see the United States playacting nuclear negotiations with Iran that, at best, will leave their mortal Shiite enemy just weeks away from the bomb."

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/crimea-vladimir-putin-charles-krauthammer/2014/03/28/id/562364#ixzz2xIegEdpF
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Obama urges Putin to pull back troops from Ukraine border in phone call

President Obama told Russian President Putin during a phone call Friday that the U.S. strongly opposes Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine, and urged him to pull back his troops from the border.
The White House said in a press release that Putin called Obama to discuss the U.S. proposal for a diplomatic solution in Ukraine, which Secretary of State John Kerry has presented to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The release said Obama asked Putin to deliver a written response to the proposal, and the two agreed to have Kerry and Lavrov meet again.
Obama also urged Putin to avoid further military provocations in Ukraine, and to pull back the troops that Russia has on the Ukraine border. Obama said Ukraine's government is pursuing de-escalation despite Russia's incursion into Crimea.
The call comes as Ukraine's government and the West are concerned about a possible Russian invasion in eastern Ukraine.
The Associated Press contributed to this report

Corruption probes hitting Dems across the country

A wave of corruption arrests and investigations is roiling Democratic politicians, posing a potential image problem in an election year. 
The latest were a pair of arrests earlier this week, snagging Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon, who later resigned, and California state Sen. Leland Yee. The latter involved a tangled web of allegations including claims that the gun control-pushing lawmaker tried to connect an undercover agent with an international arms dealer. 
So far, these cases are confined to the state and local levels, so it remains to be seen whether Democrats running in the congressional midterms will be tarnished. 
In fact, the only major arrest of a U.S. congressman since the beginning of 2013 was that of a Republican, Florida Rep. Trey Radel, who was convicted for cocaine possession and resigned early this year. Each party typically is careful to throw stones when the other side finds itself on the wrong side of the law, because corruption and other misbehavior is a bipartisan problem. 
For every Anthony Weiner, there's a Mark Foley. 
But since Radel's October arrest, the bulk of the corruption cases have involved Democrats. 
In California alone, Yee's case marked the third arrest or conviction in as many months of a state Democratic official. 
State Republicans, who have been struggling to regain their political footing, have sought to capitalize on the wave of criminal charges as a way to undo Democrats' dominance in the Legislature. Republicans have repeatedly tried to expel Sen. Rod Wright after he was convicted of perjury and voter fraud in January for lying about his legal residence in Los Angeles County. Democratic leaders have blocked those efforts. The state Senate, though, voted Friday to suspend all three of the lawmakers in trouble. 
The other, Sen. Ron Calderon, was indicted on federal corruption charges in February. Prosecutors say Calderon accepted about $100,000 for himself and family members in exchange for promoting legislation to expand Hollywood tax credits and protect the interest of a hospital that benefited from a provision of the workers' compensation law. 
Then came Yee, whose alleged activities were more befitting Hollywood than his San Francisco district. 
The criminal complaint contained dramatic details about Yee's alleged efforts to connect an undercover agent with a firearms dealer. 
"Do I think we can make some money? I think we can make some money," the senator allegedly said in one of the meetings. 
The cases, while involving local politicians, have put powerful Democrats in an awkward position. 
U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein of California joined a growing list of officials on Thursday in distancing themselves by demanding Yee's resignation. The Democratic leader of the state Senate, President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, warned Yee to resign or face suspension by his colleagues, saying "he cannot come back." 
Cannon, meanwhile, was ensnared in an FBI sting and faces federal corruption charges alleging he accepted more than $48,000 in cash, airline tickets, a hotel room and a luxury apartment from undercover agents posing as real estate developers and investors. Cannon, while not a household Democratic name, led the city that hosted the Democratic National Convention in 2012. 
On top of that case, Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox said Saturday he was resigning from leadership and would not run for re-election, a day after federal and state authorities raided his Statehouse office and home as part of a criminal investigation that they would not detail. 
The Friday raids were carried out by the U.S. attorney's office, FBI, IRS and state police. Boxes of evidence were carried off after agents spent hours at both his home and office. Officials will not say whom or what they are investigating. 
The 52-year-old Providence Democrat, who became the nation's first openly gay House speaker in 2010, said he planned to serve out the remainder of his term through the end of the year, but that "my personal focus going forward will be on my family and dealing with the investigation." 
Meanwhile, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, the mayor of the District of Columbia, a Democrat, is facing his own problems. A U.S. attorney claimed earlier this month that Mayor Vincent Gray knew about an illegal, $668,000 "shadow campaign" that helped propel him into office four years ago. Despite denials from the mayor, who has not been accused of a crime, the revelation further damaged him ahead of next week's primary. 
"I think the question politically is whether it becomes emblematic of the national party," said Mary Katharine Ham, a Fox News contributor. "And that, to some extent, depends on media coverage. In, for instance, 2006, there was the drumbeat against Republicans was this culture of corruption; and that, to a large extent, was effective because it was so consistently covered in the media."