Huckabee

Huckabee: After 14 months Mass. responds to Pelletier family
Apr. 06, 2014 - 4:01 - After overwhelming response to case, parents get answers
 http://video.foxnews.com/v/3438391939001

Obama imposes his policies directly on federal contractors, in 'year of action'

President Obama is imposing his policies directly on federal contractors.
This week, he will sign an executive order that would prohibit federal contractors from retaliating against employees who discuss their pay with each other. The prohibition on the wage "gag rules" is similar to language in a Senate bill aimed at closing a pay gap between men and women. That legislation is scheduled for a vote this week, though it is not likely to pass.
In addition, Obama on Tuesday will direct the Labor Department to adopt regulations requiring federal contractors to provide compensation data based on sex and race. The president will sign the executive order and the presidential memo during an event at the White House where he will be joined Lilly Ledbetter, whose name appears on a pay discrimination law Obama signed in 2009.
This week's steps showcase Obama's efforts to take action without congressional approval and illustrate how even without legislation, the president can drive policy on a significant segment of the U.S. economy. At the same time, it also underscores the limits of his ambition when he doesn't have the backing of Congress for his initiatives.
Republicans maintain that Obama is pushing his executive powers too far and that he should do more to work with Congress. His new executive orders are sure to prompt criticism that he is placing an undue burden on companies and increasing their costs.
Federal contracting covers about one-quarter of the U.S. workforce and includes companies ranging from Boeing to small parts suppliers and service providers. As a result, presidential directives can have a wide and direct impact. Such actions also can be largely symbolic, designed to spur action in the broader economy.
"This really is about giving people access to more information both to help them make decisions at the policy level but also for individuals," said Heather Boushey, executive director and chief economist at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth who has been working with the administration to get compensation information about the nation's workforce.
"This is definitely an encouraging first step," she said.
Federal contractors, however, worry that additional compensation data could be used to fuel wage related lawsuits, said James Plunkett, director of labor policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
What's more, he said, such orders create a two-tiered system where rules apply to federal contractors but not to other employers. Those contractors, knowing that their business relies on the government, are less likely to put up a fight, he said.
"Federal contractors ultimately know that they have to play nicely to a certain extent with the federal government," he said.
Separately, on Monday, Obama will also announce the 24 schools that will share in more than $100 million in grants to redesign their schools to better prepare high school students for college or for careers. The awards are part of an executive order Obama signed last year. Money for the program comes from fees that companies pay for visas to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs.
The moves represent a return to economic issues for the president after two weeks devoted almost exclusively to diplomacy and the final deadline for health insurance coverage. A trip to Asia in two weeks is sure to change the focus once again.
Still, Obama has declared this a year of action, whether Congress supports him or not.
In February, Obama signed an executive order increasing the hourly minimum wage for federal contractors from $7.25 per to $10.10. While White House officials estimated such an increase would affect only a small percentage of federal contract workers, they said the move could encourage states or individual businesses to act on their own to increase workers' wages.
Obama has also pushed his workplace initiatives beyond just federal contractors where possible. Last month he instructed the Labor Department to come up with new workplace overtime rules for all employers, a power the administration has under the Fair Labor Standards Act.
But presidents have most direct power over the workforce that is paid with taxpayers' money.
Obama's go-it-alone strategy is hardly new. The most enduring workplace anti-discrimination laws began with an executive order signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in June 25, 1941, outlawing discrimination based on race, color, creed and national origin in the federal government and defense industries.
President John F. Kennedy broadened that in 1961 with an order that required government contractors to take affirmative action to ensure hiring "without regard to their race, creed, color or national origin."
President George W. Bush also acted on his own when he ordered federal contractors to ensure that their workers were in the country legally by requiring the use of an electronic employment-verification system.
By employing such executive actions, however, Obama has also drawn attention to areas where he has chosen not to act on his own.
The White House has resisted pressure from gay rights advocates who want have Obama to sign an anti-discrimination executive order that would protect gays and lesbians working for federal contractors. The White House wants the House to approve a Senate-passed bill extending those protections to all Americans.
On Friday, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group, criticized the White House for saying such an executive order would be redundant if Congress were to pass a White House-supported bill. It's an argument the White House has not made when it comes to minimum wage or anti-gag rule orders imposed on federal contractors.

Fuzzy math from administration over ObamaCare?

By Jim Angle

Published April 04, 2014

FoxNews.com

Although the president and his aides trumpeted the ObamaCare enrollment figures as a success, the administration did not always see those numbers as something to brag about.
In his Rose Garden appearance this week, Obama seemed elated to proclaim "7.1 million Americans have now signed up for private insurance plans through these marketplaces."
But it remains unclear how many of those sign ups have paid premiums in order to be officially enrolled, or how many were previously uninsured.
In addition, even though officials are celebrating the 7 million mark,the White House once minimized numbers twice that large-- the 14 million people in the individual insurance market who were facing cancellations because their policies did not have all the required benefits of ObamaCare.
That created a huge political backlash, in part because the president had promised everyone could keep their plans and doctors "no matter what" -- so the president and his aides played the numbers down as just a small group.
In a news conference last November, Obama portrayed the individual market as a small portion of the insurance market, saying "Keep in mind that the individual market accounts for five percent of the population."
White House spokesman Jay Carney made the same statement repeatedly, including the next day, saying "Five percent of the country (is) in the individual insurance market, a portion of that five percent is affected by the cancellation notices."
Because of the public uproar, Obama asked state officials to allow those policies to be extended.
Twenty-one states, however, including California and New York, flatly refused. California alone had 900,000 individual policies cancelled, adding to a national total of several million.
Doug Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office, says "if you look at the 7 million and you shave off the 20 percent who probably haven’t paid, you've got about 5 and a half million people and that's roughly the number of people that were in the individual market and started having their policies cancelled."
That 20 percent number who don't pay has often been cited by insurance sources. Blue Cross/Blue Shield this week confirmed that up to 20 percent of those enrolled by February 1 still have not paid a premium.
As far as the potential cancellations, Carney referred to the 14 million as a "sliver" of the population, even though it's double the number of current signups.
“You need to look at the 7 million in the context of the U.S. population, and that's about 330 million people," says Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a non-partisan consulting and analysis firm. "So, this, this program is going to insure about two percent of the total folks who live in the United States."
So while the administration portrayed that two percent as victory, the five percent facing cancellations was minimized, leading Holtz-Eakin to observe that " it can’t be the case that, you know, five percent is no big deal and signing up two percent is a triumph, those two can’t stand simultaneously."
Some of those who were cancelled were forced into ObamCare, which added to the enrollment numbers, even though they only needed insurance because their policies had been cancelled, not because they were uninsured.
Jim Angle currently serves as chief national correspondent for Fox News Channel (FNC). He joined FNC in 1996 as a senior White House correspondent.

Inmates getting coverage under ObamaCare, as states shift cost to feds

(Bailey) No matter how they try to spin it, we the taxpayers get the bill.
WASHINGTON –  The Obama administration often touts that people with pre-existing conditions and countless others can now get covered under ObamaCare. But there's another group that's starting to benefit from the law -- prison inmates. 
Cash-strapped state and local prisons increasingly are using the Affordable Care Act to pay for their inmates' medical costs, taking advantage of a little-known provision that lets them shift some of those expenses to the federal government.
Ohio, Illinois and Iowa are among the states trying to offload the rising costs of health care – which include mental health programs – by enrolling inmates into a new expanded Medicaid program when they get sick. 
But it doesn't stop there. The states also are working to enroll them even before they're released from prison, so they have coverage when they get out.
Currently, 26 states and the District of Columbia are proceeding with a Medicaid expansion which allows them to extend medical coverage to single and childless adults. Jail operators in at least a half-dozen of those states are then, using that criteria, extending coverage to inmates. The shift means the federal government would pay some emergency costs that used to be entirely covered by the states and counties -- plus, inmates are starting to get coverage for when they leave.
Proponents of shifting prisoners into the expanded Medicaid -- in turn giving them access to health care, including mental health and rehab services, when they are released -- say this reduces recidivism. Others, though, argue that federal taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to foot the multibillion dollar bill.
“The political element of ObamaCare is that we were helping what we called the deserving poor or what we used to call the deserving poor,” Manhattan Institute fellow Avik Roy told Fox News. “A group of people who are just down on their luck … bring them the opportunities they need to get ahead and get back on their feet. And sometimes that’s true of people who served time in prison, and sometimes it’s not.”
Former Sen. Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota who was on the Senate Finance Committee when ObamaCare passed, put his concerns bluntly in an interview with Bloomberg.
“It starts to look a little like a scheme by the states and local jurisdictions to avoid responsibilities that are really theirs,” he said.
But for cash-strapped states that have figured this out, sending inmates onto the federal rolls may be hard to pass up -- a Pew study of 44 states found that in 2008, prisoner health costs hit $6.5 billion. Further, the benefits for inmates can be significant.
Unlikely to be able to afford private health care coverage when they are released, many inmates previously were unable to get covered. Pre-ObamaCare, Medicaid, a federally funded health option, was available to five categories of people: children below a certain age, the disabled, seniors, pregnant women and parents of Medicaid-eligible children (though some states offered it to more groups).
The ObamaCare expansion extends eligibility to single and childless adults. As for when they're still in jail, while Medicaid does not cover standard health care for inmates, it does pay for hospital stays off-site lasting more than 24 hours. For example, it would pay for complicated in-patient surgeries or stays in a psychiatric facility.
Roy argues that offering health care at a local level is often more efficient and more productive than handing off the responsibility to the federal government. He calls the Medicaid system “poorly designed and poorly structured.”
But states say freeing up millions in their recession-depleted budgets is worth it.
The process begins early for prisoners in Illinois’ Cook County Jail.
Cook County, the largest single-site jail complex in the United States, has started more than 13,000 insurance applications since last April. Once prisoners there are booked, fingerprinted and assigned a cell, they meet with a worker from Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities who helps them apply for Medicaid.
More than 2,000 prisoners already have gone on to receive coverage after their release, Marleza Jentz of the sheriff’s public policy office said.
Jails in California reportedly also are looking at making this shift. And in Iowa, state correction officials and human services departments are setting up a plan to enroll inmates in their public health insurance program before they are released from prison.
Prison officials will likely help inmates complete their applications shortly before they are released. Prison administrators will then send the applications to human services officials who will complete the process and ensure inmates are covered when they are paroled or finish their sentences.
“We want success,” Department of Corrections administrator Katrina McKibbin recently told a group of reporters. “We want increased public safety.”
Iowa releases about 4,000 prisoners a year.
Under the old Medicaid plan, the federal government would pay 58 percent of the cost of care while the state and local government picked up the other 42 percent. Under the expansion of the Medicaid program under ObamaCare, the federal government would absorb 100 percent of the extra costs for the first three years which would then go down to 90 percent by the end of the decade.
Fox News' Jim Angle contributed to this report.

Flood

Mozilla chief learns, if you don’t support gay marriage, you don’t deserve a job

As we enter this golden age of tolerance and diversity, the nation’s gay rights community is sending a warning message to Americans: If you don’t support gay marriage, you don’t deserve a job.
Apparently, Brendan Eich did not get that message. He’s the former chief executive officer at Mozilla, the technology group that gave us the Firefox Web browser.
Eich resigned under a firestorm of controversy after it was revealed he had donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that protected traditional marriage.
It’s unclear who outed Eich. But that really doesn’t matter. Once his donation was revealed, supporters of gay marriage launched all-out war.

I trust there are rational and reasonable individuals within the gay rights community who understand the dangers of stifling free speech and expression. But the voices that are winning the day are those who believe gay rights trump everyone else’s rights.

The Wall Street Journal reported that OKCupid, the popular online dating website, asked its followers to stop using Firefox. The wireless company Credo Mobile gathered more than 50,000 signatures on a petition calling for Eich to resign.
OKCupid posted a letter denouncing the Mozilla CEO, The New York Times reported.
“Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame and frustration are our enemies and we wish them nothing but failure,” the letter stated.
Why not demand that those who oppose gay marriage relinquish the right to own property? Why not take away their right to vote? Why not take away their children? Why not just throw them in jail? Why not force them to work in chain gangs? Why not call for public floggings? Or better yet, let’s just strap them down on gurneys, stick a needle in their arm and rid the world of these intolerant anti-gay bigots once and for all.
Eich won’t say he was forced to resign, but based on the company’s press release, it’s safe to say his days were numbered.
“Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn’t live up to it,” Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker wrote in a statement. 
“We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it’s because we haven’t stayed true to ourselves.”
She went on to opine about freedom of speech and equality. In her estimation, one trumps the other.
“Equality is necessary for meaningful speech,” she wrote. “And you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.”
No, not really, Ms. Baker. Our Founding Fathers sort of worked that out in the Bill of Rights.
I write about this very issue in my upcoming book, “God Less America.” There are pages and pages filled with stories of workers and business owners who’ve either lost their jobs or faced public floggings for their support of traditional marriage.
The left does not believe people who oppose gay marriage should be allowed to engage in the democratic process. And they have a proven track record of intimidating and bullying those who do.
Just ask Angela McCaskill, the chief diversity officer at Gallaudet University. She was suspended after she signed a petition in her church to put a gay marriage referendum on the ballot in Maryland.
Just ask Scott Eckern, the former artistic director of California Musical Theatre. He resigned under pressure after he gave money to support Prop 8. As one activist told The New York Times, “I do believe there comes a time when you cannot sit back and accept what I think is the most dangerous form of bigotry.”
Just ask our nation’s top military officials. They were called into President Obama’s office and told that if they could not support “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” they should resign their commissions.
“We were called into the Oval Office and President Obama looked at all five service chiefs in the eye and said, ‘This is what I want to do,’” said Coast Guard Adm. Robert Papp in remarks reported by Buzzfeed.
The road to political correctness is littered with the bodies of folks like Brendan Eich sideswiped by the tolerance and diversity bus.
I trust there are rational and reasonable individuals within the gay rights community who understand the dangers of stifling free speech and expression. But the voices that are winning the day are those who believe gay rights trump everyone else’s rights.
I know this may sound old-fashioned, but gainful employment should not be determined by where you put your reproductive organs.
Tolerance is a bitch, ain’t it?

GOP lawmakers push EPA to ax proposed water rule amid outcry from farmers

  (Bailey) The EPA is another part of your American Government out of control. Everyone has to eat, even the dumb asses that pass these stupid regulations.

More than a dozen Republican lawmakers are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider asserting regulatory authority over streams and wetlands amid intense backlash from farm groups over the agency's proposed water rule. 
In a letter Thursday, the GOP senators faulted the EPA for announcing a proposed rule last week before the government's peer-reviewed scientific assessment was fully complete. They are calling on the government to withdraw the rule or give the public six months to review it, rather than the three months being provided.
The senators' move puts them among several groups -- from farmers and land developers to Western governors worried about drought management -- in expressing concern about a long-running and heavily litigated environmental issue involving the Clean Water Act that has invoked economic interests, states' rights and presidential power.
The letter was led by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and signed by 14 other GOP senators.
"We believe that this proposal will negatively impact economic growth by adding an additional layer of red tape to countless activities that are already sufficiently regulated by state and local governments," the letter to EPA chief Gina McCarthy said.
Meanwhile, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, introduced appropriations language this week aimed at blocking the rule entirely. The proposed language states that "no funds shall be appropriated to study, promote, advertise, implement or otherwise promulgate" the rule. 
“This new rule is another power grab by [President] Obama. This is a brazen attempt to impose a radical redefinition specifically rejected by Congress and the Supreme Court,” Stockman said in a statement. "Green radicals have tried for decades to pass this redefinition by law, but it was too radical to pass even a Democrat-controlled Congress." 
Alisha Johnson, the EPA's deputy associate administrator for external affairs and environmental education, said the EPA's draft scientific assessment, used to inform the proposed rule, was being reviewed and wouldn't be complete until the end of this year or early next year. The EPA rule will not be finalized until the scientific assessment is fully complete, and will take into account public comments, she said. 
The proposal would apply pollution regulations to the country's so-called "intermittent and ephemeral streams and wetlands" -- which are created during wet seasons, or simply after it rains, but are temporary.
At issue is the federal Clean Water Act, which gives the EPA authority to regulate "U.S. waters." Two Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 limited regulators' reach, but left unclear the scope of authority over small waterways that might flow intermittently. 
Landowners and developers say the government has gone too far in regulating isolated ponds or marshes with no direct connection to navigable waterways.
Some 36 states, including Pennsylvania, have legal limitations that prevent the EPA from regulating waters not covered by the Clean Water Act, according to the Environmental Law Institute.
Tile drainage systems would not be regulated and there would be no new requirements for irrigation and drainage ditches. Exemptions already granted for farming activities would continue and 53 agricultural conservation practices would be added to the list.   
But farmers who receive exemptions must also engage in an ongoing conversion practice that complies with Natural Resources Conservation Services standards, according to Stockman.
“Once the landowner completes the conservation practice or changes the use of his land, he loses his EPA exemption and must now comply with a new, and more complex, set of rules,” Stockman said. "In other words, the only way a farmer or rancher can exempt himself from the EPA rule is to adhere to a mountain of other new federal rules." 
Criticizing the proposal as a "serious threat" to farmers, the American Farm Bureau Federation said Wednesday that the rule would impose new regulatory burdens on farmers, ranchers and other landowners and give the agency veto power over a farmer’s ability to work.
"This is not just about the paperwork of getting a permit to farm, or even about having farming practices regulated. The fact is there is no legal right to a Clean Water Act permit—if farming or ranching activities need a permit, [the] EPA or the Army Corps of Engineers can deny that permit," the group said in a statement.
The proposed regulation, broadly supported by environmental groups, has become a charged political issue in a midterm election year where President Obama has pledged to use his executive power as needed to push through environmental and climate change protections.
"It's the most breathtaking power grab I've seen in a long time, and they wonder why the economy is so weak," Toomey said in a Philadelphia radio interview this week.
Still, the issue is not divided strictly along partisan lines.
The proposed rule has drawn the concern of Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, chair of the Western Governors Association. He has warned federal officials that the rule change could impinge upon state authority in water management and that states should be consulted in the EPA decision-making. In recent years, Hickenlooper has urged the Obama administration to speed approval of water projects because of a looming water supply gap in Colorado.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Energy Department revives auto loan program despite Fisker flop

(Bailey) This is one of many examples of  American Government out of control.



The Obama administration announced this week it is reopening a loan program for advanced fuel-efficient vehicles that was derided by Republican lawmakers last year after two of the first five loan beneficiaries halted operations.
The Department of Energy said Wednesday it is reviving the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program and is reaching out to manufacturers of auto parts and components to apply for more than $16 billion in available funding, The Wall Street Journal reported. 
Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the program, which has has provided $8.4 billion in funding since 2009, will have a revised application process to speed up reviews and address concerns from auto makers about the process being too complex.
"Today we are presented with an opportunity to hit the accelerator on U.S. auto manufacturing growth," Moniz said at a conference in Washington. "Motor vehicle parts manufacturers play a significant role in the development and deployment of new technologies to meet the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles." 
The program came under scrutiny after the department lost $139 million on a loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc., which filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Fisker received $192 million from the program before funding was pulled.
In September 2013, the Energy Department lost about $42 million on a loan to a shuttered Michigan company that made vans for the disabled. Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, suspended operations the same year after receiving $50 million in financing. 
The loan program did have success with electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc., which repaid its $452 million loan in 2013, according to the report. 
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who said at hearing last year that the program never should have considered Fisker, told the Wall Street Journal he questioned administration's plan to revamp the program.
"Despite the Energy Department's appalling track record of loan programs, which put taxpayer money on the line to fund junk-bond-rated companies, this administration will do anything to shove their ideology-driven policy forward.," Issa said in a statement.
The Reublican-led House is expected to vote on a budget proposal from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that would essentially dissolve the auto loan program, the Washington Examiner reported.
At a Thursday hearing on the Energy Department's 2015 budget, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., voiced concerns about the reopening the program. 
"I remain highly skeptical of the federal government playing venture capitalist," Upton was quoted as saying. "The revival of the loan guarantee program that backed Solyndra ... is of serious concern."