Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst will face Democrat Bruce Braley in the Iowa Senate race this November.
People’s Pundit Daily can project that Republican Joni Ernst will win the Iowa Senate primary outright. Ernst had begun to build a big lead in the latter weeks of the campaign, building a broad coalition ranging from Mitt Romney to Sarah Palin.
PPD went out on a limb on June 1 to call the self-described “mother, soldier, conservative” the safe bet. Ernst made headlines back in March with an ad called “Squeal” that talked about her experience “castrating hogs.” Then, another ad entitled “Shot,” depicted Ernst, a veteran and former Lt. Colonel, with a firearm preparing “to take aim at wasteful spending” and promises to “set her sights on ObamaCare.”
As we first underscored back in early May, she was the only candidate to have reached first-tier status. We were able to call the race at 9:29 PM ET, while her support was roughly where it is now and above 50 percent.
Joni Ernst is way ahead of challengers, poised to outright win as predicted by @PPDNews last week.
College professor and talk radio host Sam Clovis took a distant second place with 18 percent of the vote, while businessman Mark Jacobs was close behind in third with 17.3 percent.
Former U.S. attorney Matt Whitaker, who is considering a 2016 presidential bid, was in an even more distant fourth place with just 7.8 percent of the vote.
Joni Ernst will face Democrat Bruce Braley in the Iowa Senate race this November. Braley was recently caught on video at an out-of-state fundraiser dismissing Chuck Grassley, the state’s popular Republican senator, as a “farmer from Iowa who never went to law school.” He has launched ads attempting to soften his perception and legal professional in light of the video, which is sure to get plastered all over the airwaves until Nov. Meanwhile, if Ernst defeats Braley, she will become Iowa’s first woman ever elected to federal office.
Former governor and now Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Mike Rounds.
People’s Pundit Daily can easily project that former Republican Governor Mike Rounds has won the Republican Senate primary in South Dakota. The retirement of Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson opened up a prime pick-up opportunity for Republicans. They need six seats to retake control of the U.S. Senate in November.
A Rasmussen Reports survey found Republican Mike Rounds simply trouncing Democrat Rick Weiland by 20 points – 51 percent to 31 percent. Weiland was uncontested in the Democratic primary. Nevertheless, the South Dakota Senate race is rated “Safe Republican” on PPD’s 2014 Senate Map Predictions.
May 22, 2014: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer speaks during a press briefing in Phoenix. (Photo: AP)
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is urging President Obama to end the “dangerous and unconscionable” policy of dumping illegal immigrants into her state.
Last week we learned that measurable of illegal immigrants were flown in or bused in from Texas by the federal government — many of whom were women and children — then left abandoned in the state of Arizona among other places. Brewer sent a scathing letter to Obama slinging a string of criticisms, including not notifying her administration and posing a serious of questions regarding the cruel policy.
“Media reports indicate that many of the illegal aliens that DHS is releasing into Arizona from Texas are women, children, and unaccompanied juveniles,” Brewer wrote. “The reports also indicate that DHS has abandoned these individuals at the bus stations without any food, water or basic necessities.”
For all of the talk about Democratic compassion toward illegal immigrants, it was the Republican Governor Jan Brewer who made the moral case against policies that ignore, sweep under the rug or encourage illegal immigration.
“I remind you that the daytime temperatures in Arizona during this time of year are regularly more than 100 degrees,” she added. “Consequently, this federal operation seems to place expediency over basic humanitarian concerns.”
“This unwarranted operation is another disturbing example of a deliberate failure to enforce border security policies and repair a broken immigration system,” she wrote.
Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar on Monday wrote to the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee requesting they launch an official investigation into the Obama administration’s policy. Unless addressed, excluding amnesty disguised as “a pathway to citizenship,” the problems are likely to get even worse.
The prominent argument among supporters of immigration reform, or rather amnesty, is that social welfare services won’t be stressed much more because the number of illegal immigrants entering the country will not increase. But the latest data show the number of apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley has skyrocketed once again in recent years, with south Texas now acting as the main border crossing for illegal immigrants along the southwest border with Mexico.
Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector apprehended 154,453 immigrants last year — up from 97,762 the previous year. Further, there has been a surge of children, who either are without parents equipped to care for them or any parents, altogether.
Most of the families brought from Texas and abandoned in Arizona — on Obama’s order — have been dumped off by the busload at stations in Phoenix and Tucson. However, they have also been abandoned in New York and Maryland, as well.
New reports and testimony show it is “incontrovertible” that Bowe Bergdahl had deserted his unit when he disappeared on June 30, 2009.
National Security Advisor Susan Rice again misled the public during a Sunday show appearance, during which she said Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “served his country with honor and distinction.” However, the Department of Defense concluded in 2010 that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was a deserter, after a formal 5 – 6-investigation definitely determined he walked away from his post. The department then suspiciously reclassified the investigation into a 20-19, which classified the details of the investigation.
Now, it is “incontrovertible” that Bergdahl had deserted his unit when he disappeared on June 30, 2009, taking a cell phone, knife and small ration of water on his way toward enemy lines. Bergdahl called his unit just hours after his desertion to tell the command he was gone. Though it is being widely reported that 6 soldiers lost their lives during missions to locate the deserter, PPD has learned that at least 8 more special operations forces were also killed when carrying out a mission to find Bergdahl. He was being held in Pakistan under the supervision of the Haqqani network, a Taliban ally with links to Pakistan’s corrupt intelligence service.
We have also learned that the prisoner exchange, which resulted in the release of five of the worst war criminals being held at Guantanamo Bay, has caused a rift between the traditional intelligence apparatuses and the administration. CIA officials have what has been described as a “massive” open file on Bowe Bergdahl, filled with findings that suggest he was a “potential collaborator,” including instances that occurred before he ever even left his post to go AWOL (absent without leave). The possibility that Bergdahl’s desertion was intended to draw out American troops who would be vulnerable to attack was also investigated, though we could ascertain the investigators’ conclusions.
The details of how this prisoner exchange transpired has also become more clear. Negotiations had begun in 2011, with members of the president’s reelection campaign pushing for a big foreign policy win to help the president’s image ahead of the election. But they ran into an utterly opposed duo of former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both of whom refused to trade a known deserter and potential collaborator for five of the most dangerous men ever to be held at Gitmo. In fact, Panetta and Clinton seemed to be two obstacles in the effort to carry out “a negotiated peace” with the Taliban.
But now they are gone, and a willing and supportive Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel are behind the president’s effort to shut down Guantanamo Bay. According to administration officials, the entire prisoner exchange was meant to serve as a barometer for any potential storm of public outrage resulting from the release of terrorist detainees. Lawmakers have pushed on the president’s decision to break the law, which he did when he ignored the new 30-day law that requires he notify Congress of the release of any detainees from Gitmo. President Obama signed the bill into law, and whether or nor he broke the law is as “incontrovertible” as Bergdahl’s desertion.
Meanwhile, the widely condemned and ill-advised prisoner exchange hasn’t been the only blunder from the administration.
Sgt. Bergdahl’s father and mother appeared with President Obama in the Rose Garden Saturday, during which the father appeared with a Taliban-like beard and thanked Allah for his son’s lease. He said he was growing the beard in support of his son, but questions are now being raised about whether Bergdahl’s father is also a sympathizer. He reportedly deleted a tweet from Wednesday that read: “I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, ameen [sic]!”
The latest manufacturing data released Monday from an industry report showed the pace of growth in the sector unexpectedly slowed in May.
The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.2 last month from 54.9 in April, missing Wall Street estimates. Economists polled by Reuters forecast a reading of 55.5.
A reading above 50 indicates expansion, while below 50 indicates contraction.
As of 10:04 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 9.2 points, or 0.06 percent to 16707, the S&P 500 dipped 4.6 points, or 0.24 percent to 1919 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 24.8 points, or 0.59 percent to 4218.
The employment subindex dropped to 51.9 in May from 54.7 the prior month, also missing economists’ expectations for 55.0. However, the gauge of prices paid increased sharply to 60.0 from 56.5, coming in above the 57.0 forecast by economists.
Meanwhile, new orders fell to 53.3 from 55.1.
The report comes ahead of a slew of data on the labor market, capped with the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, due out on Friday.
U.S. crude oil futures rose 3 cents, or 0.03 percent to $102.74 a barrel, while Wholesale New York Harbor gasoline dipped 0.57 percent to $3 a gallon. Gold rose $1.50, or 0.11 percent to $1,247 a troy ounce.
The Obama administration Monday announced the first-ever regulation to place nationwide restrictions on carbon emissions from existing power plants. The controversial move is key to President Obama’s climate change agenda, and aims to use the Environmental Protection Agency to force existing plants to cut pollution by 30 percent by 2030.
Aside from the new regulation bypassing Congress, both the political costs to the Democratic Party and economic costs to the American people, will be severe. The Democrats feared the political consequences of passing “cap-and-trade” legislation when they held super-majorities in both Houses of Congress, but now the president has unilaterally declared the EPA plan will go into effect in June 2016, following a one-year comment period. States will then be forced to carry out the rule, though the administration claims they can do so with some flexibility.
However, industry officials have been sounding the alarm on the lock-step march toward power shortages. American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity Mike Duncan is concerned that if more power plants are closed, “that creates huge stresses – we’re just not ready for anything like that in this country.”
Then there are the financial costs. There is widespread agreement that the rule change will increase electricity prices, as there is no way to get around the fact the United States relies on coal for 40 percent of its electricity. But rather than focus on the reality, which is that alternative energy is not developed enough to offset the cost to the everyday American, supporters focus on coal’s role as the country’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Political consequences are also a factor for a number of Democrats representing states with coal-producing economies. Democratic Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, who represents a state that gets 96 percent of its power from coal, coincidentally faces a tough reelection in November and is also opposing the rule. The West Virginia Senate race between another Representative, Shelley Moore Capito, and Natalie Tennant rated “Safe Republican” on PPD’s Senate Map Predictions.
Prior “War on Coal” regulations have all but destroyed the state’s economy, leading to a significant move toward the Republican Party in political preference, as well as the highest food stamp recipient number per capita. Rahall said Thursday that even though he didn’t have all the information about the rule, “from everything we know we can be sure of this: It will be bad for jobs.”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is releasing a study that shows the rule will kill 224,000 jobs every year through the year 2030, and will impose $50 billion in annual costs. Among the states that will be severely affected by the regulation are Kansas, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
“Add the fact that EPA is proposing new source performance standard, what this is going to do will effectively ban the construction of any new coal plants,” Manchin said on the new changes last month. “How do we keep the lights on so people’s lives will not be in danger?”
Even former comedian turned-Minnesota Democratic Senator, Al Franken, told Fox News that this is no laughing matter. “We need state flexibility in addressing those kind of issues, especially on the new rules that the EPA will make on existing coal fire plants,” he said. “We’re talking about grid security — it’s a serious issue.”
Meanwhile, the vast amount of public opinion data show that the American people — though largely concerned about the environment — have little appetite for climate change rules that take priority over economic issues. In fact, according to the latest Gallup Environmental survey, Americans recognized the unusually cold winter this past year, but did not see it as a result of man-made climate change. The indefinite delay of the Keystone XL pipeline put the Democrats’ disconnect on full display, with polls showing the public approved of the construction by more than two-thirds majority.
But on Saturday, Obama tried to rally public support for the new rule by arguing that Americans can have their cake and eat it, too, though the facts don’t bear that out. He said carbon-dioxide emissions are a national health crisis, which somehow actually hurt the economy while causing global warming.
“We don’t have to choose between the health of our economy and the health of our children,” Obama said in his weekly address. “As president and as a parent, I refuse to condemn our children to a planet that’s beyond fixing.”
Because Democrats saw little chance of selling that losing argument prior to their historic 2010 defeat, Obama is now stretching his authority in the 1970s-era old Clean Air Act, which has already been reigned in by the Supreme Court. “I can’t find a single precedent that strongly supports your position,” Justice Kennedy said during oral arguments in February regarding a case that will decide whether or not the EPA has authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases under a program for stationary sources of pollution, such as power plants and oil refineries.
Kennedy joined with the courts liberal justices in the landmark 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA, when on a 5-4 vote ruled that greenhouse gases from vehicles were a pollutant and could potentially be regulated under the air pollution law. However, Kennedy wasn’t at all thrilled with the government’s argument in the latest case.
The law is typically used to regulate pollutants such as soot, mercury and lead. But only in the recent past — under the Obama administration — has it been used to apply to greenhouse gases.
“There are no national limits to the amount of carbon pollution that existing plants can pump into the air we breathe. None,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address.
“We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, sulfur, and arsenic that power plants put in our air and water. But they can dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air. It’s not smart, it’s not safe, and it doesn’t make sense.”
Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst will likely challenge Democrat Bruce Braley in the Iowa Senate race this November.
Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst has opened up a wide lead ahead of Tuesday’s primary, leading her closest challenger by an average of 14 points. PPD has now moved our primary projection from “Leans” Ernst — first assigned in April — to “Safe” Ernst. In order to outright win the nomination the self-described “mother, soldier, conservative” needs to take 35 percent of the vote in the five-way race.
The latest Des Moines Register poll shows her at 36 percent, exactly double the support of her closest challenger, businessman Mark Jacobs. But she enjoys broad-based support from groups such as Senate Conservatives Fund, which recently launched a new TV ad on May 27, to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a coalition we believe should get her across the finish line on Tuesday.
Whether or not Ernst secures the nomination on the first round, is largely irrelevant to the inevitable outcome. Ernst made headlines back in March with an ad called “Squeal” that talked about her experience “castrating hogs.” Then, another ad entitled “Shot,” depicted Ernst, a veteran and former Lt. Colonel, with a firearm preparing “to take aim at wasteful spending” and promises to “set her sights on ObamaCare.” As we first underscored back in early May, she is the only candidate to have reached first-tier status. Now the latest polls confirms our early suspicions.
The soon-to-be Democratic nominee Rep. Bruce Braley, launched a new ad highlighting his work as a lawyer, an attempt to soften the profession that he elevated above Iowa farmers, whom he trashed in a video.
Meanwhile, in a new ad by Joni Ernst, the likely challenger to Braley plays up her Iowa roots. Aside from the video, the Iowa Senate race a “Toss-Up” on our 2014 Senate Map Predictions for the same reasons Ernst’s new ad is a hit.
By a 2 to 1 margin, Quinnipiac University found Iowa voters say they want a senator who opposes ObamaCare and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and a plurality want someone opposed to stricter gun control laws.
Harper Polling, as well, found by a margin of 52 – 39 percent, Iowa voters say they want a senator who opposes ObamaCare. Similarly, Harper Polling found Iowa voters by a margin of 42 – 38 percent want a Republican senator.
Iowa voters approve 62 – 27 percent of the job Senator Chuck Grassley is doing, but only approve 55 – 31 percent of Senator Tom Harkin.
When we compare trends, both of which show respectable improvements, we see a large disparity. The difference reflects the same political dynamic we discussed in the analysis of the last Iowa Senate poll conducted by Quinnipiac University: Iowa voters, ideologically and on the specific issues, have voter’s remorse over Barack Obama and largely agree with the Republican Party.
“President Barack Obama twice carried Iowa and it was the Iowa Caucuses which began his march to the presidency, but if he were on the ballot here today he would be toast,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
But while Obama, himself, may not be on the ballot in November, his policies are. Ernst has found the correct balance between opposing his policies enough to earn the support of the conservative base, while still receiving the endorsements of former 2012 president nominee Mitt Romney and likely 2016 president hopeful Marco Rubio.
Despite the fact that Sam Clovis has said he is more conservative than Ernst, Iowa Republican voters say she is the most conservative in the race, the Des Moines Register poll showed. If no candidate captures 35 percent, which senior political analyst Richard D. Baris does not view as the more likely outcome, about 2,000 activists would choose the nominee on June 14. “For all the talk of their conservative roots, Iowa activists are also pragmatists,” Baris said. “Ernst is a conservative who can also reach over and pull moderates to her corner. They will choose her if it even gets that far.”
Still, he says that she will have her work cut out for her no matter Tuesday’s results. “Winning the nomination outright in a five-way race is impressive, but where the numbers are also show she has a lot of others to win over who didn’t vote for her,” he added. “But Republicans want the Senate so badly, and according to polling, so do Iowa voters.”
Incumbent Republican Senator Thad Cochran (left) and conservative challenger Chris Daniels (right) will face off in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary. The Mississippi Senate race is rated “Safe Republican” regardless.
The Mississippi Senate race is all tied up ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primary, when incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran will face Chris McDaniel is the political fight of his life. When we first examined the contest back in December, we changed the rating from “Likely Cochran” to a “Toss-Up,” and cited Cochran as the most “endangered incumbent Republican senator who may not win his party’s nomination.”
Now, with just 48 hours to go before voting begins, U.S. Senator Thad Cochran — whom Senate Conservatives Fund refers to as “a liberal Republican” — is in serious danger of losing to conservative Chris McDaniel on Tuesday. Polls, viewable below, show McDaniel has surged in the final weeks, bad press notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, Sen. Cochran is offering more of the same if he is reelected. “I hope to be able to continue to use my influence in Washington to be sure that we get our share of the federal dollars that are available to help us,” he said at Simpson General Hospital, where several dozen people — both longtime supporters and hospital staffers — had gathered.
The 76-year old, six-term senator is the second-longest serving Republican in the upper chamber and, if you include the years he served in the House, then he has been in Washington for 41 years. Because Cochran hasn’t had to run a competitive race in over 30 years, he didn’t even believe he was vulnerable at first. However, The Club for Growth, Senate Conservatives Fund and the Madison Project launched TV and radio ads early in Mississippi to help raise McDaniel’s name recognition, a vital key to victory if he happens to win on Tuesday.
Cochran has flat-out ignored challenges and calls to agree to a face-to-face debate with McDaniel. “There’s no special reason why I should debate him,” he told reporters at the gathering. “I don’t know what the debate would prove that everybody doesn’t already know.”
It was becoming clear that McDaniel had the momentum and energy going into the final stretch, and PPD was gearing up to change the rating to “Leans McDaniel.” Then, two weeks ago, a local blogger actually went to the nursing home where Cochran’s wife, who suffers from dementia, has lived for more than a decade. After, a photo of Cochran’s wife was posted on the Internet, which was met with widespread condemnation in the political arena, but also prosecution in the legal arena. The blogger, Clayton Thomas Kelly, and three others, have been arrested. While the blogger has no connection to the candidate, the three have some small connection to McDaniel, though all involved have denied his knowledge of the event.
Still, even though McDaniel’s supporters fear the event might have distracted from the issues in the race, the polls do not seem to reflect that at this point. Perhaps that may have something to do with the response from those who back the insurgent. Citizens United and ForAmerica began advertising in Mississippi following the news. In total, groups backing McDaniel have spent roughly $2.4 million, compared with $1.8 million from pro-Cochran groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, according to the Federal Election Commission.
It isn’t at all difficult to understand why Cochran has been targeted by activists this cycle. A recent statement by the incumbent underscores what lays at the core of his opposition.
“I think we need to monitor any federal programs that provide services and assistance to people who need help, and this is an example of an important effort by the federal government to help make health care available, accessible and affordable,” he said. “We have probably one of the best health-care systems in the country, in the world, and we’ll need to continue to work to make sure it meets the expectations and needs of the American people. I’m glad to be involved in that effort.”
Monitor, not dismantle, big government programs that are driving the nation’s unsustainable debt? Probably, not definitively, the best health care system in the world, pre-ObamaCare? Happy to be involved in, not opposed to, an effort to work to grow more government?
A Cochran adviser immediately tried to call reporters to claim there was confusion over whether the question had been regrading ObamaCare or the Department of Veterans Affairs. But, for conservatives, that is really no excuse for someone who pretends to be for limited government because, as we have seen over recent weeks and months, neither system is ideal and both are examples of the innate flaws of big government programs. But without these programs, Cochran has little to offer to the state of Mississippi, and he and his supporters don’t even try to hide it.
“I thought it was time for me to retire,” Cochran said. “I thought I’d served long enough. But people were saying, what are we going to do without you?” Indeed, those past favors go a long way with supporters. “He has done more for Mississippi than any other representative, senator, governor in the past,” said Josh Mars, representing young business leaders endorsing Cochran.
That’s exactly what conservative groups having been arguing is the problem with Cochran. “It’s time for Mississippi Republicans to make a choice: liberal six-term incumbent Thad Cochran or next generation conservative leader Chris McDaniel,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola. An ad entitled, “The Choice,” released by The Club for Growth explains what conservatives hungry for new leadership are fighting for.
“There are some in the conservative coalition that will be working hard for Chris McDaniel,” Pat Bruce, head of the Madison County Conservative Coalition, said back in December. “But then others will be working for Sen. Cochran because of what he’s done for us over the years.”
Getting back to actual data, there is a lot of truth to the choice Chocola says the voters have to make. Let’s first state the obvious. Tuesday’s turnout, which the Cochran camp is extremely concerned about, will decide the race. They view it as unpredictable, and the demographic data by age shows the younger the better for McDaniel, or as Chocola said, in with the old and out with the new. On average, McDaniel enjoys a more than 20-point advantage over Cochran among voters under 45, and a 7-point lead among voter 45 to 65. Cochran, however, leads among voters 65 and older by an average of 15 points.
Polling has been consistent in the state in the past, and there is no change this cycle from that trend. Estimates for the 65-and-older vote ranged from 33 percent in a Polling Company survey to 58 percent in a Harper Polling survey, McDaniel led by 4 points in the Polling Company survey and Cochran led by 5 in the Harper Polling survey. In 2012, primary exits polls showed that the age bloc made up 33 percent of the electorate, which is good news for McDaniel.
The insurgent’s numbers have recovered after an initial hit he took following the arrest of those involved with the photo. Still, McDaniel was beginning to build a lead in tracking surveys prior to the news, and the question is whether he can rebuild enough momentum to cross the finish line before Tuesday. The energy is on the side of the insurgent, with committed voters supporting McDaniel outnumbering solid Cochran supporters by double-digits, and the same is true among voters who say they will “definitely” vote on Tuesday.
Second, Democrats can vote in the Republican primary. The amount of Democrats who crossover to vote for Cochran will have an enormous impact, and a staffer in the Cochran camp has told PPD they are actively hunting down Democratic votes. We will begin to see how successful this effort was pretty early on when the returns come in, particularly from looking at the turnout numbers in the First Congressional District. The Third Congressional District is Cochran’s strongest region, and unless he is holding down McDaniel’s margin in CD-1 with the help of Democratic voters, then he is likely to be defeated for the first time in four decades.
President Obama announced Friday that embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki would attempted to take the fall for the rapidly growing VA scandal. “Secretary Shinseki offered me his own resignation — with considerable regret, I accepted,” Obama said.
The president and Shinseki met at the White House after he received an update on an internal review of the problems at the VA. The review showed the problems were systemic, and not limited to just a few facilities. “It’s totally unacceptable. Our veterans deserve the best,” Obama said.
Earlier Friday morning, Shinseki publicly apologized for the failures in the VA system, and also announced he would oust senior leaders at the Phoenix VA Medical Center, where allegations of improper scheduling practices first surfaced. Shinseki, speaking to advocates for homeless veterans, said he initially believed the problems were “limited and isolated.”
“I no longer believe that. It is systemic,” Shinseki said. “I will not defend it, because it is indefensible.”
However, despite the pretend outrage at this failure of big government, which they are also pretending to have just discovered, the evidence shows both men and many others knew that the VA problems were systemic. Over a period of a decade, nearly two dozen reports from the agency’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office found veterans were dying because of long wait times for health care, and that were covered up by bogus and corrupt record- keeping by bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals.
Democrats and the administration are hoping to calm the political storm, and that the media coverage will not focus on the real story behind the VA scandal, which is the innate failure and corrupt tendency of big government. Republicans do not seem willing to allow the resignation to sweep the scandal under the rug, but whether they even understand the depth of the problem is not yet clear.
“VA’s problems are deadly serious, and whomever the next secretary may be, they will receive no grace period from America’s veterans, American taxpayers and Congress,” Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL), the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee said in a statement.
House Speaker John Boehner said the resignation “does not absolve the president.” The House Speaker is leading the calls for the Justice Department to launch a criminal probe, and his delegation is behind him. “I think criminal convictions will come out of this,” said Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN), a member of the House veterans’ committee. “Somebody in that organization put a deliberate plan together of deceit and corruption and people died.”
But Democrats are not accepting the facts and the real problem at the heart of the VA. Shinseki said the “lack of integrity” is something he has “rarely encountered.” That’s just not a correct characterization of the VA bureaucracy, which is in fact systemically corrupt. Even the internal audit reviewed by Obama on Friday found that “pressures were placed on schedulers to utilize inappropriate practices in order to make Waiting Times appear more favorable.” Simply announcing that patient wait times will no longer be used as a measure of success in employee evaluations will not remove the corruption, because the bureaucracy itself is still corrupt.
Eric Shinseki resigns just after Democrats moved to kill the VA Management Accountability Act (S. 2013), Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s Senate version of the VA Management Accountability Act (H.R. 4031) that passed overwhelmingly in the House. The bill would have granted the VA secretary the power to fire corrupt administrators who currently control the bureaucracy. Majority Leader Harry Reid relied upon self-described Democrat-socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, to kill the bill.
Nevertheless, at the behest of the public labor unions, President Obama threatened to veto the House bill if the Senate had passed a version, claiming he agreed with the principle but not the policy. Meanwhile, Obama said Shinseki told him he did not want to be a distraction. “I agree,” Obama said. “We don’t have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem.”
Yet, the entire resignation and current calls for more investigations are all distractions from the real root of the problem, which strikes at the heart of the Democratic Party’s big government ideology. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), said in a joint statement that they would continue to push a bill to commence a Justice Department investigation. “This scandal has dragged on over a decade. We believe the Department of Justice should begin investigations right away,” they said.
Even though people may be targeted for prosecution and internal reports may state the bureaucratic practices were “pervasive” enough to “require VA re-examine its entire Performance Management system,” the people will only evolve the practices into a new, unaccountable version of bureaucratic tyranny. In the mid-1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a progressive hero none-the-less, opposed efforts to unionize WPA workers. In his book Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools, Terry Moe wrote that Roosevelt, “an ardent supporter of collective bargaining in the private sector, was opposed to it in the public sector.”
Roosevelt was wrong, but not in the way progressives had hoped he would be.
Roosevelt’s ideology, and in fact the entire progressive ideology, fails to accept the corrupt nature and natural expansion of government. With government, as another book attempted to remind the American people, you cannot have your cake and eat it too. The tyranny of many, as is the case with the modern American bureaucracy, is self-perpetuating and unaccountable. It bears little resemblance to the merit-based bureaucracy our founders had in mind and Max Weber admired in his seminal work about the early American republic.
Until we return to our true limited government instincts, these deaths will have been in vain.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is stepping down, ending a tumultuous and lengthy tenure that succeeded Robert Gibbs. Carney served as President Obama’s spokesman since 2011. President Obama literally interrupted Carney’s daily briefing on Friday to announce his departure, calling him one of his “closest friends” and a trusted adviser.
“I actually think he will miss hanging out with all of you,” Obama said. Obama also said he has already chosen Carney’s deputy, Josh Earnest, to be the next press secretary. But while the president tried to joke and lighten up the announcement, the reality is that Jay Carney resigns amid scandal, with the Beltway whispering about the damage he has done to his reputation in his service to his boss.
“Today the flak jacket is officially passed to a new generation,” Obama quipped. After years of being handled with kid gloves, at least some in the press had begun to hammer Carney over false statements and ridiculous official excuses for making those statements. When the Ben Rhodes email surfaces showing 1) that the White House inner circle intentionally crafted a story about the video to divert attention away from foreign policy failures in the Middle East, and 2) Jay Carney, himself, was Cc’ed on the email despite giving ABC News White House correspondent Jon Karl inaccurate answers immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
More recently, Jon Karl hammered Carney for his inaccurate characterization of the American Legion’s position on the VA scandal, which left an untold number of veterans without care, causing death in many cases.
The announcement Friday came on another scandal-ridden day in Washington. It was just hours earlier that Obama announced he had accepted Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki’s resignation. Carney has defended President Obama from the press briefing room podium on every scandal to-date, from the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare to the most recent VA scandal. He goes with still unanswered questions about the Benghazi terror attack.
“It’s been a privilege,” Carney said following the president’s comments, but Obama said Carney plans to take the summer off before getting a new job, suggesting the job has been a “strain” on his family. Carney also said the transition will be finished around mid-June, but Earnest will begin to take over his role when he travels next week with Obama to Europe.
Carney covered the White House for Time magazine prior to serving in the Obama administration. Once at the White House, he began as communications director for Vice President Joe Biden, and then served as Obama’s press secretary.
The affable Earnest is well-liked within the White House press corps, and reporters applauded the announcement.
“As you know, his name describes his demeanor,” Obama said. “Josh is an earnest guy and you can’t find just a nicer individual even outside of Washington.”
What does the future hold for Jay Carney?
He put an end to rumors that he would serve as ambassador to Russia, though he covered the collapse of the Soviet Empire for Time. But his wife and two children wouldn’t welcome such a move, he stated. According to his comments, he has made no decision yet on his next move, but is excited about some of the possibilities he’s begun to explore.
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