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Policy

According to a new report from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, ObamaCare premium increases are estimated to hit at least nearly two-thirds of small businesses, the single-biggest source of jobs for working American in the U.S. economy.

The federal actuarial report estimated that 65 percent of small businesses will see their health insurance premiums increases, particularly because of President Obama’s signature health law requires that premiums no longer be based on a person’s age. That has sent premiums higher for younger workers, negatively impacting at least 11 million workers, and lower for roughly 6 million older ones.

“This is another punch in the gut for Americans already struggling in the president’s economy,” Boehner said in a statement. “It’s clear why the administration sought to delay and deemphasize the release of this report. It undermines the central promise of the president’s health care law: affordable coverage.”

Essentially, ObamaCare is a redistributionist scheme that redirects monies to older, wealthier groups of individuals on the backs of the young and less-secure.

“These 11 million people who will see their premiums spike are 11 million more reasons to repeal this law and start over with common sense reform that will make care more affordable, not more costly.”

The National Association for Business Economics released a new policy survey of 230 members, which found 42 percent of business economist believed the health law would not have a significant impact on long-term economic grout, mainly because businesses will simply offset the costs associated with ObamaCare premium increases by cutting jobs.

The Congressional Budget Office released a devastating study concluding that ObamaCare will kill at least 2.3 million jobs. The administration had the same, small and insulting response they did when news broke that the individual health insurance market would be eliminated, downplaying the 2.5 million people as “a small percentage of the overall economy.”

In the NABE survey, nearly a third of business economists thought the negative economic impact of ObamaCare would and could not be avoided.

According to a new report from the

News, Politics

obamacare enrollment lie

We and others have debunked the administration’s ObamaCare enrollment lie, because the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services count all applicants in the figures, including those who were previously eligible for Medicaid.

President Obama again repeated the several-time debunked ObamaCare enrollment lie, claiming “approximately” 4 million people have signed up for health insurance through federal or state marketplaces. The White House has set an unofficial goal of 7 million enrollees by the end of March, which Sebelius and others have repeatedly pretended was never their goal.

Nevertheless, The Washington Post just Monday again debunked the administration’s ObamaCare enrollment lie, assigning the president and the administration Four Pinocchios, which is the worst rating a politician’s claim can receive for lack of truthfulness. From Glenn Kessler at The Washington Post:

The Fact Checker has written several times about the fuzziness of the Medicaid numbers issued by the Obama administration. But it is like playing whack-a-mole. Every time we rap someone for getting it wrong, the same problem pops up someplace else.

Obama on Tuesday urged his most vocal supporters to help sign up as many people as possible for the federal health care law by that deadline, calling the latest claim of enrollment “definitive,” except it isn’t.

The latest figures released by the  Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services, counts together all Medicaid applicants, including people who previously enrolled in Medicaid and are deemed eligible for another year. In other words, these applicants represent what is referred to as “normal churn,” or includes people who would have been eligible without ObamaCare.

Further, they also count those users who have simply placed a plan in their online basket, whether or not they have actually paid or even intend to pay for their first month’s premium.

Obama says at an organizing summit for Organizing for Action that people must be assured that, quote, “this will pay off for them.”

The advocacy group was founded by former Obama campaign aides and supporters, and in case Americans, particularly Republicans, do not understand what “pay off” the president is referring to, ObamaCare sign ups double as Democratic voter registration drives. As Medicaid sign ups are conducted, potential voters are registered to vote, with a wink and a nod from so-called liberal navigators, who will then hand off that information to the GOTV operations.

They will, no doubt, contact them again during election season to vote via absentee ballot, or simply just fill it out for them after making a phony request for someone else’s ballot. PeoplesPunditDaily.com documented massive voter in our viral column, New Ohio Voter Fraud Charges Put Obama’s 2% Margin In Question. And we certainly aren’t the only media outlet to do so.

Open enrollment under the federal law ends on March 31, after which people without insurance are subject to federal tax penalties.

President Obama again repeated the several-time debunked

Polls

west virginia senate race

In a new WV Senate poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, Republican Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito is on top of WV Sec. of State Natalie Tennant by a whopping 14 percent. Capito garnered 49 percent support among likely West Virginia voters, while Tennant received just 35 percent.

Though Rasmussen Reports was assessed by PPD to have a rating of 4 out of a possible 1 out of 4, with 1 being a stellar rating, the survey results are largely in line with the 2014 Senate Map Predictions at PeoplesPunditDaily.com. Since we first examined the West Virginia Senate race, Capito has been a strong favorite to win on Election Day.

PPD has confidently rated the WV race “Safe Republican” on our 2014 Senate Map Predictions, and while other notable pundits were initially skeptical of our early rating, Crystal Ball and others have begun to come around to recognizing the reality of this race.

Mitt Romney beat President Obama 62 – 36 percent, who according to Gallup has an approval rating of 25 percent. We have demonstrated over and over the relationship between presidential approval ratings and Senate election outcomes since 1980. To read more about the model used at PeoplesPunditDaily.com to predict election outcomes, click here.

In the Rasmussen Reports poll, just 4 percent preferred another candidate in the race, and 12 percent said they are still undecided.

View Polling Graphs Below Or Return To PPD 2014 Senate Map

Poll Date Sample Capito (R) Tennant (D) Spread
Rasmussen Reports 2/19 – 2/20 500 LV 49 35 Capito +14
PPP (D) 9/19 – 9/22 1110 RV 50 36 Capito +14
The West Virginia Poll 8/15 – 8/22 400 A 45 40 Capito +5

In a new WV Senate poll conducted

Economy

U.S. home prices modestly dropped 0.1 percent in December, with declining prices for a second month, including 11 out of 20 tracked cities reporting declines. According to data released Tuesday, after seasonal adjustments, home prices in December rose 0.8 percent, down a bit from 0.9 percent in November, according to S&P/Case-Shiller’s 20-city composite index.

“Gains are slowing from month-to-month and the strongest part of the recovery in home values may be over,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. Blitzer basically ignored recent concerning data suggesting the housing market is shaky, at best.

U.S. homebuilder confidence suffered its largest one-month drop ever in the month of February, falling below the key 50 mark for the first time since May.

But there are reasons to be optimistic on the surface.

“The seasonally adjusted data also exhibit some softness and loss of momentum.” On a year-over-year basis, home prices rose 13.4 percent in December, the fastest calendar-year growth since 2005. However, the increases are fueled by a low inventory of homes available for sale. Including December, prices remained about 20 percent below the 2006 high, though certain cities, such as Dallas and Denver, recently posted fresh record highs.

U.S. home prices modestly dropped 0.1 percent

Economy, Markets

consumer-confidence

The Conference Board reported Tuesday that consumer confidence fell to 78.1 in February, from a downwardly revised 79.4 the month prior.

The reading that gauges activity responsible for roughly 70 percent of U.S. gross domestic product missed economists’ expectations.

Wall Street was looking for a reading of 80, which was the forecast of economists polled.

“While expectations have fluctuated over recent months, current conditions have continued to trend upward,” Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, said in a statement. “This suggests that consumers believe the economy has improved, but they do not foresee it gaining considerable momentum in the months ahead.”

The “jobs hard-to-get” index was 32.5 in February compared with a revised 32.7 in January. Consumers’ one-year inflation expectation was 5.2 percent, compared with 5.1 percent last month.

The Conference Board reported Ruesday that consumer

Opinion

SB 1062Once again our Arizona legislature has scored another blow for freedom of speech, the religious right and Neanderthal political thought.

Legislators set a low water mark for the political process last week when they passed Arizona SB 1062 and sent it to Governor Brewer’s desk for signature. The bill, which on the surface allows a business owner to decide who to do business with, is called the Religious Rights bill. Essentially, it allows a business owner to refuse service to someone if that service violates an owner’s religious beliefs or value system.

I say “on the surface” because anyone who understands how our U.S. Constitution works would realize that the bill which duplicates some elements of the First Amendment is essentially un-Constitutional.

Barry Young explained it as well as anyone on his morning show several times, but it boils down to this: This law violates the exclusionary nature of the First Amendment by establishing a law protecting discriminatory behavior. The real reason this SB 1062 is a dumb idea, though, is not its fundamental constitutional flaw, but its net effect.

Let me explain something to all the tinfoil hat wearers in the legislature.

First of all, Arizona does not establish LGBT people as a protected class. The incident where this whole thing started was in Oregon where they do enjoy such protections. In Oregon, a baker refused to bake a cake for an LGBT wedding, and was sued. The case they keep referring to at the yahoo Center of Arizona policy is in New Mexico in a similar incident, which is another LGBT protected state. Although some municipalities in AZ have such statutes on the books they have not been fundamentally challenged yet in superior court, and most importantly, are not constitutional either. The most notable case which will affect religious rights and the freedom of speech issue is the Hobby Lobby vs. Sebelius case in the SCOTUS.

Why would you act legislatively on such a hot button issue when you haven’t even let the system work? Why would you try to fix a problem that does not yet exist?

By passing this bill now, you are going to bring down everyone from the gay mafia with their pitchforks and torches onto Arizona in an election year. Furthermore, you are going to damage the reputation of the state during a year when we are on public display because of the Super Bowl. Why would do this?

There is a second issue. By passing this law, you are effectively making the case that laws do exist which discriminate against LGBT people and will allow lawsuits to be filed that could result in legal grounds for protected status. Once that is established you will force business owners into the very situation you are trying to legislate against.

The Arizona legislature claims this law will shield business owners against lawsuits. The First Amendment already does that, and its word is final. It does not need the peanut gallery at the legislature to support it in some half-witted crusade which effectively does nothing except divide society further. You can’t say we don’t want lawsuits because they are costly and time consuming since that is the process.

Right now conservatives are in a battle nationally for the soul, the heart and the minds of the American people. We are not discussing what we’re really all about, namely small government, low taxes, free markets and a strong national defense. We have to win the Senate and hopefully the White House before we can worry about the little details. Conservatives have to understand that fights like this divide the Republican Party and does nothing to further our cause.

The Republican Party has always been the party that has stood for equal rights. The party that stood for discrimination has always been the Democratic Party. They have always been the one to say you’re too stupid, you’re too slow, you’re too dumb, and so you need government help. Unless we focus on that message, craft our legislation carefully and avoid these divisive issues, we are going to win a battle and lose the war.

One last thing, that no one has answered. How the hell does making a wedding cake for a gay wedding violate anyone’s rights? Point me to the dogma in the Bible that says ‘Thou shalt not bake gay cakes’

Thomas Purcell is a nationally syndicated columnist and host of the Liberty Never Sleeps podcast hour and author of “Shotgun Republic.”

If you would like to read more about Thomas Purcell’s thoughts on this issue you can read more at LibertyNeverSleeps.com 

Opinion: Legislators set a low water mark

News, World

ukraine foreign aid

The administration said the International Monetary Fund is working on an assistance package, but Carney said the U.S. will give Ukraine foreign aid to “strengthen its social safety net.”

Just when it appears President Obama has finally begun to understand how the world works and, more importantly, how Russian President Vladimir Putin works, there is a catch. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the U.S. government will provide Ukraine foreign aid, with certain conditions, though Carney curiously said it is to “strengthen its social safety net.”

Carney’s comments came after Ukraine’s acting government issued an arrest warrant for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him of mass crimes against anti-government protesters who began dissent after Yanukovych rejected a landmark trade deal with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia. Carney Yanukovych’s whereabouts have not been confirmed, however, he is not “actively leading the country.”

Carney said the Obama administration believes the Ukrainian parliament has lawfully elected a new speaker. The parliament’s speaker, Oleksandr Turchinov, has been acting as the government’s interim leader following the storming of the presidential palace by protestors that forced the Russian-backed Yanukovich to flee the capital of Kiev for Kharkiv.

The administration said the International Monetary Fund is working on an assistance package for Ukraine. However, Carney said that the U.S. and other countries are willing to give additional support as the country “takes the reforms it needs.”

Ukraine is facing serious financial challenges, and the recent developments have squashed previous arraignments with Russia to fulfill and meet financial deadlines. Russia’s prime minister said the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian authorities is questionable.

Dmitry Medvedev said Monday, according to Russian news agencies, that the new authorities have come to power as a result of “armed mutiny,” so their legitimacy is causing “big doubts.” The loss of the Ukraine, which was a satellite state of Russia and the former Soviet Union, would be a tremendous loss for Putin. Yet it is unclear whether or not the Obama administration understands an opportunity is presenting itself, or if the importance of social safety nets in a country that never had one to begin with takes precedent over national security and balance of power politics.

“This support can complement an IMF program by helping to make reforms easier and by putting Ukraine in a position to invest more in health and education to help develop Ukraine’s human capital and strengthen its social safety net,” Carney said. “So, we would be working with international partners to complement an IMF program, going forward.”

Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew spoke Monday with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde. Lew said he told Ukrainian opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk that there is, in fact, “broad support” for an international assistance package once a transitional government is in place.

Curiously, for the first time, according to the Gallup annual World Affairs poll, a majority of Americans think President Obama is not respected by other world leaders. It represented a dramatic shift fueled by a year of foreign policy blunder, with many Democrats and a wide margin of independents shifting their views. It remains to be seen how Ukraine may affect those views in the future.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said

Culture

oldest holocaust surviver dies

Alice Herz-Sommer, oldest holocaust surviver dies at age 110 in a hospital Sunday morning. She survived two terrible years in the Nazi camp in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, in Germany during the Second World War.

Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest Holocaust survivor dies at age 110 in a hospital Sunday morning. Herz-Sommer was a talented pianist who lived in London and was originally from Prague. She survived two terrible years in the Nazi camp in Terezin, or Theresienstadt, in Germany during the Second World War.

Her grandson, Ariel Sommer, said tonight: ‘Alice Sommer passed away peacefully this morning with her family by her bedside. During her imprisonment, Ariel Herz-Sommer was sustained only by her piano and devotion to her son, Stephan.

In 1943, Alice, her husband and her son were sent from Prague to a concentration camp in the Czech city of Terezin — or, Theresienstadt in German — where inmates were allowed to stage concerts. Because of her talents, she frequently starred in these plays, which filled her head with memories in the camp where she said she was “always laughing.”

An estimated 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezin during its commission, and terribly 33,430 died there. Roughly, 88,000 were moved on to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps, where most of them were brutally killed. However, Ms Herz-Sommer and her son, Stephan, were among the lucky fewer than 20,000 who were freed when the wretched camp was liberated by the Soviet army in May of 1945.

“We all came to believe that she would just never die,’ said Frederic Bohbot, producer of the documentary “The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life.” “There was no question in my mind: ‘would she ever see the Oscars?”

A film about her life — view below — is nominated for an Academy Award.

Ms Herz-Sommer was born on November 26, 1903, in Prague, and started learning the piano from her sister at age 5.

life inspired two books: ‘A Garden of Eden in Hell’ (2006) by Melissa Mueller and Reinhard Piechocki, and ‘A Century of Wisdom: Lessons from the Life of Alice Herz-Sommer, the World’s Oldest Living Holocaust Survivor’ (2012) by Caroline Stoessinger.

In 1949, she left Czechoslovakia to reunite her twin sister Mizzi in Jerusalem, then taught at the Jerusalem Conservatory until 1986, after moving to London where she lived until her recent death.

Her son, Stephen, who changed his first name to Raphael after the war, made a career as a concert cellist. He died in 2001.

Alice Herz-Sommer, the world's oldest known Holocaust

US

justice kennedy

The Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the administration of President Barack Obama exceeded its authority in trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The utility industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 13 states led by Texas asked the court to rule that the EPA overstepped its authority by trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through the permitting program.

Predictably, the conservative justices were skeptical of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s argument, and liberal justices seemed generally in their typical fall-down supportive posture over the EPA power grab. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, who typically holds and would seem again to hold the swing vote on the nine-member high court, clashed with the Obama administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

“I can’t find a single precedent that strongly supports your position,” Kennedy said.

Judging from the questions posed by the justices, it seems clear the court is highly unlikely to revisit a landmark 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA, when on a 5-4 vote the court ruled that greenhouse gases from vehicles was a pollutant and could potentially be regulated under the air pollution law.

“Greenhouse gases are not included within the (permitting) program at all,” said Peter Keisler, representing the American Chemistry Council among two dozen manufacturing and industry groups that want the court to throw out the rule.

Justice Kennedy joined the court’s four liberal justices in the 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The justices are weighing just one of the administration’s new and various climate change regulations, focusing on 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. Thus, even if the court rules against the Obama administration it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will have a huge impact on the new EPA power grab.

The court can draw from several options available if it finds against the government’s presupposition that greenhouse gases should be regulated under the “prevention of serious deterioration,” or PSD program, which requires any new or modified major polluting facility to obtain a permit before any new construction is done. However, the regulation is vaguely written to state if it emits “any air pollutant.”

The court could ask Congress or the administration to refine specific pollutants, for example, or rule it cannot write that law without congressional legislation, altogether. The program requires facilities to install the best available technology to control emissions of specific pollutants. Another alternative discussed by the justices would require facilities already subject to the permit program for other air pollutants to be regulated for greenhouse gases, but would exempt other facilities.

Or, even in another alternative, the court could exempt all facilities from the program in relation to greenhouse gases, closer to the first option.

A ruling is expected and will be given by the end of June.

During oral arguments over the EPA climate

Elections, Polls

texas governor race

Attorney General Greg Abbott (right) will face the controversial State Senator Wendy Davis (left) in the Texas governor race.

The Texas Governor race is the sixth article in what will be a succession of articles offering expanded analysis released for our 2014 Governor Map Predictions. Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott will face State Senator Wendy Davis, who became a hero to the left when she filibustered a majority supported ban on late-term abortion.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, who was Gov. Rick Perry’s choice for successor, is and was always in a great position to become the next governor of still-red Texas. Many liberals were foaming at the mouth during the passage of the Texas abortion ban, and couldn’t seem to realize that their new superstar — Wendy Davis — had positioned herself way too far on the left in a state that overwhelmingly elected Senator Ted Cruz.

Even if the demographics were to shift in the favor of the Democrats, as they have hoped for years, Davis would still be on the far, extremist end of the state’s ideological spectrum. In fact, though Democrats enjoy a sizable advantage among Hispanics, whom they hope to tap to turn Texas blue, the truth is that their plan to do so isn’t at all solid.

I examined Texan Hispanic voting and party ID in the state in a recent article entitled, Gallup Data Show Hispanics In Texas May Pose A Problem For Democrats, Not Solution. I would encourage everyone to read the entire article after they’ve finished with this one, but let’s recap two Hispanic-specific data points Democrats and the media have refused to acknowledge.

First, although Hispanics in Texas still largely tilt Democratic by 46 to 27 percent, the 19-percentage-point Democratic advantage is far smaller than the nationwide average of 30 points. In fact, Republican candidates have typically performed above average among Hispanic voters in the state, but there is a concerning trend for Democrats no one seems to have observed yet.

Since 2008, the percentage of Hispanics who identify with the Democratic Party in Texas has declined by a significant 7-point margin, down to 46 percent from 53. Further, during the same period, the number of Hispanics who identify with the Republican Party has steadily and modestly increased to 27 percent now, up from 23 percent in 2008, resulting in a total swing in Democrat advantage of -11 points. The cause for the disparity between Texan Hispanics and Hispanics nationwide is two-fold: traditional values and opportunity.

Of course, none of that matters had the Texas State Republican Party not made a concerted effort to appeal to these voters as they have, which the Republican National Committee seems oblivious to, opting instead to support a token immigration reform bill. As of now, there doesn’t appear to be any reason to believe that this trend won’t continue, despite the efforts of Battleground Texas and the state Democratic Party. The choice to rally behind Wendy Davis won’t exactly help remake their image among “values voters,” either Hispanic or white.

And they’d better believe they need to increase their appeal among white voters in order to become competitive in Texas, once again.

The white  Democratic base continues to shrink, down to 26 percent when last asked. With 61 percent of white voters identifying with the Republican Party, the Democratic Party’s prospects of turning Texas blue will not be an easy task. When we look at the last two decades of elections in the state of Texas, we can see that, historically, a large percent of white Democratic voters will actually vote Republican on Election Day. In other words, crossover appeal historically favors Republican candidates, and it is only getting worse.

In the Rio Grande Valley, for instance, we see this translating into a serious problem for Democrats. Though the Valley remains the Democrats’ strongest nonurban area of support in Texas, because of the overwhelmingly Hispanic population, there are danger signs even they can’t ignore. In Hidalgo County, which has moved against the rightward shift in recent years, George W. Bush won 53 percent of the vote in his 1998 landslide reelection win. In 2010, Perry received the same number of raw votes in Hidalgo as Bush had, showing the decline in Republican support. However, Davis lost three of the four Valley counties, including Hidalgo, her little-known Democratic primary opponent.

This was protest vote, to be sure. And Davis, as well as the Democratic Party as a whole, is far too socially liberal for even reliably Democratic-voting Hispanics in Texas, no doubt a contribution to the trend we examined above. Abbott visited the Valley just a few days after his impressive primary showing, a sign his campaign smells blood in the water, spotting an opportunity for the party to further damage Democrats among Hispanics. “I am going to strive to set an all-time historical record for the number of votes a Republican garners in the Rio Grande Valley,” he told the crowd.

Texas Governor race polls — as seen below — show Abbott with a crushing lead on Wendy Davis. Adding to the already uphill battle for Wendy Davis is the revelation that her single-mother success story, isn’t entirely true (PPD did an investigation looking into the background story, which you can read here).

Abbot and Texas Republicans could easily have a field day with this one, but in truth they haven’t even attempted to truly exploit the lack of honesty from the Davis campaign. The reason is simple: They don’t have to exploit it because 1) the story speaks for itself, and 2) the dynamics of the race make it unnecessary. Abbott won the GOP primary with nearly three times as many votes as Davis in the Democratic primary.

Sorry Democrats in and out of Battleground Texas, but this was never going to be a close election. The Texas Governor race is and always was a “Safe Republican” contest, with the only surprising development being just how terrible of a candidate Wendy Davis turned out to be, and why Battleground Texas didn’t see the disaster coming. On the other hand, Greg Abbott has proven to be a strong political candidate in past elections, and has lived up to his past performance in the Texas Governor race, as seen during the Davis life story scandal.

View Polling Below Or Return To PPD’s 2014 Governor Map Predictions

Poll Date Sample Abbott (R) Davis (D) Spread
PPD Average 9/6 – 2/17 — 42.0 30.7 Abbott +11.3
UT/Texas Tribune 2/7 – 2/17 1200 RV 47 36 Abbott +11
PPP (D) 11/1 – 11/4 500 RV 50 35 Abbott +15
UT/Texas Tribune 10/18 – 10/27 1200 RV 40 34 Abbott +6
Texas Lyceum 9/6 – 9/20 798 RV 29 21 Abbott +8
PPP (D) 6/28 – 7/1 500 RV 48 40 Abbott +8
PPP (D) 1/24 – 1/27 500 RV 46 34 Abbott +12

The Texas Governor race is the sixth

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