PrairiePundit

Byron York: There's no doubt congressional investigators have their hands full probing allegations the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative non-profit groups. But now a different IRS scandal -- involving the chronic, ongoing, mind-bogglingly wasteful mismanagement of a popular tax credit program -- demands Congress's attention because it has taken on new importance with the arrival of Obamacare. The program is the Earned Income Tax Credit, through which the federal government gives out between $60 billion and $70 billion to low-income working Americans each year. It's known as a "refundable" tax credit, but it is basically a transfer payment, in which the IRS sends a check — perhaps even $5,000 every year — to workers who have little or no tax liability. The problem is, the IRS does little to determine whether recipients actually qualify for the money. A recent report by the IRS inspector general says the agency has given out somewhere between $110 bi...

Daily Caller: Michelle Obama’s relationship with Princeton classmate Toni McCall Townes-Whitley, whose company earned the no-bid contract to design the disastrous Healthcare.Gov Obamacare website, continued after the Obamas moved into the White House. Townes-Whitley and her husband even enjoyed “Christmas with the Obamas” at the White House in December 2010, according to a Facebook album created by Townes-Whitley. Although neither Michelle Obama nor Townes-Whitley has discussed their relationship, the Christmas event took place just seven months after Townes-Whitley joined CGI Federal as a senior vice president. Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, leads CGI Federal’s Civilian Agency Programs (CAP) Business Unit, which earned the no-bid contract to build the Obamacare enrollment website Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company. (Related: Michelle Obama’s Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website ) ... While this smacks ...

Mona Charen: The spectacularly dreadful debut of Obamacare represents the greatest political opportunity for conservatism and the Republican party in two generations. Big government stands rebuked. It has over-reached, over-promised, and embarrassingly failed to deliver. Even if the website’s gremlins are banished, and even if Obamacare purrs along like a BMW from now on, voters will be disillusioned. They will be disappointed because the president and his party promised that the program would provide coverage to the uninsured, expand the services provided at no charge to customers, cover those with preexisting conditions, oblige insurers to keep adult children on their parents’ policies, remove lifetime caps, and offer free preventive care. At the same time, no one would pay a penny more (in fact, everyone’s premiums would decline by $2,500), and no one would lose access to the plan they were happy with or be obliged to switch doctors. Oh, and not a dime would be added to the defic...

Daily Caller: CBS correspondent Lara Logan says the Obama administration is still putting ‘an extraordinary amount of pressure on the people involved not to talk’ about what happened in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012. In an interview about her yearlong investigation of the Benghazi attacks — which aired Sunday night on 60 Minutes — Logan was asked about the obstacles she faced in her reporting. “An extraordinary amount of pressure on the people involved not to talk,” Logan replied. “And an extraordinary amount of pressure on anyone in the government–the military side, the political side–not to say anything outside of official channels.” Elaborating, Logan said: “I mean, to the point where people that we’ve known for years would call people who were no longer in their positions, and they would call someone else that we knew, and messages would be delivered like that because there couldn’t be any trail linking you directly to our story.” She cited the Obama administration’s effort...

Fuel Fix: t’s time for the federal government to “put motorists first” by lowering renewable fuel requirements that could cause gas prices to climb , the automotive club AAA said Monday. So far, the debate surrounding the eight-year-old renewable fuel standard has been dominated by biofuel producers and the oil industry . But now, said AAA president Bob Darbelnet, “there is a real opportunity to put motorists first in what has been a very contentious disagreement between various industries.” “Gas and car maintenance costs are high enough as it is, and it would be a relief to know that the (renewable fuel standard) will not cause significant problems for consumers next year,” Darbelnet added. ‘Unrealistic’: API wants EPA to reconsider 2013 biofuel quotas The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose the 2014 volumetric quotas for renewable fuels soon, including traditional supplies made with ethanol and advanced biofuels created with non-edible materials. Amid fierce lob...

Guardian: With their scuffed shoes, baggy trousers and single shot hunting guns, the eight men preparing to patrol their hillside barrio in the southern Mexican town of Tixtla hardly looked like a disciplined military force. But this motley collection of construction workers and shopkeepers claim to have protected their community from Mexico 's violent drug cartels in a way the police and military have been unable – or unwilling – to do. "Since we got organised, the hit men don't dare come in here," said one young member of the group, which had gathered at dusk on the town's basketball court, before heading out on patrol. "Extortions, kidnappings and disappearances are right down." Over the past year, vigilante groups like this have sprung up in towns and villages across Mexico, especially in the Pacific coast states of Guerrero and Michoacán. They make no pretence to be interrupting drug trafficking itself but they do claim to have restored a degree o...

Las Vegas Review Journal: About 200 miles due north of Las Vegas is Nye County’s Railroad Valley. Home to only a few hundred people, it receives few visitors. But Railroad Valley boasts something unique to Nevada that could someday mean a new boom of wealth and job creation to the tune of more than 21,000 jobs. Here, in 1984, the Grant Canyon oil-field wells were first drilled. For nearly 10 years, before tapering off in the mid-1990s, the Grant wells produced about 110,000 barrels of oil per month. During these years, the Grant wells were the most productive onshore wells in the 48 contiguous states. Through most of the 1980s, in this section of rural Nye County, these few wells generated prosperity. Despite this success, however, Nevada oil exploration has been slow and sporadic. In part this was because of a technological inability to identify and economically extract oil reserves. The rock formation beneath Railroad Valley and much of Eastern Nevada, known as the Chainman Shale, ...

Chicago Sun-Times: Sue Klinkhamer has a problem. It’s called Obamacare. And the irony of her situation is not lost on her. In a recent email addressed to her former boss, Illinois Congressman Bill Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she wrote: “I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the health care issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.” For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama’s oft-repeated words ring in her ears: “If you like your health plan, you will keep it.” Well, possibly not. When Klinkhamer lost her con...

Bill Gertz: A U.S. drone strike in Somalia killed two terrorists of the al Qaeda-affiliated group al Shabaab, including a leader of the group, a U.S. official said. The drone attack took place Monday near the southern town of Jilib when an armed unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with missiles fired on a vehicle in the town, said the official who is knowledgeable of the raid but who spoke on condition of anonymity. The official provided no further details but confirmed the attack following news reports from Mogadishu that quoted eyewitnesses in Jilib, located about 75 miles north of the town of Kismayo, as saying Al Shabaab fighters claimed the bodies of the two men after the attack. Residents reported that the two men were riding in a Suzuki vehicle and, after an explosion, a drone was seen leaving the area. A large number of al Shabaab fighters then descended on the area. An al Shabaab commander who had been linked to past suicide bombing attacks reportedly was one of the two men kil...

NBC News: President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years. Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23...

One woman's cost went up over ten fold for the new policy she was being shoved into.

Washington Times: California resident: ‘I was all for Obamacare’ until I got the bill Thousands are being pushed off their current plans and onto the more expensive plans on the exchanges.  The GOP ads for the next election should write themselves.

Miami Herald: The number of undocumented Cubans intercepted in Mexico on their way to the U.S. border has more than doubled in the eight months since Havana eased its migration controls, according to Mexican government figures. The Interior Ministry numbers were the latest indication of the greatly increased flow of Cubans, both undocumented and legal, through Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean over the past year. Most, if not all of the Cubans, are heading to the United States, where they are protected from deportation to Cuba, can receive benefits as refugees and qualify for permanent U.S. residency after one year and one day. Interdictions in Mexico of undocumented Cubans totaled 2,300 from January to August of this year, compared to 994 in the same period in 2012, according to the Interior Ministry. The number does not include those who make it to the border undetected by Mexican authorities. That figure has been estimated at well over 13,000 for the 12-month per...

USA Today: Pentagon agency creating digital map of the world This should give military planners and the troops on the ground a better understanding of what they will be dealing with.

Washington Post: Al-Qaeda affiliate shakes Iraq with surge of violence The country’s instability has worsened as an al-Qaeda affiliate has waged a bloody campaign, virtually erasing security gains made in the past five years. Obama's inability to negotiate an extension of a status for forces agreement has led to the current debacle and also led to some of the violence within Syria.  Al Qaeda has also been aided by the ineptitude of the Iraqi government which pushed Sunnis out and led to the resurgence of al Qaeda.

NY Times: Health Site’s Woes Could Dissuade Vital Enrollee: the Young and Healthy Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times Organizing For Action workers in Arlington, Va., inform the public about the launch of Obamacare on Oct. 1. Officials worry that insurance risk pools could become too risky if not enough younger people sign up for coverage, causing premiums to escalate. The administration and the Democrats have already driven up the cost for millions by requiring additional coverage that many of the very people they are trying to sign up don't need.   Most of the people signing up on the exchanges that are actually working are going in for the free medicaid program.  This will only increase the death spiral of this bad law.

John Maier: ... Analyzing the Mexican Cartels within the framework of counterinsurgency doctrine provides a basis for planning. Insurgents seek to break away from state control and form a space that they can govern. [10] A successful counterinsurgency campaign should neutralize the insurgents, secure the population, and reestablish government legitimacy. As counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, “Insurgents succeed by sowing chaos and disorder anywhere; the government fails unless it maintains a degree of order everywhere. [11] Dr. David Kilcullen, within his book Counterinsurgency, provides an insurgency process model that can be used to explain the methodology of the Mexican cartels. [12] The first step is corruption or criminality within the power elite. This in turn leads to the second step the commission of bad behavior by government officials and powerbrokers. These acts lead to the third step; anger within the populace. This culminates in the final step popular suppor...

The scheme want work if this trend continues.  Who knew it was easier to get people to sign up for free healthcare than actually pay for it.  It looks like a death spiral has already begun.

Moe Lane: All in the name of “helping” her, of course . Fullerton resident Jennifer Harris thought she had a great deal, paying $98 a month for an individual plan through Health Net Inc. She got a rude surprise this month when the company said it would cancel her policy at the end of this year. Her current plan does not conform with the new federal rules, which require more generous levels of coverage.  Now Harris, a self-employed lawyer, must shop for replacement insurance. The cheapest plan she has found will cost her $238 a month. She and her husband don’t qualify for federal premium subsidies because they earn too much money, about $80,000 a year combined.  “It doesn’t seem right to make the middle class pay so much more in order to give health insurance to everybody else,” said Harris, who is three months pregnant. “This increase is simply not affordable.” This is in California, which means that Ms. Harris probably votes Democratic. You know what? It doesn’t m...

Michael Barone: “The examination of war from an exclusively military perspective, isolated from its social and political context, leads to false conclusions and poor strategy.” That is the conclusion of Emile Simpson, a former infantry office in the Royal Gurkha Rifles, who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan, in his book, War From the Ground Up . The book has won extraordinary praise from the veteran British military historian Michael Howard, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, who called it “a work of such importance that it should be compulsory reading at every level in the military.” Howard compares Simpson's book to the classic On War by the Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz. Both experienced a war that was utterly different from what they had been trained for, and tried to explain it “from the top down as well as from the ground up.” Clausewitz experienced the total war wrought by Napoleon’s massive citizen armies and the large armies raised by P...