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A bizarre scene unfolded on the day after FreePAC in the lounge of the W Hotel in Dallas Texas. Several FreedomWorks activists were relaxing before dinner, including activists from Indiana and Ohio, myself, Kristina Ribali and Dean Clancy, Vice President of Healthcare Policy at FreedomWorks. It was about 7pm, and we were sharing stories and socializing. Electricity in the lounge increased as we realized that there was a Mary Kay convention in town, and the bar began to fill up with sales ladies, and the volume slowly began to rise. We didn't really take much notice. But as we continued to chat, a truly odd thing happened. At one point I looked up and noticed that the Olympic Opening Ceremonies were on the tv at the bar. The sound was off, but we were able to watch the random images of various acrobats jumping around the screen and lighting effects that might cause seizures in sensitive individuals. And then this happened: That's right, a tribute to socialized medicine with bouncing children, giant beds, prancing nurses and a big fat sign that "reaffirms the greatness of the NHS". As Adam Baldwin remarked, and we missed because we couldn't hear the audio, the use of music from The Exorcist and Voldemort (yes, really) could not have been more perfectly ironic.  Kristina remarked on twitter: I looked at Dean Clancy. Dean looked at me. We looked around the table. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. A crew of activists for freedom and limited government, fresh off the FreePAC event, in a bar surrounded by Mary Kay consultants in evening wear, watching the London Olympics give a global salute to socialized medicine. The scene was something that might have sprung from the mind of Ayn Rand. In fact if I search her writings, I'm certain I could find it somewhere. 

The Production Tax Credit (PTC) is a federal subsidy that has been essential in starting and maintaining wind energy companies for almost two decades. Billions of dollars have been poured into wind energy, yet the industry remains unable to stand on its own without government help. Not only can the wind industry not sustain itself without government aid, it is requesting a lot more money in aid. Many of the best locations in the United States to build a wind farm are located in desolate areas far away from industrial and population centers. In order for the wind industry to gather significant amounts of wind energy, a national electrical power grid is needed. In fact the highest winds speeds exist in the isolated and inaccessible Aleutian Islands located in Alaska.   Offshore wind farms are especially having difficulties transmitting their wind energy to electricity grids.  In a report done by the Department of Energy called Wind Farm Grid Integration Using VSC Based HVDC Transmission - An Overview, S. K. Chaudhary, R. Teodorescu, and P. Rodriguez highlight the problems with transmitting wind energy from offshore farms to more populated areas.VSC-based HVDC system is a viable transmission connection for large offshore wind farms, especially when long distances are involved. Relatively higher cost and higher converter losses may be acceptable in view of its flexibility to ensure compliance with the Grid Code requirements, facilitate ancillary services like reactive power support, voltage stability, power flow regulation, etc. Further development and competitive research on VSC technology is expected to bring down the losses and price as well. Further the stability and performance of the VSC based converters has to be studied for unbalanced grid conditions and asymmetrical faults.    “Higher cost and higher converter losses” must be acceptable if wind energy is to be transferred from these remote wind farms. So why not just built a national electrical power grid to solve this problem? Unfortunately, according to a New York Times article written back in 2008, a system like this would cost $60 billion or more! I’m sorry, but the benefit of wind energy simply cannot be justified by the cost.  Another issue concerning wind energy is that once the power gets to the grid, other fossil fuel based energy is needed to balance out the unreliable fluctuations of wind. Additional facilities on a wind powered grid are known as balancing facilities. Patrick Hedger, researcher at FreedomWorks Foundation, highlights the problem of fluctuating wind power grids: “To stay competitive, the United States requires a reliable power grid; however, wind farms simply cannot produce the necessary even flow of power. This forces fossil fuel plants into a stop-and-go situation where they must work harder and burn more fuel to combat the unpredictability of the wind mills, creating more pollution than necessary to generate affordable and reliable power.”  The unreliability of wind--powered grids causes the additional need of fossil--fuel based energy, driving up the cost of using wind energy while at the same time increasing emissions that wind is supposed to reduce.  Americans for a Clean Energy Grid is requesting an expansion and upgrade to our electric power transmission and distribution system without acknowledging not only the heavy costs, but the environmental damage raised by wind energy.  The Production Tax Credit (PTC) is pumping money into an industry that despite being heavily subsided for over 20 years now, demands an unreasonable amount of more taxpayer money just to keep it going. Call or write your Congressmen today and tell them to let the PTC expire. The dream of an America powered by a vast amount of renewable wind energy is exactly that-- a dream. Let’s come back to reality and concentrate our efforts on more feasible and reliable sources of energy.   http://www.google.com/imgres

Dear FreedomWorks member, As one of our million-plus members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or her to vote YES on H.R. 459, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011. Introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), the bill would eliminate the current audit restrictions placed on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and require a full and thorough audit of the Federal Reserve. Since its inception in 1913, the Federal Reserve has never been audited. It has always operated under a certain veil of secrecy. Our dollar has lost 97 percent of its value since its creation. Many economists have found that the central bank’s loose monetary policy played a major role in the current economic crisis. It is more crucial than ever that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions be examined. Without a comprehensive audit, we will never know how the Fed is manipulating our money behind closed doors. The American people overwhelmingly support auditing the Federal Reserve. We will not settle for a one-time watered down audit of the Federal Reserve which was included in the misguided Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law passed last summer. According to a recent Rasmussen Report poll, 74 percent of adults are in favor of a comprehensive audit the Federal Reserve. In the last congressional session, Rep. Ron Paul’s audit the Federal Reserve legislation won a bipartisan group of 320 cosponsors before passing the House. With opaque bank bailouts done through “quantitative easing” among other programs, the Federal Reserve has violated the trust granted to it that allowed for secretive operations. With sound money crucial to our future prosperity, we must push for a full audit to bring much-needed transparency and accountability to the overreaching central bank. I urge you to call your representative and ask him or her to vote YES on H.R. 459, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2011. We will count their vote as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2012. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom. Sincerely, Matt Kibbe President and CEO FreedomWorks [Click here for a PDF version of this key vote notice.] File Attachments AuditFed.pdf54.46 KB

These days, the left is just about begging conservatives to surrender on repealing ObamaCare. Immediately after the Supreme Court’s controversial 5-4 ruling upholding its constitutionality, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel insisted that, “…Republicans need to drop their partisan obstruction and move on.” President Obama agreed, stating firmly, “…the law I passed is here to stay. …We are moving forward.” A couple of recent polls show that a sizable fraction of the electorate sympathizes with the idea, including some independents. This has been a long fight, so that’s understandable. Let’s retrace where we’ve been. The bitter public debate over the bill was ugly and confusing, as major proposals such as the “public option” were included and thrown out seemingly at random. Significant promises were made and broken, and President Obama ultimately flip-flopped on the individual mandate, lending it his support. Throughout the fight, conservatives screamed that the individual mandate constituted a gigantic tax,  one that would impact every American who didn’t want to be forced to purchase health insurance. Democrats laughed off this argument, claiming that nobody could reasonably refer to the mandate as a tax (the joke’s on all of us, huh?). Prominent politicians predicted the bill wouldn’t pass, others insisted that it must include certain provisions or else they wouldn’t vote for it, and still more promised behind the scenes to vote for it in exchange for big earmarks to pet projects in their state or district. After fighting a lengthy war over health care reform, Democrats rammed ObamaCare through and the president hurriedly signed it into law. Even today, few Americans can follow the bizarre and often underhanded legislative process by which the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was ultimately passed. However, the fight wasn’t over. The health care debate energized the burgeoning Tea Party, and ObamaCare became the signature issue of the 2010 elections. As you may remember, those elections didn’t turn out very well for the law’s supporters. A wave of incoming Tea Party freshmen pledged to repeal ObamaCare in full, but a slim Democratic majority in the Senate has managed to delay the repeal coalition. While the Tea Party fought for full repeal through the electoral process, twenty-six state governments brought a lawsuit to the Supreme Court arguing that the individual mandate at the heart of ObamaCare is unconstitutional. Many legal scholars scoffed at the idea, and insisted that the lawsuit didn’t have a chance. After the oral arguments didn’t go so well, the left became hysterical. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. was lambasted by the left for his weak performance in the oral arguments. Liberals argued that the Supreme Court had become hopelessly partisan, political, and conservative. Ezra Klein even started asking if Democrats would have to pack the court FDR-style in order to get favorable rulings going forward. As we all know, the hysteria was for nothing. A majority of the Court ultimately decided to uphold the individual mandate’s constitutionality under Congress’s power to tax (an argument that the Obama administration repeatedly refuted and refused to make before the Court). Of course, now the left is singing a very different tune. You would be hard-pressed to find a prominent liberal bashing the Supreme Court these days. For them, the argument’s over. Done. Kaput. Move on. …Please? Can you imagine the vitriol thrown at the Court if the conservative majority had struck down the law? It would be incredible. How many, do you think, would argue that the Court had set an unbreakable precedent? That the argument was now over, and that conservatives had won for good? The Supreme Court doesn’t have the final word on the Constitution. The American people have the final word on the Constitution, because the people are sovereign. The left wants to use the dignity and respectabili

I'm not one who's prone to wild hyperbole that anyone not on the right side of the political spectrum is some pinko commie. But when someone is using nakedly Marxist rhetoric, I don't think I'm telling tales out of school to label that person as a Marxist. In fact, it's especially important to do so when it comes from our President. Over the past two days, a couple of whoppers have emanated from Barack Obama. The first was on Friday, July 13. By now, most people have seen the remarks, but here they are from the Rush Limbaugh show in case you missed them: OBAMA: Look, i-i-if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own. FOLLOWERS: That's right! OBAMA: You didn't get there on your own. I'm always struck by people who think, "Well, it must be because I was just so smart!" FOLLOWERS: (laughing) OBAMA: There are a lot of smart people out there. "It must be because I worked harder than everybody else." Let me tell you something. There are a whole bunch of hardworkin' people out there! FOLLOWERS: (cheers and applause) OBAMA: If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help! FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah! OBAMA: There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. FOLLOWERS: Yeaaaaaah! Rush was on a tear the following Monday, saying that Obama doesn't love America. In fact, I think he's close, but he doesn't go far enough. Said Rush, "You know, before Marx there was no such thing as class-driven economics." Later, he said, "I'll tell you what. I think it can now be said, without equivocation -- without equivocation -- that this man hates this country. He is trying -- Barack Obama is trying -- to dismantle, brick by brick, the American dream." This gets very close to the truth, but actually it's not quite clear enough. Barack Obama is a Marxist, plain and simple. You don't need to know anything about his background, just listen - REALLY listen - to his words, and try to ignore his cool factor that has his supporters hypnotized. (By the way, if you ARE interested in his background, Obama's father was a leftist anti-colonialist subversive in Kenya, and his mother was a Marxist. His step father in Indonesia was also a Marxist. By his own account, Obama barely had any time in America to soak up any pro-capitalist, pro-freedom concepts at all. See for instance here, here, here and here.) In case you are not convinced, we come to Obama's second whopper - the one on Monday that didn't get nearly as much play but is equally important (h/t to my friend Kevin): Obama said today that (Rich people) are "keeping other folks down" Here's the full quote: "We're not making huge amounts of money. God bless folks successful. My mom, my grandparents, the only thing they didn't like is when they felt like folks at the top were taking advantage of their position and not following the same rules as everybody else and keeping other folks down. And we don't want an economy in which some are being treated differently than others" This is part and parcel to Marxist theory. The Communist Manifesto is based on the fundamental precept that there is a bourgeoise and a proletariat - the very definition of class-separated economics. This is the assumption that the haves and the have nots are constantly struggling to out-exploit each other, and that eventually the proletariat will have no choice but to rise up and engage in armed revolt against the fat cats who can't succeed unless there are more and newer people and markets to hold down while they attain success. Here's how S R Larson described it today in The Liberty Bullhorn: Socialism rests on four cornerstones: The principle of redistribution. Socialists, and their ideological errand boys among America’s gullible East Coast liberals, always want new redistribution programs. The more, the merrier. The vast majority of government spending here in America, federal as well as at the state level, is designed to redistribute money and in-kind services between private citizens. The philosophical found

A key provision of the unpopular Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act means that employers only incur a mandate penalty when an employee takes advantage of subsidies in the state-run exchange.  A contemporaneous report from the Congressional Research Service confirms that interpretation. As we have noted, if there is no state-run exchange, there can be no subsidy to an employee and thus no penalty to an employer. Some are calling this problem a typo or drafting error, but it was no mere missing word. It was a strategic decision on the part of Congress. It means states should not implement an exchange. The Obama Administration, of course, is interpreting the law to mean what they want it to mean, not what it says it means by its plain wording and legislative history. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute and Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University  called the IRS action illegal, saying "The IRS rule is contrary to congressional intent and cannot be justified on other legal grounds." The Act was passed and signed into law on March 23, 2010. An April 28, 2010 report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service shows that the law was understood as allowing tax credits only to individuals living in a state that has implemented its own exchange: Premium credits will only be available to individuals enrolled in a plan offered through an exchange.[6] Individuals may enroll in a plan through their state’s exchange if they are (1) residing in a state that established an exchange; (2) not incarcerated, except individuals in custody pending the disposition of charges; and (3) lawful residents.   The [6] cites to  Sec. 1401 of PPACA. Why did Congress do this? Like so much else wrong with the Act, one culprit is groupthink. Because only members of one faction of one party really had much influence in writing the bill, and because it was done in secret, no one was able to tell those writing it "Hey, some states aren't going to want this. Maybe a lot of states." Instead, we were told to pass it and then we would find out what was in it. People intent on achieving their own policy goals through law can easily make basic, fundamental miscalculations like this. Our laws should reflect popular will and Constitutional restrictions. Laws should not be attempts to change the popular sentiment, nor require extraordinary judicial reconstruction in order to pass Constitutional inspection. The only way to fix this problem -- and the dozens of others that have come up and will be seen in the future -- is full repeal of the law and implementation of reasonable, patient-centered reforms that comply with Constitutional restrictions and the spirit of American free enterprise.

FreedomWorks’ Top Ten Things Happening in Congress this Week Legislative Highlight of the Week: By far the largest and most expensive bill being offered in Congress this week is the Department of Defense Appropriations bill being considered in the House.  Numbered H.R. 5856 and sponsored by Rep. Bill Young of Florida, the bill provides for $519.2 billion in base defense funding, in addition to $88.5 billion to fund the ongoing wars and operations overseas.  The bill will be considered under an open rule, meaning that there will certainly be many amendments offered to cut spending in the bill.House/Spending: One amendment that has been offered to the DoD Appropriations bill is by an unlikely pair of Congressmen – Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina.  The two have an amendment pointing out that the amount of spending in the current bill is $1.1 billion higher than the already high amount agreed to for this year, and simply asks that spending be kept to 2012 levels.House/Spending: On Tuesday, the House will be voting on the spending authorization bill for the Department of State, H.R. 6018, sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida.  The significance of this bill is that the Department of State has not received a formal authorization of funding for about ten years, and spending has been allowed to increase freely during that time without input from Congress.  The current bill reduces DoS spending by $2 billion for a total of $15.4 billion in spending next year.House/Spending: This Wednesday, the House will take up H.R. 5872, the “Sequestration Transparency Act”.  You may remember that because last year’s “Super-committee” failed to find a sufficient number of budget cuts, an automatic cut is scheduled to take place next year through a process called “sequestration”.  This bill, introduced by Rep. Hensarling of Texas, would simply require that the administration specify what they intend to cut to fulfill the terms of the sequester.House/Regulation: Next week, the House will likely also vote on H.R. 4078, the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act.  Introduced by Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas, the bill would prevent any federal agency from implementing any major regulation until unemployment drops below 6 percent.  A “major” regulation is defined as one which would cost the economy at least $100 million if implemented, which means that many of the EPA’s job-killing regulations would be prevented by this bill.House/Finance: Next week, the House will vote on Rep. Ron Paul’s bill, H.R. 459, to fully audit the Federal Reserve.  Officially entitled the “Federal Reserve Transparency Act”, this bill would require annual, comprehensive audits of the Federal Reserve, which would make public activities such as the secret bailouts of foreign banks that were revealed when the Fed was partially audited last year.House/Taxation: Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia is circulating a letter in Congress asking leadership to vote on repealing the death tax.  The most recently introduced bill to repeal the death tax, Rep. Kevin Brady’s H.R. 1259, currently has 217 co-sponsors, including a number of Democrats.  The death tax is a double-tax, and it hits small business owners particularly hard and should be fully repealed.Senate/Regulation: On Monday, the Senate voted on S. 3369, the “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act”.  Introduced by Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the DISCLOSE Act removes important civil rights-era protections to free speech. In the guise of “campaign finance transparency”.  It is written in a way that also appears to protect unions from many of its disclosure requirements, while greatly increasing burdensome regulations and paperwork loads for everyone else, especially tea party groups.  FreedomWorks has issued a Key Vote notice opposing this bill, which you can read HERE.Senate/Budget:

Back in November of 2011, the European Parliament adopted a resolution in favor of net neutrality on a global scale. The resolution stated the following:  "[The European Parliament] calls further on the Commission to ensure that internet service providers do not block, discriminate against, impair or degrade the ability of any person to use a service to access, use, send, post, receive or offer any content, application or service of their choice, irrespective of source or target." During these same proceedings, the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has been called upon to investigate the idea of further regulating the internet. Proponents of net neutrality on a global scale argue that further regulation will actually provide more freedom for the individual citizen using the internet.  The logic in this argument seems rather inconsistent. More regulation will increase freedom? What about the freedom of internet service providers to provide the amount of internet they desire? If an individual service provider is not adequately meeting your internet needs as a consumer, than switch to another provider. It’s as simple as letting the free market meet the demands of the consumer.  Since the 1990’s, the internet has operated in a relatively free market based on a "multi-stakeholder" governance model. Federal Communications Commissioner Robert M. McDowell in the Wall Street Journal Online had this to say concerning how the current internet model is run: “This (multi-stakeholder governance model) consensus-driven private-sector approach has been the key to the Net's phenomenal success. In 1995, shortly after it was privatized, only 16 million people used the Internet world-wide. By 2011, more than two billion were online—and that number is growing by as much as half a million every day. This explosive growth is the direct result of governments generally keeping their hands off the Internet sphere.” Commissioner McDowell, who was the Federal Communication Commissioner under President W. Bush and remains the Commissioner under President Obama, goes on to discuss the role the internet has played in the last two decades. He argues that the internet has and continues to vastly improve economies across the globe, creating millions of jobs, providing a medium outlet for political freedom advocates, and increasing the standards of living, especially for people living in third world nations, all within a consumer-based free market.  And what is the response to all the vast benefits of an unregulated internet market?-‘Regulate it anyway because the evil and greedy internet providers can control internet supply!’ But what is the real reason behind increased regulation on the internet? Could the reason possibly be from a desire of governments like Russia and China to control the ever-expanding power of the internet?   Beginning in February of this year, starting in Geneva and moving to Dubai, the United Nations (UN), led by Russia and China, has considered measures to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to quote Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Here are some of the proposals that may become international law by the end of next year:  • Subject cyber security and data privacy to international control. • Allow foreign phone companies to charge fees for "international" Internet traffic, perhaps even on a "per-click" basis for certain Web destinations, with the goal of generating revenue for state-owned phone companies and government treasuries. • Impose economic regulations such as mandates for rates, terms and conditions for currently unregulated traffic-swapping agreements known as "peering”. • Establish for the first time ITU dominion over important functions of multi-stakeholder Internet governance entities such as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit entity that coordinate

Dear FreedomWorks member, As one of our million-plus FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to vote NO on S. 3369, the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. There is broad opposition to this legislation from across the political spectrum. FreedomWorks opposes this bill on principle: it is a clear violation of free speech and would likely have a chilling effect on political discourse. The DISCLOSE Act fails to preserve the anonymity of small donors. It is important to remember why this anonymity exists. As the civil rights movement was gaining steam in the late 1950s, opponents of the movement’s noble goals tried to silence supporters with government-mandated membership disclosure regimes. In 1958 the Supreme Court correctly sided with the NAACP in NAACP v Alabama, ensuring NAACP supporters could maintain anonymity so they would not be subject to personal, political, or commercial attacks. Two other pieces of the DISCLOSE Act look like specific attacks on the Tea Party movement. It is widely known that this decentralized movement is largely made up of individuals who are new to political activism and simply organizing with likeminded members of their community to do what they can for a country they love. But the DISCLOSE Act puts in place ambiguous guidelines that will leave many, especially smaller groups without the funds to pay for expensive campaign law attorneys, wondering whether or not they are violating the new rules. When changing the rules of political participation, Congress should err on the side of encouraging participation, not discouraging it with ambiguous legalese that only empowers lawyers. The DISCLOSE Act goes even further and expands the “electioneering communications” period of time during which those trying to participate in our democracy may violate new, confusing laws. That’s the number of days before elections when politicians have decided they want to control free speech. Under DISCLOSE II, the period for communications mentioning candidates for Congress would run from January 1 of the election year through the date of election. Those are exactly the days when participation should be encouraged. I urge you to call your senators and ask them to vote NO on S.3369, the Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act. We will count their vote as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2012. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom. Sincerely, Matt Kibbe President and CEO FreedomWorks [Click here for a PDF version of this key vote notice.]  File Attachments DISCLOSEActII.pdf56.67 KB

Barack Obama lectured supporters on economics and entrepreneurship last night in Roanoke, Virginia. He actually said this, "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."     Hat Tip Free Republic Really? Which mentor taught him that? From the White House website: There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.) If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

President Obama told small business owners at a campaign event in Roanoke, VA that someone other than themselves is responsible for their success. As it did with that one, the White House routinely posts the transcript each of President Obama's campaign speeches on its web site. The speeches are labeled as taking place at campaign events. That is the kind of abuse the Hatch Act was intended to prohibit. The Hatch Act was intended to keep government employees from pursuing political activity on government time and with government resources. It was also intended to keep government employees from being bullied into participating in campaign activity.   Yet here we see the White House routinely posting campaign speech transcripts on the official taxpayer-funded site.  As the Wall Street Journal notes, there is quite a bit of integration between the White House and the Obama campaign. Boundaries get blurry.  Former White House people now work on the campaign; ex-campaign aides are in the White House. Mr. Obama flies to electoral battlegrounds and gives official addresses. Or he stays in the White House and delivers what sound like campaign speeches. Indeed, many have noted the permanent campaign strategy. As early as January, 2009, The Boston Globe reported that Even before he takes office next week, Obama has made clear that he will continue some of the most controversial practices of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who routinely used political tools while in the White House to promote both their policy agendas and electoral fortunes. As the reelection campaign season has begun to occupy virtually all of Mr. Obama's time and that of his staff, the lines blur even more. Tapes have leaked from a frantic call made from Air Force One by President Barack Obama to campaign donors presumably just after visiting the devastating fires in Colorado. According to news reports, the president said, "The majority on this call maxed out to my campaign last time. I really need you to do the same this time." Apparently, a special phone on the government aircraft is dedicated to political calls that are paid for by the campaign. Despite the fig leaves of using a separate phone line, reimbursing for the use of Air Force 1, or using separate campaign and administration briefers to reporters, it remains clear that the Obama White House and the Obama campaign are identical.  No rule of separation will ever be perfect. There is no way to stop people from thinking about their campaign activities on government time, or from mixing political messages with public policy decisions.  It does seem clear however, that the President's reelection campaign materials should not be hosted on the official White House web site.  

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) desire to regulate the American people seems to never end. In the name of ‘protecting the environment’, the EPA has crossed the line one to many times.  Its newest objective involves preventing private citizens and businesses from using water, resting on their own land, the way they see fit. The Clean Water Act (CWA) of 1972 made it unlawful to discharge any pollutant from a point source into navigable waters, unless a permit was obtained from the EPA's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). But this wasn’t enough power for the EPA. Early this year, the EPA issued draft guidance on "Identifying Waters Protected by the Clean Water Act." Through this act the EPA is attempting to drastically expand the powers given to it by the CWA by trying to regulate ditches and gullies on private property arguing that non-point sources are the cause of pollution in navigable bodies of water.   Back in June of 2011, Representative Jim Oberstar (D–Minn.) and Senator Russ Feingold (D–Wis.) tried to expand the powers of the EPA by introducing legislation that would replace the term “navigable waters” in the CWA with “waters of the U.S.” This attempt at expanding the regulatory power of the EPA was stopped, yet the EPA continues to use backdoor means to expand its jurisdiction. Congress has a history of stopping the EPA’s federal power grab yet it continues to try to enforce draconian mandates without approval from Congress.  Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has this to say about the EPA’s federal jurisdiction grab:  “This federal jurisdiction grab has been opposed by Congress for years, and now the administration and its agencies are ignoring law and rule making procedures in order to tighten their regulatory grip over every water body in the country…this administration needs to realize it is not above the law.” Many Americans have been victims of the EPA’s federal land grab. Back in 2005 Mike and Chantell Sackett purchased three-quarters of an acre in Idaho in order to build a new house. They obtained permits and verification from the state and local governments in Idaho, and started building in 2007. Enter the EPA. Agents arriving on their property threatened to fine them $37,500 a day, arguing that their property was considered a ‘wetland.’ Under the CWA, the EPA argued it had the power to “protect” land even from its own owners. The Sackett’s although owning the land, did not have the freedom to do with it what they liked. Thankfully, the case was brought before the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that the landowners have the right to due process in challenging the validity of arbitrary compliance orders before any enforcement action is taken by the EPA. However, after all this, the Sacketts would still have to comply with the EPA’s order if a judge rules that their property is a wetland and can be regulated under the CWA.  So what is to be done about the EPA’s continued violation of the private property of American citizens? Last month, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved legislation to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) from dramatically and illegally expanding federal power to regulate water and land use under the Clean Water Act (CWA).  Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) says that the EPA must stop its backdoor efforts to increase its regulatory power.  “It is unfortunate that the Agencies have chosen this backdoor approach to rulemaking instead of a proper, transparent process. If the Administration seeks statutory changes to the Clean Water Act, then a proposal should be submitted to Congress and we will have a healthy debate. Until that time, the current flawed process needs to stop.” In the Senate, John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), and 26 other Senat

Obama seems to have one goal in mind this election: creating an even greater gap between Republicans and Democrats. I must admit, he’s doing a great job of it, stoking class warfare and feeding the media and his supporters left-wing lies. Did you hear the GOP is nothing but a bunch of wealthy and corrupt people that have no interest in the good of the lower and middle class citizens? This issue was raised again most recently in the discussion of extending the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of this year. I would like to first state that the phrase “tax cuts” is a complete misnomer at this point. These “cuts” have been in place for about a decade now and have thus become the norm. That is to say, the current tax rates are simply that: the tax rate, not “The Bush Tax Cuts.” Because of this, Obama’s decision to not extend current tax rates for those making over $250,000 is in fact a plan to increase taxes, which is something that should not be taken lightly. Obama argues that he will not extend current tax rates because “sustaining the current tax rates for top earners puts too big a hole in the federal budget” and "we can't afford to keep that up." This argument is greatly flawed. The tax hikes would increase the top two individual income-tax rates from 33 percent to 36 percent and from 35 percent to 39.6 percent. This increase would reap few benefits. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the national debt would be reduced by $140 billion dollars over the next ten years. That’s only .009 percent of the total national debt, hardly a dent. This number is simply too small to override the losses that would occur should taxes increase. Also, according to Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, raising taxes on those who earn above $250,000 would reduce GDP growth in 2013 by $40 billion, a number too large to downplay. Despite these numbers, many people continue to argue for increased taxes on high earners because they believe the current income tax is unfair because it “favors” the wealthy. This simply isn’t true. According to CBO, the top 20 percent of households already pay for 68.9 percent of all federal tax liabilities, while the top one percent of households pays 28.1 percent of all Federal taxes. The Bush tax cuts are justified in that they give those with the heaviest tax burden a slight break while also procuring benefits for the lower and middle classes. Obama likes to campaign on this platform of class warfare by painting a nasty picture of the wealthy; one of corruptness and greed. I would like to point out that most of the wealthy that fall into the tax hike category are self-made business owners that became successful through hard work and dedication. In fact, according to the Cato Institute, inheritances account for less than one-fifth of the assets of the wealthy, a number that continues to decline. Obama loves to portray himself as a small business supporter, yet the second a small business achieves success, he’s going to punish them with tax hikes. Though, Obama doesn’t seem to see this policy as a punishment. He truly believes that increasing taxes on the wealthy will reap benefits for the poor and middle classes as well as for the economy as a whole. This is absolutely false; higher taxes do not necessarily mean higher revenue. In fact they often mean the opposite, especially in times of economic struggle. Because higher tax rates reduce the profit that business owners could earn through sales and investments, they have less money left over for future investment, expansion (which creates jobs), research and development, etc. Increasingly dim prospects for success make individuals less likely to take risks by expanding their business – or even creating new businesses. This problem then trickles down into the middle and lower classes because owners are less likely to hire workers and more likely to raise prices of their products or services in order to make up for the r

Dear FreedomWorks member,As one of our million-plus FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to sign a Republican Study Committee-Tea Party Caucus letter urging House leadership to defund the implementation of ObamaCare. The text of the letter is as follows: We are outraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to rewrite and largely uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ObamaCare”), as we know you are as well.  And we know that our sentiments are in line with the vast majority of Americans who believe that healthcare should be controlled by patients and doctors, not by the government. We appreciate your willingness to schedule a vote on the full repeal of ObamaCare.  We should continue efforts to repeal the law in its entirety this year, next year, and until we are successful.  However, in the meantime, there is more we can do in Congress.  Since much of the implementation of ObamaCare is a function of the discretionary appropriations process, and since most of the citizens we represent believe that ObamaCare should never go into effect, we urge you not to bring to the House floor in the 112th Congress any legislation that provides or allows funds to implement ObamaCare through the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Health and Human Services, or any other federal entity.  We also urge you to take legislative steps necessary to immediately rescind all ObamaCare-implementation funds. In Federalist No. 58, James Madison wrote that the “power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon ... for obtaining a redress of every grievance…”  We thank you for your consideration and look forward to working closely with you to address defunding one of the largest grievances in our time and to restore patient-centered healthcare in America. Sincerely, Matt Kibbe President and CEO FreedomWorks [Click here for a PDF version of this letter.] File Attachments RSCTeaPartyLetter.pdf27.53 KB

In this second of three episodes with FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe, he talks about the fundamental difference between the ethos of the Tea Party and that of Occupy DC. More broadly, he talks about how many of America's great policy disagreements come down to a battle between those who believe in property rights and respect for the individual and those who don't. He also talks about how the disintermediation of our society is moving us away from centralized, top-down structures in both government and everyday life. Tea Time Interviewee:  Matt Kibbe