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Who knew the best form of birth control would be the President himself? Shortly after the historic election of Barack Obama in 2008, Newsweek magazine ran an article basking in the afterglow of victory, opining about the possibility of American citizens themselves ... um, basking in the afterglow. In an article which showed the depths of worship in which the media had descended to support their chosen candidate, Jessica Bennett projected her own excitement upon readers, discussing the possibility of a baby boom sparked by "exhilarated" and "euphoric" Obama fans being "in the mood for love." The title of the piece, Change You Can Conceive In, tells you all you need to know. In mind-numbing, stomach-turning, reach for the bleach to cleanse the eyes, scenario after scenario, liberal couples share about their need to celebrate Obama's 'seismic' election. I could cite many examples, but I'll spare you and leave you with the mildest of them all; a husband who downed a bottle-and-a-half of wine and started muttering to his wife about "making an Obama election baby." Crikey. Why am I torturing readers with this, you ask?   Despite the ridiculous examples cited, Bennett was right.  According to reports from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the number of live births rose from 325,000 in November of 2008, to 360,000 in August of 2009.  That represented a 0.8% increase in live births per 1,000 population during that time, and a seasonally adjusted increase of 1.1%. Hope and change, or hope and euphoria as Bennett reported, had resulted in a little more lovin' amongst our fellow Americans. So if we're willing to concede that point, then the liberal media must surely concede an updated point about birth rates: Once their rockstar candidate Obama turned into our bumbling President Obama, birth rates went relatively limp. Recent analysis by the Pew Institute shows that the actual number of national births in 2012 hit the lowest point in nearly 15 years, and the rate itself is at an all-time low. A Daily Mail report tried to find reason for the decline, eventually settling on financial uncertainty.   But how could this be, with the recession having ended over four years ago? We have seen a "summer of recovery", we have seen jobs created, jobs saved, and "lives touched", and we have seen "economic triumph."   We have seen Obamanomics. And that's just it.  The President's economic plan, firmly implanted for four years now, has effectively sterilized the nation. D’Vora Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center explained:  "When times are up, births go up.  When times are bad, births go down." Times are bad.   The Daily Mail report adds: Despite the recession being officially over for four years, the weak recovery and economic uncertainty has resulted in the national birthrate hitting an all-time low in 2011, and staying there in 2012. ... Some couples are missing their window of opportunity to have a baby because they never feel financially secure enough to commit to having a child. ... For many middle-class people, parenting in the way they want ... is a costly and sometimes unaffordable task. For lower income people, the expense of a baby could push families below the poverty line. CNBC reporter, Allison Linn, examines the current trend of delaying parenthood, or perhaps even being denied an American dream that includes children.  Her report arrives at similar economic results - Student loan debt, lack of career mobility in a weak job market, and watching their own parents suffer economically, were all cited as current reasons for lower birth rates. These economic negatives have flourished under the President's term, and their is very little sign of improvement on the horizon. For all of the whining that legal scholar, Sandra Fluke, staged in front of House Democrats in 2012, regarding how birth control, easily attainable for most at the local retail store f

Being a semi-old coot, I don’t have much experience with hipster retailer Urban Outfitters. I visited one of their stores a few years ago to grab a gift card for my niece. My young daughter liked the set-up and excitedly told a pierced and tatted counter girl, “this place is almost as cool as WalMart!” Miss Counterculture didn’t find this as amusing as I did. To differentiate themselves from the WalMarts of the world, UO offers irreverent products aimed at their college-age clientele. Among the trendy and tacky wares, they feature a mug with an obviously fake prescription for coffee. “Drink one mug by mouth, repeat until awake and alert,” reads the Rx to “Mr. Java Joe Espresso.” Not hilarious but no biggie, right? Wrong. Twenty-three state Attorneys General with far too much time on their hands were shocked – shocked – at this novelty coffee mug. Something must be done! they cried and leapt into action with a Strongly Worded Letter (pdf). On behalf of the undersigned Attorneys General, we request that Urban Outfitters immediately cease sales of your “Prescription Line” of glasses, coasters, mugs, drink holders and related products that mimic prescription pill bottles and prescription pads. How much are we paying these idiots? Excuse me, they continue… As you may be aware, there is a national health crisis related to the abuse and diversion of prescription drugs. As Attorneys General, we have prosecuted and engaged in outreach to stop this epidemic. We are actively engaged in a campaign of environmental change to educate the public that abuse of prescription drugs is not safe simply because the medication originated from a doctor. By putting these highly recognizable labels on your products you are undermining our efforts. These products demean the thousands of deaths that occur each month in the United States from accidental overdoses.  You guys, this jokey mug mocks the deaths of thousands! Because there’s a design on the mug that talks about coffee and it… well, it looks kind of like a doctor wrote on the side of the cup and… the… it has coffee. Look, we don’t have time to go into all the reasons but this mug is basically a MURDERER. These products are not in any way fun or humorous but make light of this rampant problem. We invite you to pull these products from your shelves and join with us to fight prescription drug abuse. Are you people serious? IT’S A GAG COFFEE MUG. It’s not even a funny gag coffee mug, but that’s all it is. No sentient human on the face of the earth will mistake said mug for an actual prescription. Even if they were dim enough to make that error, the “prescription bottle” only contains lukewarm coffee from State U.’s cafeteria. The mug doesn’t mention illicit drugs or drug abuse, let alone deaths of drug abusers. What kind of crazy person would see a student crossing the quad, glance at her novelty mug and think: “That evokes a prescription bottle. Which reminds me, I recently read about my state’s not-at-all-overpaid attorney general actively engaging in a campaign of environmental change to educate the public that abuse of prescription drugs is very, very bad. I daresay that this coffee mug undermines that noble effort and mocks the death of thousands!” Even if there were a person this unhinged, why on earth would they think they have a right to stop the sale of not-terribly-funny coffee mugs? Whenever your state government says they don’t have enough money for courts, schools or health care, remember that 23 of the highest-ranking officials had enough resources to waste on novelty drinkware. Urban Outfitters has a right to sell these cups without bullying from nanny-state enforcers. Now excuse me while I top off my far more impressive coffee mug. Follow Jon on Twitter at @ExJon.

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or her to vote NO on new House Farm Bill, H.R. 2642. House Leadership does deserve some slight praise for bringing forth a Farm Bill that is separate from the food stamp provisions that have served for decades as a mammoth earmark to attract Democratic support for the bill. However, splitting the food stamps and farm bill is a means to reform, not an end in itself. Unfortunately, House Republicans appear to be trying to advance a Farm Bill that not only contains no major reforms to crop insurance or industry subsidies, it is actually somewhat worse than the policies in the Democrat-led Senate Farm Bill.  The House bill actually spends more than its Senate companion, while still containing the brand new shallow loss crop insurance entitlement, which is guaranteed to spend billions per year more than the CBO estimates. Worse, this bill doubles down on bad policy by locking in all of its corporate welfare and overly generous subsidies into permanent law, by getting rid of the provision that requires the bill to be reauthorized every five years.  Once again, the whole point of splitting up the Farm Bill was to break up the unholy alliance between urban Democrats and rural Republicans that ensures that the bill passes every five years without significant reform. House Leadership is trying to pass this bill off as a great reform and a major concession to conservatives.  Instead, they are ensuring that fiscal conservatives may never be able to make any significant reforms to this terrible bill ever again. I urge you to call your representative and ask him or her to vote NO on the new Farm Bill. We may count their vote as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2013. The Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom. Sincerely, Matt Kibbe President and CEO FreedomWorks File Attachments KVN_2013-07-10_Farm_Bill_House_Pt._2_-_NO.pdf296.23 KB

The Southern State of Arkansas is where the newest battle against ObamaCare is taking place. A strong grassroots campaign has formed to place a voter referendum on the ballot seeking to repeal the state’s recent Medicaid expansion. But the battle in Arkansas is not the traditional fight seen in other states.   Since last summer’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of ObamaCare, each state has been able to decide whether or not it wants to accept Federal funding to expand Medicaid eligibility. The Federal Government would fund 100% of the cost for the first three years, and scale down its support until it reaches 90% by 2020, leaving states to pay for the rest. But there really are no guarantees of Federal assistance after the first few years. To date, 26 states have chosen to expand Medicaid, with Arkansas being one of them.  But while many states voted to expand Medicaid eligibility, Arkansas’s Democratic Governor Mike Beebe knew he had to do something different.  With a Republican-controlled House and Senate and a 3/4 majority required to pass the expansion, Governor Beebe knew conservative Republicans would not bite. Instead, he got special permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to use the Federal Medicaid dollars to subsidize the purchases of private healthcare through the insurance exchanges. Thus instead of actually expanding Medicaid, the deal technically only subsidizes private coverage, since it is currently against the law to subsidize commercial insurance for individuals who are eligible for Medicaid. This so called “private option,” was touted as saving money and providing better care. Republicans in the legislature bought it.  While private health insurance plans through the exchanges will provide better health coverage, they will cost much more.  Although the Federal Government pledges to cover the majority of the tab (for the time being), cash-strapped Arkansas will face even greater fiscal obligations under its special deal with HHS. According to the CBO, it costs 50% more to enroll individuals in health exchanges than in Medicaid (a cost increase from $6,000 to $9,000 per person). Arkansas’s share of the cost by 2022 will be $665 million.   In addition, the Arkansas deal greatly changes the purpose of Medicaid dollars. Instead of simply helping the very poor and needy (as the program is intended), Medicaid funds in Arkansas will support a much larger group of individuals. It will encourage those in a private program to switch to the more attractive public program. While the deal could be argued to increase Arkansas’s healthcare flexibility, the feds have denied it. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services declared in its “Good Friday” memo,  “Under all these [premium support] arrangements, beneficiaries remain Medicaid beneficiaries and continue to be entitled to all benefits and cost-sharing protections.” This is a nice way of saying that all the strings are still attached.  Arkansas’s deal opens the possibility for similar expansions in other states. As Avik Roy writes on Forbes, “now that HHS has cut this deal with Arkansas, other states will have every incentive to reopen their negotiations with HHS to ask for a similar one. Congress will need to figure out if HHS is legally authorized to spend more money in this fashion, and if so, if Congress should reduce spending elsewhere to offset it.”  He also said that, “if every state sought the same deal that Arkansas has apparently achieved, ObamaCare’s costs could increase by trillions of dollars.”   To repeal this costly entitlement expansion, Arkansans Against Big Government has been formed to place a voter referendum on the ballot for the 2014 election. To succeed, the group must get at least 56,000 signatures by August 15th. Find out more at the Arkansans Against Big Government (AABG) - Referendum Campaign on FreedomConnector and Facebook.  

The Columbus Dispatch advocated for Ohio Medicaid expansion in 8 staff editorials while quoting nearly 3 times more Medicaid expansion supporters than critics in news coverage that slammed opponents and shielded proponents, a full review of stories published from February 4 to June 18 reveals. The Dispatch's failure to objectively report on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) Medicaid expansion, which the editors endorsed in late January, is clear in individual news pieces and even more obvious when coverage of the issue is viewed in the aggregate. In 60 news stories, Dispatch reporters quoted a total of 114 Medicaid expansion supporters and only 40 critics. News was routinely based on themes favoring Medicaid expansion, with story titles including "Medicaid expansion crucial to mentally ill," "Without Medicaid expansion, poorest lose," and "State covers many foes of expanding Medicaid." Among the pro-expansion talking points repeated - but rarely questioned - by Dispatch reporters, Gov. Kasich's false claims about PPACA Medicaid expansion funding were included in 8 news stories. Dispatch writers never challenged the Kasich Administration's deceptive assertions, just as they showed no skepticism of Ohio Hospital Association rhetoric debunked by an exhaustive Media Trackers analysis of hospital financials. Not only did the Dispatch fail to ask difficult questions of Medicaid expansion supporters, the paper circled its wagons around the PPACA Medicaid expansion when others tried to do so. From this foundation of willful ignorance, Dispatch reporters built up the narrative that opposition to Medicaid expansion has no rational basis. In 6 different news stories, the Dispatch suggested foes of Medicaid expansion are motivated by heartless ideology. Dispatch reporters' refusal to acknowledge major arguments against Medicaid expansion fit neatly with pronouncements from the editorial board. "Any responsible leader also can see that the terms of the expansion will benefit Ohio," the Dispatch editors opined less than a week after the governor's budget plan was released. Through June 18, the editors advanced this theme in a total of 8 columns. The Dispatch published 5 Medicaid expansion news stories written by senior editor Joe Hallett during the 18-week period reviewed, though Hallett described critics of the policy as "fringe," "legislative ideologues," "rigid intimidators," and "bent on society's regression" in a pair of February opinion pieces. Elsewhere on the opinion page of Ohio's most influential newspaper, 14 op-eds supported the PPACA Medicaid expansion versus just 1 column from an opponent. With the exception of letters to the editor, no commentator featured in the Dispatch after February 22 advised against expanding Medicaid. Gov. Kasich wants to spend billions per year to expand an ineffective entitlement program, and The Columbus Dispatch has chosen to work with the governor, the health care lobby, and socialized medicine advocates against any Ohioan who might disagree. Download the complete Media Trackers report for details. Dispatch Editor Ben Marrison was contacted for comment on preliminary findings from this analysis, but did not respond. Media Trackers also reached out to Statehouse press corps president Laura Bischoff to ask whether she has spoken with anyone at the Dispatch about the paper's Medicaid expansion coverage, and whether she or any other Statehouse reporters have worked to address the side of the debate ignored by the Dispatch. "I don’t tell the Dispatch how to cover stories or issues," Bischoff replied. "That is not my role as a Dayton Daily News employees [sic] or as the president of the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association." This story originally appeared at Media Trackers Ohio.

After Congress failed to reach a compromise before the July 4th recess, student loans subsidized through the Federal Direct Stafford Loans program will see interest rates double from 3.4% to 6.8%. Pundits and the media have been reporting this as “Congress’s failure to act,” and a “catastrophic increase” on students. However, there are several reasons this “failure to act” is a good thing.  A little background first. Normally, interest rates fluctuate just like every other price in the economy. But government backed student loans operate very differently. Since July 2006, the Federal Government began fixing interest rates at 6.8%, not allowing them to increase above that level regardless of the amount of loans. In 2007, Congress voted to bring the rate down to 3.4% over the course of four years, and later extended it in 2012 for another year. However, this only handles subsidized loans in the Stafford program, which account for a quarter of all federal loans. As well, the current debate only regards new loans, not existing ones, since they already have fixed rates. Thus, the issue at hand deals with, more or less, a rate increase on ¼ of all future loans.  According to the Congressional Research Service, the difference between 6.8% and 3.4% is the equivalent of $6-$10 (depending on how much is barrowed) a month for a 10 year standard repayment plan. The cost increase then to a student is the difference of a couple beers or frappuccinos a month.  But extending the 3.4% rate will cost $41 billion to taxpayers over the next 10 years.  As well, there are fundamental problems with fixing interest rates. Sure, we’d all love lower interest rates, but what are the consequences for the broader economy? By fixing the interest rate so low, it encourages over-borrowing by students. While this technically helps some students go to school, it makes tuition more expensive for everyone. It also gives colleges and universities less incentive to cut costs since more of the tab is being picked up by taxpayers. As Neal McCluskey, the associate director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom summarizes, “It both encourages students to demand things they otherwise wouldn’t — more expensive programs, lots of educationally superfluous amenities — and enables colleges to raise their prices, since cheap aid ensures that students can pay them.”  In some sense, we are doing students a disservice. We are over encouraging individuals to seek college education, so they go to school, rack up debt, and can’t find jobs when they graduate. Student debt stands at a whopping $1 trillion nationally.  Half of 2012’s class of graduates ended up unemployed or underemployed.  Further, many people do not need degrees for the work they end up doing. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity released a report which showed that, “More than one-third of current working graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree, and the proportion appears to be rising rapidly,”  commenting, “we may have significantly ‘over invested’ public funds in colleges and universities.”  This trend will only continue in the future, as the Associated Press reported, “only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position.”   In essence, the current program is arbitrarily encouraging students to pile on an enormous amount of debt with hardly any way to pay it off. Granted, employers prefer those with degrees over those who do not have one. But part of this, “credential inflation” would likely be reduced if the artificial demand for education was deflated.  However, even letting rates double to 6.8% does not solve the problem. It is still a fixed rate. How can a few people in a boardroom meeting know the proper price that will coordinate the necessary supply of loans with the student demand?  What is magical about 3.4%? Not

The Obama Administration has taken an axe to the Affordable Care Act, after finally admitting that it is too complex to implement. The move to delay the employer mandate appears to be illegal on its face. It is also further redundant proof that Obamacare must be repealed. As announced in a post on the Treasury blog, the administration, through the IRS, is delaying the implementation of "reporting requirements", leading to a one-year suspension of the mandate that employers provide health insurance to their full-time employees. The announcement was leaked to two reporters from Bloomberg News, and was originally scheduled to be made the eve of the July 4th federal holiday. With the President out of the country and available to comment only to captive White House correspondents, that would assure the minimum news coverage. The leak forced the posting from former IRS employee Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy Mark Mazur:  The Administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin.  A release from Congressman Steve King of Iowa explains the first problem with that sentence: If President Obama wants to make changes to ObamaCare, he must come to Congress," said King. "Two years ago, the Obama Administration, through a memo from a Homeland Security Department bureaucrat, declared it would not enforce our nation's immigration laws. Now the Obama Administration, through a blog post by an Assistant Secretary in the Treasury Department, is declaring it won't even enforce its own health care law on employers. We live in a Constitutional Republic. We are a nation governed by laws written by Congress, not memos and blog posts written by bureaucrats.Though Rep King stops short of saying so, this change exceeds Administration's authority (more on that below). Back to the blog post written by the bureaucrat:This is designed to meet two goals.  First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law.  Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees. That is an admission that both the implementation and the design of Obamacare are too burdensome for American business. If you have to simplify the procedures you just created, that means you overreached and made a mess of things. And after three years, if you still haven't been able to "adapt health coverage and reporting systems" to the new law, it means that Obamacare's basic design is too complex and heavy-handed ever to accomplish its goals.Within the next week, we will publish formal guidance describing this transition.  Just like the Administration’s effort to turn the initial 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible about reporting requirements as we implement the law. No, this is not just like simplifying the health insurance application to 3 pages from 21. That was a minor change which, though embarrassing, had no further impact. This wreaks havoc on the structure of the entire law, and requires Congressional authority to perform.But why could the government think it's legal?Here is some additional detail.  The ACA includes information reporting (under section 6055) by insurers, self-insuring employers, and other parties that provide health coverage.  It also requires information reporting (under section 6056) by certain employers with respect to the health coverage offered to their full-time employees. What does Section 6055 of the US Code (created by Obamacare section 1502) say?‘‘SEC. 6055. REPORTING OF HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE. ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—Every person who provides minimum essential coverage to an individual during a calendar year shall, at&n

Dear FreedomWorks member, As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Representative and urge him or her to co-sponsor the Local Education Authority Returns Now (LEARN) Act, H.R. 2394.  Introduced by Congressman Scott Garrett (R-NJ), this bill aims to give states and individual parents more choice in the education of their children. Rep. Garrett’s bill allows states to opt out of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and other K-12 education standards.  The federal government would then make an amount of money available to the parents in the opt-out states, equal to what they would have received in educational grants. This returns much more of the control over education to the state and local level and to parents. Besides promoting local control and school choice, this bill also makes it much easier for states to opt out of the federal Common Core curriculum standards.  The Department of Education has long used education grants to states as a means to essentially bribe states into accepting more federal regulations and centralized standards, and the LEARN act uncouples the regulations from the money.  This will allow more of that money to go to where it is actually needed – schools and students – and not to bureaucrats working at the Dept. of Education. The federal government has no constitutional authority to fund local K-12 schools, but as long as it persists in doing so, this bill offers a better way to do it than today's centralized, top-down approach. The more federal middlemen are taken out from between students and their teachers, the better our education funding will be spent. Thus, I urge you to contact your Representative and urge him or her to support the LEARN Act (H.R. 2394), and to co-sponsor the bill if they have not already done so. Sincerely,   Matt Kibbe President and CEO FreedomWorks File Attachments LoS_2013-07-02_-_Support_-_LEARN_Act.pdf219.11 KB

US Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is starting to realize that maybe, in the 21st century, bloggers and Twitter users deserve the same level of First Amendment protection as other journalists.  Unfortunately, the definition of "journalist" the Senator prefers misses the mark, revealing in the process his desire to control the information received by the public. Part of the trouble Mr. Durbin runs into when he talks about these issues is the difference between free expression and defense of sources -- the right not to incriminate someone else. Durbin contends that while some people should be able to keep their sources secret, others should not.The media informs the public and holds government accountable. Journalists should have reasonable legal protections to do their important work. But not every blogger, tweeter or Facebook user is a “journalist.” While social media allows tens of millions of people to share information publicly, it does not entitle them to special legal protections to ignore requests for documents or information from grand juries, judges or other law enforcement personnel. The arrogance of a government official declaring who is and who is not fit to inform the public is rather striking. In the era of the democratization of information, setting up a protected journalist class as distinct from ordinary citizens is everything that's wrong with Washington elitism. To declare that journalists should have "reasonable legal protections" leaves open on one hand the definition of reasonableness, and on the other hand denies those protections to other citizens.  Durbin says that the media "holds government accountable," but the major media in the US have been highly protective of the Obama administration and Mr. Durbin's policy positions. The corporate media needs competition from amateurs; everyday citizen journalists with smart phones and a twitter account to keep them honest.  By setting up protections for employees of the corporate media, Durbin is saying that the corporations themselves deserve greater First and Fifth Amendment protection than ordinary people. And what does Durbin think is the definition of a journalist? A journalist gathers information for a media outlet that disseminates the information through a broadly defined “medium” — including newspaper, nonfiction book, wire service, magazine, news website, television, radio or motion picture — for public use. This broad definition covers every form of legitimate journalism. Durbin's definition misses the mark, in part because he attempts to make an exhaustive list of media, and also because of the arbitrary limitations he imposes within that list. He chooses media that are overwhelmingly filled by his political allies, leaving the impression that he wants to retain the unlevel playing field. Technology changes too quickly to categorize certain media as journalism, and other media as not journalism. The real trouble is trying to define "journalist" in the first place, when that really isn't the question.  Just as not all people who write things for the public are journalists, on Mr. Durbin's terms, not all journalists have sources to protect.   The real question is, "What is a reporter?" According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a reporter is: A person who represents, at the time he is gathering information, that the information is being gathered for the purpose of disseminating it to the public. As long as the source knows that the goal is making the information public, the method of transmission, professional status, size of audience, type of content, or frequency of publication should not matter. The source should be protected. Whether someone is a "journalist" is irrelevant, since journalism is profession, not an activity. Yes, professional journalists are entitled to First and Fifth Amendment protection, but so is everyone else.  The protection is not for the reporter. The protection is for t

It might surprise you to learn that hydroelectric power is not renewable energy. Well, it's not considered renewable in Oregon, anyway. Despite the fact that the engine of electricity production literally falls from the sky - at a higher than average rate for the United States.  Due to bureaucratic nonsense, hydroelecric power cannot be applied to the state's mandate to produce 25% of its power from renewable resources. Luckily, a plucky group of citizens has picked up on this anomaly and is attempting to correct the problem. Background: in 2007, Oregon's legislature passed a measure that mandates large utilities provide electricity from 'renewable' sources. From Pacific Power's website: Requirements for renewable energy To promote the development of new renewable resources and decrease reliance on fossil fuels for electricity generation, Oregon passed a law in 2007 that created a renewable portfolio standard (RPS). The law established that Pacific Power and other large utilities in Oregon would increase development and use of renewable energy sources. The RPS requires large utilities to have electricity from qualifying sources of at least 5 percent by 2011, 15 percent by 2015, 20 percent by 2020 and 25 percent by 2025. What's funny about this 2007 law, other than its massively false premises about the renewable resource industry capacity and the supposed evils of fossil fuels, is that hydroelectric power doesn't count toward the RPS if generated by dams built prior to 1995. Evidently, despite the fact that hydroelectricity has been providing low cost, renewable, and - dare I say it - green energy for the entire Pacific Northwest electric grid for around 8 decades or so, it's just not green enough. Or new enough. Or something. Enter this crazy band of citizens who think that hydroelectric power is renewable. The Oregonian reports, The initiative seeks to alter renewable portfolio standards approved in 2007 that require large utilities obtain 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2015, and 25 percent by 2025. The law prohibits large utilities from counting hydroelectric power generated by dams built before 1995 towards the standard. Portland lobbyist Paul Cosgrove and Salem resident Tom Hammer, the initiative sponsors, want to count all hydroelectric power toward the green energy mandate. "Most people agree that hydro power is renewable because in the every day meaning of that term, it is renewable," Cosgrove said. Critics of this form of sustainable green energy were quick to respond, saying that the RPS rules were "aimed at developing newer sources of renewable energy, such as wind and solar", and that the standards weren't written "to count hydroelectric power generated by dams built decades ago." In other words, despite being literally decades ahead of its time, hydro doesn't count because it's already solved the problem before it even existed, which then leaves environmental activists with precious little to do. Fear not, young idealist! We can reinvent the problem AND the solution! So says Jeff Bissonnette, of the Citizen's Utility Board of Oregon: "Hydro is renewable, but we can't pat ourselves on the back for the things we did back in the '30s," Bissonnette said. "That's meeting current load. We're trying to figure out how to meet load growth going forward." Of course, hydroelectric produces so much excess power that wind farms are frequently forced to shut down. But since that completely blows a hole in the RPS, it can't be allowed to continue. But hey, we can always try to bring some common sense to the legislature. As is frequently the case, in this instance it comes in the form of a perfectly logical citizen's initiative. Let's hope the voters approve logic over the sustained war on affordable energy that allows us the best standard of living ever known to humanity.

The IRS, in its zeal to block the legal political activity of conservative groups, has still not come clean. The agency is out of control, and needs serious reform, and ought to be shuttered, its services provided in some other way. IRS officials are still trying to claim that the targeting of 292 Tea Party groups is nothing special because the IRS also turned its icy gaze on 6 progressive groups. It isn't clear that any of the progressive or liberal groups actually received any heightened scrutiny. Items of interest:IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when she pleaded her innocence before trying to invoking it. Another Senior IRS manager, Greg Roseman, did invoke the Fifth Amendment rather than testify to a House committee. The Linchpins of Liberty provide a detailed account of questions the IRS asked themPublic interest lawyer Cleta Mitchell noted that as of mid-May, the IRS was still harassing conservative groups.  Now the second wave of IRS testimony has shown contradictions. Someone is lying. As GatewayPundit put it, Instead of condemning this practice, Tucker misrepresented the truth. She told the committee several different groups were targeted. This was not true. The Inspector General report in May confirmed that the agency was inappropriately targeting “conservative” groups. The IRS list allowed “progressive” groups to be approved on the spot while agents were told to send conservative applications to Washington DC. According to McClatchy News Service, Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration J. Russell George wrote to Congress that liberal groups were not subjected to the same kinds of inappropriate IRS treatment as conservatives: George added that while “we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, emails, and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘Progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention.” According to Gallup, most Americans think it was all political, or at least knowledge of the operation went well up the organizational chart: The coverup shows the crime.  With the IRS playing such a key role in implementing nationalized medicine, the nation deserves answers. Ideally, the whole agency should be abolished.

Dear FreedomWorks member, As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or her to cosponsor H.R. 2399, the Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act (LIBERT-E Act). Introduced by Reps. Justin Amash (R-MI) and John Conyers (D-MI), the bill would restrict the federal government’s ability under the Patriot Act to collect information on Americans who are not connected to any ongoing investigations. The bill would also make Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court opinions available to Congress and the public to increase transparency and accountability.The LIBERT-E Act is urgent and necessary to stop the growing surveillance state. As we learned over the past few weeks, the National Security Administration (NSA) has been secretly collecting phone records of millions of innocent Americans. It is unconstitutional for the government to spy on Americans without a warrant or any reasonable suspicion that they are committing any crimes. This is a direct violation of the 4th Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. This bill would prevent the federal government from infringing on our right to privacy on the phone and Internet.  The court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that prescribes procedures for surveillance is top secret. Secret court orders are antithetical to a free society. Under the LIBERT-E Act, congressmen would have access to court opinions and the public can read the summaries of the opinions. The FISA court should be open and accountable to the people. Congress and the public must be allowed access to court orders to discuss security and privacy concerns.The bipartisan LIBERT-E Act would protect our constitutional rights and increase government transparency. I urge you to contact your representative and urge him or her to cosponsor H.R. 2399, the Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and Email Act today.  Sincerely, Matt KibbePresident and CEO FreedomWorks[Click here for a PDF version of this letter.]

Update: The IRS' auditor has explicitly confirmed that - as is argued below - conservative, and not progressive, groups were targeted. In the last few days, much of the political left has rushed to the defense of the IRS. Salon has gleefully announced that the “scandal is entirely bogus,” claiming that the IRS targeted progressive groups and not just conservative ones. Some Democratic legislators, like Rep. Elijah Cummings, are now displaying an “enthusiasm for defending the IRS,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Cummings has urged the public to move on from the scandal, calling scrutiny of the IRS “a witch hunt.” Yet if progressive groups were targeted  – and this remains doubtful – they were subjected to incomparably less scrutiny than conservative organizations. According to Washington-based IRS supervisor Holly Paz, IRS officials openly used the term “tea party” to describe the dozens of cases they allowed to remain untouched for more than a year. During this period, the IRS approved dozens of applications from groups whose names included words like “progressive”, “liberal” and “equality.” Even the New York Times says that the IRS "approved these groups at a fairly steady rate from 2010 through 2012.” Media Trackers - a conservative applicant that had been delayed for 16 months - was approved in three weeks after it reapplied under the name “Greenhouse Solutions.” The question “Who’s going to jail?” is as pertinent now as it was when this scandal came to light. IRS officials fundamentally violated Americans’ trust in government, and not one is known to have been fired – let alone brought up on criminal charges - as a result. Instead, key players in the scandal – like Holly Paz and Lois Lerner – seem to have been placed on administrative leave. It’s an interesting sort of “witch hunt” that punishes its victims with paid vacations. Moreover, details about the full extent of the IRS' corruption are still emerging. Rep. Darrell Issa has released a report alleging that IRS higher-ups awarded lucrative contracts to their close friends, paying them hundreds of millions in contracting fees. One of these contracts went to a firm owned by Bruce Castillo – a close friend of Gregory Roseman, IRS Deputy Director of Acquisitions. In February, Castillo denied having a personal relationship with anyone at the IRS. The House Oversight Committee, however, has obtained hundreds of text messages between him and Roseman - many containing obscene jokes, including quotes from the movie “The Hangover” (pg. 60). Our society trusts government employees to serve the public. Yet our public servants have abused that trust on a large scale - and are not being held accountable. The IRS scandal is very real – and it should be far from over. See also: Rundown: What We Know About the IRS Targeting Scandal and Top Unanswered Questions About the IRS Targeting Scandal.

The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services claim that consumers saved $3.9 billion because of restriction on insurance companies under Obamacare. The figure is almost meaningless. Also, they don't mention that Obamacare is raising insurance premiums, not lowering them. In contrast, CMS (a part of the Department of Health and Human Services) is now claiming that saving you money means not making you spend as much as you would have under Obamacare. CMS issued a press release June 20 touting a report on Medical Loss Ratios. Under Obamacare, insurance companies must use 80% of premium income for health care and "quality improvement", leaving 20% for profit and overhead. CMS said that "For many consumers, the report found that the law motivated their plans to lower prices or improve their coverage to meet the standard." In the accompanying report (pdf), CMS claims further (emphasis added): Consumers benefit from the 80/20 rule in two ways. First, they benefit upfront because insurance companies now keep premiums lower and operate more efficiently in order to meet the 80/20 rule. And second, if an insurance company doesn’t meet the 80/20 rule, then the consumer benefits by receiving a rebate for the amount that exceeds this threshold. In 2012, the 77.8 million consumers in the three markets covered by this 80/20 rule saved $3.4 billion upfront on their premiums because of the 80/20 rule and other Affordable Care Act programs.  But neither the logic nor the arithmetic work. If companies can only spend 20% of premiums on profit and overhead, that's incentive for them to have as large a premium as they can.  Competition and, to a lesser extent, regulation counteract that. The Medical Loss Ratio is a factor raising prices, not lowering them. What do the "other Affordable Care Act programs" include? A CMS spokesperson emailed: The Medical Loss Ratio standard (or “80/20 rule”) works in conjunction with other provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including the required review of proposed double-digit premium increases, to stabilize and moderate premium rates and provide consumers better value for their premium dollar.  As the report indicates, the $3.4 billion was a result of upfront savings on premiums, and the remaining $[500] million were from rebates. Critics of the law are arguing that premiums will rise by selectively looking only at one part of the law, while simply ignoring critical provisions of the law that lower costs and drive premiums downward. John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, said "If [insurers] paid rebates, it's just because they haven't learned how to game the system. Give them a couple of years and there won't be any more rebates. They'll learn how to organize their affairs so as not to pay rebates. You can count on that." CMS listed items saving consumers money:Tax credits Reinsurance Risk adjustmentRisk corridorsAllowing for the purchase of lower-premium coverage under a catastrophic plan for young people and individuals who otherwise cannot afford insurance  The new authority to ensure premium hikes are transparent and publicly reported Goodman said none of those things actually lower premiums to any significant degree. Tax credits increase a consumer's income, but make it possible for premiums to rise. Eventually they come from someone's taxes.  Reinsurance, risk adjustment, and risk corridors are all of minor value.  Young people can buy catastrophic coverage now if they chose, so that's not saving anyone any money. "And," Goodman agreed, "the catastrophic care would be more expensive under Obamacare than it would be now in the market. " The only item listed that could lower premiums are the regulations limiting premium increases. That is simply the latest attempt at price controls, which never work.[T]he premium savings number captures another way consumers benefit from the 80/20 rule (aside from the rebates

The phrase, “fiscal irresponsibility” does not even begin to describe our government’s stewardship of taxpayer money. Here’s why: Citizens know the importance of fiscal responsibility and are rightfully concerned about the nation’s finances. Government debt is higher than ever. Every day the government spends money it doesn’t have at a rate unparalleled in human history. As the $16 trillion national debt continues to grow, the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio creeps above an already unstable ratio of 100%. Because of smoke-and-mirrors accounting, the government debt and debt-to-to-GDP ratio is actually much larger than it appears to be. When the national debt is calculated using the same procedures that every man, woman, family and company in America must adhere to, the national debt becomes much greater. Without the use of special accounting rules, the national debt rises to a mind-numbing and unconscionable $87 trillion (or $85.4 trillion depending who you ask). To get a sense of how deep we are in debt, consider total world GDP. Last year, the total value of all the things produced on the world was $83.2 trillion according to the CIA World Fact Book. Our federal government’s debt to world GDP ratio is 102.6%, the debt to US GDP ratio is 543.7%. Now for the dry stuff: why do I call the $16 trillion debt number a result of “smoke-and-mirrors” accounting? It’s because government accountants get to write their own special and unique accounting standards. Here is how they depart from the normal standards that everyone else must adhere to.  When you calculate your financial net worth, you take into account your current total assets and liabilities. Mortgages, car payments and credit card debt are liabilities that Americans must disclose when calculating financial statements. The same goes for businesses, non-profit organizations, and many other entities. All these things are calculated according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), a near-universal set of accounting principles formalized by the Government Accounting Standards Board.  For companies, GAAP is a generalized way to determine profits and losses that assures everyone’s calculation method is uniform.  Since everyone’s account statements are uniform, we can make meaningful profit/loss comparisons between different companies and different individuals. For example, we can confidently say statements like,” Apple is more profitable than Nintendo” or “Warren Buffet has more money than his secretary”.  The federal debt is not calculated like debt of private companies or individuals. While you use GAAP, the federal government uses its own Government Auditing Standards (GAS) compiled by the Government Accountability Office. There are many differences between GAAP and GAS, such as GAS’ use of budgetary basis accounting. Budgetary basis accounting allows for gaps between accounting periods where the accounting equation can remain unbalanced, where current debits don’t have to equal current credits. Expected revenues can be projected into the future and then be assumed to cover existing and ongoing costs. Under GAAP, credits and debits must equate at all times. Expenditures are recorded when paid as opposed to expenditures being recorded when the related liability is incurred.  More importantly, the government’s many continuing resolutions (long-term ongoing obligations) are always reported with the same bundle of financial resources that were used to determine the costs. Originally calculated budget surpluses/deficits just roll over year by year, even if actual costs change. Under GAAP, continued resolutions are reported as reserved fund balances that can increase or decrease as the cost of fulfilling the continued resolution changes. We tend to focus on the debt of Washington, but the federal government isn’t the only entity that taxpayers must support. State and local governments deserve scrutiny as well. Built-in wage increases for public secto