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Electric Cars: Next They'll Have To Give Them Away

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:06:00 GMT

Government Failure: Two years ago the president announced his goal of putting 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. Did he mention that to reach that target the unpopular cars might have to be given away? The market for electric cars is so weak that consumer costs are approaching almost nothing. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that in order to "spark buyers for electric cars," there is a need to "drop the price to nearly $0."

Now The Gibson Guitar Raids Make Sense

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:06:00 GMT

IRS Scandal: The inexplicable raid nearly two years ago on a guitar maker for using allegedly illegal wood that its competitors also used was another targeting by this administration of its political enemies. On Aug. 24, 2011, federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. One of the top makers of acoustic and electric

Stop Importing Terrorists To The United States

Thu, 23 May 2013 23:06:00 GMT

Homeland Insecurity: A number of recent terrorist cases call into question Washington's push to give amnesty to all illegal immigrants, including those from hostile Muslim countries. The latest case involves a possibly illegal Chechen immigrant who reportedly stabbed an FBI agent in Orlando. Ibragim Todashev was close to confessing to a triple homicide in Boston when he suddenly lunged at the agent during an interview. The Muslim man was then shot

Are ObamaCare's 'Markets' Doomed To Fail?

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:56:00 GMT

Industrial Policy: What if government created an insurance "marketplace" and no one came? As the launch of the ObamaCare insurance exchanges draws near, that could happen -- bringing the reform crashing to the ground. The premise of ObamaCare's exchanges was that they would provide individuals and small businesses a choice of many competing health plans. And because the plans all have to provide the same benefits, consumers would be able to shop

Irs Scandal Shows Agency Was Used To Harass Political Foes

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:30:00 GMT

'Horrible customer service." That's what the newly fired IRS commissioner averred was the agency's only sin in singling out conservative political groups for discriminatory treatment. In such grim proceedings one should be grateful for unintended humor. Horrible customer service is when every patron in a restaurant finds a fly in his soup. But when the maitre d' screens patrons for their politics and only conservatives find

Forget The IRS Scandal, Try Reforming The Tax Code

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:30:00 GMT

One way President Obama can begin to put the IRS scandal behind him is by proposing comprehensive tax reform. Beyond the usual Washington theatrics, the real problem is that the U.S. tax code is unbelievably complicated, clocking in around 74,000 pages, with all rulings, regulations and other material. The greater the complexity, the broader bureaucrats' powers to determine the status of an individual, corporation or association. A radically

In Defiant, Arrogant Obama, Media Face Monster They Made

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:30:00 GMT

How does President Obama, a man of such keen intelligence, with such promise to "change" America, find himself in so much serious trouble? From the IRS targeting conservatives to the continued confusion over what happened at Benghazi to provoking a battle with the Associated Press by subpoenaing phone records that could involve as many as 100 reporters, what went wrong? The answer is simple: arrogance, aided and abetted by a compliant, adoring

IRS Scandal Is Nothing New -- It's Always Been A Political Weapon

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:30:00 GMT

IRS Politicization Comes In Many Forms Revelations that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) -- in the run-up to last year's presidential election -- purposefully delayed processing applications for tax-exempt status from politically conservative groups, pried unnecessarily into their internal affairs and singled out Tea Party activists and donors for tax audits has produced a firestorm of righteous indignation. The furor is understandable given the

Garcetti Mayoral Win In L.A. Is Sign Public's Fed Up With Unions

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:43:00 GMT

Organized Labor: On the surface, the Los Angeles mayor's race looked like a choice between Coke and Pepsi. But Eric Garcetti's lopsided win over Wendy Greuel showed a major difference -- in the public's view of unions. City Controller Greuel lost 54%-46% on Tuesday, bested by City Councilman Garcetti, who will become the mayor of America's second-largest city on July 1. It was an interesting result because the candidates are two peas in a pod. Both

Cracks Widen In The IRS Scandal Stonewall

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:43:00 GMT

Scandal Watch: New evidence makes it clear that the Internal Revenue Service campaign against conservatives wasn't the result of two "rogue" agents, but was directed from higher up. The question is, how high up? The claim that a couple of workers in the bowels of an IRS office in Cincinnati managed to block tax-exempt applications from conservative groups for more than two years, while subjecting them to outrageous, intrusive and improper requests

Key IRS Exec Takes The Fifth, But Tea Party Couldn't

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:43:00 GMT

Scandal: The rest of us must answer IRS questions under threat of perjury, but the agency's execs can take the Fifth. A Tea Party targeted by the IRS -- and the FBI and OSHA and the ATF -- thinks that's unfair. We do too. Lois Lerner, chief of the IRS' exempt organizations division when the Tea Party and other conservative groups were targeted for their opposition to President Obama, has invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to be questioned on her

Because Of Ideology, Benghazi Terrorists Remain Free

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:43:00 GMT

National Security: The U.S. knows who and where five of the Benghazi terrorists are who murdered Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The Obama administration's ideology keeps them free. Remember when, in the summer of 2008, soon-to-be Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama charged that President Bush's strategy was to "engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who

Obama Media Spying Is Flagrant Violation Of Civil Liberties

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:15:00 GMT

There are various reasons you might not care about the Obama administration's spying on journalist James Rosen and labeling him an "aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator" in an espionage case. Liberals may not be particularly bothered because the targeted journalist works for Fox News. Conservatives may not be concerned because of their antipathy toward the news media generally. And the general public certainly doesn't have much patience for

Republicans Must Argue Case To Win Political Points

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:15:00 GMT

It is painful and embarrassing to watch. In the Benghazi scandal, Democrats have committed one of the most monumental episodes of official misfeasance and malfeasance in American history, and Republicans have them in the cross hairs. But because Republicans are so inept and flat-footed at political communication, or even the basics of logical argumentation, Democrats easily run rings around them. The result in this case is not just a political

Immigration Bill Grants Amnesty Without Closed Border

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:15:00 GMT

Gang of Eight Betrays Americans The Gang of Eight immigration bill can be summed up as amnesty now, border closing never. The Department of Homeland Security is not required to build a fence (which was ordered by the Secure Fence Act signed by President George W. Bush). DHS is required only to submit a plan. If the DHS secretary decides she has not reached 90% of border security, a "trigger" kicks in: the creation of a Southern Border Security

Despite Appearances, Media Are Not Getting Tough On Obama

Wed, 22 May 2013 22:15:00 GMT

As the Obama scandals surround the White House, some conservatives are suggesting that -- finally -- the media are "getting tough" on Obama. Don't count on it. All our modern experience suggests tough reporting on a Democratic president is more of a temporary sensation than an ongoing trend. The news media honestly believe they were tough on Team Clinton. It is simply not true. There was a seemingly endless supply of Clinton administration (and

Reform Should Give Those Here Illegally A Path To Citizenshipe

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

Is it a good thing or a bad thing for a foreign national who is living and working in the United States to yearn to become an American citizen? Until conservatives come to terms with the obvious answer to this easy question we will never frame a coherent position on the polarizing issue of immigration. Of course it's a healthy development if people toiling in this country want to become full participants in our national life and express their

Under ObamaCare, IRS Is Creating Chaos For Doctors, Patients

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

IRS Illegally Usurps Congress with New Law in Obamacare As an internist, I have dedicated my 30-year career to advancing the long-term health of all of my patients, one patient at a time. Unfortunately, the greatest barrier to this goal is government intervention into my professional judgment, my office management and my patient care. This has been increasingly true long before enactment of the onerous Affordable Care Act (ACA), but it's

California's Budget Ills Could Be Cured With Repeal Of Prop. 13

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

It has been 35 years since California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a measure that, as Gov. Jerry Brown put it in 2011, "started the centralization of power" in the state. He should know because he was also governor in 1978 and helped oversee that shift. At the time, Californians were enraged that their inflation-fueled home values were accompanied by rising local property taxes. The referendum limited those taxes to 1% of

Environmental Fear-Mongering Isn't Just Silly, It Kills People

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

Dr. Henry Miller, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a Forbes article "Rachel Carson's Deadly Fantasies" (9/5/2012), wrote that her 1962 book, "Silent Spring," led to a world ban on DDT use. The DDT ban was responsible for the loss of "tens of millions of human lives -- mostly children in poor, tropical countries -- have been traded for the possibility of slightly

Senator Blames Okla. Tornado On Climate Change, GOP

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

Junk Science: Despite no evidence that devastating tornadoes have increased in frequency or intensity due to fossil fuel use, another warm-monger blames the Moore, Okla., disaster on GOP "polluters and deniers." Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., thought the devastation of Moore was a crisis that should not be wasted as he took to the Senate floor Monday to rail against his Republican colleagues for denying the theory of anthropogenic (man-caused) global

Are Obama's Policies To The Left Of Communist China?

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

Free Market: The government has decided that less intervention on its part will be better for economic growth. Is this a new initiative coming out of Washington? No. This is the thinking in Beijing. Under the headline "China Cuts Red Tape As Premier Li Shows Stimulus Reluctance," Bloomberg reported last week that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, who "pledged to reduce the government's role in the world's second biggest economy after a new leadership

The Bystander President

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:38:00 GMT

Leadership: Is Barack Obama the president or not? If you were visiting from another planet, you'd have to wonder. He says he learns what his government is doing from the news, and seems detached from his role as leader. Let's take Obama at his word (for now) that he didn't know his Justice Department was spying on reporters. Or that his IRS agents were targeting his political enemies. Or that al-Qaida was attacking his diplomats -- after they'd

Blame Tax Code, Not Apple, For Profits Stranded Abroad

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:11:00 GMT

Tax Policy: A great American company gets hauled before senators for its wholly legal activities. What's the point? If it's to close "loopholes," the real question is why they're needed at all. You might think a company that paid $6 billion to the government last year would get some sort of prize. That firm, Apple Inc., is indeed America's biggest taxpayer. But in the eyes of Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chair of the permanent subcommittee on

The Obama Objective: To Control The News

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:56:00 GMT

First Amendment: For awhile, it looked like the White House wanted just to control "the narrative." But its seizure of AP phone records and surveillance of Fox employees now show its real aim: to control the news. The Obama political team at the White House has always prided itself on its media savvy. After all, they got a candidate with an otherwise unsalable socialist past elected on a campaign that sold his personality, not his platform. They

Perez Framed Lenders As Racist In $600 Mil Shakedown

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:53:00 GMT

New evidence has emerged that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez may have improperly prosecuted Wells Fargo, Bank of America and dozens of other banks for lending discrimination by using deficient mortgage data in investigations. IBD has learned the special prosecutor spearheading Perez's record number of statistics-based cases of racism against lenders told federal bank regulators in 2010 he lacked key home loan data needed to

Benghazi: Where Was President Waldo During Attack?

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:46:00 GMT

Benghazigate: The lack of a timeline for what the commander-in-chief was doing the night terrorists murdered our ambassador to Libya and three others is an "irrelevant fact," according to a key White House aide. Playing the role Sunday of former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who last Sept. 16 went on all five talk shows to parrot the administration line that Benghazi was provoked by a video, was White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer. Following in

IRS Scandal Is Opportunity To Reduce Big Government

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:46:00 GMT

Government: The IRS scandal isn't just about misconduct of a possibly criminal nature. Without big government, such a powerful, intrusive organization would be obsolete -- which should be the goal. The scandals in big government shine a spotlight on the scandal of big government. As British historian Paul Johnson warned, "The destructive capacity of an individual, however vicious, is small; of the state, however well-intentioned, almost limitless.

5 Troubling Questions About The IRS Scandal

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:34:00 GMT

Scandal Watch: Despite White House attempts to brush the IRS scandal aside as "irrelevant" or the work of rogue miscreants, huge questions remain about who ordered IRS agents to harass Tea Party groups, and why. Every day, in fact, raises new and more disturbing questions that congressional investigators must get answers to. Among them: 1. Who told Internal Revenue Service workers to target conservatives? It's becoming increasingly clear these

Five Reasons The Global Warming Scare Is Fading

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:24:00 GMT

Climate Hysteria: The unraveling of the global warming scare continues thanks to several recent important pieces of science news. The alarmists who have hyped fear for decades should be ashamed of themselves. We begin with an analysis of ice cores taken from the Arctic. The samples, according to Scientific American, "show this region used to be a lot warmer -- and may thaw out again in the future." The sediment recovered by researchers dates "back

Keystone Pipeline Is An Economic Slam Dunk For America

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:24:00 GMT

It's Time to Build the Keystone XL Pipeline The Keystone XL pipeline is a line in the sand issue, dividing those who want to utilize our energy resources to create jobs and propel America toward economic growth and energy self-sufficiency and those whose sole goal is to stop the development of fossil fuels. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground, which is why it is so perplexing that President Obama has yet to make a decision on the project

Swarthmore Farce Shows Results Of Barbarian Takeover

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:24:00 GMT

An all too familiar scene was enacted on the campus of Swarthmore College during a meeting on May 4 to discuss demands by student activists for the college to divest itself of its investments in companies that dealt in fossil fuels. As a speaker was beginning a presentation to show how many millions of dollars such a disinvestment would cost the college, student activists invaded the meeting, seized the microphone and shouted down a student who

Obama White House Attack On AP, Fox May Be Unconstitutional

Mon, 20 May 2013 22:24:00 GMT

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists' phone records, perusing their emails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn't chilling, it's just plain cold. It also may well be unconstitutional. In my reading, the First Amendment prohibition against "abridging the freedom ... of the press" should rule out secretly obtaining two months' worth of the

Undoing The Brainwashing That Students Get In College

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:49:00 GMT

This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning. The strategy used by Gen. Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different

Legalizing Millions Of Unskilled Immigrants Is No Recipe For Growth

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:12:00 GMT

The Heritage Foundation recently issued a comprehensive report showing that Sen. Marco Rubio's plan to instantly legalize 11.5 million illegal immigrants would add $6.3 trillion to budget deficits over the next 50 years. Heritage assumed there are 11.5 million illegals, but other estimates put the number at 33 million, which would mean adding an additional $18 trillion to the deficit. To put that in perspective, the largest U.S. budget deficit in

ObamaCare, Tea Party Targeter Run By Same IRS Exec

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Government Overreach: The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare. As bad as the IRS scandal was, with the taxing body of government using its unequaled authority to intimidate and harass the president's political opposition to aid his re-election, it got worse with the news that the IRS official, Sarah Hall Ingram,

Pope Francis Ignores Power Of Free Market To End Poverty

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Statism: Pope Francis seemed to have an economic blind spot, to say the least, when he urged more "state control" to cut global poverty Thursday. On the contrary -- the biggest poverty-killer in history is free

Europeans Still See Spending Cuts As The Right Cure

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Economy: If "austerity" is such a disaster in Europe, why do most Europeans still back spending cuts? Maybe common sense isn't dead there, although the GDP is flat-lining. If you don't look too closely, stats from the past week seem to make a tidy case for bigger government. Japan has chosen stimulus, and its economy is growing. The eurozone has chosen spending cuts labeled "austerity," and it's stuck in a long slump. So the moral is clear, right?

Gosnell Case Is Shifting Public Opinion On Abortion

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

IBD/TIPP Poll: What many thought to be impossible might be beginning to happen because of public awareness of abortionist Kermit Gosnell's crimes: a sizeable shift in opinion away from support of abortion. The latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that 42% of respondents who read or saw news stories on the trial resulting in a murder conviction for Philadelphia abortion "doctor" Kermit Gosnell say that as a result of the trial they now lean more toward

The Trifecta Of Obama Scandals Offers Little In Payout

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:20:00 GMT

Folks, deep breath time. This is not the end of the Obama presidency. It's a bad stretch with an unfortunate confluence of unfortunate events. None of which will make the first paragraph -- not even the first page -- of the account of the Obama administration in the history books. Let's tick through the trifecta of scandals and what they tell us -- about the foibles of this administration, about the hidden operations of bureaucracies, about the

Startup Business Are America's Best Job Creators

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:20:00 GMT

'Small business" is the recipient of much official love (as well as heavy regulatory intrusion), but it receives its loudest applause as the supposed source of most employment growth. Alas, that conventional wisdom is incorrect: The modern scholarly literature finds that it is new (not small) businesses -- startups -- that contribute disproportionately to job creation. Job creation obviously is important, but ultimately it is

Looks Like IRS Tried To Keep Tea Party From Winning

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:20:00 GMT

When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the Tea Party. Rick Santelli, a Tea Party founder and my colleague, made this point first. I've taken it a step further: The IRS took the Tea Party out of play for the 2012 election to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another Tea Party landslide. There are a lot of numbers out there. Some say Tea Party applications for

Obama's Big Government: It Sees And Regulates Everything

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:00:00 GMT

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who "incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity." Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years

Obama Media Lapdogs Turn, But For How Long Is Unknown

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:28:00 GMT

Media Bias: The MSNBC talking head who was most "head over thighs" over Barack Obama is one of many news fixtures now coming down to earth. That thrill going up Chris Matthews' leg is gone. 'I felt this thrill going up my leg," Matthews infamously declared on Election Night 2008, as he "covered" Obama's presidential victory. Nearly two years later, he was bestowed with the Media Research Center's far-from-coveted Quote of the Year award for

IRS Attack Against Tea Party Assaulted Civility

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:28:00 GMT

Democracy: The IRS targeting of Tea Party groups is mind-boggling not only for its abuse of government power. It's also disturbing for what it intended to do: destroy civil society, opening a door for tyranny. The formation in 2009 of hundreds of Tea Party groups at the rallying cry of CNBC news editor Rick Santelli, from places as diverse as Lowell, Mass., Pleasanton, Calif., Asheville, N.C., Yuma, Ariz., and Lincoln, Neb., among hundreds of

White House Lied About Editing Benghazi Talking Points

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:28:00 GMT

Scandal In Libya: A new email dump shows that the White House, contrary to public statements, was heavily involved in editing the Benghazi talking points to remove all references to it being a terrorist attack. The limited, heavily redacted package of emails released by the administration Wednesday is noteworthy for what the emails don't say and reflect a concerted effort by the White House and State Department not to get at the truth but to put

IRS Lies About Tax Scandal Continue To Mount

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:24:00 GMT

Like everything else the IRS has said about the tax scandal, its explanation for why it ended up targeting conservative groups turns out to be completely false. Which raises the question: Why are IRS officials trying so desperately to hide what really went on? Ever since the tax scandal broke, top IRS officials have insisted that the reason it started singling out conservative groups for extra review was because the agency was getting a flood of

What Did John Brennan Know?

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:02:00 GMT

National Security: If a thorough investigation is conducted into the origins of the al-Qaida attacks on Benghazi, Republicans will regret not blocking John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director. Not only did Brennan, as White House counterterrorism czar, take his eye off al-Qaida in Libya, but Wednesday night's White House email dump in response to congressional subpoena reveals he played a role in the Benghazi cover-up. This is something we've

Republicans Shouldn't Overhype The Benghazi Scandal

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:37:00 GMT

Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don't know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn't meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming this is nothing but partisan politics. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Hypocrites Voice Response To Espionage Enforcement

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

The false god of 'narrative' 'What if the government starts enforcing the espionage statute whenever there's a leak?" Steve Roberts, a former New York Times journalist who teaches at George Washington University, observed to the Baltimore Sun. "It's going to have a tremendously chilling effect on this interplay between sources and reporters." But Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, insisted that stopping leaks should be a very high

Limiting Foreign Access To Your Bank Accounts

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Earlier this week, I introduced a bill that would reform the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca). Originally tacked on as the "pay-for" to a 2010 bill to incentivize hiring, Fatca was intended to crack down on overseas tax evasion. That's not been the reality, however. Instead, the Treasury Department has chosen to manipulate Fatca to establish an international financial snooping scheme that violates the Constitution, disregards the mutual

Unions' JPMorgan Power Play Is About Labor Organizing, Not Performance

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Union Groups Finger Trading Losses in Targeting JPMorgan (top) Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, when serving as President Obama's chief of staff, verbalized his view of the 2008 financial meltdown with the quip, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste." Labor union pension funds have taken the mantra to heart this proxy season with respect to the nation's largest financial institution, JPMorgan Chase. Tapping into angst and anger over the bank's

Obama's Scandal-Denial Is Driven By Progressive Desire To Expand Government

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government's large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question "Will Barack Obama's scandals derail his second-term agenda?" was a question: What agenda? The scandals are