The Patriot Post Brief 5-20-2013

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The Patriot Post Brief 5-20-2013
From The Federalist Patriot
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First Your Taxes, Then Your Health

May 20, 2013

The Foundation

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." --James Madison

Government

"It turns out that Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as head of the IRS office handling tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012 -- when the targeting was going on -- is now head of the IRS division in charge of the IRS office policing Obamacare. ... The IRS is assigned a lot of work by the Obamacare law. It will impose penalties on Americans who can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it. It will impose penalties on companies with more than 50 employees who work 30 hours a week and don't provide government-mandated policies. It will give tax credits to non-affluent purchasers of health insurance on state exchanges. The IRS says it can also give tax credits to such people in states that have federally run exchanges, though many argue the law does not authorize that. In other words, the IRS is going to possess and process a large amount of information not only on your income but on your health insurance and perhaps your health. The IRS was given these tasks by the drafters of Obamacare because no other government agency had the capability to gain access to people's personal financial information. They may have thought that taxpayers would trust an agency that they had gotten used to dealing with. That level of trust may not be as high as it was 10 days ago. Chilling effect, indeed." --columnist Michael Barone1

Essential Liberty

"The president, as usual, acts as if all of this is totally unconnected to him. He's shocked, it's unacceptable, he'll get to the bottom of it. He read about it in the papers, just like you. But he is not unconnected, he is not a bystander. ... It is not even remotely possible that all this was an accident, a mistake. Again, only conservative groups were targeted, not liberal. It is not even remotely possible that only one IRS office was involved. ... What happened at the IRS is the government's essential business. ... Everyone involved in this abuse of power should pay a price, because if they don't, the politicization of the IRS will continue -- forever. If it is not stopped now, it will never stop. And if it isn't stopped, no one will ever respect or have even minimal faith in the revenue-gathering arm of the U.S. government again. ... This is not about the usual partisan slugfest. This is about the integrity of our system of government and our ability to trust, which is to say our ability to function." --columnist Peggy Noonan2

Re: The Left

"Imagine for a moment if black civil rights organizations, gay groups or teachers unions loudly complained to members of Congress and the press that the IRS was discriminating against them. How long would it take for the White House to investigate? Answer honestly: Minutes? Hours? ... You can be sure that the moment [Obama] heard credible allegations of political persecution of liberal groups -- outfits with 'progressive' or 'civil rights' in their names -- he would have moved heaven and earth to make things right. But when such allegations came from the right, the response from the president -- and from a press corps that until recently acted like a king's guard -- ranged from smirks and eye-rolling to flat-out lies or virtual applause. ... The time for democratic debate is always behind us with an administration that began with the mission not to let a crisis go to waste, for as Obama said in his second inaugural address, 'Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.' Moreover, President Obama often insists we live in a country where the 'government is us,' where there's no need to fear tyranny 'around the corner' because we could never be tyrannical against ourselves." --columnist Jonah Goldberg3

Opinion in Brief

"Mr. Obama had promised in his 2008 campaign to 'fundamentally transform the United States' and he kept that promise in 2010 when he used this most august, most formal occasion of our republic to deliver a blistering denunciation of the Supreme Court's ruling in the controversial case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The black-robed Justices were seated before him as he tongue-lashed them. They had been invited as honored guests. But Mr. Obama wanted them there as props. He wanted to show the world that he was master in our house. ... During the campaign, he had egged on his supporters, telling them to 'get in their faces.' The night of his 2010 State of the Union Address, Barack Obama got in their faces. ... His arrogant and offensive behavior toward the Supreme Court of the United States ... was the opening gun in the race to crush his opponents. It was not a great stretch for middle level bureaucrats at IRS to see that they would please this president if they made life miserable for his opponents. And they did." --columnists Ken Blackwell & Bob Morrison4

The Gipper

"The Founding Fathers established a system which meant a radical break from that which preceded it. A written constitution would provide a permanent form of government, limited in scope, but effective in providing both liberty and order. Government was not to be a matter of self-appointed rulers, governing by whim or harsh ideology. ... To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. That is our purpose in the world -- nothing more and nothing less." --Ronald Reagan5

For the Record

"Liberalism's agenda has been constant since long before liberals, having given their name a bad name, stopped calling themselves liberals and resumed calling themselves progressives, which they will call themselves until they finish giving that name a bad name. The agenda always is: Concentrate more power in Washington, more Washington power in the executive branch and more executive power in agencies run by experts. Then trust the experts to be disinterested and prudent with their myriad intrusions into, and minute regulations of, Americans' lives. ... His re-election theme -- re-elect me because I am not Mitt Romney -- yielded a meager mandate, and he used tactics that are now draining the legitimacy an election is supposed to confer. One tactic was to misrepresent the Benghazi attack lest it undermine his narrative about taming terrorism. Does anyone think the administration's purpose in manufacturing 12 iterations of the talking points was to make them more accurate? ... Because Obama's entire agenda involves enlarging government's role in allocating wealth and opportunity, the agenda now depends on convincing Americans to trust him, not their lying eyes. In the fourth month of his second term, it is already too late for that." --columnist George Will6

Political Futures

"If the media had acted like professionals in 2012, more of this new information would be old news by now. Voters could have made a decision between Obama and Romney with a fuller picture of how corrupt this administration truly is. By refusing to reveal that corruption, they brought that stain of corruption on themselves. Some reporters in this moment are sounding like professionals. But too many reporters are spending too much time pining about how scandals may harm Obama's 'legacy.' Journalists shouldn't be demonstrating great care for Obama's historical reputation, like they're the White House weed-whackers. Obama's legacy is becoming apparent. He laughably claimed to be above politics, above partisanship and dirty tricks -- when the facts are proving he's really the dirtiest pool player in today's politics. It's Chicago-style politics, day and night." --Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell7