The Patriot Post Digest 1-27-2014

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The Patriot Post Digest 1-27-2014
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

Jan. 27, 2014

THE FOUNDATION

“In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” –James Madison, Federalist No. 51, 1788

TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS

Little Sisters Win Big

The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic nun organization, sued the Obama administration over the contraception mandate last year – one of 91 such lawsuits. Most courts ruled that the administration’s exceptions were too narrow and that the rule violates religious liberty. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the Little Sisters a permanent stay pending appeal. It was a significant rebuke for an Obama White House that sees no limit on its own power. More significant still, there were no dissents from the Court, meaning even Obama’s appointees seem to think he’s clearly overstepped his constitutional bounds.

Chuck the Tea Party

Senator Chuck Schumer revealed how he really feels about the IRS having illegally targeted conservatives groups. Schumer outright encouraged the rogue agency to put additional pressure on Tea Party organizations: “It is clear that we will not pass anything legislatively as long as the House of Representatives is in Republican control, but there are many things that can be done administratively by the IRS and other government agencies – we must redouble those efforts immediately.” He followed up by slamming the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, adding, “Obviously the Tea Party elites gained extraordinary influence by being able to funnel millions of dollars into campaigns with ads that distort the truth and attack government.” But why worry about advocates of limited government when you can use BIG government to squash them?

Illegals ‘Earned the Right to Be Citizens’

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Friday that he believes providing a “path to citizenship” for illegal aliens is a “matter of … homeland security.” He added, “It is also, frankly, in my judgment, a matter of who we are as Americans to offer the opportunity to those who want to be citizens, who’ve earned the right to be citizens, who are present in this country – many of whom came here as children – to have the opportunity that we all have to try to become American citizens.” So because they came illegally and currently reside here, they have “earned the right to be citizens”? That kind of thinking is evidence of rule of men, not constitutional Rule of Law.

Raise the Debt Ceiling

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew sounded the warning bell on the debt ceiling once again last week, writing a letter asking Congress “to provide certainty and stability to the economy and financial markets by acting to raise the debt limit before Feb. 7, 2014, and certainly before late February.” After that, he says, Treasury will run out of ways to shuffle money. Congress suspended the debt ceiling in October at $16.7 trillion, but it will stand at $17.3 trillion on Feb. 8, when it’s reinstated. The GOP wants more spending reform in exchange, but White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer says, “The American people should not have to pay the Republicans in Congress' ransom for doing their most basic function, which is paying the bills.” For those keeping score, every man, woman and child in the U.S. now carries more than $53,000 of the federal debt. Enough never seems to be enough.

Chattanooga Most Bible-Minded

The American Bible Society and the Barna Group released a new study showing the U.S. cities where citizens are most and least Bible-minded. Not surprisingly, the Northeast and West Coast are at the bottom of the list, while the Southeast is at the top. In fact, our hometown – Chattanooga, Tennessee – tops the list. We also note that there is a definite correlation between non-Bible-mindedness and voting Democrat. Conservative and liberal. Faithful and unfaithful.

For more, visit Right Hooks1.

RIGHT ANALYSIS
Study: Income Mobility Is Stable

“Income inequality” is going to be Barack Obama’s tired refrain in 2014, as he and his fellow Democrats ramp up their midterm election campaign. It will no doubt be the focus of Tuesday’s State of the Union address. However, a recent study from Harvard shows that income mobility has remained stable – perhaps even improved slightly – over the last 50 years. The study’s authors found that “the probability that a child reaches the top fifth of the income distribution given parents in the bottom fifth of the income distribution is 8.4% for children born in 1971, compared with 9.0% for those born in 1986.” But that won’t stop the Left’s narrative or change the fact that leftist policies produce the very “income inequality”2 they decry.

Still, writes the Heritage Foundation’s Donald Schneider3, “just because the rates of mobility haven’t declined doesn’t mean we should be happy with them – nor is it an indicator that all is well. In terms of our ability to lift people out of poverty and into the middle class and beyond, our rates of upward mobility are still insufficient. The sad truth is that 70% of poor Americans fail to reach the middle class.”

People can do three main things to help their opportunity for advancement: graduate from high school, marry before having children and hold down a job. Unfortunately, marrying before having children is going by the wayside because of cultural degradation over the same 50-year period that the Harvard study covers, and getting a job has become increasingly difficult in the Obama “recovery.” Transferring income from the haves to the have-nots is not the solution to the lack of mobility as Democrats would have us believe. But we fully expect to hear plenty of that in Tuesday’s State of the Union Address.

SCOTUS Considers Unions and Rights

The Supreme Court heard arguments last week in Harris v. Quinn, a case in which the issue is whether a state may, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, compel personal care providers to accept and financially support a private organization, a union, as their exclusive representative to petition the state for greater reimbursements from its Medicaid programs.

In 2003, then-Illinois Democrat Gov. Rod Blagojevich (now a convicted felon) signed an executive order making the Service Employees International Union the exclusive bargaining agent for home-care workers. The state’s current governor, Democrat Pat Quinn, signed a second order in 2009. The targeted workers are often self-employed and have no relation to the state other than Illinois using Medicaid to subsidize home care to the disabled. Illinois, invoking a variant of the Golden Rule (“He who has the gold makes the rules”), declared these workers to be state employees, providing SEIU new dues-paying members. We’re sure that it’s unrelated, but SEIU contributed about $1.8 million to Blagojevich’s two campaigns for governor, in 2002 and 2006, and was his top contributor in the second election.

Plaintiff Pamela Harris cares at home for her severely disabled son. She and seven others are challenging the Illinois rule as infringing on the First Amendment by forcing them to join a union, violating their right to free association, and allowing unions to use their dues to fund political causes they don’t support, violating their right to free speech. These violations are compounded by the use of the corrupt “card check” scheme that does away with the secret ballot and allows union thugs to set up shop as soon as they’ve coerced half the workers to sign a “card” saying they want a union. Ten states have similar arrangements.

Illinois' defense is that there is a state interest in unionization based on the “labor peace” doctrine that goes back to the earliest days of the union movement. Seemingly, the Supreme Court’s four leftist justices bought this argument relying on a 1977 case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Four of the remaining five judges lean in the opposite direction. Surprisingly, the fence sitter is none other than Antonin Scalia.

Since Abood, the Supremes have tried to protect worker First Amendment rights by drawing a line. Workers can be compelled to pay dues that pay for collective bargaining for wages and benefits, but they can’t be compelled to pay dues that go to political activities. Commentator Charles Krauthammer thinks the stakes are high, saying, if the union loses, “I think this would be a blow to organized labor from which they would not recover.” We’ll find out soon.

For more, visit Right Analysis1.