The Patriot Post Digest 4-15-2016

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-15-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Apr. 15, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.” —Thomas Jefferson (1824)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Democrat Debate: The Dodgers Return to Brooklyn1

The Dodgers baseball team left New York City for Los Angeles after the 1957 season, but the Dodgers — a.k.a. the Democrat politicos old enough to play on the original team — returned to Brooklyn Thursday night for a night of exaggeration, weaseling and lies.

In the ninth Democrat debate2, the rhetoric between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders grew sharper as each candidate covered the bases to prove their liberal bonafides. The two candidates bunted on the question on gun control — situational rhetoric to appeal to the crowd. Clinton denied that she blamed guns sold in Vermont for NYC’s crime rate3 after moderator Wolf Blitzer fact-checked4 her to say only 1.2% of guns recovered in NYC originated from Vermont. Meanwhile, Sanders reversed his original call on the field regarding whether the families of the Sandy Hook victims have the right to sue gun manufacturers. Previously5, he said they had no such right. But after a judge granted the ability for the suit to proceed, the socialist batted from the other side of the plate.

Sanders came out and swung hard at Clinton’s connections and donations from Wall Street, accusing her of having bad judgment. The grizzled socialist was trying to make up for the embarrassment of the New York Daily News endorsing his rival6 days before. “Subjected to meaningful scrutiny for the first time, the senator from Vermont proved utterly unprepared for the Oval Office while confirming that the central thrusts of his campaign are politically impossible,” the Daily News wrote. Clinton used that endorsement as another grounder to highlight her pragmatic experience.

After such a bitter game, sports announcers political commentators like James Taranto7 wondered if the smack talk in the Democrat dugout has gotten so contentious that the party will split between veteran Clinton supports and young socialists. Sanders' wife, Jane Sanders, said the couple will vote8 for Clinton if she advances to the playoffs. But Sanders' supporters — who were looking for the political revolution Sanders keeps dreaming about — may take their ball and go home.

Mental Health Misfire?9

One of the more daunting issues facing Congress is how to reform mental health care without abrogating one’s constitutional rights. Both sides are more or less unified on the issue of better mental health care, but while the Left believes the Constitution can be circumvented, Republicans want to make sure no one’s rights are unjustly trampled. After it initially appeared that a compromise was in the works, it may not work out after all.

According to The Hill, “Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in talks with leaders of the Senate health committee to combine his mental health bill with one that passed the committee last month. But Democrats object to certain sections of Cornyn’s bill that they say would make it easier for mentally ill people to acquire guns, and the controversial provisions could shatter Democratic support for the bill. Those provisions would require a full judicial hearing to ban someone from buying a gun due to mental illness and would allow people previously committed for mental illness to purchase a gun as soon as a judge’s commitment order expires.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) complained, “Obviously I can’t support a bill on the floor that has those provisions in it.” Cornyn is “open to discussing it” but insists “this whole idea that we’re not going to have a fulsome discussion about mental health and [the] problems it creates with the criminal justice system, housing and the health care field seems kind of unrealistic to me.”

In too many cases, a person’s right to bear arms has been taken away without due process. For example, as Hot Air notes10, “There are tens of thousands of people in New York who might argue the point after Andrew Cuomo placed countless residents on the No Guns For You list without a single medical professional weighing in on their competence under the provisions of the NY SAFE Act.”

Republicans are at least trying to reach across the isle with a rational compromise. But despite how often they talk about common sense, Democrats want none of it. All that’s important to them is restricting guns from those who exhibit any type of “mental illness.” And as we’ve already seen, that could literally be anybody.

Dodd-Frank Act Is Too Big and Failing11

It’s been six years since Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act — one of the most monstrous attempts at “reform” ever imposed on Wall Street. “These reforms represent the strongest consumer financial protections in history,” Obama said12 at the time he signed it. “And these protections will be enforced by a new consumer watchdog with just one job: looking out for people.” Well, certain people — namely Democrat constituents. But recently, this Obama legacy seems to be falling apart, and up and down, left and right, Americans are now ready to fix that onerous legislation.

The watchdog agency Obama created, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is one of the least accountable bureaucracies in Washington. And it’s in federal appeals court this week, where a judge appears13 to think the whole bureau is unconstitutional. The CFPB was designed to be a fast-acting agency that can lay down regulation and demand compliance with rapid speed. It’s headed by a lone director who is not beholden to Congress because the bureau gets its money from the Federal Reserve. No accountability? Massively concentrated power? What could go wrong?

The House Financial Services committee passed two bills14 Wednesday that would place the responsibility to disperse CFPB’s budget in Congress' hands. But that’s not the only part of the act that’s falling apart. This week, federal regulators declared five of the eight big banks were still too big to fail. They didn’t have adequate plans in place to declare bankruptcy and bring the U.S. economy down with them. Remember: Dodd-Frank was, in part, supposed to prevent the American public from bailing out the big banks again.

“Dodd-Frank’s failure on its own terms virtually guarantees that someone will reform it,” wrote15 the Wall Street Journal editorial board. “The question is whether it will be the judicial or legislative branch. Republicans have been criticizing Dodd-Frank since it was on the drafting table. More significant is that both Democratic presidential candidates are now also talking reform. Obviously a Bernie Sanders rewrite of financial rules would look very different from a Ted Cruz version. But outside of the White House, the status quo has almost no constituency. And with Barack Obama due to vacate the premises in just nine months, Dodd-Frank’s flaws are becoming impossible to ignore.”

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

    Michael Barone: Donald Trump’s Insincere Process Arguments16
    Jonah Goldberg: TV Shows Its Conservative Side on Abortion Issue17
    Joe Bastardi: History in the Making — The El Niño/La Niña Couplet?18

For more, visit Right Opinion19.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 4-15-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Emancipation Day, or Income Redistribution Day?20

By Nate Jackson

Today is that most mirthless of days, April 15, tax filing day, or as we in our humble shop have long dubbed it, “Income Redistribution Day.” Well, sort of. The Internal Revenue Service has moved the official filing deadline to Monday, April 18. Is that good news, or does it just belabor the pain?

Just in case you were tempted to thank our benevolent overlords for the extra time to wade through the 74,608-page tax code, Jason Russell of the Washington Examiner explains the change21: “[Washington, DC] celebrates Emancipation Day every April 16 to recognize the day President Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, freeing more than 3,000 slaves in the district. But since April 16 is a Saturday, the Emancipation Day celebration gets moved up to Friday, April 15. Almost no one other than city employees gets the day off, but that’s enough of a reason for the IRS to move Tax Day.”

The only thing being emancipated these days is the money from our wallets.

Unfortunately, tax filing day doesn’t mean you’re actually done working to pay your taxes. As we noted last week22, the Tax Foundation23 says Tax Freedom Day will arrive on April 24 this year. That’s just about the same amount of time Americans had to work last year24 in order to fill the government maw. Tax Freedom Day marks when the whole nation has worked long enough to pay off all federal, state and local taxes — 114 days for a collective 31% tax rate. After that, the fruits of our labor are ours to keep. And statists think they’re being generous to “give” you that much.

It’s worth remembering too that not everyone pays income taxes25. The top 20% of earners bring in 51.3% of all income and yet pay 83.9% of all federal income taxes. By contrast, the bottom 20% of earners actually receive money from Washington thanks to those in the higher brackets. What was that about a “fair share” again?

Yet it’s never enough for Democrats. Socialist Bernie Sanders wants to raise taxes by a staggering $20 trillion over 10 years26. He’d like you to believe that’s just on the “rich,” but such a massive hike would hit everyone hard.

One silver lining: Despite actual and proposed income redistribution, generosity thrives in America27. Our fellow citizens are the most generous in the world.

Straight up wealth transfer is the main reason we call it “Income Redistribution Day,” but plain old government waste is another. Citizens Against Government Waste puts out an annual “Pig Book” listing the crazy ways in which our “representatives” spend our money.

In but one example of waste, this year’s edition28 notes that the government spent “$3,000,000 for the Delta Regional Authority (DRA), which also received a $3 million earmark in the Agriculture Appropriations bill in FYs 2014 and 2015. However, in FY 2016, the DRA received an additional earmark costing $10,064,000 in the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, for a combined total of $13,064,000, an increase of 335.5 percent over the past earmarks.”

Worse, the Pig Book continues, “According to the Republican Study Committee’s FY 2016 budget, funding for the DRA should be terminated because such regional commissions are duplicative of other federal programs and support mostly local projects. Support for cutting DRA funds is bipartisan, as President Obama’s FY 2017 version of Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings recommended reducing the agency’s budget by $3 million annually.”

Today is a day to ponder how a government that sees itself as providing everything for its citizens can become so oppressive. It’s not just financial, either; these are issues of trust, power and the future of our great nation.

We close with the immortal words of Will Rogers: “The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.”

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

    ANALYSIS: Iraq or Libya: Which Was Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake’?29
    What Mine Spill? EPA’s McCarthy Wins ‘Conservationist of the Year’30
    Ohio State Disbands Protest By Treating Students Like Adults31
    Pentagon Bribed Shoe Company to Push Through Trade Deal32
    Bathroom Wars May Soon Come to Tennessee33
    Russia’s Iron-Fisted Bully Rattles U.S. Destroyer34

TOP HEADLINES

    North Korea Missile Test Backfires After Blowing Up on Launch35
    Connecticut Judge Allows Case Against Gun Maker to Proceed36
    In Major Union Victory, California Court Upholds Teacher Tenure37

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report38

OPINION IN BRIEF

Michael Barone: “Of course there is always some basis for a loser to complain about the rules. The presidential nomination process is the weakest part of our political system and, not coincidentally, the only one not addressed by the framers of the Constitution. None of the successive reforms made since 1968 have produced a perfect system, and in a nation of this size, none can. A national primary would penalize all but a few nationally known candidates. Caucuses tend to favor candidates with constituencies of well-organized voters. Reasonable people can differ about whether it’s fairer to allocate delegates proportionately or by winner-take-all. Arguments over the rules inspired one of my Rules of Life: ‘All process arguments are insincere, including this one.’ Losers' real gripe is not with the process but the result.”

SHORT CUTS

For the record: “Clinton, last night, defending her judgment: ‘President Obama trusted my judgment enough to ask me to be secretary of State for the United States.’ Yeah, that line may work really well in a Democratic primary, but you can apply the same ‘hey, if Obama picked me, I must know what I’m doing’ argument to former HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, VA secretary Eric Shinseki, short-lived Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, all of those wealthy donor ambassadors who knew nothing about the countries where they would represent the U.S.” —Jim Geraghty

Helping Hillary: “Please comment on whether the CONFIDENTIAL classification level can be eliminated from your agencies' guides and the negative impacts this might have on mission success. This action could promote transparency.” —James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, in a just-released memo from March

Non Compos Mentis: “The AR-15 … is advertised to young people as being a combat weapon.” —Hillary Clinton

Advice from the devil: “If [Republicans] reject the public will, they will really hand us a bigger victory than I’m even anticipating now, because that will be an implosion of the Republican Party.” —Nancy Pelosi on nominating anyone but Donald Trump

Hot air: “As a taxpayer and voter, the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen. … So I can see where people are very concerned about this, and they’re pursuing criminal investigations as well as engaging in discussions like this. … That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good.” —Bill Nye

Alpha Jackass: “I have asked my distributor NOT to book my film in any theater in North Carolina due 2 their bigoted law against LGBTQ ppl. They have agreed.” —tweet by filmmaker Michael Moore

Late-night humor: “The big New York primary, which happens next Tuesday, is looking pretty good for Hillary Clinton. In fact, website FiveThirtyEight says Hillary has a 99 percent chance of winning the primary for New York. When he heard, Bernie Sanders said, ‘My God, I’ve become part of the 1 percent!’” —Jimmy Fallon

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.