Obama Disarms Americans While Arming the World

As President Barack Obama has outwardly attempted to curtail Americans’ Constitutional Second Amendment right to bear arms, his Administration has approved huge increases in defense spending and export sales. The Administration is now seeking to eliminate stringent State Department controls on exports and foreign licensing of dozens of categories of weapons and technology from the United States Munitions List (USML) by transferring control to the pro-business Commerce Department.

In spite of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warnings this change could increase terrorist access to dangerous weapons, the Administration claims this “reform” would enhance “the competitiveness of key United States manufacturing and technology sectors.” 

It may seem hypocritical to tighten gun control at home and flood the world with weapons. But since Obama was elected president, Democrats have eliminated Republicans’ advantage in collecting defense industry campaign contributions. 

President Obama has tried to push Congress into passing extensive domestic gun control legislation. In Obama's first four years in office he also used his regulatory powers for the federal government to conduct about the same number of background checks on gun owners and prospective buyers as George W. Bush's in his first six years in office. 

Declaring a national gun control crisis after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in January 2013, the Administration issued 23 executive orders directing federal agencies to “improve knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, what might help prevent it, and how to minimize its burden on public health.” According to the Institute of Medicine, “One of these orders directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to identify the most pressing problems in firearm violence a committee tasked with developing a potential research agenda that focuses on the causes of, possible interventions to, and strategies to minimize the burden of firearm-related violence.” 

It seems clear that the goal of this Presidential Executive Order is to instruct the CDC to fund medical research to “prove” that gun owners are afflicted with some pathological disease or mental defect.

The President may have been visibly advocating gun control in America, but he has been a huge cheerleader for expanding the American defense industry. Since 2008, U.S. defense spending grew by 25% to $900 billion; defense exports grew by 30% to $73 billion; and foreign licensing agreements grew 46% to approximately $50 billion.

CONTINUED:  http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/08/29/Obama-Disarms-America-and-Arms-the-World

GAO Finds Rampant Waste in $18B Federal Job-training Program

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) study, commissioned by Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), is bringing to question whether taxpayers should finance an $18-billion annual “investment” in federal programs that provide training to unemployed Americans. The 2011 analysis, which observed programs in fiscal year 2009, pinpointed a profuse and overlapping mesh of 47 different job-training programs administered by nine agencies.

“The vast majority of money we spend in job training doesn’t go to job training, it goes to employ people in those job training federal programs,” Coburn said in an interview with Fox News. Some programs are brimming with fraud and abuse, with taxpayer-funded dollars being spent on affairs that are in no way associated with professional training. For example, the study reported:

• Some job training participants spent their days sitting on a bus.
• Some were trained for jobs that didn’t exist.
• Others were paid to sit through educational sessions about jobs they already had.
• High school students were knowingly exposed to the cancer-causing agent asbestos as part of a job training program.
• Funds were misspent to pay a contractor for ghost employees and to purchase video games.
• Job training administrators spent federal funds on extravagant meals and bonuses for themselves.
• In one state, workforce agency employees took more than 100 gambling trips to casinos mostly during work hours.

CONTINUED:  http://thenewamerican.com/economy/commentary/item/11443-gao-finds-rampant-waste-in-$18b-federal-job-training-program

Monday, April 16, 2012: Today In Washington

THE SENATE: Convenes at 2 and at 5:30 will rebuff legislation to implement Obama’s “Buffett rule” — by creating a new alternative minimum income tax of 30 percent for about 210,000 people making at least $2 million annually, while phasing in the higher rate for those earning at least $1 million.

Sixty votes will be required to keep the measure alive, and there’s almost no chance the majority will be within five of that. (A pure 53-47 party-line result is the likeliest.) As will be the case on so many Senate votes over the next six months, the roll call is more about making a campaign ad than making a law, and the only suspense is whether any of the senators most vulnerable to defeat this fall — Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester and Bill Nelson among the Democrats, and Dean Heller and Scott Brown among the Republicans — go against the party line.

Senators also will confirm Stephanie Thacker, a former prosecutor who’s now partner at a firm in Charleston, W.Va., as a judge on the Fourth Circuit. She’ll be only the second new federal appellate judge seated this year; five other circuit court picks are awaiting floor votes.

THE HOUSE: Convenes at 2 and will be done no later than 6:30, after passing separate measures honoring Raoul Wallenberg, Lena Horne, Jack Nicklaus and Mark Twain.

THE WHITE HOUSE: Obama, who got back home from the Summit of the Americas in Colombia after midnight, has nothing on his public schedule.

His re-election campaign, meanwhile, announced this morning that he’d raised a combined $53 million for his own bid, the Democratic Party and other campaign funds in March — bringing his total haul this cycle to nearly $350 million.

Mitt Romney hasn’t reported his March numbers yet, but through February had raised $75 million for his campaign. (He only started raising money jointly with the Republican National Committee a few weeks ago.) The all-but-official GOP nominee began March with $7.2 million in the bank; the president’s cash on hand at the same time was $85 million.

LINE ’EM UP: With essentially no sustained and meaningful legislating in the offing during the two weeks before the next recess, Congress will while away the time with the sort of oversight efforts that make terrific television (and pretty good campaign rhetoric) but do almost nothing to shape public policy or limit governmental waste and federal employee misbehavior.


The opportunities for sound-bite mischief-making were presented on a pair of silver platters by two federal agencies — one that hardly anybody outside the Beltway knows about (the General Services Administration) and one that’s more fabled in pop culture than any other (the Secret Service). The story that broke two weeks ago about the lavish Las Vegas conference held by the GSA two years ago will be fodder for no fewer than four hearings in the next three days — starting at 1:30 in House Oversight and Government Reform, where Chairman Darrell Issa is sure to have a highly covered field day lambasting the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up excesses that GSA bureaucrats even took the time to put on film. (The organizer of the conference, Jeff Neely, will invoke the Fifth Amendment when he testifies.) House Transportation’s John Mica will take his own shots tomorrow, while a pair of Senate Democratic chairmen, Barbara Boxer and Dick Durbin, will wait until Wednesday to chime in on the GSA’s $800,000 boondoggle. And by the end of the day, it’s a sure bet that Issa, House Homeland Security Chairman Pete King and probably a couple of Senate chairmen will announce hearings as well into the revelations this weekend that Secret Service agents hired prostitutes after finishing their advance work obligations for the Cartagena summit.

But it’s tough to predict that anything substantive will come from such hearings. Issa and the Republicans will work hard to tie both the bureaucrats’ and agents’ misbehavior to one of their favorite narratives — which is that Obama and the Democrats are all to willing to turn a blind eye to governmental waste and abuse. But the Democrats will be ready with a worthy rebuttal, which is that the people and their misdeeds are about as apolitical as it gets in the government, and that such patterns of misbehavior cannot readily be linked to this president’s policies. In fact, it’s a reasonable assumption that the same sort of advantage-taking went on long before Obama took office, including during the eight years of his GOP predecessor. (In fact, GSA spending on conferences looks to have increased steadily during the George W. Bush years.)

The best possible outcome, then, is that both parties agree that there’s a longstanding and trans-administration pattern of loose spending on professional development events and “conferences” at all manner of agencies — and that, similarly, maybe some lax oversight by both sides has allowed the Secret Service to take a little too much advantage of its rock-ribbed reputation for probity. But even a congressional agreement on that much, and a shared Republican and Democratic decision to do a little wing-clipping, is probably too much to expect at this year’s Capitol.


QUOTES OF NOTE: “I’m going to probably eliminate for high-income people the second-home mortgage deduction” while pushing to close HUD and dramatically shrink the Education Department, Mitt Romney told donors at a Palm Beach fundraiser last night — his uncharacteristically specific ideas broadcast so they could be heard by reporters on a nearby beach. Ann Romney, who turns 63 today, characterized last week’s “never worked a day in her life” comments from Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen this way: “It was my early birthday present from someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it.”


David Hawkings

dailybriefing@cqrollcall.com

SEN.COBURN: Payback? Was funding for GAO cut because of their report on Govt. Waste?

And has the report that came out in March been ignored by our elected officials because they care more about re-election support from special interests than saving the taxpayers money?  I thought so before the interview, now judge for yourself.

Greta Van Susteren interviews Sen. Tom Coburn

http://gretawire.foxnewsinsider.com/video/uncut-sen-tom-coburn-on-the-record/

Californians for Population Stabilization - ALERT! New bill in Congress to secure border!

ALERT! New bill in Congress to secure border!

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that only 44 percent of the southwest border is under operation control, and only 15 percent of the border is airtight. In other words, 56 percent of our border with Mexico is unsecured!

In response, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine, CA), has introduced The Unlawful Border Entry Prevention Act, HR 1091, which would authorize an additional 350 miles of fencing along the border.
Under existing law, the DHS was given until December 2008 to identify specific locations on the border for construction of infrastructure. This bill would give legal authority to DHS to build additional infrastructure where needed. It would also require DHS to report to Congress if apprehensions increase in any border sector by 40 percent in one year and then to submit a plan for gaining operational control of that sector.

ACTION NEEDEDTell your Representative that we must secure the border against illegal immigration. Send a fax or an e-mail by entering your ZIP Code and clicking "Go!" http://capwiz.com/caps/issues/alert/?alertid=36732521

GAO Finds Sebelius Misleading Taxpayers on Health Reform

For those on Medicare or have family and friends on Medicare, please read! Make sure you link to the article, referenced links and the GAO report B-319834, September 9, 2010.



September 10, 2010 11:04
GAO Finds Sebelius Misleading Taxpayers on Health Reform
by Elizabeth MacDonald

The Government Accountability Office says a Medicare mailer sent out by Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, to Medicare recipients on the new health-care law isn’t accurate.

In fact, according to the GAO, the brochure, which cost $18 million in taxpayer dollars to publish and emanated from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presented a view of the health reform law that is “not universally shared,” that it “overstated the benefits” of health reform,” and that it failed to note the possibility of less generous Medicare benefits and higher costs.

While the GAO cleared the administration of putting together a purely partisan or propagandizing brochure, it was nonetheless critical of its content.

Is this Sebelius brochure good use of nearly $20 million in taxpayer money?

Prior to press, Fox Business reached out to HHS for its response to the GAO report. After the story appeared on the FBN website, HHS emailed this statement: "The GAO report confirms what we have been saying all along. The Medicare brochure is a critical tool to inform Medicare beneficiaries and their families about how the Affordable Care Act affects them." The statement concludes by saying that the GAO report "confirms that it [the brochure] is not partisan and is not propaganda."

The irony is rich. Almost a year to the day, Humana, one of the biggest private insurers offering richer Medicare plans to the elderly, sent out a letter last September warning senior citizens that a government revamp of health insurance could eliminate their benefits.

An official with a unit of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services then sent the insurer a threatening letter instructing Humana that it was now under investigation, that it must “end immediately all such mailings to beneficiaries” and that it must “remove any related materials” from its website, adding, “please be advised that we take this matter very seriously and, based upon the findings of our investigation, will pursue compliance and enforcement actions.”

That letter set off an explosive fight in Congress, with Democrats Sen. Max Baucus and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the one side and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell on the other.

Representatives David Camp (R-Mich.) and Wally Herger (R-Calif.) had asked the GAO to determine whether the HHS brochure violated publicity or propaganda prohibitions in federal law.

In the brochure, Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, says the handout provides taxpayers with “accurate” information about “new services and benefits” under health reform.

Specifically, in a section entitled "What Stays the Same," Sebelius advises taxpayers that "[t]he guaranteed Medicare benefits you currently receive will remain the same,” that reform “preserves and strengthens Medicare," makes "improvements," and creates "new benefits."

But the GAO says those statements are misleading and are overstatements.

For example, the GAO says the brochure fails to note that reform actually delivers cuts to the Medicare program, increases Medicare prescription premiums, and cuts payment to doctors.

The GAO also says the Sebelius brochure made misleading statements about health reform making “improvements” to Medicare Advantage, and that the brochure does not cite the $123 billion in estimated cuts over a ten-year period to Medicare Advantage, which provides services beyond regular Medicare offerings. Medicare Advantage is the private options that about one in five Medicare beneficiaries enroll in.

And the GAO says the brochure fails to note that “two government analyses have determined that [health reform] reductions in funding for Medicare Advantage may decrease enrollment and result in less generous benefit packages.”

The GAO also says the brochure misleadingly tells Medicare recipients that health reform "increases the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and physician assistants" enrolled in Medicare, when in fact, reform only provides incentives for those doctors to voluntarily join or stay in Medicare.

The GAO also says the brochure misleadingly refers to new programs as being available for Medicare recipients, when they are not eligible for these offerings.

A spokesman for the GAO says the report "confirms what we have been saying all along. The Medicare brochure is a critical tool to inform Medicare beneficiaries and their families about how the Affordable Care Act affects them and remind them to be on the alert for any scams asking for personal information. Today's GAO report confirms that it is not partisan and is not propaganda."

In a section called “Improvements beyond Medicare that you and your family can count on,” Sebelius’s brochure notes that under the new health reform law, children up to age 26 can stay on their parents plan. But the GAO says that section is misleading, as Medicare beneficiaries “are likely to be ineligible” for that offering, meaning, their children can’t get Medicare benefits.

And in that same section, the Sebelius brochure also cites a new long-term care insurance program that requires enrollees to work while paying premiums. But the GAO says that, again, Medicare beneficiaries “are likely to be ineligible” for that offering.

The GAO also says the brochure fails to acknowledge what the 2010 Medicare Trustees Report says, “that while the financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially improved as a result of” reform, “the feasibility of long-range improvements is still uncertain, and significant increases in premiums for some beneficiaries may be necessary.”

The Sebelius brochure also states that reform will "ensure accountability throughout the health care system,” but the GAO report says it “does not guarantee it.”

Similarly, the brochure notes that health reform "reduces payment errors, waste, fraud, and abuse,” but again the GAO says those reductions are not guaranteed.

And the GAO says the brochure makes other “overstatements of information” on health reform, including that "[i]nsurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage due to a pre-existing condition for children starting in September, and for adults in 2014," when in fact the new law “does not apply to all health plans,” and that “a subset of health plans-grandfathered individual health insurance plans-are exempt” from restrictions on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.

 http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/09/10/gao-finds-sebelius-misleading-taxpayers-health-reform#ixzz0zHBBeNyK

Report: Obama used tax money for 'propaganda'

Report: Obama used tax money for 'propaganda'

Congressman says GAO needs to investigate 'pro-stimulus cheerleading'

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has called for a Government Accountability Office investigation into the legality of the Obama administration's use of taxpayer funds to conduct "a propaganda effort" to promote the president's partisan political agenda.  Read more @

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=192613