This and That for Friday

1338

~~~ We’ve heard from one of our good friends, Elizabeth from God’s Country, Conway, New Hampshire.

Hiya Moe!

In the current antics going on, I am finding some scary parallels between what is happening now and the actions taken after Lenin and the Socialist party took control in Russia:

1)  Religion was just short of outlawed in Russia. 

The Eastern Orthodox Religion is an extremely devout community.  I should know, two of my neighbours were Greek and I grew up celebrating two Easters and probably went to more Eastern Orthodox weddings than Western ones. 

What is happening here and now?  A whisper of God (even in the generic) promotes a lightning storm of censorship (the controversy over “in God we trust”, “under God”, etc.) that is designed to bury and mention or even practice of a faith. 

We have the Chick-Fil-A controversy over store hours and practices based upon the owner’s beliefs.  We even have the government dictating about what MUST be included in health insurance coverage in Catholic Hospitals that goes against dogma (Catholic churches are NOT municipal hospitals, they fall into private hospitals). 

What about the exercise of a teacher who told his class to write the name of Jesus on a piece of paper, put it on the floor and step on it?  One student had the strength of character to refuse and until it hit the national press was penalised for the refusal.

2)  Journalism and the press became increasingly stepped on and censored to the point of there being virtually one point of media/journalism. 

I grew up with the advertisements on television for 'Radio Free Europe' to get other news behind the Iron Curtain.  Now we have the AP raided and a Fox Journalist's phone records (even his parents phone records) accessed by a warrant whose scope was narrowly determined but exceeded.

3)  The ownership of personal weapons has been increasingly attacked.

4)  People’s personal information based solely on political beliefs is being accessed by the IRS. 

In the case of application for a 501C4 for True Vote America, not only has the application not been given an approval or denial (application was in 2010), but the family’s personal business is being audited by OSHA and ATF (their factory has the ability to manufacture parts for firearms but has never manufactured any). 

They have never been audited by any of the entities in the entire history of the business.  Now the IRS is being given the authority to monitor the most personal of individual information:  that of their health care.  In Soviet Russia, how many people’s information has been accessed and eavesdropped on?

5)  Education:  The free exchange of ideas is being increasingly infringed on.  If you are a conservative student or teacher on a campus, you must almost be in an underground. 

If a conservative or independent student questions a liberal teacher, life is made a misery (see end example of #1). 

If you phrase something in a manner other what is politically correct approved, the ideas are not considered, only the politically incorrect phrase.  What about using small children in an almost indoctrination chant on political issues, especially without parental permission?

6)  Children are not property of the state; their upbringing is the responsibility of the FAMILY, not state rules. 

We have “journalists and commentators who outright say that children are the property of the state”.  We have legislation that says children who are teenagers can get morning after pills or abortions without parental notification or consent. 

"It Takes a Village" does not necessarily mean the state has the authority to decide the course of child rearing.  In a sense, I grew up in a village as the neighborhood I grew up in was very close and all the neighbors looked out to make sure the children were safe playing. 

If a child did something very wrong, it was brought to the attention of the parents, and it was the parents' responsibility to correct the child.

We are facing a scary time in the country.  We all must get all the information we can so we can be informed and stay on top of what our government is saying and doing to protect our liberties. 

If this had happened under ANY Republican administration, it would be howled at from every corner of the media.  This media needs to start taking a fresh look at today's goings on. 

In true cannibalistic fashion, the administration it supports thinks nothing of raiding sources under the flimsiest of excuses.  How long will it be before the administration wishes to vet news before publication?  It already attacks those whom it is expected to fall into their camp that do not believe or follow the policy line. 

About a month ago Sean Hannity had a special where the entire panel had three things in common:  they are black, they are conservative, and because of their conservatism which they are proud of they are under continual attack from the media.

In this weekend, I hope people take a moment out of barbecues and parties and say a prayer of thanks to those who help preserve our freedoms and those that paid the ultimate price for that service.

Have a good weekend!

Elizabeth
Conway NH

~~~ Good news coming out of the Bay State. National Republicans have dispatched staff to Massachusetts to assist with the Senate special election that has become tantalizingly close.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has committed at least four staffers to help nominee Gabriel Gomez in the final weeks of the June 25 contest. The moves come amid fresh polling that showed Gomez running just behind Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey in this solidly Democratic state.

Money remains a major hurdle for Gomez to overcome against the well-funded Markey. So the NRSC sent two fundraisers to help Gomez open some financial doors. Sarah Morgan, a regional political director, arrived Wednesday to organize volunteer efforts over the next few weeks. And Kevin McLaughlin, a senior adviser, is in Boston to assist with communications and general strategy.

The NRSC donated $45,400 -- the maximum allowable contribution from a national party to a Senate candidate -- to the Gomez campaign on April 30, the day he won the GOP primary. But a spokesman would not comment on whether any more funding would be headed Gomez’s way.

“Announcing our strategy to win in Massachusetts is a recipe for defeat, so we’ll leave punditry to the pundits,” NRSC spokesman Brad Dayspring said. “Massachusetts is always an uphill climb, but Gomez is a refreshing candidate who is winning over independents looking for something new in Washington. Navy SEALS can climb mountains and Gomez has a legitimate chance to win the race.”

Polls conducted by firms from both parties in the past two weeks showed Markey ahead by margins ranging from 3 to 7 points. That has yet to entice outside groups from either party to begin any substantial advertising campaigns. However, the Springfield Republican reported Thursday that NextGen Committee, a super PAC, is planning to support Markey through a number of platforms. Given the close margins, more help could be on the way for the four-week sprint following Memorial Day.

(Read Roll Call Contributing Writer Stuart Rothenberg’s most recent take on Massachusetts Senate race polling: In Massachusetts Senate PPP Poll, Read the Numbers — Not the Memo).

Two weeks ago, Gomez was mired in negative press surrounding revelations that he benefited significantly from a controversial tax deduction. Since then, Republicans believe Gomez, a former Navy SEAL, has found traction in targeting Markey on national security.

He received some help Monday from Senator John McCain who joined Gomez on the stump and at a fundraiser. A Gomez spokesman said no other nationally known Republicans are scheduled to join him on the trail.

Along with touting his record in Congress, Markey has slammed Gomez on gun control and for his work on behalf of a special-interest group that criticized President Barack Obama -- who won the state in 2012 with 61 percent of the vote -- for politicizing the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Gomez launched a new TV ad on Wednesday hitting the 19-term incumbent congressman for running negative ads, while also pitching himself as “something new.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was behind Markey during his primary with fellow Congressman Stephen F. Lynch. The committee regularly helps campaigns staff up, and it encouraged Markey in January to hire Sarah Benzing, a rising star among the party’s political operatives, as campaign manager.

Reached for comment about what kind of assistance the committee will provide Markey, DSCC spokesman Justin Barasky said, “Massachusetts voters have rallied around Ed Markey’s candidacy and so have the DSCC, the DNC and first lady Michelle Obama.”

Although neither is tipping their hand, both national parties could have already spent significant resources on the race. While independent expenditures are filed immediately to the Federal Election Commission, the party committees can quietly funnel money to a race by transferring it to their aligned state parties. That wouldn’t need to be disclosed until June 20, five days before the election.

Gomez is the one who would need the most help. He loaned his campaign $600,000 just to make it through the GOP primary. Meanwhile, Markey went into the final weeks of the April 30 Democratic primary with more than $4.6 million in the bank.

Can David Overcome Goliath? We’ll know in a few weeks.

~~~ The Internal Revenue Service, charged with implementing the biggest change in tax laws in 20 years due to Obamacare, has created eight offices and special "teams" to handle the chore, way more than initially revealed.

 

Besides the top office headed by the woman in the middle of the IRS-Tea Party scandal, there are seven others and a special enforcement team that make up an organization chart that mirrors the organization of the IRS itself, according to a Treasury Inspector General's report.

The June report focused on concerns that the IRS, which is filling the Obamacare offices with 2,137 agents and officials to make sure citizens and companies comply with the new health law or pay a fine, isn’t clear on its new role and how many new workers it will actually need. For example, the IRS will be in charge of analyzing hospital “community benefit activities,” which it has never done before.

But in that report was the organizational chart revealing the series of Obamacare offices. They are led by a steering committee that coordinates Obamacare implementation across the IRS. It is led by the agency’s deputy commissioner for services and enforcement, the office linked to the IRS scandal. Ousted acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller recently had that job.

Other branches include three program management offices, four services and enforcement offices, and services and enforcement exchange working teams.

From the IG report:

Appropriate Plans Have Been Developed to Implement Most Tax-Related Provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

To begin the major task of implementing the tax-related provisions of the ACA, the IRS created the following Executive Steering Committees, Offices, and Teams.

-- The ACA Executive Steering Committee (ESC) is responsible for overall program coordination and implementation of the ACA across the IRS. This committee is co-chaired by the Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement and the Deputy Commissioner for Operations Support. It also includes the IRS Chief of Staff and other IRS executives, including the business operating division commissioners, et al.

-- Three program management offices (PMO):

1) Services and Enforcement;

2) Modernization and Information Technology Services (MITS);5 and

3) Health Care Council. These PMOs are accountable to the ESC for ACA implementation and work with the IRS business operating divisions to ensure efforts are successfully coordinated.

-- Four functional ESCs, each led by an executive chair, have responsibility for specific provisions in the ACA that directly affect the four business operating divisions (Wage and Investment, Small Business/Self-Employed, Large Business and International, and Tax Exempt/Government Entities).

-- The Services and Enforcement Exchange Working Teams are responsible for planning the implementation of the exchange provisions scheduled for 2014.

~~~ The Associated Press says three days of congressional hearings about the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative political groups have lawmakers looking for ways to widen an investigation that has so far been largely contained within the tax collection agency.

More than 11 hours of testimony and an inspector general’s report have revealed plenty of wrongdoing within the IRS. But so far, investigators have not produced evidence that anyone outside the IRS authorized the targeting, or even knew about it before a few weeks ago.

They will keep trying.

Three congressional committees are investigating the matter, and the leaders of those committees say they are just getting started. The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation, and the new acting head of the IRS says he is conducting an internal review.

“The long and short of the situation is this: The public doesn’t know the full story yet,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Thursday.

Thursday morning, new acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel met with Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. During the meeting, Hatch told Werfel he expects the IRS to fully cooperate with committee’s investigation, a Hatch spokeswoman said.

President Barack Obama appointed Werfel last week; he started Wednesday. In an email to agency employees, Werfel sounded the same theme.

“The first step in this effort must be to get to the bottom of the recent allegations regarding the criteria to determine eligibility for tax-exempt status,” Werfel wrote.

“The missteps uncovered in the recent inspector general report are inexcusable and cannot be tolerated by any of us,” he said. “That is why we must work together with the inspector general, the Justice Department and Congress to ensure that responsible parties are held accountable for the inappropriate activities that occurred and that we correct the breakdowns in process and oversight that allowed them to occur.”

The White House has not been unscathed. Obama’s top spokesman said Wednesday the White House was facing “legitimate criticisms” for its shifting accounts about who knew, and when they knew, about the IRS targeting of conservative political groups.

Press secretary Jay Carney first said that only Obama’s top lawyer knew the IRS was being investigated in the weeks before the inspector general’s report was released. Later, he said the chief of staff and other top officials also knew.

“There have been some legitimate criticisms about how we’re handling this,” Carney said. “And I say 'legitimate' because I mean it.”

The inspector general’s report, which was released last week, said IRS agents in a Cincinnati office targeted tea party and other conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. They started targeting these groups in March or April of 2010. By August 2010, “tea party” became part of a “be on the lookout,” or “BOLO,” list of terms to flag for additional screening.

Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status, learned in June 2011 that agents were singling out groups with “Tea Party” and “Patriots” in their applications for tax-exempt status, the report said. She ordered agents to scrap the criteria immediately, but later they evolved to include groups that promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

It finally stopped in May 2012, when top agency officials say they found out and ordered agents to adopt appropriate criteria for determining whether tax-exempt groups were overly political.

Former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told two congressional committees this week that he first learned in the spring of 2012 that conservative groups had been improperly singled out for additional scrutiny. However, after learning that the practice had stopped and that the inspector general was investigating, Shulman said he didn’t tell anyone in the Treasury Department or the White House about it. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.

Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, left office in November, when his five-year term expired.

Lerner was subpoenaed to testify Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Her appearance was brief. She read an opening statement in which she denied any wrongdoing. Then she refused to answer questions, invoking her constitutional right against self-incrimination.

“I have not done anything wrong,” Lerner said. “I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said he might recall her. He and other Republicans say they believe she forfeited her Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify by giving an opening statement in which she proclaimed her innocence, but several law professors were skeptical lawmakers could make that stick.

Issa later said he would consult with others -- including her lawyer and House attorneys -- before determining whether to summon her again, hopefully deciding by the time Congress returns early next month from an upcoming recess.

“She’s a fact witness with a tremendous amount that she could tell us,” Issa said.

Lerner, a career civil servant, is still in her position at the IRS. She was the IRS official who first publicly disclosed the matter at a legal conference on May 10.

J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration, has blamed ineffective management for allowing agents to improperly target conservative groups for so long.

On Wednesday, he hinted there may be more revelations to come. He told the oversight committee that his office has since uncovered other questionable criteria used by agents to screen applications for tax-exempt status. But he refused to elaborate.

“As we continue our review of this matter, we have recently identified some other BOLOs that raised concerns about political factors, George said. I can’t get into more detail at this time as to the information that is there because it’s still incomplete.”

~~~ President Obama on Thursday announced major changes to the nation’s counter-terrorism policy, limiting drone strikes and renewing his effort to close down the Guantanamo Bay prison facility by returning detainees to their home countries in Afghanistan and Yemen.

Speaking at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., the president said the death of Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants mean that there have been no large-scale attacks on the U.S. homeland, prompting the need for a new overarching counter-terrorism policy.

In his speech, he once again modified his description of the state of al Qaeda, stressing that the “core of al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan is on on a path to defeat.” On the campaign trail last year he repeatedly boasted that all of “al Qaeda was on the run.”

“America is at a crossroads,” he said. “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘no nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

Mr. Obama also broadly ruled out the possibility of al Qaeda having any role in the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three and injured 264 others.

“Today, the core of al Qaeda is on a path to defeat,” he said. “Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us. They did not direct the attacks in Benghazi or Boston. They have not carried out a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11.”

~~~ House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday flatly ruled out chances of the House passing the Senate’s immigration bill, saying his chamber will debate its own bill instead.

 

Boehner and his top GOP lieutenants issued a joint statement that seemed designed to tamp down some of the momentum behind the Senate bill, which emerged from a Senate committee on a bipartisan 13-5 vote earlier this week, and to stake out a House GOP position.

“While we applaud the progress made by our Senate colleagues, there are numerous ways in which the House will approach the issue differently,” the GOP leaders said in their statement. “The House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes. Rather, through regular order, the House will work its will and produce its own legislation.”

Boehner is playing a proxy game of political checkers with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a bipartisan gang of lawmakers tries to write a broad immigration deal that would include legal status for illegal immigrants and a rewrite of the legal immigration system.

Even as those lawmakers are working, however, the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees are writing individual bills on border security, agricultural guest-workers and an electronic verification system for businesses to check workers’ legal status -- all pieces of the broader immigration debate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee cleared its bill on Tuesday with the support of 10 Democrats and three Republicans, and that legislation heads to the full Senate for what promises to be a bruising and extensive debate next month.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, told reporters on Thursday that getting the immigration bill done is his top priority right now -- so much so that he won’t pick any other fights with the GOP so as to avoid upsetting bipartisan momentum. That includes not pushing a contentious vote on President Obama’s Labor Department secretary nominee, Thomas Perez.

“I am not going to do anything to interfere with the immigration bill,” Reid said.

Already there is some speculation that if a bill emerges from the Senate, Democrats would call on the House to pass it as well.

The House GOP statement seemed designed to shut down that avenue.

“Enacting policy as consequential and complex as immigration reform demands that both chambers of Congress engage in a robust debate and amendment process,” the leaders said.

Pelosi said Thursday that one issue holding up the bipartisan House negotiations on immigration is over how insistent Congress should be that the administration creates a nationwide electronic verification system to check workers’ legal status.

“If E-Verify is not effectively accomplished in five years, then all of these people revert to the status they have now. I think that’s pretty drastic,” the California Democrat said.

But Mrs. Pelosi shot down reports that she was insisting on broader health coverage for illegal immigrants, saying that she accepts the decision in the 2010 health law that makes them ineligible.

“I’m saying that there is no obstacle to our support of a bill if it says no taxpayer funding. That would be a subsidy in the Affordable Care Act, and it would also be Medicaid,” she said.

~~~ President Obama on Thursday said he is imposing new limitations on the use of drone strikes against suspected terrorists and took fresh steps to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, declaring America at a “crossroads” in its fight against terrorism.

In the most expansive detailing of his counterterrorism policies, the president outlined the legal rationale for remote-controlled, targeted killings, which increased dramatically under his watch. The president said he wants the military, rather than the CIA, to play a larger role in operating the drones.

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us,” Obama said during an hour-long speech at the National Defense University in D.C.

Addressing one of the glaring unfulfilled promises of his presidency, Obama lifted his self-imposed moratorium on transferring Gitmo detainees to Yemen, appointed a new State Department envoy to oversee transfers to third-party countries and vowed to bring terrorists to justice in American courts. Nearly 90 Guantanamo prisoners have been cleared for transfer but are still being held indefinitely in Cuba.

With revelations that his Justice Department had secretly monitored reporters in Washington, Obama vowed to do more to ensure journalists could work without fear of prosecution. He instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to report back to him by July 12 on administration guidelines for investigating reporters.

“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said.

The president is framing his actions as a break from the national security policies of former President George W. Bush, who said the United States was engaged in an ongoing “war on terror.”

“We must define our effort not as a boundless global war on terror, but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts,” Obama said.

Republicans were immediately skeptical of Obama’s new blueprint on national security.

“Is it still your administration’s goal to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda?” House Speaker John Boehner asked in a series of questions to the president. “If you are scaling back the use of unmanned drones, which actions will you be taking as a substitute to ensure Al Qaeda’s defeat? Is it your view that if the U.S. is less aggressive in eliminating terrorists abroad, the threat of terrorist attacks will diminish on its own?”

Obama’s own political base has hammered him for deploying counterterrorism policies he derided as a candidate. Obama looked to quell such concerns Thursday.

“For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen -- with a drone, or a shotgun -- without due process,” he insisted. “Nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil.”

Obama’s speech came a day after his administration publicly acknowledged it had used drones to kill four U.S. citizens living abroad. The president said that disclosure is the beginning of a new era of transparency about how government leaders protect the homeland.

Gray is the word for today (and possibly some tomorrows).

Ciao…….Moe Lauzier

This and That for Thursday

1339

~~~ A recent study by Edgar Feige, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, suggests that the size of the underground economy in the U.S. in 2012 reached $2 trillion.

A study done by Friedrich Schneider, a professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, suggests that this figure was only $1 trillion in 2009. The underground economy, also known as the gray and black markets, is the business activity that does not get reported to governments and taxed. This underground economy includes everything from activities banned by the state, such as selling certain drugs and weapons, to off-the-books jobs in fields as diverse as childcare and construction.

Many economists blame the recession and lackluster recovery for the growth of the underground economy. “You normally see underground economies in places like Brazil or in southern Europe,” said Laura Gonzalez, professor of personal finance at Fordham University. “But with the job situation and the uncertainty in the economy, it's not all that surprising to have it growing here in the United States.”

“I think the underground economy is quite big in the U.S.,” said Alexandre Padilla, associate professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. “Whether it's using undocumented workers or those here legally, it’s pretty large.”

“It’s typical that during recessions people work on the side while collecting unemployment,” said Bernard Baumohl, an economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “But the severity of the recession and the profound weakness of this recovery may mean that a lot more people have entered the underground economy, and have had to stay there longer.”

Most mainstream economists and sociologists see this development as negative. “Too much off-the-books work is not good for the social contract,” said Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist at Columbia and the author of a study of the underground economy. “Economies work best when people have some sense, however abstract, that they are all tied together.”

There is, however, another school of thought that sees this development as positive, and hopes that this trend will continue. That school of economic thought is known as agorism.

Agorism is a libertarian social philosophy that advocates the goal of the bringing about of a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges by means of counter-economics, or the use of the gray and black markets. The agorist ideal would be an economic secession from the state by relying solely upon the gray and black markets. Agorism includes replacing the use of government fiat currency with barter, local exchange trading systems, and/or the use of commodity-backed currencies, such as those based upon precious metals. The ultimate goal of such actions is to abolish government through peaceful means by depriving it of the resources that its agents need to carry out government functions. Agorism was first proposed by libertarian philosopher Samuel Edward Konkin III in 1975, with additional contributions by J. Neil Schulman.

It is possible that the transition from state-sanctioned economic activity to counter-economic activity will not be a temporary development related to current economic turmoil, but will be the first step toward the emergence of a truly free market through the theory of agorism. Only time will tell.

~~~ Here’s a letter found in the Wall Street Journal:

Have you heard?

President Obama will not "tolerate" the IRS targeting conservative groups. The president expresses his outrage and intolerance often. He seems to think that he simply has to state that he will not tolerate something and it will stop. Here are some recent examples.

He will not tolerate Syria using chemical weapons. He will not tolerate attacks on Americans. He will not tolerate sexual harassment or rape in the military. He will not tolerate school shootings. He will not tolerate the IRS targeting conservative groups. He will not tolerate another debt-ceiling debate.

We can all rest assured that these things will not happen again because he will not tolerate them. Right. And don’t forget, President Obama has stated that he will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Should we be concerned? You bet.

Scott Engers

Ann Arbor, Mich.

~~~ While national polls haven’t shown a shift in the public’s opinion of President Barack Obama’s performance, recent controversies have significantly changed the political landscape.

And changes in the landscape have led the Rothenberg Political Report to change its Senate ratings.

For the past few years, the public’s focus has been on Republicans’ opposition to the president’s agenda, their desire to shrink (even cripple) government and their conservatism. But the IRS scandal, along with controversies involving the attack in Benghazi and the Justice Department’s collecting of journalists’ telephone records, has change the political narrative.

While the Oklahoma tornado tragedy will dominate media coverage for the next few days, the new political narrative that will re-emerge when journalists return to politics involves questions about what the administration knew, said and did.

The new focus on the Obama administration puts it on the defensive and should boost enthusiasm on the political right throughout this year.

While we don’t know how long the focus will stay on the administration -- or whether Republicans will stumble over the investigations or matters of public policy -- between now and the November midterms, it is undeniable that recent events have altered, at least for now, the trajectory of the 2014 elections.

Given the different natures of midterm electorates, the new political narrative increases the risk for Democratic candidates in red states, where Democrats must win independent and, in many cases, Republican voters to be successful.

Republicans can get a Senate majority in next year’s elections by winning races in states Mitt Romney carried. Because that now seems more difficult than it did just a month ago, we are moving a number of Senate contests to the GOP.

Our moves are as follows:

• West Virginia (Open seat; Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, is retiring): From Tossup/Tilt Republican to Lean Republican.

• South Dakota (Open seat; Sen. Tim Johnson, a Democrat, is retiring): From Tossup/Tilt Republican to Lean Republican.

• Arkansas (Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat): From Tossup/Tilt Democrat to Pure Tossup.

• Louisiana (Sen. Mary L. Landreiu, a Democrat): From Tossup/Tilt Democrat to Pure Tossup.

• Alaska (Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat): From Lean Democrat to Tossup/Tilt Democrat

• North Carolina (Sen. Kay Hagan, a Democrat): From Lean Democrat to Tossup/Tilt Democrat.

The ratings of the elections is very conservative. There is a possible GOP sweep of all these races.

~~~ The national debate over gun control has spilled over into New Hampshire where one of my favorite senators Kelly Ayotte is defending her vote against stricter gun laws and deriding the Mayors Against Illegal Guns group that is attacking her as carpetbaggers who don’t understand her state’s voters.

 

At stake is whether gun control groups can sway the half-dozen or so lawmakers needed to push expanded background checks for gun purchases through the Senate -- and Ayotte’s re-election race in 2016 is shaping up as a key test.

The proxy war broke out here weeks ago when MAIG, an advocacy group with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as co-chairman, started targeting Ayotte in a six-figure ad buy that ran in the Manchester, N.H., and Boston media markets. The group ramped up the pressure over the weekend, releasing another television spot saying MAyotte didn’t step up when her vote was needed.

“Ayotte’s vote helped defeat a modest measure to prevent the seriously mentally ill from purchasing firearms,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot. “Now Ayotte says she is for strengthening background checks, but when it counted she was a key vote to kill it and that makes New Hampshire less safe.”

But Ayotte and her allies, including Senator Marco Rubio of Florida’s political action committee, have returned fire, saying that MAIG is misleading voters and that the junior New Hampshire senator has voted to beef up the current National Instant Criminal Background Check System that federally licensed dealers must use.

“They are running ads basically saying that I voted against background checks, which is false,” Ayotte said last week. “I supported legislation that would have improved our background check system. These are clearly out-of-state interests coming into New Hampshire spending a lot of money, and I think at the end of the day people will sort through these types of false attacks, they will examine the issue, and I trust the people of New Hampshire to make their own judgments.”

The back-and-forth comes after the Senate shot down a bipartisan proposal last month that would have expanded gun-purchase background checks to sales online and at gun shows.

Ayotte joined 40 of her fellow Republicans and five Democrats in opposing the plan, which was the centerpiece of the Obama administration’s response to last year’s shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that left 26 people dead.

Ayotte, meanwhile, backed another proposal, which also failed in the Senate, that made changes to the background check system, provided resources to help address mental health and school safety, and addressed gun trafficking and straw purchasing.

Since the vote, some polls have suggested that Ayotte’s unfavorable ratings have ticked up, and found that she holds the lowest approval rating of any statewide official.

Andrew E. Smith, political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said that Democrats -- at the national and state level -- are hoping to put a dent in Ayotte’s image ahead of her 2016 re-election campaign “because she is an attractive conservative woman from New England.”

“The idea is kneecap her right now,” Smith said, adding that Democrats are basically saying, “We are not going to do too much damage, but you won’t be able to walk very well.”

James M. Demers, a longtime Democrat consultant and New Hampshire co-chairman of President Obama’s presidential campaign, said Tuesday that some voters are aware of Ayotte’s opposition to expanded background checks, thanks to the MAIG ads.

“I saw one this morning, and I do think it is having an effect,” Mr. Demers said. “A lot of people, particularly the independent voters here, are asking why she voted the way she did. It seems like it is having a big effect.”

Michael Biundo, the campaign manager for Republican Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign, said it is politically savvy for Democrats to go after Ayotte because it diverts attention from the Democrats up for re-election in 2014 -- a list that includes Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. But, he said, he doesn’t think the attack sticks.

Tom Rath, a New Hampshire GOP strategist and former adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said Ayotte remains popular with the state’s law enforcement officials and that the senator has plenty of time to respond before she has to worry about re-election.

“Typically a candidate gets in trouble when they do something contrary to what they said they are going to do, and the vote Senator Ayotte cast is very consistent with what her position has been,” Rath said. “So, I don’t think anything changes much in the way of poll numbers, certainly not any change that has any impact on 2016.”

The dogs of dirt are barking up the wrong tree.

~~~ Sixty percent of voters think the Obama administration is trying to cover up what happened during the September 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi compared to 28 percent who think the administration is being open and transparent, a new Fox News poll said.

Fifty-three percent disapprove of how the Obama administration has handled the response to the attacks, which claimed the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Sixty-two percent say President Obama could have done more to help the Americans on the night of the attack, compared to 27 percent who think he could not have.

Last month, a similar poll showed that 46 percent of voters thought the Obama administraion was covering up what happened there, compared to 43 percent who did not.

Under growing pressure, the White House last Wednesday released emails that showed the talking points crafted to explain the deadly terrorist attack were changed at the behest of a State Department worried about political fallout.

The 100-page cache of email printouts shows that during the editing process, references to the fact that U.S. intelligence agencies believed al Qaeda-linked extremists may have been involved in the attack were removed, as were references that the CIA had received general warnings about the worsening security situation in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city.

The talking points were originally drafted by the CIA, but the references to terrorist groups and the security situation were stripped after “deep concerns” were raised by the “leadership” at the State Department, the emails show.

The emails also show that several changes were made at the behest of White House officials, including John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser at the time who is now director of the CIA. That contradicts repeated statements by White House press secretary Jay Carney.

Fifty percent of voters in the poll released late Tuesday think the Obama administration changed the CIA’s description of the attack for political reasons, compared to 37 percent who think it was for security reasons to avoid hurting the ongoing investigation.

Still, the controversy ranks second among voters’ concerns with three ongoing crises the White House is dealing with. The IRS’s targeting tax applications of certain conservative groups concerns was first, with 32 percent listing that as the controversy that concerns them the most, followed by Benghazi, at 27 percent, and the Justice Department’s seizing phone records of reporters third, at 21 percent.

The poll of 1,013 registered voters taken May 18-20 has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Why does Don Meredith singing “the party’s over” returning loud and clear.

~~~ The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the federal government’s new borrowing limit is $16.699 trillion — an increase of $305 million over the previous limit in February.

Congress earlier this year gave the Obama administration an extraordinary three-month holiday from having to worry about the debt limit, saying that any debt built up between Feb. 4 and May 19 would be added, and wherever the debt stood on May 19 would become the new limit.

On Tuesday the Treasury Department announced that new limit would be $16.699 trillion, up from the $16.394 trillion level it was in February.

Under the terms of the February law, the government is already bumping up against that new limit, and Treasury officials have said they are using special techniques to prevent breaching the limit. Those measures could keep the government below the limit through the fall.

We’re taking money out of one pocket and shifting it to another suggesting that bills were paid and accounts balance. We’re living in a fool’s paradise.

~~~ A handful of conservative congressmen said Wednesday that they will demand a budget that balances in 10 years in exchange for their vote to increase the debt ceiling, saying that Republican leadership promised as much during a GOP retreat earlier this year.

Conjgressman Raul Labrador, Idaho Republican, said another option presented by leadership — to have a general plan for tax reform in exchange for a debt-ceiling deal — is a “non-starter” and “a slap in the face in many ways.”

Congressman Tim Huelskamp, Kansas Republican, shared a similar sentiment.

“That was the promise from our leadership,” he said. “It wasn’t a promise we’re going to put it in the budget, it was the promise that will be what we go for on the debt ceiling. So that should be part of our debt ceiling offer.”

Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said that negotiations are still in their early stages.

“We have just begun the process of talking with members, and -- more importantly -- with the American people, about the best way to increase the debt limit consistent with the ‘Boehner Rule,’ which requires cuts or reforms equal or greater than the increase,” Steel said.

The House and Senate have passed wildly different spending plans, and appear far from even beginning the process of reconciling them.

The fight over the debt ceiling has spilled onto the Senate floor as well in recent days, with a trio of GOP senators -- Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah, and Rand Paul of Kentucky -- objecting to appointing conferees to a House-Senate panel to reconcile the budgets unless an assurance is given that the debt ceiling will not be raised.

GOP Senator Marco Rubio of Florida joined in the argument Wednesday, and was rebuffed by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican.

“The American people don’t like it, and I don’t like it,” McCain said. “It is not the regular order to demand certain conditions on the conferees.”

Rubio responded that so-called “regular order” has resulted in the country racking up $17 trillion in debt.

~~~ President Obama isn't the only one whose fortunes are on the line in the face of a trio of explosive political scandals that are consuming Washington.

The Justice Department's monitoring of reporters, the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups and the White House’s handling of the September 11 Benghazi, Libya, terrorist attack could also haunt Obama’s fellow Democrats, many of whom are already facing headwinds in next year's midterm elections.

With Republicans -- and much of the public -- convinced the controversies will linger into 2014, some Democrats a year and a half ahead of the election are already talking about the electoral consequences they will face when voters head to the ballot box.

“We haven't exactly been emboldened by the White House’s response,” a senior aide to a Democratic House member told The Washington Examiner. “Could the Republicans overplay their hand? Absolutely. But if the White House doesn't clean this up, it'll just linger and linger -- to our detriment.”

A new Rasmussen poll found that most respondents -- 55 percent -- believe the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups and the response to the Benghazi terrorist strike will remain important news stories in 2014.

And Republicans are framing the events as symptomatic of chronic abuses in the federal government, a clarion call sure to play well with a GOP base seething from defeat in the 2012 presidential election. With Obama no longer at the top of the ticket, any developments that sap enthusiasm from loyal Democrats could spell disaster for the president’s bid to control both chambers of Congress during his last two years in office.

The president has not been coy about the importance of winning back the House, a development that could make it easier to close deals on immigration reform and greater gun control, among other issues on his agenda.

In the short term, Obama's top surrogates are dismissing Republican attacks as "fishing expeditions." White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday went so far as to compare the GOP’s current questioning to the fringe Birther movement’s assertions that the president wasn’t born in the United States.

“You know, we could go down the list of questions -- we could say, what about the president's birth certificate?” a frustrated Carney told reporters. “Was that legitimate?”

Despite the White House’s continual defensive posture, some Republicans warned the GOP not to get too giddy about its newfound political opportunities.

“Just because there’s a scandal doesn’t mean you’ve won,” said Republican pollster David Winston, pointing to 1998, when Republicans lost House seats despite President Clinton’s self-inflicted woes. “The other side is embroiled in putting out fires. It presents a clear opportunity to define the policy debate -- the question is, what do you do with that opportunity?”

House Speaker John Boehner vowed Tuesday to keep the pressure on Obama.

“We have a responsibility to the American people to provide oversight of the executive branch,” Boehner said on the House floor. “And I think Americans understand, and our colleagues understand, that the American people deserve the truth.”

A stretch of gray on the way.

Ciao…….Moe Lauzier