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US

boston-pd-cvs

Authorities responded to a shooting Tuesday morning outside a CVS near Boston. (Photo: MyFoxBoston.com)

Police in Massachusetts arrested a man in connection with a counterterror investigation just hours after another man under round-the-clock surveillance by was shot and killed.

Usaama Rahim, 26, was shot outside a CVS Pharmacy in Roslindale, Mass. at approximately 7 a.m. local time Tuesday after the Joint Terrorism Task Force approached Rahim to question him about “terrorist-related information” they had received. When he moved toward officers with the knife, they opened fire.

A law enforcement source with intimate knowledge of the case told PPD that Rahim had been making terrorist threats against law enforcement personnel and their families.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said officers repeatedly ordered Rahim to drop the knife but he continued to move toward them, regardless. Evans said task force members hit Rahim once in the torso and once in the abdomen in controlled fire. Rahim was taken to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Another source also told WFXT that they had been investigating an “active plot” to harm law enforcement officials, which may have been inspired by the terror group ISIS. While PPD could not independently confirm the latter claim, the Islamic State has repeatedly called on “lone wolf” followers in the United States to attack law enforcement and military personnel.

Vincent Lisi, special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office, said authorities “don’t think there’s any concern for public safety out there right now.”

Commissioner Evans also said authorities knew Rahim “had some extremism as far as his views,” but did not approach him with guns drawn.

“Obviously, there was enough information there where we thought it was appropriate to question him about his doings,” Evans said. “He was someone we were watching for quite a time.”

Police video shows Rahim “coming at officers” while they are backing away, Evans noted, though the account differs from claims made by Rahim’s brother Ibrahim Rahim, who said in a Facebook posting that his youngest brother was killed while waiting at a bus stop to go to his job.

“He was confronted by three Boston Police officers and subsequently shot in the back three times,” he wrote. “He was on his cellphone with my dear father during the confrontation needing a witness.”

Ibrahim Rahim’s Facebook page claims he studied Islamic law at the Islamic University of-Medina KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), and that he currently works at a ministry that bares his name in Boston, Massachusetts.

“We are deeply grieved by the loss of my younger brother,” he wrote. “While we understand the need for information. We ask that the press give us time to grieve. We will have a statement once we have met as a family [sic].”

Meanwhile, officer and the agent involved in the shooting weren’t physically injured but were evaluated at a hospital for what Evans described as “stress.”

The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center said its security firm hired Rahim as a security guard for a month in mid-2013, though he served only as a loss prevention officer at CVS. Executive director Yusufi Vali, the head of a center that has been surrounded by controversy in the past due to their connection to known jihadis, said Rahim didn’t regularly pray at the center and didn’t volunteer there or serve in any leadership positions.

Later Tuesday, the FBI and local police arrested a man at a home in Everett, Mass., in an action authorities said was related to the Roslindale shooting. Christina Diorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, said David Wright was taken into custody from his home in suburban Everett. She said Wright will face federal charges and is expected to appear in U.S. District Court on Wednesday.

The FBI and Rhode Island State Police also searched a property in Warwick, R.I. in relation to the Roslindale shooting. Police sealed off a street, requiring anyone who lived there to show identification to pass the police cordon, though it was not immediately clear if they had anyone in custody.

A 17-year-old told the Boston Globe that police had asked him about a neighbor in his mid-20s named Nick. The teen told the paper Nick often wears long robes and prays in his front yard.

Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said one

Video

[brid video=”9345″ player=”1929″ title=”American Muslims in Minnesota prefer Sharia Law over American Law (Video)”]

Independent filmmaker Ami Horowitz traveled to urban Minnesota to ask the Somali muslim population if they prefer Sharia law over American law, or the U.S. Constitution.

“I’m a muslim. I prefer Sharia law,” one man said very matter of fact-like.

“Of course,” another young man says when asked if he prefers Sharia over American law.

Independent filmmaker Ami Horowitz traveled to urban

Opinion

Hillary-Clinton-Newscom

Hillary Clinton at a campaign event in Iowa. (Photo: Keiko Hiromi/Polaris/Newscom)

Protestors demand “social justice.” I hate their chant. If I oppose their cause, then I’m for social “injustice”? Nonsense.

The protesters usually want to punish capitalism. “Spread those resources,” says Hillary Clinton.

Even capitalists often make the mistake of talking about “social justice” as if it’s the opposite of free markets or a reason to rein in markets with more regulations or redistribution of wealth. But there’s nothing “just” about the leftist protesters’ claimed solution: more big government.

Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and Harry Belafonte praised Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez for his socialist revolution. Chavez then proceeded to destroy much of his country.

Even after his death, his portrait remains on walls everywhere and his policies live on. They haven’t produced social justice, unless your idea of “justice” is privileges for government officials and shortages of basics like food and toilet paper for ordinary people.

Only socialism could take an oil-rich nation and turn it into one where people wait in line for hours for survival rations.

The left-wing Guardian newspaper quotes a Venezuelan farmer saying that Chavez’s policies left Venezuela with “no one to explain why a rich country has no food.”

Not many people in Venezuela give such explanations — the government censors its critics — but free-market economists can explain.

Goods don’t get matched to consumer needs by anyone’s burning desire for justice. The amazing coordination of the marketplace happens because sellers and buyers are free. Sellers can sell whatever they choose at prices they choose. Buyers decide whether to pay. That flexibility — and chance to make a profit — is what persuades people to create what customers want and risk their own money and safety to stock it in a store.

Without the free market setting prices and allocating resources, all the cries of “justice” in the world don’t help anyone. You can’t eat justice. You can’t use it as toilet paper.

Intellectuals, activists and government alike love it when politicians take “tough,” decisive action — usually meaning sudden interference in the marketplace. A year and a half ago, Venezuelan government used the military to seize control of Daka, one of the country’s largest retailers, in order to force the chain to charge “fair” prices. Punish those rich, greedy store-owners!

Surprise! That didn’t work. The chain is now collapsing as looters take what they want.

Socialists say capitalists just want to make a quick buck, but it’s government that can’t plan for the long haul.

Instead of thinking in terms of returns on investment and sustainable business models, socialists think only of today: They see people who need stuff and stores full of stuff. Take the stuff and give it to people, and then tomorrow — well, those capitalists will always bring in more stuff, I guess.

Calling it “social justice” doesn’t make it work.

Sometimes activists admit they aren’t very interested in economics. What they really want is a more “tolerant” world with less sexism and racism. They act as if capitalism is an obstacle to that.
But it isn’t. Capitalist societies are less racist and less sexist than non-capitalist ones.

In America, white people often take for granted the advantages that being white sometimes provides. But compare America to China, where one ethnic group, the Han, dominates politics and openly looks down on minorities — and where even scientists have tried to show that the Han are a distinctive race that does not trace its ancestry to Africa like the rest of us.

The autocratic nation of Saudi Arabia doesn’t let women drive cars or open their own bank accounts.

Markets, in which individuals, not just rulers, have property rights, give people options. Businesses have an incentive to serve as many people as possible, regardless of gender or ethnic group. They also have an incentive to be nice — customers are more likely to trade with people who treat them fairly. Everyone gets to choose his own path. That’s what I call justice.

Injustice is telling people that they must wait to see what their rulers decide is fair.

Protestors demand "social justice." I hate their

Politics

rand-paul-patriot-act-filibuster

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Wednesday May, 20, 2015, at the start of an almost 11-hour speech opposing the wholesale renewal of the Patriot Act. (Photo: Senate video feed)

The Senate Tuesday in a 67-32 vote approved the USA Freedom Act, legislation that reforms bulk metadata collection established in the Patriot Act. The bill, which was already passed overwhelmingly and in a bipartisan fashion in the Republican-controlled House, now goes to President Obama’s desk for his signature.

Lawmakers missed a key deadline last weekend after Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kty., ran the clock out in protest using procedural measures. After the Senate failed to pass the status quo continuation bill Sunday night, the controversial surveillance programs were suspened, most notably the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.

The passage of the bill marks what Sen. Paul called a victory for liberty and the Fourth Amendment, but leadership did everything they could to keep it from passing.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Republican and Kentuckian, offered several amendments. If any of them had passed in a vote, the bill again would’ve had to return to the House. But GOP leaders in the House warned that changes would sink the bill, period, resulting in an end to these programs, altogether.

Here are several reforms that the bill has put in place:

  • Act allows the NSA to resume metadata collection programs, but only for a transition period of six months. Afterward, the legislation would no longer permit the NSA to gobble up Americans’ records in bulk. Instead, the NSA will have to leave the records with phone companies and the bill requires the government to seek and obtain a warrant.
  • Continue other post-9/11 surveillance provisions that had also lapsed after the Senate failed to pass the Patriot Act Sunday night, including the FBI’s authority to gather business records during terrorism and espionage investigations. The bill also makes it easier for the FBI to eavesdrop on suspects who frequently discard cellphones to avoid surveillance.
  • Creates an independent panel to provide the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court with guidance on privacy and civil liberties matters.
  • Increase transparency involving the decisions handed down by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Worth noting, prior to Paul’s filibuster-like procedural move, the Justice Department Inspector General released a report that admitted they had never foiled a major terror attack using the powers of bulk metadata collection permitted in the USA Patriot Act. The IG also openly supported reforms to the status quo.

“The agents we interviewed did not identify any major case developments that resulted from use of the records obtained in response to Section 215 orders,” the inspector general found. “While the expanded scope of these requests can be important uses of Section 215 authority, we believe these expanded uses require continued significant oversight.”

However, Sen. Paul and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., worry the USA Freedom Act doesn’t go far enough. They proposed nine amendments to further reform and clarify the USA Freedom Act (Read them here).

Nonetheless, the legislation will achieve his ultimate goal — the end to the NSA bulk collection.

[brid video=”9332″ player=”1929″ title=”Sen. Rand Paul Appears on Fox Hannity June 1 2015″]

The Senate Tuesday in a 67-32 vote

Policy

obama-phone-video

Screenshot from the now-infamous Obama phone video taken in Cleveland, Ohio.

Back during the 2012 presidential campaign, I criticized the view that America was divided between “makers” and “takers.”

But not because I disagreed with the notion that people trapped in government dependency have an unfortunate self-interest in supporting politicians who want a bigger welfare state. Indeed, I’ve explicitly warned that some statist politicians explicitly want to create more dependency to advance their power.

That being said, it’s important to understand the depth of the problem. It’s not accurate, as I’ve written, to assume that people who don’t pay tax are part of the moocher class.

…those people are not necessarily looking for freebies from government. Far from it. Many of them have private sector jobs and believe in self reliance and individual responsibility. Or they’re students, retirees, or others who don’t happen to have enough income to pay taxes, but definitely don’t see themselves as wards of the state.

Moreover, it’s not even accurate to say that households receiving benefits from the government are part of the dependency class.

…the share of households receiving goodies from the government...is approaching 50 percent and it probably is much more correlated with the group of people in the country who see the state as a means of living off their fellow citizens. But even that correlation is likely to be very imprecise since some government beneficiaries – such as Social Security recipients – spent their lives in the private sector and are taking benefits simply because they had no choice but to participate in the system.

If we really want to understand the depth of America’s dependency problem, it’s much better to look at the share of the population that gets money from anti-poverty programs.

The Census Bureau has just released a report looking at the share of the population receiving “means-tested” benefits, which is the term for programs targeting low-income recipients. Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights) from the accompanying release.

Approximately 52.2 million (or 21.3 percent) people in the U.S. participated in major means-tested government assistance programs each month in 2012, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released today. Participation rates were highest for Medicaid (15.3 percent) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamp program (13.4 percent). The average monthly participation rate in major means-tested programs increased from 18.6 percent in 2009 to 20.9 percent in 2011. …The largest share of participants (43.0 percent) in any of the public assistance programs stayed in the programs between 37 and 48 months.

Perhaps more worrisome are the details on how some segments of the population are more likely to be trapped in government dependency.

In an average month, 39.2 percent of children received some type of means-tested benefit, compared with 16.6 percent of people age 18 to 64 and 12.6 percent of people 65 and older. …At 41.6 percent, blacks were more likely to participate in government assistance programs in an average month. …At 50 percent, people in female-householder families had the highest rates of participation in major means-tested programs.

Though perhaps “trapped” is too strong a word. As you can see from this table, less than 50 percent of recipients appear to be long-term dependents.

time spend in government programs

Looking at all this data, my conclusion is that we’re not in any immediate danger of hitting a “tipping point” of too much dependency. To be sure, the trends are not favorable, thanks to politicians like Obama, but 21 percent of the population receiving means-tested benefits is not nearly as bad as 47 percent.

Though it appears that the Census Bureau doesn’t count the “earned income credit” in its calculations. That’s an odd omission since it is a means-tested spending program (operated through the tax code). So the problem presumably is worse than what is stated in the report, but I’m assuming that there’s a big overlap between EIC recipients and those already counted by the Census Bureau. which means that the share of households getting money from Uncle Sam is still significantly less than 30 percent.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried. Indeed, the welfare state should be radically changed because we care about both taxpayers and poor people.

Writing for The Federalist, Robert Tracinski explores specific policies that would restrain and reduce the welfare state.

He lists seven ideas, which I’ve shared below (in very abbreviated form) followed by my two cents.

1) Repeal ObamaCare – If we want to roll back the welfare state, we will never have any better opportunity to start than by repealing ObamaCare—a program that is relatively new, has never been popular, and is in a slow process of imploding.

My response: Fully agree.

2) Health Savings Accounts – Scrapping ObamaCare would be a natural opportunity for Republicans to propose their own free-market health-care reforms. The centerpiece of that alternative should be Health Savings Accounts, which make it easier for individuals to save money in tax-free accounts which they can use for medical expenses.

My response: Not my preferred option. HSAs are a big improvement over the current system and presumably would help with the third-party payer problem, but fixing healthcare requires far bigger changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax code’s fringe benefit loophole. And if you make those changes, HSAs wouldn’t really matter.

3) Means-test Social Security – Social Security is already a bad deal for the middle class, since the benefits are already skewed in such a way that they are equivalent to a tiny return, between 1 and 2 percent annually, on what might have been a private investment. By contrast, long-term returns on the stock market are about 7 percent annually. And in order to make Social Security sustainable, it will have to become a much worse deal.

My response: Also not my preferred option. Too many otherwise sensible people are giving up on personal retirement accounts.

4) Restart economic growth – the United States has slipped into the Obama rate of growth, a permanent state of semi-stagnation. We’ve been through market crashes and recessions before, but usually after a year or two of pain, we get a strong burst of growth to make up for it. …This low rate of growth makes the burden of the welfare state greater, because we can no longer grow our way out from under its expenses. …If we’re going to expect people to be more self-reliant, they must also have a sense of economic hope.

My response: Hard to argue with this suggestion, or the description of the problem.

5) Re-reform welfare – …the Obama administration has used the recession to gut the welfare reform of the 1990s, extending unemployment benefits and loosening work requirements. …the administration has used the state for the opposite purpose: to push people from self-reliance into dependence.

My response: Also hard to argue with this suggestion. It’s very worrisome how leftists are operating behind the scenes to push more dependency.

6) Save the cities – …the centers of economic inequality and racial conflict—the key issues on which Democrats always campaign—are places that are the sole property of Democrats, owned and run by them for about as long as anyone can remember. …If we want less class and racial conflict, if we want more people moving up into the middle class and no longer feeling the need for government support, if we want to compete for the vote in what are now deep centers of political support for the left—then we need to start targeting the cities for basic reforms that will improve the quality of life there and bring back the middle class.

My response: A very accurate description of the problem, but I suspect advocates of limited government won’t gain control of policy in big cities, so it might be better to first focus on rhetorical efforts to explain how statism leads to bad results.

7) Federalism – This is not a foolproof solution, because we’ll still occasionally get local handouts… But the general idea is that we can let New York and California set up more generous welfare states—if they want to pay for them. And they should let the hinterland scale back welfare. Then the states can compete to see whose approach is more successful and how many people vote with their feet for the small government model.

My response: Bingo!! This is far and away the right answer and it’s got plenty of intellectual firepower behind it.

America isn’t Europe, either in terms of policy or attitudes. But I worry that we’re heading that direction.

The Census Bureau gives us the data and Robert Tracinski has given us some good answers.

But will the solutions be implemented before too many people are riding in the wagon of government dependency? Because once you reach that point, there’s probably little hope.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Looking at all this data, economist Dan

World

Iraq PM-Haider-al-Abadi-Paris-06-02-2015

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, center, is seated and members of the anti-Islamic State coalition meet at the French Foreign Minister in Paris, France, June 2, 2015. Iraq’s prime minister on Tuesday accused the international coalition fighting Islamic State of not doing enough to tackle the group. (Photo: Reuters/Pool/Stephane De Sakutin)

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Tuesday blamed the U.S.-led coalition that is training his security forces for the spread of the Islamic State in his country. Prime Minister al-Abadi said ISIS “is a failure on the part of the world” to offer an alternative to militant Islam, adding the international community has “a lot of political work” in their own countries.

“Why are there are so many terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Egypt [and] European countries,” al-Abadi demanded to know. “If it is due to the political situation in Iraq, why are Americans, French and German [fighters] in Iraq?”

His comments were made during a gathering in Paris by senior leaders of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (ISIS), which despite allegedly successful airstrikes, has continued to make gains in Iraq and Syria.

“This is a failure on the part of the world,” Abadi told reporters ahead of the meeting. “There is a lot of talk of support for Iraq. There is very little on the ground.”

The anti-Islamic State conference is being held just weeks after Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, fell to ISIS militants. The humiliating defeat occurred despite the Iraqi army — including Baghdad’s U.S. special operations-trained “Golden Division” — outnumbering ISIS militants by at least 5 to 1 (some estimate 10 to 1).

Abadi said the campaign efforts are “too little,” and called on the U.S. and allies to increase their air and weapons assistance, and stop holding up arms shipments.

But, even though there is no shortage of criticism of the administration’s actions to combat the Islamic State, military experts and spokesman say the issue is a bit more complicated than al-Abadi is portraying.

“The dirty little secret is that there is no more Iraq,” says retired Lt. Colonel Tony Schaffer. He also noted that the Anbar Awakening that helped turn the tide and win the Iraq War is not possible because, in addition to the pleas by Sunni tribesman falling on deaf ears at the White House, Prime Minister al-Abadi and the Shiite majority continue to create disaffected Sunnis in Iraq.

Still, Schaffer has been extremely critical of the Obama administration’s strategy — or, lack thereof — to defeat the Islamic State.

By some estimates, including one from an Air Force pilot who stoke to PPD last week, roughly 75 percent of all bombing missions in Iraq and Syria return with their payloads. Pilots blame a politically correct bureaucracy taking their marching orders from the Obama administration, which compartmentalizes each and every engagement decision.

“They say we will not indiscriminately attack targets and risk alienating Iraqi civilians, yet I literally watch militants execute those citizens because I am not permitted to engage targets,” he said. “We are in a catch 22, a morally reprehensible catch 22.”

Similarly, a Navy F-18 pilot who has flown missions against ISIS also voiced his frustration to Fox News recently.

“There were times I had groups of ISIS fighters in my sights,” he said. “But I couldn’t get clearance to engage.”

However, officials at the Pentagon defended the strategy when asked to respond to the reports by PPD.

“Our position is that the strike process is designed to do exactly what it is supposed to do,” Air Force spokesman Capt. Andrew Caulk responded in an email. “We target Daesh (ISIS) when we find them and in a way that protects civilians. We will not stoop to the level of our enemy and put civilians more in harm’s way than absolutely necessary.”

The growing chorus of voices criticizing the limited role of the U.S. in Iraq and the Middle East, in general, includes regional allies.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar — all of which are allied with the United States against the ISIS and Shiite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — have pushed the administration for a more active role in the fight. In response, officials note that the United States has shipped 2,000 anti-tank rockets to the Iraqi military in recent weeks, trained 7,000 Iraqi soldiers and is currently training another 4,000.

Ultimately, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest let the cat out of the bag while answering questions about the fall of Ramadi, which follows the fall of other major cities in Iraq, i.e. Mosul and Tikrit (the birthplace of Saddam Hussein and famed muslim military commander Saladin).

“The United States is not going to be responsible for securing the security situation inside of Iraq,” Earnest said. “Our strategy is to support the Iraqi security forces in doing what we will not do for them. The United States is prepared to train them, to equip them, and to back them on the battlefield with coalition military air power as they take the fight to ISIL in their own country.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Tuesday

Politics

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, D-Calif., during a news conference where republican leaders discussed plans for the new year after the House Republican Caucus in the U.S. Capitol on January 8, 2014. (Photo: Douglas Graham/Getty Images)

GOP Leadership Planning Repeal Vote Ahead of SCOTUS Ruling on ObamaCare Subsidies, Without Alternative

A memo from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Cali., reveals GOP leadership is planning votes to repeal ObamaCare provisions a few days before the Supreme Court hands down a decision that could gut the president’s signature health care law.

According to the memo, the Republican-controlled House will vote the third week of June to repeal the tax on medical devices, and the law’s provision that gives a board of appointees the power to cut Medicare doctor payments if the program’s spending grows beyond expectations. Considering the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) announced last year they can no longer stand by their initial projections claiming budget neutrality on the law, but rather revised their spending estimates to reflect a budget-busting program, the latter is likely.

The formation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, is dependent upon the growth of spending as a result of ObamaCare, and has been one of the most controversial provision in the law.

However, despite the law’s deep unpopularity and the fact the planned vote will not repeal the law in its entirety, the memo indicates the GOP will not offer a single alternative solution.

“Beyond Obamacare’s added costs, reduced choice and access to Medicare Advantage plans for seniors, the law’s 15 person Independent Payment Advisory Board acts as a de facto rationing body through arbitrary cuts to providers that can effectively stop access to care in order to control costs,” McCarthy wrote.

The proposed vote will come down just days before the Supreme Court is expected to hand down the King v. Burwell decision, which could end ObamaCare subsidies for the millions of Americans who purchased health insurance plans through the federal marketplace online. The lower federal courts have ruled that the administration and the IRS knowingly and illegally offered subsidies to those living in states where state-based exchanges were rejected.

While the administration’s lawyers argued the law intended to allow for the practice, in truth, Democrats were unable to revise and introduce amended legislation to do just that because they lost their House majority and multiple Senate seats in the 2009 – 2010 elections. In particular, the election of former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown in a devastating upset victory to replace the late Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy forced House Democrats to pass the bill that did not provide for subsidies through the federal exchange.

ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber was caught on video admitting the subsidies weren’t permitted by the law, and set off a political firestorm last year when another video surfaced of Gruber saying Democrats and the president relied upon a “lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American voter” to pass the bill.

Regardless, the GOP runs the risk of facing the wrath of voters if they are blamed for already-skyrocketing healthcare costs climbing even higher as a result of the lawsuit. Yet, in the face of this risk, the House majority leader’s memo doesn’t prioritize an alternative.

To be sure, the cost of healthcare in 2016 was destined to give voters a rate shock simply because the law backloaded much of the law’s cost increases to avoid the 2014 elections. This week, insurance companies around the nation began providing states with their proposed premium rates for 2016, which include premium rate hikes of up to 51 percent in New Mexico and more than 30 percent in Maryland and Tennessee.

Up until now, premium increases, though a reality, have been modest compared to the out-of-pocket cost increases under the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. Sky-high deductibles have thus far offset the necessary cost increases, but premiums were always on the time and will inevitably rise.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, for instance, which is the state’s largest insurance provider, requested to raise premiums by an average of 36.3 percent.

In addition to the ObamaCare repeal votes, according to the memo, the House is also planning a vote on various Medicare-related measures. In piece of legislation, the GOP would delay the government’s authority to terminate privately-run Medicare plans that underperform, while another would require the government to annually report on enrollment data for such plans.

Aside from related medical cures bill recently passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee, McCarthy offered no plan to counter the rising costs of healthcare or provide political cover for the party.

[caption id="attachment_25836" align="aligncenter" width="740"] House Majority Whip

Opinion

baltimore-mayor-stephanie rawlings-blake

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake struggles to answer questions from Leland Vittert of FOX News regarding the crime boom.

Baltimore is now paying the price for irresponsible words and actions, not only by young thugs in the streets, but also by its mayor and the state prosecutor, both of whom threw the police to the wolves, in order to curry favor with local voters.

Now murders in Baltimore in May have been more than double what they were in May last year, and higher than in any May in the past 15 years. Meanwhile, the number of arrests is down by more than 50 percent.

Various other communities across the country are experiencing very similar explosions of crime and reductions of arrests, in the wake of anti-police mob rampages from coast to coast that the media sanitize as “protests.”

None of this should be surprising. In her carefully researched 2010 book, “Are Cops Racist?” Heather Mac Donald pointed out that, after anti-police campaigns, cops tended to do less policing and criminals tended to commit more crimes.

If all this has been known for years, why do the same mistakes keep getting made?

Mainly because it is not a mistake for those people who are looking out for their own political careers. Critics who accuse the mayor of Baltimore and the Maryland prosecutor of incompetence, for their irresponsible words and actions, are ignoring the possibility that these two elected officials are protecting and promoting their own chances of remaining in office or of moving on up to higher offices.

Racial demagoguery gains votes for politicians, money for race hustling lawyers and a combination of money, power and notoriety for armies of professional activists, ideologues and shakedown artists.

So let’s not be so quick to say that people are incompetent when they say things that make no sense to us. Attacking the police makes sense in terms of politicians’ personal interests, and often in terms of the media’s personal interests or ideological leanings, even if what they say bears little or no resemblance to the facts.

Of course, all these benefits have costs. There is no free lunch. But the costs are paid by others, including men, women and children who are paying with their lives in ghettos around the country, as politicians think of ever more ways they can restrict or scapegoat the police.

The Obama administration’s Department of Justice has been leading the charge, when it comes to presuming the police to be guilty — not only until proven innocent, but even after grand juries have gone over all the facts and acquitted the police.

Not only Attorney General Holder, but President Obama himself, has repeatedly come out with public statements against the police in racial cases, long before the full facts were known. Nor have they confined their intervention to inflammatory words.

The Department of Justice has threatened various local police departments with lawsuits unless they adopt the federal government’s ideas about how police work should be done.

The high cost of lawsuits virtually guarantees that the local police department is going to have to settle the case by bowing to the Justice Department’s demands — not on the merits, but because the federal government has a lot more money than a local police department, and can litigate the case until the local police department runs out of the money needed to do their work.

By and large, what the federal government imposes on local police departments may be summarized as kinder, gentler policing. This is not a new idea, nor an idea that has not been tested in practice.

It was tested in New York under Mayor David Dinkins more than 20 years ago. The opposite approach was also tested when Dinkins was succeeded as mayor by Rudolph Giuliani, who imposed tough policing policies — which brought the murder rate down to a fraction of what it had been under Dinkins.

Unfortunately, when some people experience years of safety, they assume that means that there are no dangers. That is why New York’s current mayor is moving back in the direction of Mayor Dinkins. It is also the politically expedient thing to do.

And innocent men, women and children — most of them black — will pay with their lives in New York, as they have in Baltimore and elsewhere.

Baltimore is now paying the price for

Policy


Washington_State_Capitol

The Washington State Legislature meets in the Legislative Building on the Washington State Capitol campus in Olympia.

Every so often, I get asked why I’m so rigidly opposed to tax hikes in general and so vociferously against the imposition of new taxes in particular. In part, my hostility is an ideological reflex When pressed, though, I’ll confess that there are situations – in theory – where more taxes might be acceptable.

But there’s a giant gap between theory and reality. In the real world, I can’t think of a single instance in which higher taxes led to a fiscally responsible outcome.

That’s true on the national level. And it’s also true at the state level.

Speaking of which, the Wall Street Journal is – to put it mildly – not very happy at the tax-aholic behavior of Connecticut politicians. Here’s some of what was in a recent editorial.

The Census Bureau says Connecticut was one of six states that lost population in fiscal 2013-2014, and a Gallup poll in the second half of 2013 found that about half of Nutmeg Staters would migrate if they could. Now the Democrats who run the state want to drive the other half out too. That’s the best way to explain the frenzy by Governor Dannel Malloy and the legislature to raise taxes again… Mr. Malloy promised last year during his re-election campaign that he wouldn’t raise taxes, but that’s what he also said in 2010. In 2011 he signed a $2.6 billion tax hike promising that it would eliminate a budget deficit. Having won re-election he’s now back seeking another $650 million in tax hikes. But that’s not enough for the legislature, which has floated $1.5 billion in tax increases. Add a state-wide municipal sales tax that some lawmakers want, and the total could hit $2.1 billion over two years.

In other words, higher taxes in recent years have been used to fund more spending.

And now the politicians are hoping to play the same trick another time.

Apparently they don’t care that they’ve turned the Nutmeg State into a New England version of Illinois.

…the state grew a scant 0.9% in 2013, the last year state data are available. That was tied for tenth worst in the U.S. The state’s average compounded annual growth for the last four years is 0.42%. Slow growth means less tax revenue but spending never slows down. Some “40% of the state budget goes to government employee compensation and benefits, including payroll, state pensions, teacher pensions and current and retiree health care,” says Carol Platt Liebau, president of the Hartford-based Yankee Institute. …The Tax Foundation ranks Connecticut as one of the 10 worst states to do business. The state finished last in Gallup’s Job Creation Index in 2014 and now ties with Rhode Island for the worst job creation in the index since 2008.

What’s particularly discouraging is that Connecticut didn’t even have an income tax twenty-five years ago. But once the politicians got a new source of revenue, it’s been one tax hike after another.

Not too many years ago Connecticut was a tax refuge for New York City workers, but since it imposed an income tax in 1991 the rate has kept climbing, as it always does.

There are a couple of lessons from the disaster in Connecticut.

First and foremost, never give politicians a new source of revenue, which has very important implications for the debate in Washington, DC, about a value-added tax.

Unless, of course, you want to enable a bigger burden of government.

And for the states that don’t already have an income tax, the lesson is very clear. Under no circumstances should you allow your politicians to follow Connecticut on the path to fiscal perfidy.

Yet that’s exactly what may be happening in America’s northwest corner. As reported by the Seattle Times, there’s a plan percolating to create an income tax in the state of Washington. It’s being sold as a revenue swap.

State Treasurer Jim McIntire has a “grand bargain” in mind on tax reform and he wants to bend your ear. …the McIntire plan would institute a 5 percent personal-income tax with some exemptions, eliminate the state property tax and reduce business taxes. The plan would raise billions of dollars… The proposal also would lower the state sales tax to 5.5 percent from 6.5 percent.

But taxpayers should be very suspicious, particularly since politicians are talking about the need for more “investment,” which is a common rhetorical trick used by politicians who want to squander more money.

“It is mathematically impossible for us to sustain an adequate investment in education on a shrinking tax base,” he said.

And when you read the fine print, it turns out that the politicians (and the interest groups in the government bureaucracy) want a lot more additional money from taxpayers.

…the plan would raise $7 billion in state revenue but would lower local levies by $3 billion, for an overall increase of about $4 billion.

Advocates of the new tax would prefer to avoid any discussion of big-picture principles.

“We need to have less of an ideological conversation about this,” he said in a news conference.

And their desire to avoid a philosophical discussion is understandable. After all, the big spenders didn’t fare so well the last time voters had a chance to vote on whether the state should impose an income tax.

Voters may not welcome McIntire’s argument, either. In 2010, a proposed income tax on high earners failed by a nearly 30-point margin.

The voters in Washington were very wise back in 2010, so let’s hope they haven’t lost their skepticism about the revenue plans of politicians over the past few years.

There’s every reason to suspect, after all, that the adoption of an income tax would be just as disastrous for the Evergreen State as it was for the Nutmeg State.

To close, I want to share some great advice that was presented by the always sound Professor Richard Vedder. I was at a conference a few years ago where he was also one of the speakers. Asked to comment on whether the Lone Star State should have an income tax, he threw his hands in the air and cried out with passion that, “Texas should give the Alamo to Osama bin Laden before allowing an income tax.”

So if I’m ever asked to speak in Seattle on fiscal policy, I’m going to steal Richard’s approach and and warn that “The state of Washington should give the Space Needle to North Korea before allowing an income tax.”

I doubt I’ll capture Professor Vedder’s rhetorical flair, but there won’t be any doubt that I’ll be 100-percent serious about the dangers of a state income tax.

And what about my home state of Connecticut?

Well, I don’t know of any big landmarks that they could have traded to avoid an income tax. About the only “good” thing to say is that New York’s tax system is probably even worse.
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Washington State should look to Connecticut before

Economy


ISM-manufacturing-index

The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Report On Business Survey. (Photo: REUTERS)

The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) Manufacturing Report On Business Survey rose slightly in May to a reading of 52.8, up from 51.5 in April.

The ISM survey barely beat out the MarketWatch-compiled economist survey for a reading of 51.8, though any reading over 50 indicates expansion.

The new orders component rose 2.3 points to 55.8, and the employment index also improved.

Still, the survey wasn’t very upbeat and followed disturbing data from the Midwest last week.

The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago’s gauge of factory activity in the Midwest region fell to 46.2 in May from 52.3 the month prior, with every single subindex falling into contraction territoy. Wall Street, which had expected April’s rebound to hold, forecast the gauge to rise to 53.

The Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) Manufacturing

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