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Politics


newt-wolf-blitzer-gop-debate-cnn

Newt Gingrich scolds moderator Wolf Blitzer in a 2012 Republican debate for opening up the forum with a question about a 10-year-old story involving his ex-wife.

Fox News announced Wednesday night it will partner with Facebook to host the first Republican debate on Aug. 6 at the Quicken Loans Arena in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Though Republicans are expected to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 19 candidates — give or take a few — according to the rules, only the top 10 candidates will be allowed to take the stage at the event moderated by Fox anchors Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace.

In addition to their position in the RCP average of polls, candidates must have formally registered for a presidential campaign with the Federal Election Commission and have paid all necessary federal and state filing fees. For candidates who are excluded based on the five most recent national polls, Fox indicated it would give “additional coverage and airtime” during the day of the debate.

“We support and respect the decision Fox has made, which will match the greatest number of candidates we have ever had on a debate stage,” said Chairman Reince Priebus.

In the post-mortem GOP autopsy report conducted after the party’s 2012 loss, Republicans said the debate schedule caused the party to lose control of their message. Even though a total of 9 candidates participated in certain primary debates, it was concern over the left-leaning bias of the “mainstream” media during no fewer than 26 debates and forums that was paramount. Fox and CNN each held six formal debate, while NBC and CNBC held four. Liberal outlets MSNBC and Politico each held one, ironically at the Reagan Library. ABC held two and CBS held one. There were also seven “forums.”

It was a completely predictable quagmire and an equally predictable Republican bash-fest by so-called moderators. Chairman Priebus was bent on not repeating the same mistake in 2016, even going so far as to threaten to ban NBC and CNN if they chose to air a puff-piece, hour-long glamor special on Hillary Clinton.

“The committee chose to limit the number of debates, spread the debates across the country by sanctioning no more than one debate per state, allocate the debates over the course of seven months, include a larger conservative media presence and allow campaigns to know and plan for the debate schedule early,” the RNC said in a statement.

This time around, Fox will get three, to include one that will be televised on Fox Business, CNN will get to host two; NBC two, with one on CNBC; and the other two networks, ABC and CBS, will each get one.

However, they never planned for the number of candidates that are expected to announce this cycle, and no party has ever had more than 10 candidates on the stage at one time. Priebus only said publicly that he wanted to avoid the ridiculous number of debates, but privately he has been concerned with the number of debating candidates, and indicated limits such as Fox and CNN has imposed would be welcome.

CNN, who will host the second Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California on Sept. 16, has chosen to go with a two-tier model. Candidates polling in the top 10 will debate in their respective group, while the remaining candidates will debate each other in a group of candidates polling at 1 percent or higher. Further, CNN has said debate participants must have at least one paid campaign staffer in two of the early voting states and have had visited two of those states at least one time.

As of now, according to both the RCP average and PPD average of polls, the chief executive of the very important battleground state where the first debate will take place, Gov. John Kasich, would be excluded. The same is true of Carly Fiorina, who declared her candidacy earlier this month, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is forming an exploratory committee, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is expected to announce his campaign next month. Along with Gov. Kasich, these hopefuls are all polling at or below 2 percent.

The 2012 runner-up, Rick Santorum, who will announce his candidacy in two weeks, is polling at just 2.3 percent, just behind Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 2.4 percent. If the debates were held today, they would barely make the cut. But the first debate is not for another two months, an eternity in the world of politics and duration of time that is likely to see another 5 candidates added to the list.

“By constructing and instituting a sound debate process, it will allow candidates to bring their ideas and vision to Americans in a timely and efficient way,” he said. “This schedule ensures we will have a robust discussion among our candidates while also allowing the candidates to focus their time engaging with Republican voters. It is exciting that Republicans will have such a large bench of candidates to choose from, and the sanctioned debate process ensures voters will have a chance to gain a chance to hear from them.”

Whether or not Mr. Priebus has solved one problem only to have missed the rise of an even larger problem, has yet to be seen. But for the debates to have offered voters any meaningful opportunity to make an informed decision, at all, he and the networks had no other choice.

Fox News announced Wednesday it will host

Economy


existing homes sales reuters

(Photo: REUTERS)

The National Association of Realtors said Thursday existing home sales in the U.S. fell by 3.3 percent to an annual rate of 5.04 million units. Wall Street was expecting an increase to 5.24 million units, according to a poll of economists conducted by Reuters.

“April’s setback is the result of lagging supply relative to demand and the upward pressure it’s putting on prices,” said Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at NAR. “However, the overall data and feedback we’re hearing from Realtors® continues to point to elevated levels of buying interest compared to a year ago. With low interest rates and job growth, more buyers will be encouraged to enter the market unless prices accelerate even higher in relation to incomes.”

The number of homes on the market last month fell 0.9 percent from a year earlier, helping push the median home price up 8.9 percent from the same month in 2014. However, inadequate inventories pushed prices higher, while March’s sales pace was revised up to 5.21 million units from the previously reported 5.19 million units.

“Housing inventory declined from last year and supply in many markets is very tight, which in turn is leading to bidding wars, faster price growth and properties selling at a quicker pace,” says Yun. “To put it in perspective, roughly 40 percent of properties sold last month went at or above asking price, the highest since NAR began tracking this monthly data in December 2012.”

The percent share of first–time buyers remained at 30 percent in April for the second consecutive month. First–time buyers represented 29 percent of all buyers in April 2014, only a slight gain despite the increase in risk the government is artificially injecting into the housing market.

Distressed sales4 — foreclosures and short sales — were 10 percent of sales in April, unchanged from March and below the 15 percent share a year ago. Seven percent of April sales were foreclosures and 3 percent were short sales. Foreclosures sold for an average discount of 20 percent below market value in April (16 percent in March), while short sales were also discounted 14 percent (16 percent in March).

Still, NAR President Chris Polychron, the executive broker with 1st Choice Realty in Hot Springs, Ark., continued to advocate for a grace period through the end of 2015, which would delay enforcement of the new rules set up by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act and Truth in Lending Act.

“There likely will be bumps in the closing process while all parties get used to the new requirements,” he said. “We hope that the move away from the HUD–1 is smooth, but even if only 10 percent of transactions experience closing issues, that’s as many as 40,000 transactions a month.”

Regional Breakdown

April existing–home sales in the Northeast declined 3.1 percent to an annual rate of 620,000, but are 1.6 percent above a year ago. The median price in the Northeast was $253,200, which is 3.6 percent higher than April 2014.

In the Midwest, existing–home sales increased 1.7 percent to an annual rate of 1.22 million in April, and are 13.0 percent above April 2014. The median price in the Midwest was $173,700, up 11.4 percent from a year ago.

Existing–home sales in the South declined 6.8 percent to an annual rate of 2.04 million in April, but are still 3.6 percent above April 2014. The median price in the South was $189,400, up 8.5 percent from a year ago.

Existing–home sales in the West decreased 1.7 percent to an annual rate of 1.16 million in April, but are still 6.4 percent above a year ago. The median price in the West was $318,700, which is 10.0 percent above April 2014.

[caption id="attachment_25418" align="aligncenter" width="740"] (Photo: REUTERS)[/caption] The National

Economy


long-term-unemployed-jobless-benefits

IRS building in New York. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The Labor Department reported Thursday that weekly jobless claims for the week ending May 16 rose to a seasonally adjusted 274,000, an increase of 10,000 from the previous week’s unrevised 264,000 figure.

The 4-week moving average was 266,250 — which is widely considered to be a getter gauge of the labor market, as it irons out weekly volatility — decreased by 5,500 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 271,750. While this is the lowest level for this average since April 15, 2000 when it was 266,250, a survey released Wednesday offers a bleak labor market picture that isn’t apparent by the headline numbers.

“The State of the Unemployed,” a Harris survey of 1,553 working-age Americans conducted for Express Employment Professionals, found that 40 percent of unemployed Americans have completely given up looking for work.

“We often hear people theorizing about what motivates the unemployed or how joblessness is affecting the lives of our fellow Americans. Instead of guessing, we decided to ask them,” said Bob Funk, CEO of Express Employment Professionals and a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. “This survey shows that some of the troubling trends we observed last year are continuing. While the economy is indeed getting better for some, for others who have been unemployed long-term, they are increasingly being left behind.”

The survey helps to explain the disparity between the Labor Department’s data and reality, even though the government claims no state was triggered “on” the Extended Benefits program during the week ending May 2.

The labor report said the total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending May 2 was 2,195,714, which is a decrease of 58,933 from the previous week and down from 2,620,550 claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2014. While on the surface it may appear the long-term unemployment picture is getting better, it is largely a reflection of the number of ineligible people who have exhausted their benefits.

In reality, compared to last year, the average duration of unemployment has increased by greater than three months, from 23.2 months to 26.8 months. Further, more than two out of five unemployed Americans have been jobless for more than two years. That represents an increase from 2014, when 32 percent said they had been out of work for more than two years.

Among the roughly 9,000,000 Americans currently unemployed, 14 percent are receiving unemployment benefits and 89 percent say they would “search harder and wider” for work if their benefits ran out before finding a job. This is a typical finding and an economic reality, which is why repeatedly extending long-term unemployment benefits as advocated by the Obama administration and Democrats, may sound rosy but is simply bad economic policy.

Those receiving benefits were asked whether they agree with a series of statements about unemployment compensation benefits.

  • 40 percent agree that “I haven’t had to look for work as hard knowing I have some income to rely on.”
  • 36 percent agree that it “has allowed me to turn down positions that weren’t right for me.”
  • 69 percent agree that it “is giving me a cushion so that I can take my time in searching for a job.”
  • 59 percent agree that it “has allowed me to take time for myself.”

    • Meanwhile, 37 percent of unemployed American say they have never applied and 32 percent say they are not eligible. But, for a whopping 22 percent, which represents roughly two million Americans, benefits have already run out, and nine percent were denied.

    “Over the last year, we have seen the unemployment rate go down, but we too easily forget that there are people still hurting, still wanting to work, but on the verge of giving up,” Funk said. “I believe everyone who wants to work should have a job, so we must not overlook those who have been left behind and left out of the job market.”

    The Labor Department weekly jobless claims report

    Politics, Video

    Glenn-Beck-05-20-15

    Glenn Beck speaks on his radio program May 20, 2015. (Photo: TheBlaze TV)

    On his radio program Wednesday, Glenn Beck said a new report confirming the U.S. was gun-running from Benghazi to Syria before the Sept. 11, 2012 Benghazi terror attack “must end the hope of any presidency for Hillary Clinton.”

    U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others were murdered during the pre-planned attack emails prove Clinton and other top administration officials knew had nothing to do with a video, as then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice stated on five Sunday shows the weekend after the attack.

    “The fact is we had four dead Americans!” Clinton said to Sen. Ron Johnson, R- Wis., at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

    Beck, who played an audio of him saying the same thing in the days and weeks after the attack, slammed Hillary Clinton for stooping to the tactics he says she learned from her husband, former President Bill Clinton, which was on full display during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

    “Or is it because you were running guns to Syrians against the law?” Beck demanded. “Why did they not send somebody in? Why did they let the bad guys break down the gates and steal everything that was in that house, including the ambassador? Because there was evidence of gun running there. So they couldn’t go in and save him.”

    The Clinton playbook is well-known in Washington circles, and consists of denying wrongdoing until the American people lose interest and stop paying attention.

    “You lie, lie, lie, lie. Drag it out. People get sick of it,” Beck summarized. “People don’t want anything to do with it and it’s over. The most damaging thing we have learned in 50 years, maybe in the history of our country, was that lesson. We did it wrong.”

    Hillary Rodham Clinton issued an official statement following the attack claiming the assault was the result of “a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet.” Shortly after, while speaking at the ceremonial return of the victims’ bodies, Clinton said that the attack was prompted by “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with,” promising the families that the man who made the video would pay.

    However, emails recently obtained by PPD via Judicial Watch proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the former secretary of state knew that was a lie.

    “I said at the time they were doing something illegal. And the president was told, ‘Go away, Mr. President, so you are not touchable on this,’” Beck recalled. “Remember how far they distanced him from that? And we said at one point, ‘Do you want the president of the United States to look like a guy who had a nap during a fire fight?’ It didn’t make any sense leading up to the election, unless they were doing something illegal.”

    This week, PPD obtained documents further proving Beck’s suspicions were correct.

    “Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria,” an internal DIA document dated October 2012 states. “The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155mm howitzers missiles.”

    “And the president, standing in front of the UN and lecturing the United States of America about a video,” Beck added in an agonized tone. “It had nothing to do with the video! They were running guns.”

    Beck also said that the Benghazi scandal is worse than Watergate and Iran-Contra combined, and “if this country has any chance of getting well,” it cannot elect Clinton, who was at the epicenter of the coverup. He added that considering recent allegations of corruption at the Clinton Foundation with these new revelations, “if we don’t clean up that Clinton mess, it is indeed over and we are … worse than Mexico.”

    Watch Video Below (H/T TheBlaze.com:

    Glenn Beck said Wednesday a new report

    Opinion


    Obama-Constitution-burning

    Photo: WND

    What if we didn’t have a Constitution? What if the government were elected by custom and tradition, but not by law? What if election procedures and official titles and government responsibilities merely followed those that preceded them, and not because any of this was compelled by law, but because that’s what folks came to expect?

    What if those elected to office, and those appointed to it, as well, took oaths to uphold the Constitution? What if those who took the oaths promised fidelity to the Constitution? What if the Constitution declares itself to be the supreme law of the land? What if the supreme law of the land means what it says?

    What if all in government, from presidents to park rangers, from generals to janitors, from judges to jail guards, take substantially the same oath? What if very few who have taken their oaths take them seriously? What if very few who have taken their oaths have actually read the Constitution? What if very few who have taken their oaths understand the values the Constitution upholds?

    What if even fewer understand the historical, moral and legal bases for those values? What if most who took those oaths did so expecting someone else in government to tell them what the Constitution means and how to deal with it?

    What if the whole purpose of the Constitution is to limit the government, not to unleash it?

    What if the plain language of the Constitution puts clear limits on what the government in America may lawfully do? What if those in government began cutting constitutional corners about 100 years ago and overlooked prohibitions and limitations in the Constitution because they enjoyed exercising power over others and because they thought they knew what was best for everyone?

    What if those prohibitions and limitations — some of which were in the corners that were cut — were written into the Constitution intentionally to keep the government off the backs of the people?

    What if personal liberty is the birthright of all persons? What if government is essentially the negation of that liberty?

    What if the Constitution represents the value judgment of Americans that our rights are higher in value than the government’s powers to interfere with them? What if those who wrote the Constitution believed that personal liberty is the default position and government power the exception? What if the Constitution means that our rights should be maximum and government minimum?

    What if our rights are natural components of our humanity? What if that humanity is a gift from God? What if we were created in His image and likeness? What if the greatest likeness we have with Him and the greatest gift from Him is free will? What if we are perfectly free as He is perfectly free?

    What if He created us with such free will that we are free to reject Him? What if we are so free that we are free to reject the government? What logic could underlie an argument that we are free to reject the Creator who made us but not free to reject the government we created?

    What if a government that rejects its own Constitution were to be rejected by the people? What if the people have had enough of politicians and government leaders who promise safety and demand the surrender of liberty? What if liberty once surrendered is never returned? What if the liberty-for-safety trade is a facade that impairs both liberty and safety?

    What if that trade makes government’s job easier, but does not keep us safer? What if the Constitution was written to keep the government’s job from becoming too easy? What if it is easier to listen to everyone’s phone calls than only to those as to whom the government has probable cause to listen? What if the Constitution recognizes that liberty is personal and cannot be sacrificed by a majority vote of representatives, but only by individual consent?

    What if the greatest right protected by the Constitution is the right to be left alone, the right to be oneself, the right to answer only to one’s own free will? What if the Framers who wrote the Constitution so valued the right to privacy that they wrote very specific criteria into the Constitution to govern the government’s ability to interfere with it? What if the government violated those criteria millions of times a day in the name of safety?

    What if the violation of the right to privacy is a gateway to all other government violations of personal liberty? What if every government witch hunt never stops until it finds or creates a witch?

    What if every government inquisition never stops until it finds or creates a heretic? What if government does create modern-day witches and heretics and then arrests them and seeks credit for keeping us safe from them? What if they never posed any threat? What if we fall for this?

    What if those who love power defeat those who love liberty in a government election? What if there is no one left to enforce the Constitution against those in power?

    What if all this is happening right under our noses? What do we do about it?

    Judge Andrew Napolitano: What if we didn't

    Policy

    fair-tax-rally-dc

    Supporters of the fair tax and flat tax model hold a Tax Day rally in Washington D.C. (Photo: AP)

    In my ultimate fantasy world, Washington wouldn’t need any sort of broad-based tax because we succeeded in shrinking the federal government back to the very limited size and scope envisioned by our Founding Fathers.

    In my more realistic fantasy world, we might not be able to restore constitutional limits on Washington, but at least we could reform the tax code so that revenues were generated in a less destructive fashion.

    That’s why I’m a big advocate of a simple and fair flat tax, which has several desirable features. The rate is as low as possible, to minimize penalties on productive behavior. There’s no double taxation, so no more bias against saving and investment.

    And there are no distorting loopholes that bribe people into inefficient choices.

    But not everyone is on board, The class-warfare crowd will never like a flat tax. And Washington insiders hate tax reform because it undermines their power.

    But there are also sensible people who are hesitant to back fundamental reform.

    Consider what Reihan Salam just wrote for National Review. He starts with a reasonably fair description of the proposal.

    The original flat tax, championed by the economists Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka, which formed the basis of Steve Forbes’s flat-tax proposal in 1996, is a single-rate tax on consumption, with a substantial exemption to make the tax progressive at the low end of the household-income distribution.

    Though if I want to nit-pick, I could point out that the flat tax has effective progressivity across all incomes because the family-based exemption is available to everyone. As such, a poor household pays nothing. A middle-income household might have an effective tax rate of 12 percent. And the tax rate for Bill Gates would be asymptotically approaching 17 percent (or whatever the statutory rate is).

    My far greater concerns arise when Reihan delves into economic analysis.

    …the Hall-Rabushka tax would be highly regressive, in part because high-income households tend to consume less of their income than lower-income households and because investment income would not be taxed (or rather double-taxed).

    This is a very schizophrenic passage since he makes a claim of regressivity even though he acknowledged that the flat tax has effective progressivity just a few sentences earlier.

    And since he admits that the flat tax actually does tax income that is saved and invested (but only one time rather than over and over again, as can happen in the current system), it’s puzzling why he says the system is “highly regressive.”

    double-taxation-chart

    If he simply said the flat tax was far less progressive (i.e., less discriminatory) than the current system, that would have been fine.

    Here’s the next passage that rubbed me the wrong way.

    …there is some dispute over whether ending the double taxation of savings would yield significant growth dividends. Chris William Sanchirico of Penn Law School takes a skeptical view in a review of the academic research on the subject, in part because cutting capital-income taxation as part of a revenue-neutral reform would require offsetting increases in labor-income taxation, which would dampen long-term economic growth in their own right.

    I’m not even sure where to start. First, Reihan seems to dismiss the role of dynamic scoring in enabling low tax rates on labor. Second, he cites just one professor about growth effects and overlooks the overwhelming evidence from other perspectives. And third, he says the flat tax would be revenue neutral, when virtually every plan that’s been proposed combines tax reform with a tax cut.

    On a somewhat more positive note, Reihan then suggests that lawmakers instead embrace “universal savings accounts” as an alternative to sweeping tax reform.

    Instead of campaigning for a flat tax, GOP candidates ought to consider backing Universal Savings Accounts (USAs)… The main difference between USAs and Roth IRAs is that “withdrawals could be made at any time for any reason,” a change that would make the accounts far more attractive to far more people. …Unlike a wholesale shift to consumption taxation, USAs with a contribution limit are a modest step in the same general direction, which future reformers can build on.

    I have no objection to incremental reform to reduce double taxation, and I’ve previously written about the attractiveness of USAs, so it sounds like we’re on the same page. And if you get rid of all double taxation and keep rates about where they are now, you get the Rubio-Lee tax plan, which I’ve also argued is a positive reform.

    But then he closes with an endorsement of more redistribution through the tax code.

    Republicans should put Earned Income Tax Credit expansion and other measures to improve work incentives for low-income households at the heart of their tax-reform agenda.

    I want to improve work incentives, but it’s important to realize that the EIC is “refundable,” which is simply an inside-the-beltway term for spending that is laundered through the tax code. In other words, the government isn’t refunding taxes to people. It’s giving money to people who don’t owe taxes.

    As an economist, I definitely think it’s better to pay people to work instead of subsidizing them for not working. But we also need to understand that this additional spending has two negative tax implications.

    1. When politicians spend more money, that either increases pressure for tax increases or it makes tax cuts more difficult to achieve.
    2. The EIC is supposed to boost labor force participation, but the evidence is mixed on this point, and any possible benefit with regards to the number of people working may be offset by reductions in actual hours worked because the phase out of the EIC’s wage subsidy is akin to a steep increase in marginal tax rates on additional labor supply.

    In any event, I don’t want the federal government in the business of redistributing income. We’ll get much better results, both for poor people and taxpayers, if state and local government compete and innovate to figure out the best ways of ending dependency.

    The rest of Reihan’s column is more focused on political obstacles to the flat tax. Since I’ve expressed pessimism on getting a flat tax in my lifetime, I can’t really argue too strenuously with those points.

    In closing, I used “friendly fight” in the title of this post for a reason. I don’t get the sense that Mr. Salam is opposed to good policy. Indeed, I would be very surprised if he preferred thecurrent convoluted system over the flat tax.

    But if there was a spectrum with “prudence” and “caution” on one side and “bold” and “aggressive” on the other side, I suspect we wouldn’t be on the same side. And since it’s good for there to be both types of people in any movement, that’s a good thing.

    P.S. I got a special treat this morning. I was at Reagan Airport for a flight to Detroit at the same time as a bunch of America’s World War II vets arrived on an Honor Flight to visit the WWII Memorial.

    Here’s my rather pathetic attempt to get a photo of one of the vets being greeted.

    Since I’ll never be in demand as a photographer, you should watch this video to learn more about this great private initiative to honor World War II veterans.

    [brid video=”8818″ player=”1929″ title=”Honor Flight Stories Ryan Story”]

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

    In Fiscal Fights Part 1, CATO economist

    Opinion


    cleveland-ghetto

    Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker.” — Proverbs 14:31

    It’s not my habit to start a column with a quotation from the Bible, but this one’s loaded with self-professed Christians, so why not?

    In the mid-1990s, during my time as a metro reporter and feature writer for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, I started writing stories about people who lived in poverty.

    I learned early to avoid certain words and descriptions that ignited the ire of certain readers who would rather shame fellow Americans for their dire circumstances than consider why so many of them live in poverty. And often just blocks away from our front doors.

    As a columnist, I still sometimes fall back on those rules:

    Unless crucial to the story, don’t refer to the flat-screen television in the living room or the car in the driveway, no matter how many miles are on it. A depressing number of people will want to know why a poor person needs a TV or an independent mode of transportation.

    Avoid mentioning a tattoo unless it’s central to the narrative. Even then, brace yourself for the onslaught of angry readers demanding to know whether taxpayer money paid for that ink.

    And just skip the part about the gold cross dangling around the neck of the grieving mother. I admit this is born of self-preservation. The number of people who are more interested in how she got her jewelry than how her son died will eat at your soul.

    So here we are, facing another round of legislative attempts to humiliate poor people who can’t fight back. Lots of headlines but little noise from most of us. I’m not the cynic who thinks everybody’s heart has shriveled to stone. I do, however, worry that our exhaustion is fueling these heartless victories.

    In Missouri, the pending House Bill 813 stipulates, “A recipient of supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits shall not use such benefits to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak.”

    This bill was introduced by state Rep. Rick Brattin, who identifies himself and his family on his website as “devoted Christians.”

    In Wisconsin, a new bill would dictate that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits could not be used to buy crab, lobster, shrimp or any other variety of shellfish.

    Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, the Baptist preacher’s son who insists his marching orders come from God, wants to take it further: Anyone who applies for unemployment, food stamps or another assistance program would have to prove his or her sobriety.

    “This is not a punitive measure. This is about getting people ready for work,” he said. “I’m not making it harder to get government assistance. I’m making it easier to get a job.”

    In Kansas, we have Gov. Sam Brownback, who last year said, “Our dependence is not on big government, but it’s on a big God, who loves us and lives within us.”

    Brownback just signed a bill into law that prevents welfare recipients from spending their assistance on “expenditures in a liquor store, casino, jewelry store, tattoo or body piercing parlor, spa, massage parlor, nail salon, lingerie shop, tobacco paraphernalia store, vapor cigarette store, psychic or fortune telling business, bail bond company, video arcade, movie theater, swimming pool, cruise ship, theme park, dog or horse racing facility or sexually oriented retail business.”

    You might wonder whether there was any evidence of such widespread spending, but that would mean you’re in search of facts and you’re definitely not going to fit in with this crowd.

    State Sen. Michael O’Donnell, also the son of a pastor who likes to mention Jesus when explaining his opposition to helping the poor, told the Topeka Capital-Journal last month: “We’re trying to make sure those benefits are used the way they were intended. This is about prosperity. This is about having a great life.”

    Democratic state Sen. David Haley’s response: “This is a troubling elitism here that this body is embracing during what, for many of us, is Holy Week. We really have to look in the mirror. We can’t say something on Wednesday and shift gears on Sunday and think somebody isn’t paying attention.”

    As the late Rev. William Sloane Coffin once put it, “it is ironic to think of the number of people in this country who pray for the poor and needy on Sunday and spend the rest of the week complaining that the government is doing something about them.”

    “Ironic” isn’t the word that immediately comes to my mind, but what do I know? I’m just a Christian-in-training, not one of those experts willing to insult our Maker.

    Gov. Scott Walker and Ohio State Sen.

    Politics, Video


    hillary-supports-accomplishment-iowa

    A focus group of ten Iowa Democrats were assembled by Bloomberg Politics, but were unable to name a single accomplishment by Hillary Clinton during her 4-year tenure as secretary of state. (Photo: Bloomberg Politics)

    Hillary supporters in Iowa Wednesday were unable to name a single accomplishment of Mrs. Clinton during her 4-year tenure as secretary of state.

    Bloomberg Politics questioned a group of Iowa Democrats to discuss former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign for presidential in 2016. Obviously, it was unanimous that Clinton represented Democrats’ best chance to keep and win the White House in 2016, but it appears the sentiment says more about the weak Democratic bench this cycle than Clinton’s actual accomplishments.

    When host Mark Halperin asked them to name one thing Clinton accomplished while she was secretary of state, they were Dems caught in the headlights.

    “I really can’t name anything off the top of my head,” one of the Democrats replied. “Give me a minute, go someplace else,” another person jokingly replied.

    Yet another Democrat argued she didn’t really “follow along” with everything that was “going on” during Clinton’s tenure at the State Department.

    “I mean it’s either going to be that or it’s going to be Scott Walker, you know, taking away, destroying America’s unions,” replied Ryan, a 24-year-old graphic designer, said. “And there’s just, you know, she’s not perfect. But she’s been in the eye for a long time, in the public’s eye, and you’re going to have some stuff on her. But she has great policies and she knows how to get stuff done.”

    Watch a clip from the interview via Bloomberg Politics below:

    [brid video=”8817″ player=”1929″ title=”Iowa Dems Can’t Name Single Accomplishement by Hillary as Sec. Of State”]

    This isn’t the first video showing Hillary supporters unable to credit the former first lady and secretary of state with any meaningful accomplishment. And, no doubt, it won’t be the last.

    A panel of Hillary supporters in Iowa

    Economy


    Zeen-101-WordPress-Leaky-Paywall

    File Photo: UniPress, left, and Leaky Paywall, right, from Zeen101 have helped WordPress revolutionize the Internet publishing industry. (Photos: Zeen101)

    Since it’s release on May 27, 2003, the WordPress content management system (CMS) has evolved from a blogging platform to an industry leader in Internet publishing. Their brilliance was in their decision to make WordPress a free, open source software for a community of loyal users, entrepreneurs, theme designers and plugin contributors in need of an easy-to-use yet versatile platform.

    Research from W3Techs found that 15 percent of the world’s one million largest websites are powered by WordPress, and over 54 percent of all websites using a CMS. As the pie chart below demonstrates, WordPress now powers 23.9 percent of all websites and is gobbling up marketshare quickly.

    By comparison, Joomla, a CMS competitor, is in a very distant second used by just 7.2 percent of all the websites whose content management system we know. Joomla’s market share represents just 2.9 percent of all websites. WordPress.org recently boasted that 22 out of every 100 new active domains in the United States are running WordPress, and the popularity of WordPress is evident from a simple search in Google Trends.

    wordpress-google-trends

    However, as forward-thinking and innovative as Team WordPress (WordPress Foundation) has proven themselves to be, they cannot take all of the credit for their platform’s market dominance. There are scores of companies and individuals who, from the beginning, saw the potential in WordPress and helped grow the platform to the website-running giant it is now.

    Recently, we had a chance to speak with the head of one of those companies. Peter Ericson is the co-founder of Zeen101, who together with Lew Ayotte, runs what is undoubtedly the most important company in existence for premium site publishers on the WordPress CMS, whether they know it or not.

    The story of Zeen101 is inseparable from the evolution of WordPress from a simple blogging platform to one now used by news organizations, magazines, eCommerce sites and scores of other industries with an Internet presence. By default, a website’s homepage on the WordPress CMS displays a simple blogroll of the site’s latest “posts.” Prior to version 1.5, that was not just the default but the only option.

    “I started in a general web development company, but the tech wasn’t there to give clients more flexibility” Ericson said. “We found a plugin that changed the WordPress frontpage from a blog to a static homepage. I thought ‘this can be a website, not just a blog.'”

    Dartmouth-Engineer-Summer-2011-Issue-Cover

    Cover of the Summer 2011 issue of the Dartmouth Engineer. (Photo: Zeen101)

    The publisher solutions that would come to be developed and offered by Zeen101 began with meeting the demand of a client — Dartmouth College — who told Ericson they needed a way to put Dartmouth Engineer Magazine online to reach alumni, current and prospective students. Basically, publishers at the Dartmouth Engineer — and later, the Atlantis Rising Magazine — wanted a digital version on WordPress.

    For every need there is a product, that is, if the individual or the company has enough vision and skill to meet the demand. In this case, the demand was met by supplying Dartmouth with the Issue Manager Theme, which was originally developed to help Dartmouth manage each issue produced. The software also allowed publishers to easily design and publish digital issues without sacrificing quality of content, or quality and content.

    From Issue Manager Theme To IssueM

    Ericson and Ayotte decided to develop the plugin version of IssueManager, and shortened its name to IssueM. Because they made the move right around the time WordPress developed the custom post type functionality, the newly designed plugin gave clients the ability to abandon the blogging “post” default for an “article,” which for obvious reasons is far more conducive to publishing news and magazine issue content.

    The $50.00 purchases were coming, but not fast enough. So, two years ago, in the true spirit of WordPress, they decided to make the core software free, or open source, submitting it to the WordPress.org plugin directory. The business model, which stands to this day, consisted of offering premium products to use alongside the free core software, which would inevitably include the Leaky Paywall, the mobile app management software UniPress, and multiple traditional and native ad management tools.

    “At the time, my wife gave me a rough time. She thought I was crazy to offer IssueM for free,” Ericson joked. “But on the flip side, you have to have a plan to monetize that give-away.”

    It was a gamble, but one he says every WordPress software developer should consider making if, again, they have a plan to monetize.

    “If anyone is thinking of taking their software open source, if you can, absolutely do it.”

    With the core software on the open source directory, Zeen101 opened themselves up to reviews from the who’s who in the WordPress community. It proved to be a boon.

    “What I like about IssueM (as well as being free) is that it is super simple and intuitive to use,” Leanne King, a writer for the popular site WP Queen said. “You simply create the Issue of your Magazine in the dashboard of WordPress and then add articles to each issue. Easy peasy. Out of the box, it’s a quick, elegant and free solution to get started as an online magazine publisher for your niche.”

    Meanwhile, with positive reviews making the rounds, Zeen101 continued to build publications and sell other premium software that integrates with IssueM. The help desk is continuously looking for patterns in the requests that come in from clients, which identifies common publisher needs that could be considered for development.

    Dartmouth got them in the door with other schools in need of publisher solutions, including Simmons, Middlebury, Yale, Berkley and the State University of New York. They have even begun to make inroads into other commercial and professional industries, such as the American Bar Association.

    A few years back, while Peter was browsing the RSS reader Feedly, he saw an article about the The New York Times beginning the evolution into the metered paywall model. It was a rocky rollout for The Times, but pioneering the metered paywall, which essentially allows readers to view a predetermined number of articles before prompting them to subscribe, turned out to be a profitable success.

    Even prior to the more-known paywall pilot by The Times, the model had been on Ericson’s radar. He had been watching Marco Arment experiment with The Magazine, which he later sold.

    “The Magazine started with a metered paywall, and I thought it was coming and needed to jump on it,” he said.

    There are two practical benefits to the metered paywall juxtaposed to the hard paywall model used by most others at the time, including The Wall Street Journal, which continues to use the model. Unlike a hard paywall, with a “leaky” paywall Google still crawls the articles and pages on the site, and social media shares aren’t, well, pointless.

    To be sure, others have caught on to at least a variation of the model used at Zeen101, but there are some stark differences. Perhaps the most known paywall alternative, TinyPass, which is well-funded by corporate sponsors and venture capitalists, has several challenges in the growing WordPress publishing market.

    “As far as Leaky Paywall or Zeen101, in general, in comparison to TinyPass and others, we come from the core of WordPress,” Ericson said.

    TinyPass is certainly not WordPress-specific and was clearly not designed with WordPress publishers, who represent the vast majority of CMS consumers, in mind. Because they aren’t WordPress-centric, there is only so much their software can do.

    In addition to the lack of functionality — or, the inability to provide a truly all-in-one, consolidating solution — TinyPass also generates revenue from subscription transactions. Leaky Paywall offers publishers the option to pay a one-time, inexpensive fee, allowing them to keep what will be a far larger portion of their profits.

    Ask any WordPress publisher with a news or magazine niche what their main priority or request would be, and they will tell you integration and syndication. Whether they are running a small, local publication or a national outlet, no administrator or editor can spend precious time republishing articles from their main site to mobile apps or redesigning advertisement space for each platform. According to an industry leader, that model simply isn’t viable anymore. Publishers will have to find new and faster ways to deliver their content to users, or drown.

    “The business model for media agencies needs to change,” says David Hohman, the Executive Vice President at Nielsen. “Many agencies still operate according to an old-school billable hours model, but as tech companies and platform vendors bring new services to the marketing and advertising world, media agencies are going to need to evolve faster.”

    Nielson-Total_Audience_Infographic

    “Publishers are starting to realize they can integrate their platform with a seamless and easy, inexpensive solution,” Ericson notes. “If publishers want to implement a paywall on their digital publication, integrate their site content, traditional and native ad management with mobile apps, there’s no other way to do it.”

    (Disclosure: For all the obvious reasons above, People’s Pundit Daily is also a Zeen101 client.)

    WordPress has evolved into a CMS market

    Science


    greenhouse-gases-power-plant

    Steam and smoke is seen over the coal burning power plant in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, on Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

    Yet another country has joined a growing list of nations caught “adjusting” climate change data to show global warming trends across the world. Global warming skeptics argue global warming, or climate change, is more a man-made scam than a man-made problem, but alarmists contend the evidence in conclusive and debate is over.

    Initially reported historical weather data, however, is apparently being altered by countries across the world, including the United States.

    Dr. H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute says that Switzerland has joined Australia, Paraguay, and the United States in “adjusting” their weather data in an effort to prove global warming is real.

    “Switzerland joins a growing list of countries whose temperature measurements have been adjusted to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instruments,” Burnett wrote. “In previous editions of Climate Change Weekly, I reported weather bureaus in Australia and Paraguay were caught adjusting datasets from their temperature gauges. After the adjustment, the temperatures reported were consistently higher than those actually recorded.”

    Burnett focused on a report from Swiss Science journalist Markus Schär, which shows a “doubling of the temperature trend.”

    “For example, in Sion and Zurich, [the Swiss Meteorological Service] adjustments resulted in a doubling of the temperature trend,” Burnett writes. “Schär notes there has been an 18-year-pause in rising temperatures, even with data-tampering. As a result, Schär calls the adjustments a ‘propaganda trick, and not a valid trend.'”

    In February, PPD reported that oft-cited climate data are being systematically “adjusted” or “revised” to show global warming trends. In fact, while fact-checking the work of Telegraph journalist Christopher Booker on the research of Paul Homewood, we found official temperatures published by governmental agencies in South America and the United States, which are the very data sets used by climate change alarmists to argue global warming trends, did not match the initial reported temperatures from weather stations.

    PPD found — and illustrated the juxtaposition in a graph — suspicious one-way “adjustments” of originally recorded temperatures first by the U.S. government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN), whose data were then amplified by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC).

    Now, with the latest adjustments out of Switzerland and other nations being revealed, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is apparently launching an investigation to determine whether data adjustments by government meteorological bureaus are justified, and whether they have been carried out using “sound scientific methods.”

    “Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists,” Burnett wrote.

    In truth, this is not the first time the so-called scientific community, which politicians would have us believe make up a consensus, have been caught manipulating temperature data. In 2012, it was revealed that the average state temperature records used in current trend analysis from the NCDC, which is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), do not reflect the actual published paper records from the past. Temperatures published in Monthly Weather Reviews and Climatological Data Summaries from 1920s & 1930s have been “revised” to reflect “cooling.”

    Yet another country has joined a growing

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