CTPP Monthly meeting Monday March 10 - 7:30pm

Cleveland Tea Party Patriots

Monthly meeting Monday March 10, 2014 at 7:30pm

Please join us for our monthly meeting Monday March 10, 2014 at 7:30pm.

This will be a very important meeting that will actually be a lead in for our monthly meeting in April in which our guest speaker will be Mr. Tom Kelly who will be speaking in regards to the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) rate increases and how you can help stop them.

In our upcoming meeting we will be discussing and showing how you can start to become an influence in your community, which will be an important first step not only in supporting the efforts of reigning in the abusive and unaccountable NEORSD.

Agenda:

• Tea Party Patriots / National

• 2014 Primary Races

• Influencing Your Community

Please be mindful, the work, organizing and efforts of what we do now, is a direct relation to the results we see in November.  We cannot expect to stop the progressive creep and establishment GOP if people only want to be involved 2 weeks prior to the elections.  

While we deal with upcoming issues, we will continue to preach the mantra of "all politics are local" and how what we do this year all leads up to the 2016 Presidential race.

• Date: Monday 3/10/14
• Time: 7:30pm - 9:00pm
• Location: Crowne Centre Building
• Address: 5005 Rockside Rd Suite #960, Independence, OH  (Map)

NOTE: Enter through the Crowne Centre front or back entrance and take the elevators to the 9th floor.

We look forward to seeing you there! Feel free to bring a friend!

Ted Cruz: "God bless the Tea Party"

The Top 13 Things You Missed 

At Tea Party Patriots' 5 Year Anniversary Event

Tea Party Patriots has a great report on last week's Anniversary event in DC, with Quick Quotes by Mark Levin, Mike Lee, Louie Gohmert, Jenny Beth Martin, Jim Jordan, Michelle Bachmann, Rand Paul, among others. And Sen. Ted Cruz. Just go here. 

States Lining Up to Retake Control of Healthcare

With more and more states looking for ways out of the failed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Health Care Compact is the one option that not only lets them remove themselves from the chains of the PPACA, but will also give them the fiscal freedom and legislative liberty to address their health care concerns and costs at the state level.

Currently 8 states (UT, TX, OK, MO, IN, AL, SC & GA) have passed the Health Care Compact, and it has been introduced in 9 more states (WA, CO, KS, LA, TN, MI, FL, NH & OH). 

Ohio is hoping to be the ninth state to pass the Health Care Compact, Ohio HB 227 which is making its way through the OH House State & Local Government Committee and will hopefully be on the House Floor for a full vote.

From the Daily Caller --

The states cannot rely on Washington to correct the travesty that is Obamacare. After forty-seven votes to repeal or reform the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Congress has not been able to even hold Health and Human Services (HHS) accountable for the website folly, including over $1 billion spent for federal exchange and data services contract awards.

From the opaque political proceedings, to passage by desperate arm-twisting and bribes, to the exceptions granted favored groups including members of Congress and staff, to the eighteen unilateral, politically expedient White House revisions, to the un-competitively contracted website disaster, the formation and implementation of PPACA has done grave injury to the political process.

Americans are now watching the entire Act collapse under the weight of its own illegitimacy. Obamacare has, thus far, served to discourage Americans from working, vastly expanded the Medicaid entitlement, caused the cancelation of millions of private insurance plans, pledged tax funds to underwrite insurance’s losses, increased premium costs by an average of 41 percent, and distanced doctors from patients.

Jonathan Turley, noted constitutional scholar who generally supports President Obama’s policies has said,

I think many people will come to loathe that they remained silent during this period. . . . I think that many people will look back at this period in history and see nothing but confusion as to why people remained so silent when the president asserted these types of unilateral actions. You have a president who is claiming the right to basically rewrite or ignore or negate federal laws. That is a dangerous thing.

Of course, when Americans think of federal law, this spectacle of harried negotiation and frantic deal-making that produced a 2,700 page reconciliation product called the PPACA “law” was as repugnant as Washington sausage-making gets. Key Senators and Congress-members writing in a pending federal appellate amicus brief called the law “disjointed, confusing, and even self-contradictory,” describing it as a “preliminary draft” that was pushed to preempt the filibuster after the election of Republican Senator Scott Brown.

The American public is well aware that Congress generally did not read the PPACA, nor did members deliberate the terms in reconciliation. Now that we are all “finding out what is in it,” sixty-four percent of Americans polled said that the ACA would not have passed “if we knew then what we know today.”

States seeking a way to defend the constitutional order have signed on to lawsuits challenging the legal foundations upon which Obamacare is rationalized. So far, legal challenges have failed.

There is another way that states may organize to pull healthcare back from Washington: the Healthcare Compact. Eight states have already agreed to join in a compact designed to restore control of medical services and systems to the states. An additional ten states are now actively considering adopting the Compact.

Recently, Congressman James Lankford introduced H.J. Res. 110 to authorize “member states … to implement their own health care systems without interference from federal bureaucrats.”

Interstate compacts between states have been in place since before the nation was formed. They have been used over two hundred times to address regional concerns, settle disputes, and defend state sovereignty. For example, compacts have been utilized to organize emergency management, resolve transportation issues, and establish regulatory consistency. Currently, many states are now participating in twenty-five or more compacts.

The Healthcare Compact simply returns healthcare administration to the states. Comparable to a block grant, this compact would provide for allocation of funds back to the states as currently designated by Washington. The Compact also establishes an advisory Healthcare Commission that would convene to recommend non-binding resolutions, assess healthcare issues, and publish data.

At the very least, Congress is obligated to make good on attempts to repeal Obamacare and should expedite approval of the multistate Healthcare Compact. The grant of congressional consent would uphold constitutionally mandated state police power vesting oversight of “health, safety, and welfare” matters in the states. This sovereign state authority logically includes the regulation of healthcare policy.

The federal government has countered that it has the constitutional power to tax and spend for the general welfare and that universal healthcare is a justifiable federal interest. Indeed, this taxing authority rationale was the basis for Chief Justice Roberts’ legal defense of the individual mandate. However, even a wildly imaginative interpretation of the tax-and-spend power could not be construed to license the capricious federal meddling and legislative tampering now imposed upon the most personal medical affairs of state citizens.

States should not pass on this opportunity to reacquire control of healthcare matters while resolving the question of state sovereignty. Moreover, Congress has a constitutional duty to allow state laboratories of advanced technology, medical innovation, and economic incentive to fix the mess that Washington has made.

Some states like Vermont have already expressed interest in a single payer plan whereas other states might choose a plan based upon Indiana’s successful trial of health savings accounts for government employees. Private organizations have demonstrated great results with cooperative plans that promote individual responsibility and comparative shopping for medical services. Health maintenance organizations like Kaiser Permanente have been able to offer reasonable premiums while featuring preventative programs. States are far better positioned than the federal government best to determine the options that are most efficient and effective.

If entrepreneurial states are given a chance to show that they can do a vastly superior job of providing quality care at competitive cost, they will also restore faith in the American reputation for innovative, reliable, and quality medical care. More importantly, returning healthcare to state management will advance a core American ethic: state dynamism and self-determination.

Karen Lugo is Director of the Center for Tenth Amendment Action at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. 

IRS Targeting: connecting the dots

Photo credit: themoderatevoice.com

Tea Party and other patriot groups have been targeted by the IRS, in most cases, enduring endless delays in the approval of the tax-exempt 501(c)(4) classification. A former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Bradley A. Smith, lays out the incriminating timeline in today’s WSJ online:

Connecting the Dots in the IRS Scandal

The 'smoking gun' in the targeting of conservative groups 

has been hiding in plain sight.

The mainstream press has justified its lack of coverage over the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups because there's been no "smoking gun" tying President Obama to the scandal. This betrays a remarkable, if not willful, failure to understand abuse of power. The political pressure on the IRS to delay or deny tax-exempt status for conservative groups has been obvious to anyone who cares to open his eyes. It did not come from a direct order from the White House, but it didn't have to.

First, some background: On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Citizens United v. FEC upholding the right of corporations and unions to make independent expenditures in political races. Then, on March 26, relying on Citizens United, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the rights of persons (including corporations) to pool resources for political purposes. This allowed the creation of "super PACs" as well as corporate contributions to groups organized under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code that spend in political races.

The reaction to Citizens United was no secret. Various news outlets such as CNN noted that "Democrats fear the decision has given the traditionally pro-business GOP a powerful new advantage."

The 501(c)(4) groups in question are officially known as "social-welfare organizations." They have for decades been permitted to engage in political activity under IRS rules, so long as their primary purpose (generally understood to be more than 50% of their activity) wasn't political. They are permitted to lobby without limitation and are not required to disclose their donors. The groups span the political spectrum, from the National Rifle Association to Common Cause to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. If forced out of 501(c)(4) status, these nonprofit advocacy groups would have to reorganize as for-profit corporations and pay taxes on donations received, or reorganize as "political committees" under Section 527 of the IRS Code and be forced to disclose their donors.

Now consider the following events, all of which were either widely reported, publicly released by officeholders or revealed later in testimony to Congress. These are the dots the media refuse to connect:

• Jan. 27, 2010: President Obama criticizes Citizens United in his State of the Union address and asks Congress to "correct" the decision.

• Feb. 11, 2010: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) says he will introduce legislation known as the Disclose Act to place new restrictions on some political activity by corporations and force more public disclosure of contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations. Mr. Schumer says the bill is intended to "embarrass companies" out of exercising the rights recognized inCitizens United. "The deterrent effect should not be underestimated," he said.

• Soon after, in March 2010, Mr. Obama publicly criticizes conservative 501(c)(4) organizations engaging in politics. In his Aug. 21 radio address, he warns Americans about "shadowy groups with harmless sounding names" and a "corporate takeover of our democracy."

• Sept. 28, 2010: Mr. Obama publicly accuses conservative 501(c)(4) organizations of "posing as not-for-profit, social welfare and trade groups." Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, asks the IRS to investigate 501(c)(4)s, specifically citing Americans for Job Security, an advocacy group that says its role is to "put forth a pro-growth, pro-jobs message to the American people."

• Oct. 11, 2010: Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) asks the IRS to investigate the conservative 501(c)(4) Crossroads GPS and "other organizations."

• April 2011: White House officials confirm that Mr. Obama is considering an executive order that would require all government contractors to disclose their donations to politically active organizations as part of their bids for government work. The proposal is later dropped amid opposition across the political spectrum.

• Feb. 16, 2012: Seven Democratic senators— Michael Bennet (Colo.), Al Franken (Minn.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Mr. Schumer, Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Tom Udall (N.M.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.)—write to the IRS asking for an investigation of conservative 501(c)(4) organizations.

• March 12, 2012: The same seven Democrats write another letter asking for further investigation of conservative 501(c)(4)s, claiming abuse of their tax status.

• July 27, 2012: Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) writes one of several letters to then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman seeking a probe of nine conservative groups, plus two liberal and one centrist organization. In 2013 testimony to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, former IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller describes Sen. Levin as complaining "bitterly" to the IRS and demanding investigations.

• Aug. 31, 2012: In another letter to the IRS, Sen. Levin calls its failure to investigate and prosecute targeted organizations "unacceptable."

• Dec. 14, 2012: The liberal media outlet ProPublica receives Crossroads GPS's 2010 application for tax-exempt status from the IRS. Because the group's tax-exempt status had not been recognized, the application was confidential. ProPublica publishes the full application. It later reports that it received nine confidential pending applications from IRS agents, six of which it published. None of the applications was from a left-leaning organization.

• April 9, 2013: Sen. Whitehouse convenes the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism to examine nonprofits. He alleges that nonprofits are violating federal law by making false statements about their political activities and donors and using shell companies to donate to super PACs to hide donors' identities. He berates Patricia Haynes, then-deputy chief of Criminal Investigation at the IRS, for not prosecuting conservative nonprofits.

• May 10, 2013: Sen. Levin announces that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold hearings on "the IRS's failure to enforce the law requiring that tax-exempt 501(c)(4)s be engaged exclusively in social welfare activities, not partisan politics." Three days later he postpones the hearings when Lois Lerner (then-director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division) reveals that the IRS had been targeting and delaying the applications of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.

• Nov. 29, 2013: The IRS proposes new rules redefining "political activity" to include activities such as voter-registration drives and the production of nonpartisan legislative scorecards to restrict what the agency deems as excessive spending on campaigns by tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups. Even many liberal nonprofits argue that the rule goes too far in limiting their political activity—but the main target appears to be the conservative 501(c)(4)s that have so irritated Democrats.

• Feb. 13, 2014: The Hill newspaper reports that "Senate Democrats facing tough elections this year want the Internal Revenue Service to play a more aggressive role in regulating outside groups expected to spend millions of dollars on their races."

In 1170, King Henry II is said to have cried out, on hearing of the latest actions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Four knights then murdered the archbishop. Many in the U.S. media still willfully refuse to see anything connecting the murder of the archbishop to any actions or abuse of power by the king.

Last call to register your opposition to IRS regulations here. Deadline is today.

  

Another Day, another Obamacare Disaster

From The Washington Post --

In a colossal “oh by the way” revelation, last Friday afternoon the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency under the United States Department of Health and Human Services (that would be the executive branch run by President Obama), quietly released a report exposing the fact that under Obamacare, two-thirds of Americans who work at small businesses will see their insurance premiums increase. So this report – which is more than two years late – says over 11 million American workers will have higher health insurance premiums because of Obamacare. Despite the administration’s attempts to, as House Speaker John Boehner put it, “delay and deemphasize” the report, we now have it straight from the Obama administration that Obamacare will raise health-insurance premiums for American workers. That is a far cry from Obama’s 2008 campaign promise that families would see lower health insurance premiums – $2,500 lower, to be exact – under Obamacare.

When you want to hide something in Washington, you release it on a Friday

afternoon – but this latest Obamacare revelation is too big to ignore. Remarkably, there have been so many horrific disclosures of the deceit, inaccuracies, inadequacies and flaws in Obamacare that this latest report hasn’t stirred much outrage. On its face, the fact that the CMS says 11 million workers will see their health-insurance premiums increase should be a banner headline. But in the Obamacare narrative, disclosures like this have pretty much become routine. And that’s what the White House wants the media to think – that there’s no more juice in reporting another Obamacare lie or providing details about how this law is coming apart, undermining health care, killing jobs, decreasing American household income, leaving the uninsured uninsured, etc.

When challenged on the negative impacts of Obamacare, the White House Obamacare media strategy appears to be either to just deny the accuracy of obvious facts or to shrug and assure the compliant media that there is nothing new here. They are counting on the media watchdogs becoming bored with the Obamacare debacle.

There is no evidence that the Obama administration has any intention of rebooting its health-care policy or actually trying to fix the damage done by Obamacare. Instead, it’s decided to go with a strategy that my old boss, Lee Atwater, would love: “That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” No matter what the truth is, or what harm is done, it seems like this administration is dealing with the fallout from Obamacare by stiff-arming Congress and the press and giving the voters the finger.

They are making a bet that this approach will yield better 2014 election results than telling the truth, admitting mistakes and fixing problems.

Gov. Kasich’s State of the State

Yesterday evening, Governor John Kasich delivered his annual State of the State address in Medina. From the Third Base Politics blog, here are some highlights:

·         Kasich reiterated familiar points of his record, including the $8 billion shortfall he faced, 350,000 lost jobs and 89 cents left in the rainy day fund. Since then, Ohio has added 170,000 jobs and added $1.5 billion to the surplus fund while cutting taxes $3 billion and killing the death tax.

·         He said that JobsOhio is beginning to hit its stride. CEO magazine says that Ohio has the most improved business climate and touted Nestle CEO’s praise of the JobsOhio staff. They recently announced to move of 250 jobs from Chicago to Solon.

·         Kasich proposed a further round of tax cuts to finally get Ohio’s income tax rate below 5%. He said that $12 billion have left Ohio for states with lower income taxes since 1995.

·         Education was a major part of the governor’s speech, touting that last year the increase in state aid to schools was the largest in a decade.

·         The next challenge to address, he says, is the dropout rate in Ohio. 24,000 Ohio kids drop out of school every year, often leading to poverty. He proposes programs with 2-year colleges to make it easier for people to come back and get their high school diplomas. He wants to use casino receipts to create matching funds for communities and schools to create mentoring programs for students to help them succeed. He also believes we need to refocus on vocational education and bring vocational education down to kids as young as 7th grade.

·         He said that Ohio will be leading the nation by distributing money to universities based on classes completed and degree awarded, not just based on enrollment. He called for a statewide program for high school students to be able to earn college credits while still in high school.

·         The most emotional moment was when Governor Kasich presented the Ohio Medal of Courage to Amanda Berry, Gina deJesus and Michelle Knight, the three women who were help captive by a Cleveland man for nearly a decade. The three women received the longest and loudest ovation of the evening.

Libertarian candidate for Governor Charlie Earl comments and criticism of the SOTS is here. 

# # #

Common Core and privacy concerns

cartoon credit: cagle.com

Ohio may yet pass legislation to get rid of Common Core “standards” in our schools. And now Columnist/blogger Michelle Malkin reported on serious privacy issues - in addition to the quality-of-education problem:

. . .  Parents, teachers and administrators who object to the government education “standards” racket — which usurps local control, impedes academic achievement and undermines family privacy — have politicians on the defensive.  . . .

Common Core jerkitude is a bipartisan disease. Lair’s ridicule of grave parental concerns about Common Core data mining follows in the footsteps of Democratic U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (who derided opponents as “white suburban moms”) and GOP former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (who derided opponents’ motives as “purely political”). It’s all a snitty, snotty smokescreen that will backfire as more families from all parts of the political spectrum discover the truth about Common Core’s invasive nature.

Assessing Common Core is inextricably tied to the big business of data collection and data mining. States that took the Race to the Top bribes in exchange for adopting Common Core must now comply with the edutech requirements of two private testing conglomerates, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Common Core states also agreed to expand existing statewide longitudinal database systems that contain sensitive student data from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary education.

Will Estrada and Katie Tipton of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association conclude that “it will become increasingly difficult to protect the personal information of homeschool and private school students as these databases grow.” In addition to stimulus and Race to the Top enticements, both the Education and Labor Departments have funded several other initiatives to build and make various interoperable student and teacher databases.

“Before our eyes,” Estrada and Tipton warn, “a ‘national database’ is being created in which every public school student’s personal information and academic history will be stored.” It’s no laughing matter.

Just this week, SafeGov.org, a computer privacy watchdog group, reported that Google has admitted in recent court filings that “it data mines student emails for ad-targeting purposes outside of school, even when ad serving in school is turned off.” The newly exposed documents explicitly “confirm in a sworn public court declaration that even when ad serving is turned off in Google Apps for Education (GAFE), the contents of users’ emails are still being scanned by Google in order to target ads at those same users when they use the web outside of Google Apps (for example, when watching a YouTube video, conducting a Google search, or viewing a web page that contains a Google+ or DoubleClick cookie).” Last month, I reported on how Google is building brand loyalty through a questionable GAFE certification program that essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company.

. . .

Read the rest here.