Fiscal Cliff Talks Down to the Wire

At the clip, Charles Krauthammer praises Obama for his "ruthless" partisanship.

And at the Wall Street Journal, "Both Sides to Meet at White House; Any Deal Likely to Be Limited":

Congress and the White House took small steps toward breaking the budget impasse Thursday, but Democrats and Republicans grew increasingly fearful they won't be able to avert the tax increases and spending cuts known as the fiscal cliff, a prospect that is unnerving consumers and investors.

President Barack Obama invited congressional leaders to the White House on Friday afternoon for a last-ditch effort to broker a deal, as the Senate returned to Washington on Thursday. House GOP leaders said in a Thursday conference call with Republicans, who are growing nervous about their party being blamed for the deadlock, that the House will reconvene Sunday evening.

It is still possible the two sides can reach a deal, especially with the leaders meeting Friday. Any resolution would be a scaled-back version of the package Mr. Obama and congressional leaders had anticipated passing after the November election. The White House is pressing for the Senate to extend current tax rates for income up to $250,000, extend unemployment benefits, keep the alternative minimum tax from hitting millions of additional taxpayers and delay spending cuts set to take effect in January.

The 11th-hour strategy carries enormous risk because it leaves no margin for error in Congress's balky legislative machinery. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said the prospects for passage of a bill before the last day of the year are fading rapidly. "I have to be very honest," he said. "I don't know time-wise how it can happen now."

Anxiety about Washington's ability to resolve its budget battles is roiling the economy. Conference Board figures showed that consumer confidence fell in December to its lowest level since August, driven by a pessimistic outlook for economic activity next year.

Stocks have swung on the latest news from Washington. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply on Mr. Reid's pessimistic comments before recouping most of a 151-point drop on news the House would reconvene this weekend.

At best, leaders are looking at a narrow bill that could be passed at the last minute. At the meeting Friday, Mr. Obama will outline the elements he thinks should be in a deal and could get majority support in both chambers of Congress, according to a person familiar with the matter. He won't put forward a specific bill or legislative language, the person added.

Continue reading.

And at Telegraph UK, "Barack Obama will meet congressional leaders today at the White House for last-minute talks on a "fiscal cliff" deal to avoid automatic tax increases and broad spending cuts that threaten the US economy's recovery."

PREVIOUSLY: "America's Crisis of Big Government Cronyism and Corruption."

The Year the Dreams Died

From Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review (via BCF and Memeorandum):

Barack Obama in 2008 won an election on an upbeat message of change amid hopes that the first black president would mark a redemptive moment in American history. Four years later, the fantasies are gone. In continuing dismal economic times, Obama ran for reelection neither on his first-term achievements — Obamacare, bailouts, financial stimuli, and Keynesian mega-deficits — nor on more utopian promises.

Instead, Obama’s campaign systematically reduced his rival, Wall Street financier Mitt Romney, to a conniving, felonious financial pirate who did dastardly things, from letting the uninsured die to putting his pet dog Seamus in a cage on top of the family car.

Obama once had mused that he wished to be the mirror image of Ronald Reagan — successfully coaxing America to the left as the folksy Reagan had to the right. Instead, 2012 taught us that a calculating Obama is more a canny Richard Nixon, who likewise used any means necessary to be reelected on the premise that his rival would be even worse. But we know what eventually happened to the triumphant, pre-Watergate Nixon after November 1972; what will be the second-term wages of Obama’s winning ugly?

Well, it won't be impeachment, that's for sure. The Democrat-Media Complex has got Barack's back.

Continue reading.

NBC's David Gregory Under Investigation by Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police

Wiilliam Jacobson has been all over this story, "NBC News stonewalls inquiries regarding David Gregory and “active investigation” by D.C. Police":

As previously reported, last Sunday David Gregory held up what he described as high capacity AR-15 ammunition magazine, which would violate the District of Columbia’s gun law if the magazine were real.

My multiple attempts last Sunday to obtain a response from NBC News as to whether the magazine was real were met with stone cold silence. None of the three senior communications executives with responsibility for Meet the Press responded.

Now there is news via Breitbart.com (h/t Drudge) that the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department is investigating.

I spoke with Officer Alali, the spokesman on duty today at the MPD, who refused any further comment except to confirm that there is an “active investigation.”

It may be even worse for Gregory and NBC News. According to an e-mail received by The Patriots Perspective website, which originally broke the Gregory story, NBC News had inquired whether it was permitted to use the magazine and was told that it was not permitted. The authenticity of the email has not been verified.

More at the link.

And following it, here's Warner Todd Huston, at Big Journalism, "DC Police Investigating NBC's Gregory for Brandishing Illegal Magazine." Also at Patriot Perspective, "David Gregory Violated DC Gun Laws After Being Denied By DC Police?"

And here's a kicker, at the Weekly Standard, "W.H. Petition: 'Press Charges Against David Gregory' for Breaking D.C. Gun Laws." (Via Memeorandum.)

NewsBusted: 'Liberal Comedians Don't Make Fun of President Obama...'

Via Theo Spark:

Do You Believe the NRA's 'Grip on Congress' is Threatened?

I got a pretty good laugh out of this front-page story at yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "Gun lobby's grip on Congress threatened":

WASHINGTON — The gun-control debate sharpened Tuesday as President Obama backed an effort to revive the assault weapons ban spearheaded by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is poised to have a powerful new role as the head of the Senate committee overseeing gun laws.

Calls for federal gun restrictions were mounting following last week's shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. — even from lawmakers who had rejected them in the past. The National Rifle Assn. and its allies have successfully kept such efforts at bay for years, but the slayings of 20 children have roiled the politics of gun control and now challenge the gun lobby's hold on Capitol Hill.

I doubt it. The president's task-force on firearms is supposedly designed to freeze the politics of gun control. But even if it doesn't I don't think there's much support for gun control beyond a couple of token measures to make the left's extremists happy. We'll see. A good indicator going forward will be the direction the NRA takes in its press conference on Friday. The group exists to protect the rights of gun owners. It's not going to take all these pathetic attacks lying down. Word has it that the group's going to hammer mental health failures and the pop culture's glorification of violence. This oughta be good.

Obama Invokes Newtown Massacre to Attack GOP on Fiscal Cliff Negotiations

From Bryan Preston, at PJ Media, "Disgraceful: Obama Invokes Newtown Massacre to Pressure Republicans to Go Along with His Tax Hikes":

This has to be one of the lowest moments of a very low presidency. Why should the Newtown killings bring any sort of “perspective” to a spending crisis that Barack Obama has created?

More at that top link, and watch Krauthammer rip into the disgusting one, at the Right Scoop, "Krauthammer: Obama invoking the massacre of children to say GOP needs to accept his terms is a SACRILEGE!"

Union Thug Was Attacking Crowder Before Fists Flew in Viral Video

At Legal Insurrection, "Union member was taunting and confronting Steven Crowder prior to sucker punch."

More at Twitchy, "Steven Crowder promises more damning video of union thug violence."

No amount of evidence will satisfy the deranged progressive mob, but if stories like this are able to gain mainstream attention, and that's a big if, then Americans for once will get the genuine inside dope on these fiends.

Progressives suck.

Progressives Push 'Social Justice' in Public Education

A great post and video at Blazing Cat Fur, "Ending Progressive Public Education."

Also at Eye Crazy, "Good news everyone! Canadian school kids are now getting Marxist indoctrination in Math class."

Stimulus Forecasts Show Obama Can't Blame GOP for Poor Economy

At IBD, "Obama's Attacks On GOP Tax Policy Blunted By Own Data":

President Obama continues to blame the soft economy and record red ink on Republican policies, including "tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans."

But three years ago he seemed convinced the economy had made a clean break from those old policies, and would soon roar back on the strength of his own policies. The proof is in his economic projections.

In his 2010 budget, Obama predicted his American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would "jump-start our economy" and "create new jobs" and "many years of economic growth."

Stronger economic activity, he promised, would bring in more government revenues and "cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office," putting "our nation on sound fiscal footing."

"The time has come to usher in a new era — a new era of responsibility in which we act not only to save and create new jobs, but also to lay a new foundation of growth," the president said.

Didn't Deliver

His recovery plan included more than $1 trillion in new government spending. A Democrat-controlled Congress passed it without a single Republican vote.

Based on the new economic program, the White House forecast real GDP in 2012 would grow at a robust 4.6% clip, cutting the unemployment rate to 6.0%. It also saw the budget deficit dropping to 3.5% of the economy.

The projections didn't come even close to panning out. Real GDP growth has stagnated at 2%, while unemployment hovers near 8%. Far from being halved, the deficit had soared to 8.5% of GDP.

As the jobless rate soared to 10% — well beyond the promised 8% high point — the White House had to adjust its assumptions and timeline. In its 2012 budget, however, it still projected 4.0% economic growth.

Despite White House spin, it became clear the president's economic plan had failed to deliver on its promised stimulus.

They all knew this. Obama, David Axelrod, Stepanie Cutter --- they all knew all of this.

Which is why they lied 24/7 about the problems facing the country and launched the most unprincipled demagogic smears against private property and wealth accumulation in modern history. And it worked! I doubt four more years of economic stagnation will help the party maintain its general election majority, but then again, I was wrong about 2012, so who knows? Maybe another paradigm of lies will lift these criminal authoritarians to yet another presidential win in 2016. Democracy doesn't just collapse in one big instant, it withers away in the slow death of a thousand cuts. It's withering now under the Democrats, but all is not lost. The republic will survive when enough people who've been butt-reamed and had the wool pulled over their eyes wake up and scream, "I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Susan Rice Bemoans Partisanship in Whiney Withrawal as Secretary of State Nominee

It's all partisan politics with these people, all the time. And keep in mind it was moderate Senator Susan Collins who was the most implacable opponent to Rice's confirmation in the Senate. (And it was a chorus of leftist Democrats and journalists who've been leading the weeks-long opposition to Rice, but the White House never lets the truth get in the way of an epic smear against the right.)

And Rice took to the pages of the Washington Post to explain her withdrawal? She's a backbench bureaucrat. Nobody needs an op-ed to figure out what happened. Democrats are just horrible people. We watch it roll before out eyes every day. See: "Why I made the right call." (At Memeorandum.)

Steven Crowder's Family Under Police Protection

Crowder tweeted last night:

Right now I have a former police officer, heavily armed at my house protecting my wife. The threats are severe. Prayers appreciated.
— Steven Crowder (@scrowder) December 14, 2012

And at The Other McCain, "Left’s ‘Tent Truthers’ Claim Union Attack on AFP in Lansing Was an ‘Inside Job’."

Plus, from Dana Loesch, "Everything About This Article Is Idiotic."

Marcy Wheeler's Pro-Union Thuggery — And a Raging Homosexual's Blast From the Past!

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Union Violence in the Age of Obama

From Michelle Malkin, "'There Will Be Blood': Union Violence in the Age of Obama":

Yesterday [Tuesday], Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed right-to-work legislation into law. The death threats against him are pouring in. The Left is blaming the conservative victims of union violence, as usual. The progressive climate of hate is always our fault. Today’s column sets the Democrats’ call for blood in the context of Obama-era union violence and incitement.

He helped build that.

Read it all at the link. The thug violence in Lansing is not an aberration. It's not an isolated case. The attack on Crowder --- and the racist attack on the hot dog vender --- is just the latest example left-wing bullying and malevolent muscle. This is what they do. This is who they are.

Marcy Wheeler and the Americans for Prosperity Self-Sabotage Tent Conspiracy

This is one of the more classic cases of partisan hatred blinding an otherwise intelligent person into abject imbecility, if not progressive insanity.

"Emptywheel" is Marcy Wheeler, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, which just goes to show that even high-powered credentials are no guarantee against epic self-beclownment.

William Jacobson reports, "The Epistemic Closure of progressives to their violent union thugs." At the screencap union thugs are taking down the AFP tent:

Even more pathetic is how many other unhinged progs jumped on board, at Memeorandum, "Breitbart Folks Appear to Fake Violence in Lansing." Hilariously, lame-blogger Steve M. at No More Mr. Nice Blog sucks it all up, downplaying the vicious union thug attack on Steven Crowder as insignificant.

It's too easy with these people. This is the left. This is what they do. Just own it people. You folks won last month. Let's see if you can keep your majority. As it turns out, it's not going too well at the state level.

A Nation of Takers Hurtles Toward the Fiscal Abyss

From Bruce Thornton, at FrontPage Magazine:

The on-going negotiations over avoiding the tax hikes and spending cuts we call the “fiscal cliff” are the simply the latest act in a farce of self-serving political denial. For decades now both parties have overseen and nurtured the expansion of the entitlement state all the while ignoring the slow-motion economic implosion whose predictable end can be seen today in a bankrupt Greece currently surviving on EU handouts. But American voters and politicians are so marinated in expectations of endless federal and state largess that modest reductions in spending, such as those proposed earlier this year by Congressman Paul Ryan, are attacked as draconian “cuts” that will “shred” the safety net and throw millions into Dickensian penury.

And make no mistake. The “cliff” might not be reached in January, even without a deal. But it’s still waiting down the road. Baby Boomers, 75 million strong, are retiring at a rate of 200,000 a month, and they can expect to live on average until 84 if they make it to the retirement age of 65. The two big drivers of entitlement spending, Social Security and Medicare, weren’t designed to transfer money to retirees for so long, or pay for artificial knees and hips for Boomers who want to be active in their 70s and 80s. If left unreformed, spending just on Social Security and Medicare will eat up 14% of GDP in 40 years, necessitating even more federal borrowing than the 40 cents currently borrowed for every dollar the feds spend. That’s not a cliff, that’s an economic abyss.

Reining in entitlement spending, then, is the major problem that everybody needs to focus on. And a good place to start is Nicholas Eberstadt’s A Nation of Takers. Eberstadt’s grim documentation of the reckless expansion of what he calls the “vast and colossal empire of entitlement payments that it [the state] protects, manages, and finances,” and his analysis of the ill effects such transfers have had on the American character should be read by everyone serious about the fiscal threats to our way of life.

Redistributing wealth through programs like income maintenance, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance has become the federal government’s most important function. This development would have astonished the Founders, who codified national security and defense as the national government’s primary role. And this momentous shift has led to an accelerating number of Americans on some sort of dole. In the early 1980s, 30% of Americans received at least one government benefit. By 2011 just over 49% were. The costs of this increase have accelerated as well. In 1960, entitlement spending by government at all levels was $24 billion in today’s dollars. In 2011, the cost was almost $2.2 trillion. As Eberstadt glumly prophesizes, we are heading for “the day in which entitlement spending comes to exceed all other activities of all levels and branches of the U.S. government.”

The costs of such profligacy, however, are more than economic. These wealth transfers have had deleterious effects on traditional American character. Observers of the American character traditionally had remarked on what Eberstadt describes as a “fierce and principled independence” and “proud self-reliance.” This independence extended to financial self-reliance as well. Americans “viewed themselves as accountable for their own situation through their own achievements in an environment bursting with opportunity,” Eberstadt writes, and had “an affinity for personal enterprise and industry” and a “horror of dependency and contempt for anything that smacked of a mendicant mentality.” Accepting help or handouts was considered “an affront to their dignity and independence.” These are the strengths of character and virtue that have created the richest, freest, and most powerful nation in world history. But the federal government’s ever- increasing handouts––which these days are not considered signs of shame, but deserved legal and civil rights––are eroding these virtues.

Yeah, those virtues have been circling the drain for some time. And the Obama-Socialists have been all too happy to apply the plunger to accelerate the flushing action.

IMAGE CREDIT: The People's Cube, "In Progressive America Virtue Has No Value."

ObamaCare Slams Wisconsin Small Businesses

These interviews with businessmen are very revealing. Remember Sam Facchini's interview the other night? Well, more on his concerns coming out of Wisconsin, at the clip.

I was fairly skeptical reading Rivkin and Casey's case for new ObamaCare challenges at the Supreme Court. But one way or another something's going to happen. Perhaps the GOP's fortunes will change by 2016, winning the White House and the Senate, and Republicans will consider changing the law, or even replacing it. Something's going to happen, though, either way. The law's so messed up on so many levels, and so viciously unfair to those not well-enough connected to score a waiver. The small businesses are just getting hammered. It's completely un-American, but then, progressivism is un-American, so there you go.

The Opening for a Fresh ObamaCare Challenge

From Rivkin and Casey, at the Wall Street Journal:

The court's determination to preserve ObamaCare through "interpretation" has exacerbated the law's original flaws to the point that it has become palpably unworkable. By transforming the penalties for failing to comply with the law's requirements into a "tax," the court has given the public a green light to ignore ObamaCare's requirements when it is economically beneficial. Law-abiding individuals, who might otherwise have complied with the law's expensive purchase mandate to avoid being subjected to financial penalties, can simply now choose to pay a tax and not sign up for coverage. There is certainly no stigma attached to simply paying a tax, and noncompliance with the law's other requirements—such as those imposed on employers—is arguably made more attractive on the same basis. This effect fundamentally undercuts Congress's original purpose, which was to expand health-care coverage to the greatest number of people, not to improve federal revenues.

Similarly, having reviewed the likely costs and benefits, states are now taking advantage of the court-granted flexibility. Seven states, including Texas, Mississippi and Georgia, have so far opted out of the Medicaid-expansion provisions, and eight (with more certain to come) are refusing to create the insurance exchanges, leaving this to a federal bureaucracy unequipped to handle these new administrative burdens. As a result, a growing number of low-income Americans will be unable to obtain the free or cost-effective insurance that Congress originally meant them to have, although they remain subject to the mandate-tax.

Policy problems aside, by transforming the mandate into a tax to avoid one set of constitutional problems (Congress having exceeded its constitutionally enumerated powers), the court has created another problem. If the mandate is an indirect tax, as the Supreme Court held, then the Constitution's "Uniformity Clause" (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1) requires the tax to "be uniform throughout the United States." The Framers adopted this provision so that a group of dominant states could not shift the federal tax burden to the others. It was yet another constitutional device that was simultaneously designed to protect federalism and safeguard individual liberty.

The Supreme Court has rarely considered the Uniformity Clause's reach, but it cannot be ignored. The court also refused to impose meaningful limits on Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce for decades after the 1930s, until justices began to re-establish the constitutional balance in the 1990s with decisions leading up to the ObamaCare ruling this summer. And although the court has upheld as "uniform" taxes that affect states differently in practice, precedent makes clear that a permissible tax must "operate with the same force and effect in every place where the subject of it is found," as held in the Head Money Cases (1884). The ObamaCare tax arguably does not meet this standard.

ObamaCare provides that low-income taxpayers, who are nevertheless above the federal poverty line, can discharge their mandate-tax obligation by enrolling in the new, expanded Medicaid program, which serves as the functional equivalent of a tax credit. But that program will not now exist in every state because, as a matter of federal law, states can opt out. The actual tax burden will not be geographically uniform as the court's precedents require.

Thus, having transformed the individual mandate into a tax, the court may face renewed challenges to ObamaCare on uniformity grounds...

RTWT.

Actually, I think the Court will be faced with religious conscience violations before any new Art. I challenges come before it, but this is an interesting piece either way. The PPACA is a motherf-king abomination and should be consigned to the scrap-heap of history, sooner rather than later.

We'll see. Meanwhile, check the additional commentary at Memeorandum.

We Won't Build That: States Resist ObamaCare Insurance Exchanges

At IBD, "ObamaCare: 21 States Reject Exchanges On Cost, Rules":

ObamaCare's subsidized insurance exchanges are supposed to be up and running in little more than a year, putting a key piece of the federal health care law into action.

But it's unclear that will happen, especially with a growing number of states saying they don't want the cost and regulatory headaches.

The exchanges are where consumers without employer-based coverage will shop for insurance under ObamaCare and receive a tax credit toward its purchase if they are eligible. But 21 states have expressly declined to set up their own exchanges, with nine others still undecided ahead of the Dec. 14 deadline.

Federalism in action. Gee, is that racist?

More at that top link.

Where the Real Money Is

Taxes are going up. Even if a deal is reached to avoid the fiscal cliff, Democrats will continue to push for more revenue to finance their never-ending spending binge, and the middle class will take the hit.

This editorial's from June 2011 but still as timely as ever. At the Wall Street Journal, "Where the Tax Money Is":

Consider the Internal Revenue Service's income tax statistics for 2008, the latest year for which data are available. The top 1% of taxpayers—those with salaries, dividends and capital gains roughly above about $380,000—paid 38% of taxes. But assume that tax policy confiscated all the taxable income of all the "millionaires and billionaires" Mr. Obama singled out. That yields merely about $938 billion, which is sand on the beach amid the $4 trillion White House budget, a $1.65 trillion deficit, and spending at 25% as a share of the economy, a post-World War II record.

Say we take it up to the top 10%, or everyone with income over $114,000, including joint filers. That's five times Mr. Obama's 2% promise. The IRS data are broken down at $100,000, yet taxing all income above that level throws up only $3.4 trillion. And remember, the top 10% already pay 69% of all total income taxes, while the top 5% pay more than all of the other 95%.

We recognize that 2008 was a bad year for the economy and thus for tax receipts, as payments by the rich fell along with their income. So let's perform the same exercise in 2005, a boom year and among the best ever for federal revenue. (Ahem, 2005 comes after the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama holds responsible for all the world's problems.)

In 2005 the top 5% earned over $145,000. If you took all the income of people over $200,000, it would yield about $1.89 trillion, enough revenue to cover the 2012 bill for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—but not the same bill in 2016, as the costs of those entitlements are expected to grow rapidly. The rich, in short, aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's entitlement state ambitions—even before his health-care plan kicks in.

So who else is there to tax? Well, in 2008, there was about $5.65 trillion in total taxable income from all individual taxpayers, and most of that came from middle income earners. The nearby chart shows the distribution, and the big hump in the center is where Democrats are inevitably headed for the same reason that Willie Sutton robbed banks.

This is politically risky, however, so Mr. Obama's game has always been to pretend not to increase taxes for middle class voters while looking for sneaky ways to do it.

Well, he's a sneaky f-ker, that's for sure. We've got $268 billion in ObamaCare taxes about to kick in, regardless of what happens with the fiscal cliff.

The left's appetite for ever-increasing revenue is insatiable.

White House Data Debunk Myth Bush Cuts Built Deficit

A lovely chart, via Instapundit:

Also at Bizzy Blog, "Graphs of the Day: The Fiscal Mess Is Not the Fault of Bush’s Tax Cuts" (via Memeorandum).