An interesting intersection. I’m pretty hawkish on going after and getting bad guys. However, I’m not sure if I would be cool with just sending in policeman to go ahead and shoot them.
On the other hand, it seems pretty reasonable that US citizens should be able to expect a trial.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that four American citizens –one of them a suspect in a North Carolina-based terrorist cell – have been killed in drone strikes since 2009 in Pakistan and Yemen. The disclosure to Congress comes on the eve of a major national security speech by President Barack Obama.
In conducting U.S. counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and its associated forces, the government has targeted and killed one American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and is aware of the killing by U.S. drones of three others, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy.
Al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric, was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. Holder said three other Americans were killed by drones in counterterrorism operations since 2009 but were not targeted. The three are Samir Khan, who was killed in the same drone strike as al-Awlaki; al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, a native of Denver, who also was killed in Yemen two weeks later; and Jude Kenan Mohammed, who was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan.
Mohammed was born in the United States and dropped out of Fuquay-Varina High School in 2006. He left the U.S. two years later.
He was among eight men with Triangle ties indicted on charges they raised money, stockpiled weapons and trained in preparation for jihadist attacks against American military and foreign targets. Seven of them were arrested in Johnston County in July 2009. Mohammed, who was believed to be in Pakistan at the time, was never found.
All seven of Mohammed’s co-conspirators are serving prison time. Four were convicted and three, including alleged ringleader Daniel Patrick Boyd, pleaded guilty.
Again, a gut wrenching intersection.
Posted in Liberty, Politics: National
Tagged Barack Obama, Drone, Terrorists, War on Terror
There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Nearly all of the remaining provisions of the new health care law go into effect next January, including one that requires businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to pay for their health care or pay a penalty.
Some businesses may already be making personnel changes to save money when that provision of the Affordable Care Act kicks in. One option on the table: shifting full-time workers to part time.
Duane Davis thinks that’s what happened to him. He’d probably still be stocking clothing at the Juicy Couture store in New York City if he still got 30 to 40 hours a week of work like he used to. The work environment “was very cool,” he says, and he liked his co-workers.
But Davis quit because he couldn’t get enough hours. If he’d stayed and worked 30 or more hours a week, he would have been eligible for employer-paid health care starting next year. But earlier this year, Davis says, he was told he could work no more than 23 hours.
And the math is simple:
Rob Wilson, president of the temp agency Employco, says he’s observing similar shifts happening across his business.
“We’re seeing it quite a bit,” he says. “Instead of saying, ‘I want one person for 40 hours a week,’ [employers are saying], ‘I’ll take two people for 20 hours or 25 hours a week.'”
Wilson says the health care issue is also reshaping his own business. A typical temp working full time makes a gross profit of about $3,000 a year for Employco. But the cost to insure that person would come to $2,900.
That means just $100 in profit per employee before he advertises or pays his recruiters and his payroll department. “You can’t survive on $100,” Wilson says, “so you really have to pass that cost on.”
In other words, Wilson will have to charge his clients more — if they are willing to pay. And from his perspective, this basic math adds up to a big labor market problem. “Your underemployed population in America is just going to go up dramatically,” Wilson predicts.
I don’t doubt the intentions of liberal agendas, I just doubt their success.
Yikes!
All of a sudden the IRS story that didn’t have legs to reach the White House has grown legs that reach all the way to the White House:
Washington (CNN) — New details emerged of what the White House knew about the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups, with spokesman Jay Carney disclosing Chief of Staff Denis McDonough was among the top officials made aware of the matter late last month.
We’ve now gone from individual low level IRS employees at a Cincy office all the way to the White House.
This cannot be good news for the Obama administration.
I think that Harsanyi is on to something here:
One of the most seductive parts of President Barack Obama’s political message (and the message of progressive Democrats in general) is sympathy for the poor and a willingness to talk about the disparities of capitalism — about the rich being too rich and the poor being screwed. In some ways, it’s the predominant message of the Obama era.
…
Now, if you’re heavily invested in the market, life is peachy. A confounding fact, no doubt, when one considers that nearly every economic indicator known to mankind has been pretty abysmal of late. We are experiencing high unemployment, a shrinking labor force, stagnant gross domestic product growth and rickety consumer confidence. A disconnected market, though, has been on a historic boom. So if we need any more proof that life really isn’t fair, think about this: The rich have the Federal Reserve, and you have Harry Reid.
What does it mean in substance? According to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data, thanks to a robust stock and bond market, coupled with a lousy housing market, the recovery has meant that households with a net worth in the upper 7 percent have seen their net worth rise, on average, by nearly 30 percent in the years after the recession and that everyone else’s net worth has dropped by an average of 4 percent.
The economic gap between whites and minorities is even worse. According to the Urban Institute, whites, on average, have two times the income of blacks and Hispanics and six times the wealth, and that gap is accelerating.
This is going on, if you can imagine, even after a tax hike on the wealthy.
The brutal and bitter reality of liberal policy is that the very people they claim they are helping are getting hammered. And just as those very folks who are getting screwed by the democrats go to vote, they are going to hear that it’s all because of the republicans.
In all of history, nothing has improved the lot of the ordinary man in the way that a freer and more open market has. Increased government regulation leads only to the poor remaining poor.
Posted in Economics, Politics: National
Tagged Barack Obama, Capitalism, Democrats, Free Market, Liberal
Recently ReflectionEphemeral posted on the IRS scandal:
On a scale of 1-10, the IRS scandal seems to me about a 3. It is improper to focus on one side’s fundraising groups. An overall examination of supposedly tax-exempt organizations would probably be worthwhile. But they didn’t audit or persecute people; they sent them additional questionnaires.
Recently, nickgb got me thinking that perhaps profiling groups isn’t that bad an idea. In fact, it’s an idea that I have been a proponent of in the gun debate. As such, RR may have a point. Overtly political groups may need to be audited. However, it might be nice if such political groups were audited in equal measure based on their ideology; right and left groups.
However, in RR’s post, he pointed out the fact that there maybe a bigger scandal:
If someone at the IRS actually took confidential information and sent it out, that’s unequivocally a crime.
Well, as it turns out:
ProPublica on Monday reported that the same IRS division that targeted conservative groups for special scrutiny during the 2012 election cycle provided the investigative-reporting organization with confidential applications for tax-exempt status.
That revelation contradicts previous statements from the agency and may represent a violation of federal guidelines. Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS sector that reviews tax-exemption applications, told a congressional oversight committee in April 2012 that IRS code prohibited the agency from providing information about groups that had not yet been approved.
As an interesting experiment I Googled “ProPublica IRS”:
Not one single major news source on the first page. And when I include “CBSnews” in the search I do get a New York CBS affiliate and, at the bottom, a cbsnews.com story about how the scandals benefits conservatives. And even that story is lifted from Slate.
Anyway, it would seem that we now have a legit scandal. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.
Listening to the back and forth that the Obama White House is contributing to surrounding:
I have noticed a pattern. In each of the three scandals he’s facing, Obama has been eager to point out that he’s not been involved or knew of the activities.
Which brings me to the point:
What exactly DOES he know about? What on earth does this man do if he isn’t aware of the activities of his direct reports? How does he not know that Eric Holder is confiscating AP phone records as a result of an investigation of leaks? How does he not know what Hillary Clinton is doing surrounding Benghazi? And how in the name of heaven does he not know what the IRS is doing?
As nickgb help me realize, this may not be a case of scandal, rather, Hanlon’s Razor might be at work:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Though in this case, I like Napoleon’s version better:
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Indeed.
…hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some seperate sinister entity that’s at the root of all of our problems Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is just around the corner.
You should reject these voices.
Obama is talking about conservatives in general. Republicans in congress and Tea Party republicans in specific.
He is referring to people who feel that we must ever be careful that government is only one day away from becoming a tyrannical mechanism that will restrict liberty. He is referring to people, specific people.
Think those voices need to be rejected now?
