Obama Administration Endorses New U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Negotiations

NRA-ILA: Just as NRA warned would happen, following the election, the Obama administration has moved forward with its plans to support a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty. On Wednesday November 7, the U.S. Mission to the U.N. made clear its support for renewed ATT negotiations, casting a vote in favor of resolution A/C.1/67/L.11. The resolution calls for a "Final United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty" to be held in New York City from March 18-28.

Undeterred by the failure of July's U.N. Conference on the ATT, in recent months the global civilian disarmament groups and their patron governments have been working nonstop to revive the treaty. Most visible were the attempts made by participants at the Second Review Conference of the UN Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons. At the conference, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon used his time to state, "an arms trade treaty is long overdue… I urge you to redouble efforts to agree on a robust 'ATT' as soon as possible."

The resolution notes that at the March conference, the last draft from the July conference will be the starting point for new talks. Among the draft's most onerous requirements are those intending to burden and keep records on "end users," or gun owners. The draft states that "Each State Party shall maintain national records… Such records may contain… end users" and that "Records shall be kept for a minimum of ten years." If this obligation were to be enacted and followed, it could result in registration for any American that purchases an imported firearm.

Despite the insistence of a U.S. State Department official this summer that ammunition controls are not feasible and would have "significant administrative and financial costs," ammunition remains within the scope of the working draft. The draft states, "Each State Party shall establish and maintain a national control system to regulate the export of ammunition for conventional arms." In the explanation of its vote in favor of the resolution, Mexico made clear that it will continue to pursue its goal of including ammunition within the scope of the treaty.

As in past negotiations, the March conference will require consensus on the treaty's text. This is an important requirement that has served to protect the U.S. from a U.N. tyranny of the majority. However, Mexico has attempted to undermine this vital condition. In a statement during the meetings in which the November 7 resolution was passed, Mexico's representative said, "the goal of consensus should not be interpreted as a right of one or a few delegation to impede a general agreement."

Further, despite the already restrictive wording of the draft treaty, some global gun controllers have insisted it doesn't go far enough. The umbrella ATT group known as the Control Arms Campaign (which includes Amnesty International, the International Action Network on Small Arms and Oxfam International, among others) states that an ATT "must include all weapons, all transfers, and all transactions," and has constructed a wish list to make the treaty more prohibitive. Their stated goal of "finishing" the current draft is even more ominous when you consider that in the past Amnesty International has made clear that "The ATT should not exempt certain small arms (for example, sporting or hunting firearms) from its scope of application." With several nations supporting this position and negotiations over the final text remaining fluid, there is a possibility that the final treaty could be far worse than the current draft.

During the July negotiations, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre made clear to the assembled U.N. delegates that, "Any treaty that includes civilian firearms ownership in its scope will be met with the NRA's greatest force of opposition." The speech was bolstered by letters from a majority of U.S. Senators and 130 Representatives, making clear to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton their opposition to a treaty encompassing civilian arms. Several writers noted NRA's opposition as key to the failure of the July conference. Needless to say, our position will remain the same on any treaty that could adversely affect the rights of American gun owners.

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Tags: Obama administration, UN Arms Trade Treaty (UN ATT), Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), 2nd Amendment, U.S. Constitution To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama Lost in Every State With Photo ID Law

American Third Position: Was the election stolen? Remember all those lawsuits by Democrats demanding that any voter identification laws be repealed. Well, now we know why they filed them. They needed to steal the vote in certain key states so that Obama could be reelected.

Curiously, Obama lost in every state that requires a photo ID to be produced before voting. A list of closely contested state elections with no voter ID, which narrowly went to Obama include: Minnesota (10), Iowa (6), Wisconsin (10), Nevada (6), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5) and Pennsylvania (20). This amounts to a total of 66 electoral votes. When added to Romney’s total of 205 electoral votes, that would give Romney 271 electoral votes, enough votes to win even without Ohio or Florida.

Romney also likely had the states of Florida and Ohio stolen from him, which don’t require photo IDs. Ohio requires a non-photo ID. Would a library card do? Florida “requests” a photo ID, but doesn’t require it. So what happens if they request a photo ID and the illegal alien Haitian doesn’t have one? Do they just count the vote anyway?

Add to all this, electronic vote fraud. An article from the Blaze reports “Last week, TheBlaze brought you a story from a North Carolina voting precinct using electronic voting machines that was already experiencing issues where votes for GOP candidate Mitt Romney were being changed to Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Now, it’s allegedly happening again, this time in both Kansas and Ohio — and we talked to a vendor supporting the machines about the issue. Nancy from Topeka, Kan., who asked that her last name not be used for reasons pertaining to her husband’s work, told TheBlaze she fears if voters aren’t double checking their selections, they’ll be ‘robbed of their vote.’ Nancy explained that while her husband was casting a vote for Romney, the touchscreen highlighted Obama. “He played around with the field a little and realized that in order to vote for Romney, his finger had to be exactly on the mark,” Nancy wrote in an email. She said ‘the invisible Obama field came down about 1/4 [of an inch]‘ into what should technically have been the Romney area.”

Funny how this “glitch” only benefited Obama while stealing votes from Romney. I wonder how many other “glitches” were out there and how big a role they played in Obama’s “victory”.

No incumbent president in the last 60 years has won reelection with the unemployment rate as high as it currently is. The only way left for the Democrats to keep Obama in office was to steal the election. Obama failed to win ANY states with photo ID laws for voters, but he did win all the swing states which require no voter ID. Add to this electronic “glitches” that gave Obama votes meant for Romney, and it’s pretty obvious what happened on November 6th, 2012. We just became a Third World country.

2012 Voter ID Laws:

 . . .  Read Full Article.
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ARRA Editor's Note:  We found the above article worth to share, but do not advocate or supporting a third party especially one based on European interests. We support the Constitution of the United States and its preliminary document The Declaration of Independence which separated us from European interests.

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Tags: elections, voter ID, voting, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Right to Hunt and Fish Constitutional Amendments Pass in Idaho, Nebraska and Kentucky

NRA News: John Popp talks to Lacey Biles, Deputy Director of NRA-ILA State and Local Affairs, about the right to Hunt and Fish Amendments that passed in Kentucky, Nebraska & Idaho, as well as a special land use amendment that passed in Alabama .

The NRA has led efforts to provide these truly meaningful constitutional protections for sportsmen across the country by preserving science-driven wildlife management and the North American Wildlife Conservation Model. The amendments offer specific defenses against efforts to incrementally destroy our hunting heritage by anti-hunting extremist organizations such as The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Nearly one-quarter of all states have adopted similar amendments.

"Hunting, fishing, and harvesting of wildlife are part of the American fabric," said Chris W. Cox, executive director for NRA's Institute for Legislative Action. "These constitutional amendments are a concerted effort by the NRA to help preserve America's rich hunting heritage that is increasingly under attack by well organized and well funded anti-hunting radicals. The stakes have never been higher. Voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Kentucky must go to the polls and vote to support our outdoor heritage."

In Idaho, House Joint Resolution 2a, the Right to Hunt and Fish Constitutional Amendment, passed with overwhelming support in the state Senate by a 31 to 3 vote and in the state House by a 63 to 4 vote. It will now be on the November ballot.

The Nebraska Legislature passed Legislative Resolution 40CA, the Right to Hunt and Fish Constitutional Amendment, by a 41 to 3 vote. This amendment will be on the ballot this November.

Last year, the Kentucky Legislature passed House Bill 1, the Right to Hunt and Fish Constitutional Amendment. This amendment will also be on the ballot in November.

Mississippi is currently considering House Concurrent Resolution 30, the Right to Hunt and Fish Constitutional Amendment. The NRA is working closely with legislators to pass this critical protection for Mississippi sportsmen this year.

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Tags: NRA, NRA-ILA, Hunting Amendments, elections 2012, passed, Idaho, Nebraska, Kentucky, Alabama, 2nd Amendment To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Persecuting Jesus

Bob Morrison and Ken Blackwell

Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison, Contributing Authors: The nineteenth century French painting, Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer -- today hangs in the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. It has not lost its capacity to shock. In the Roman Circus, the small flock of Christians is huddled in the sand, kneeling around their aged pastor. We see weeping little children, whole families gathered. In the stands are tens of thousands of people, none of whose faces are visible, but they are colorfully dressed, awaiting a special entertainment. The scene is eerily lighted by flaming crosses. Looking more closely, however, we see those crosses bear Christians, covered in pitch and set aflame. Their suffering, at least, will be brief. Out of the depths beneath the Circus stride lions a single tiger. The lead lion advances menacingly toward the Believers.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, the painter, may have wanted Christians of his time to remember the sacrifices necessary to build the magnificent civilization he and his contemporaries then enjoyed. The sky in this painting is dark and threatening. It symbolizes an age in classic antiquity that was both technologically advanced—look at architecture!—and spiritually stunted.

For France in 1883, it was the Belle Epoque. That was when Paris was being rebuilt as the beautiful City of Light we know today. In that year, steamships traveled the world’s oceans and Europeans sought to bring the benefits of railroads, schools, medical clinics, and the Gospel to many lands around the world.

All of that “imperialism” is today viewed with unalloyed horror by the intelligentsia of the West. The cultured despisers of religion think that persuading Indians to give up suttee— the practice of burning living widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres is cultural imperialism. Teaching native peoples in Africa not to kill newborn twins and chase their mothers into the bush to be devoured by lions is seen as imposing an alien values system on others.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that so little attention is being paid to Christian persecution in the Third World today. Our modern world—so technologically innovative—is morally and spiritually closer to that Roman Circus than we might like to admit. World Magazine, an Evangelical publication, is almost the only national news outlet that takes Christian persecution seriously. In the current issue, journalist Jamie Dean has provided a broad view of Christian persecution in the Mideast. It leads us to ask: Why should Christians anywhere view the “Arab Spring” with approval? Why should American Christians, in particular, join with the Obama administration in hailing every step they think they see toward greater democracy? Democracy requires more than people voting. In Egypt, there has been a sharp increase in the murder of Coptic Christians.

This administration entered office pledging to deal more openly with Iranian mullahs. These are the same men who jailed Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, 32, for the “crime” of sharing his faith with others. Reporter Dean makes clear that the recent release of Pastor Nadarkhani may have had more to do with the mullahs trying to avoid more stringent Western economic sanctions than with any lessening of their cruelties toward Christians

Christians are familiar with the Bible passage in the Book of Acts where Jesus speaks to Saul. “Why do you persecute me,” Jesus asks. Saul is on his way to Damascus. How very appropriate this passage is to our own day. For it is in Damascus that Christians are being newly endangered. And when that is the case, it is not just Jesus’s followers are being persecuted, it is Jesus Himself. We have His word on that.

As we approach this Sunday’s International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, it is good to remember that we are citizens, too. We should pray for our brethren suffering all over the bloody crescent. And we should recall that when Saul became Paul he did not give up his Roman citizenship. He used that citizenship to advance God’s purposes on earth. As Christian citizens of this great republic, we can certainly cry out against persecution at home and abroad. And we can make our voices heard. John F. Kennedy said it well: "Here on earth, God's work must truly be our own."
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Ken Blackwell is a conservative family values advocate. Blackwell is a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and a visiting professor at Liberty University School of Law. Bob Morrison is a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council. He has served at the U.S. Department of Education with Gary Bauer under then-Secretary William Bennett. Both are contributing authors to the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: International Day of Prayer, Persecuted Church, murdered Christians, Persecuting Jesus, Ken Blackwell, Bob Morrison To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Sen. McConnell Expresses Opposition To Tax Rate Hikes

Update 2:210 PM - McConnell Calls on President to Offer ‘Realistic and Specific’ Economic Proposal
"While I appreciate and share the President’s desire to put the election behind us, the fact is we still have yet to hear an actual plan from the President for addressing the great economic challenges we face. What’s needed now is a realistic and specific proposal from the President that can actually pass the Congress."

LOUISVILLE – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell released the following statement today regarding America’s looming fiscal cliff and the need for a specific proposal from the President to resolve it:

“I was glad to hear the President’s focus on jobs and growth and his call for consensus. But there is no consensus on raising tax rates, which would undermine the jobs and growth we all believe are important to our economy. While I appreciate and share the President’s desire to put the election behind us, the fact is we still have yet to hear an actual plan from the President for addressing the great economic challenges we face. What’s needed now is a realistic and specific proposal from the President that can actually pass the Congress. For the last two years, the President avoided outlining these kinds of realistic solutions. Now that the election is over, the American people expect a plan that reduces spending, reforms the entitlement system, and puts us on a path to ending our chronic annual deficits—without harming an already fragile economy. While the Speaker and Republicans in Congress have sought common ground by calling for pro-growth tax reform without raising tax rates, we have yet to hear from Democrats on spending and entitlement reform. Every one of us wants to help the American people by helping the economy grow, and Republicans are eager to hear the President’s proposals on this and many other pressing issues going forward. The President has a duty to lead. We implore him again to do so.”

According to The Washington Post, President Obama is expected to speak this afternoon about the fiscal cliff, but “Obama is not planning to release a new plan.” It’s unclear why the president doesn’t seem to want to take the lead in proposing a new plan to deal with the rapidly approaching fiscal cliff, even with some Democrats in Congress calling on him to do that.

In a statement to Breitbart News today, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell laid out his position on dealing with tax rates that expire at the end of the year: “One issue I’ve never been conflicted about is taxes. I wasn’t sent to Washington to raise anybody’s taxes to pay for more wasteful spending and this election doesn’t change my principles. This election was a disappointment, without doubt, but let’s be clear about something: the House is still run by Republicans, and Republicans still maintain a robust minority in the Senate. I know some people out there think Tuesday’s results mean Republicans in Washington are now going to roll over and agree to Democrat demands that we hike tax rates before the end of the year. I’m here to tell them there is no truth to that notion whatsoever.”

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Economists from the Congressional Budget Office detailed new warnings of an economy speeding toward a so-called fiscal cliff created by a combination of government spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect Jan. 1. . . . The CBO on Thursday detailed its view that if Washington policy makers don't act before the end of the year, the economy would contract by 0.5% in 2013. The unemployment rate would jump from 7.9% to 9.1% by the end of 2013, according to the CBO—a nonpartisan arm of Congress.”

Clearly, something must be done to prevent the nation from plunging over the fiscal cliff. But with the economy continuing to struggle, now is not the time to raise taxes. Will President Obama present a better plan today?

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Tags: US senate, minority leader, Sen Mitch McConnell, no new taxes, opposes tax hikes To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Beware of the Lame Duck Session

Phyllis Schlafly

by Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum: The current Congress hasn’t finished its mischief. It still has the opportunity to do bad things in the upcoming Lame Duck session, a period when members of Congress who are already defeated will have the opportunity to vote without concern for voter approval.

The globalists have been plotting to use the volatility of this Lame Duck session to achieve some of their internationalist goals that they couldn’t get passed during the last four years. In particular, they would like to lock us into treaties that slice out various parts of our national sovereignty, a concept that they have been trying to promote as obsolete.

The globalists could make a surprise treaty push for ratification of the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (UNATT). This treaty is coming under the radar since gun-control advocates know it could never pass the U.S. Senate after debate in broad daylight.

The gun-control advocates assume that private ownership of guns is inherently dangerous. They hope they can achieve their goal of prohibiting private ownership by the covert strategy of a treaty with vague language, and so far have been successful in avoiding media attention.

Supposedly UNATT is merely designed to regulate government-to-government arms transfers and direct sales by manufacturers to governments. Its danger to our Second Amendment is its innocuous treaty language that can impact on the use and ownership of guns by individuals.

Another plan to ratify an anti-sovereignty treaty and subject us to unwelcome global regulations is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This mischievous document was signed for the U.S. by UN Ambassador Susan Rice (now famous for giving big TV time to Obama’s lies about the Benghazi disaster).

We don’t need a treaty that sets up UN busybodies to assure benefits and protections for persons with disabilities. We already treat individuals, able or disabled, rich or poor, better than any other nation by our Americans with Disabilities Act, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Fair Housing Act, Rehabilitation Act, Voting Accessibility for Elderly and Handicapped Act, Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, and Architectural Barriers Act.

The feminists are using this treaty as an opportunity to promote their abortion agenda. Article 25 requires signatory states to “provide persons with disabilities … free or affordable health care … including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based health programmes.”

The globalists desperately want us to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which was a bad idea when Ronald Reagan rejected it in 1981, and which has soured rather than ripened in its years of languishing in the Senate. This treaty cedes sovereign control over practically all the riches at the bottom of the world’s oceans to an International Seabed Authority.

The treaty’s one-nation-one-vote setup assures control by Third World countries, while Uncle Sap is expected to finance the technology and investment to bring the sea’s minerals to the surface. This treaty sets up a system of dispute resolution by the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) based in Hamburg, Germany, whose judgments about “maritime disputes” can be enforced against Americans.

U.S. access to the high seas, as well as freedom of the seas for all countries, is best protected by a superior U.S. Navy, not by regulations made by UN paper-pushers financed by a global tax. Instead of paying tribute to a UN tribunal, we should build more U.S. ships so America can fulfill its mission to keep the seas open for commerce and national defense.

Still lurking in the drawers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is the U.N. Treaty on the Rights of the Child, a broadside attack on parents’ rights to raise their own children. This impudent Treaty purports to give children their own right (against their parents) to express their views freely in all matters, to receive information of all kinds through “media of the child’s choice,” to attend a church of the child’s choice (not his parents’), to be protected from interference with his correspondence, to have access to information from national and international sources in the media, to use his own language, and to have the right to “rest and leisure.”

After ratification, treaties become part of the “supreme law” of the United States on a par with federal statutes, which gives supremacist judges the power to invent their own interpretations. The whole concept of putting the United States in the noose of global organizations, in which the U.S. has only the same one vote as Cuba, is offensive to Americans, and all these UN treaties should be scrapped forthwith.

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Tags: Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum, Beware, Lame Duck session, 2012, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

The Lamest Generation

by William Warren:

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Tags: military, sacrifice for country, Obama voter, lamest generation, William Warren, political cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

After the Election

The following insights are worth all conservatives reading. This is adapted from remarks Heritage Foundation President Ed Feulner delivered Wednesday to Heritage staff.

Ed Feulner

by Ed Feulner, Heritage Foundation: I imagine that, besieged and belittled on all sides, and confronted with such a formidable array of adversaries – in the White House, Congress, the media and the academy – all determined to undo the Reagan Revolution and establish the Obama Revolution in its stead, many of you may look around in despair and ask: “Where is the cavalry that can come galloping to our rescue and save us from disaster?”

But I have news for you: This time around, we at The Heritage Foundation are the cavalry.

We are the flagship conservative organization that carries on the Reagan legacy.

We are the people conservatives look to stop the Obama Revolution in its tracks.

In large measure, it’s up to us to nobly save, or meanly lose, this great American experiment in democratic self-government.

Looking back on the nearly four decades that have elapsed since The Heritage Foundation opened its doors, it seems to me that perhaps everything we have built up, slowly and painfully, has finally led us to this defining moment.

• Our brilliant team of analysts;
• Our unparalleled capacity to communicate with grassroots America;
• Our ability to market our ideas;
• Our superb contacts on Capitol Hill;
• The huge clout we wield through our sister-organization, Heritage Action for America;
• Our influential friends on talk-radio and generally, in the media;
• Our hundreds of thousands of dedicated members; and
• Our millions upon millions of friends and well-wishers — all these hard-won assets must now be brought into play as we wage the fight of our lives.

My friends, we too have many challenging days ahead of us.

But they can also be great days, provided we recognize that we conservatives have not lost the war.

We have merely lost a battle in an on-going struggle.

The main thing is not to play into the Left’s hands by giving up the struggle. That would be truly catastrophic.

So let us not be frightened or anxious or downcast.

Let us rather remind ourselves that we are immensely privileged to participate in a struggle that is much, much larger than ourselves.

We are well-armed — morally, intellectually, and materially — to carry on this struggle. And with God’s help, and in His own good time, we will take our country back.

Onward!
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Edwin J. Feulner is President of The Heritage Foundation. He had lead in the transformation of  Heritage from a  small policy shop into America’s powerhouse of conservative ideas and into what the New York Times calls “the Parthenon of the conservative metropolis.”

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Tags: Ed Feulner, Heritage Foundation, after the election, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

First Day After The Election, Reid Says He Wants To Weaken Filibuster

The Washington Times writes, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday that he will try to push through a change to Senate rules that would limit the GOP’s ability to filibuster bills. . . . ‘I think that the rules have been abused and that we’re going to work to change them,’ he told reporters. . . . Republicans, who have 47 of the chamber’s 100 seats in the current Congress, have repeatedly used that strong minority to block parts of President Obama’s agenda on everything from added stimulus spending to his judicial picks. A filibuster takes 60 senators to overcome it. Leaders of both parties have been reluctant to change the rules because they value it as a tool when they are in the minority. But Mr. Reid said things changed over the last few years when he repeatedly faced off against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell . . . .”

Back in July, the last time Reid floated this idea, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell shot back, “The core problem here is … the Majority Leader as a practical matter is running the whole Senate because everything is centralized in his office, which diminishes the opportunity for senators of both parties to represent their constituents. Look, we all were sent here by different Americans who expected us to have a voice, to have an opportunity, to effect legislation. I would say … we don’t have a rules problem, we have an attitude problem. When is the Senate going to get back to normal? I can recall my friends on the other side saying repeatedly the difference between the House and Senate is you get to vote.”

Indeed, The Times goes on to point out, “Senate Republicans, though, said the real problem is that Mr. Reid too often tries to limit the amendments they can offer to bills on the Senate floor. Left without the chance to debate their own priorities, the GOP sees little option but to filibuster. After Mr. Reid’s comments Wednesday, Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, said Democrats would set a bad tone for next year. ‘We hope Democrats will work toward allowing members of both sides to be involved in the legislative process — rather than poisoning the well on the very first day of the next Congress,’ Mr. Stewart said. ‘And that Sen. Reid will honor his public commitment to do rules changes only through the regular order.’”

Townhall.com’s Guy Benson adds some key context: “Reid’s rationale is faulty and hypocritical.  . . .  The historic uptick in attempted and threatened Republican ‘filibusters’ (or some variant thereof) has correlated directly with Reid’s strong-arm tactics as majority leader.  To an unprecedented degree, Reid has denied the minority the right to even offer amendments to legislation, meaning that Republicans would have no input in the structure or content of these laws.  Reid has employed this maneuver, known as ‘filling the amendment tree,’ more than his six immediate predecessors combined. . . . When some Republicans proposed the ‘nuclear option’ to limit filibusters of judicial appointees by changing the rules during the Bush years, Democrats melted down.  This idea amounted to a mortal threat to the republic, they argued . . . . California's Diane Feinstein gravely warned that the Republican plan would put the Senate on a slippery slope -- ultimately leading to tampering with the sacred legislative filibuster...which is precisely what Reid is moving to do now.”

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Tags: Us Senate, Harry Reid, dictator, weaken minority rights, weaken voter representation To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

What President-elect Obama Is Inheriting

by Glen McCoy:  Here's what president-elect Barack Obama inherits from the current Obama administration.

By Glenn McCoy - November 07, 2012

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Glenn McCoy has long been recognized by his peers as a superior cartoonist. The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) has twice named Glenn the Magazine Cartoonist of the Year, as well as Editorial Cartoonist of the Year and Greeting-Card Cartoonist of the Year.

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Tags: Glenn McCoy, editorial cartoon, president elect, Barack Obama, inherits To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Coming Two Terms With Obama's Win

Tony Perkins, FRC Action Update: This was supposed to be the morning when Americans got up and shook off the nightmare of the last four years. Instead, they awakened to a new one: a profound drubbing of the Republican Party that is supposed to be the guardian of the conservative vision our nation so desperately needs. On every level--presidential, congressional, social--it was a bruising day for our movement that no amount of spin can improve. Americans had a choice, and they made it. Is the outcome what we want? Obviously not. In fact, there are only a few positive highlights from yesterday's election. But despite this election setback, there is no evidence to suggest that the transcendent values our nation has rested on for the last 237 years have been revoked or disproved. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." In all the years that I have been involved in this movement, we have never staked our future on political success. As Christians, we hold an eternal perspective--and that means standing for truth whether it's winning or losing.

"If we thought we could wake up and feel safe about [social] issues because Romney got elected then we'd be as foolish as those on the other side of these issues who think Obama is the 'savior,'" Bob Rice wrote today. "We can't depend on the government for our spiritual welfare. We've got to go out and proclaim God's truth with our lips and share His love from our hearts." God's Word and His purposes are not altered by what happens at the ballot box. Our call is to fight for truth in an increasingly dark and hostile world--no matter what the outcome.

Of course, there will be a temptation after this election for people to despair and disengage, believing that America is beyond hope. It isn't. Despite the devastation of these last 24 hours, there is no reason to apologize, back away from, or rethink what we stand for. If anything, this election emphasizes our mission and what FRC has said all along: the way to renew our nation's commitment to those founding principles is through the church's transformation of hearts and minds. That requires us standing as salt and light through some of the bleakest times in our nation.

Among the more demoralizing losses yesterday were the outcomes in Maryland, Minnesota, Washington, and Maine, where natural marriage lost for the first time in America by popular vote. It was a significant moment for the radical Left, which was helped to victory by the most pro-gay President in American history. But contrary to what the Left will say, the narrow margin for victory in these four states offers plenty of evidence that a solid majority of Americans still opposes same-sex "marriage." Despite being outspent 8-to-1 in some of the most liberal states in the country, we witnessed record-setting petition efforts that crossed every racial, party, and socioeconomic divide. And while homosexuals may be celebrating an end to our movement's perfect record, they still have a long way to go to match the 32 states where Americans voted overwhelmingly to protect the union of a man and woman. And that includes North Carolina, where President Obama's endorsement of same-sex "marriage" likely cost him the state's electoral votes.

In a glimmer of good news on the marriage front, the support for marriage in these four states actually out-polled Mitt Romney, who won 48% of the popular vote. In the weeks and months ahead, we're confident that as voters see and experience the consequences of redefining marriage, many will reconsider their support. How can I be so certain? Forty years after Roe v. Wade, the nation is more pro-life, and the abortion issue is far from settled. As with same-sex "marriage," the Left can make it legal, but they can never make it right.

Silver linings were also hard to come by in other ballot initiatives, including marijuana (now legal in Massachusetts, Montana, Colorado, and Washington State), gambling (expanded in Maryland), a ban on taxpayer-funded abortion (rejected in Florida), and public funding of religious schools (also rejected in Florida). Although conservatives managed to pass a parental notification law in Montana with overwhelming support, block assisted suicide in Massachusetts, and repeal ObamaCare insurance mandates in Missouri, Montana, and Wyoming, the GOP's finger-pointing at social conservatives has already begun.

Fortunately, not everyone is buying it--including Matt Lewis, who wrote a great column in the Daily Caller, "The GOP needs modernization, not moderation." "Make no mistake, the GOP faces serious challenges going forward," Lewis points out. "This wasn't 'just a loss.' But that doesn't mean the party should sell out its core values, either. In many cases, reinvention means drawing a clearer contrast with liberals. The GOP probably needs to reaffirm some values. For example, it would make no sense for the GOP to abandon its role as the party of life. It would make no sense for the GOP to abandon its role as the party of individual liberty. But there must be some reevaluation."

Hopefully, part of that reevaluation will include a renewed focus on the party's conservative core. Most of Tuesday's brightest spots were victories by principled, pro-family leaders like Senator-elect Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Senator-elect Deb Fisher (R-Nebr.), Congressman-elect Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Reps. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Steve King (R-Iowa), and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)--all of whom were championed by the FRC Action PAC. In two years, there will be a political opportunity to embolden and provide allies for these who stand for life, marriage, religious liberty, and limited government.

Until then, our mission is as critical as ever. It's time to get up, dust ourselves off, and trust in God's ability to work in dire situations. "Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation," writes the Psalmist, "When his breath departs he returns to earth; on that very day his plans perish. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord ..." (146:3-5). We do not serve victory; we serve God. And to Him, in these anxious times, we turn.

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Tags: Coming Two Terms, Obama's Win, 2012 election, FRC, Family Research Council, Tony Perkins To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Losers’ Last Lines

Bob Morrison

by Bob Morrison:  One of the things I had to learn some forty years ago was how to concede an election. I was totally unprepared for my loss, so I hadn’t given any thought to what I would say. Suffice it to say, I didn’t say it well. I soon learned that Americans don’t like sore losers. Richard Nixon lost the California governorship in 1962 and told the media to take a hike. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more,” he said with no little bitterness. And, as we all know, that was the end of him.

Henry Clay was the high-minded sort. After losing the White House for after his third try, he said: “I had rather be right than be president.” Voters agreed. They respected Clay and they came to despise the president who beat him.

Abraham Lincoln lost his second bid for the U.S. Senate from his home state of Illinois. His comment was typically touching: “I feel like the little boy who stubbed his toe: I’m too big to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.” Fellow Illinoisan Adlai Stevenson liked that line so much, he used it when he was defeated for president by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. Adlai liked that Lincoln line so much that he got to use it again: When Ike beat more soundly in 1956.

The Great Commoner William Jennings Bryan ran for president three times, 1896, 1900, and 1908. He was the thunderer, the powerful orator who brought down a prairie twister of denunciation on the bankers of Wall Street. Bryan, an Evangelical and teetotaler, got a laugh when he compared himself to the drunk who got tossed from the saloon three times. “I’m getting the impression they don’t want me in there.”

In 1916, the election looked over in the East as the candidates and most other Americans went to bed. They were confident that the bearded Charles Evans Hughes had defeated President Woodrow Wilson. But late returns from California painted a different picture. One enterprising reporter telephoned the Hughes residence in New York and asked to speak to the candidate. Somewhat huffily, Hughes’ son replied that the President was sleeping and was not to be disturbed. “That’s okay, don’t wake him,” said the scribbler, “but when he gets up, tell him he ain’t president.”

Ronald Reagan rarely had to concede a defeat. In 1976, he lost, narrowly, to Gerald Ford for the Republican presidential nomination. On the last night of his party’s convention in Kansas City, Jerry Ford gave the best speech of his life. I was so impressed, I even considered voting for him. After that splendid performance, President Ford motioned to his defeated rival. Gov. Reagan, tanned and wearing a light colored sport coat, aw shucksed the victor and mouthed the words: No, No, Jerry, this is your night.

The president was not to be put off. He virtually ordered Reagan to come to the speaker’s podium. Alright, Reagan said, ambling down to the stage. Then he delivered a stirring address that left the convention delegates and millions of Americans deeply moved. On their way to the Kansas City airport, the homebound Republican delegates had to follow a single route. One enterprising conservative put up a billboard: “Republicans: You nominated the wrong man!” Four years later, many of those same Ford delegates corrected their error.

My favorite concession speech was from Gov. Thomas Dewey in 1948. He was stunned, the world was stunned, when President Harry Truman defeated him. Every poll showed Dewey winning over the embattled incumbent. The Chicago Tribune even went to press early with a stunning headline: Dewey Defeats Truman. Well, he didn’t. (That’s not the last time the media hosed things up.)

Dewey recovered from his shock quickly however. The very dapper, dignified New Yorker described his reaction: “I feel like a man who wakes up in his own casket. If I’m alive, what am I doing here? If I’m dead, why do I have to go to the bathroom?”

But the best line of that surprising night goes to Mrs. Dewey. The governor was so confident of victory, he had bought his wife a fetching nightgown because, he said, beaming, “tonight you’ll be sleeping with the President of the United States.”

Mrs. Dewey asked her hubby: “Well, Tom, is Harry coming over here or do I run over to the White House?”
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Bob Morrison is a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council. where he first shared this article. He has served at the U.S. Department of Education with Gary Bauer under then-Secretary William Bennett. He is a contributing authors to the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: Bob Morrison, election 2012, loser's last lines, humor To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

And The Winner Is . . .

A.F. "Tony" Branco:

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Tags: Barack Obama, wins, election 2012, Unites States, A.F. Branco, editorial cartoon To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Arkansas Republicans Win All U.S. Congressional Seats

Bill Smith, Editor: While nationally, voters re-elected President Barack Obama, Arkansas moved on to join the Dixie states in electing Republicans to Congress and controlling their state legislatures. Arkansans voted over 60 percent for presidential candidate Mitt Romney and placed the Republicans in control of the Arkansas State Senate for the first time since reconstruction in 1874. They voters also removed the democrats' majority control of the Arkansas State House. Republicans are expected with one remaining race being verified or recounted to either control the Arkansas House via an outright Republican win or to control via a conservative caucus.

At the Congressional level, Arkansas voters re-elected three Republican members of Congress and elected a new Republican to represent the remaining congressional district.  1st District Congressman Rick Crawford won with over 56% of the vote over three opponents.  2nd District Congressman Tim Phillips won with over 55% of the vote over three opponents. 3rd District Congressman Steve Womack won with over 75% of the vote over two opponents.

The 4th Congressional district has been a democrat bastion, but in the last few years, it has been represented by "blue dog" democrat Congressman Mike Ross who is retiring at the end of this session. Ross' votes while moderate most of the time were often against the positions of liberal democrats controlling his political party. Mike Ross should reconsider is party affiliation if he desires to pursue elected offices in Arkansas. As a side note, the Democrat controlled Redistricting Commission via Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe and Arkansas Attorney General  Dustin McDaniel gerrymandered the districts in hopes to gain an advantage and to protect the democrat's control of the 4th District. However, by the will of the people, their efforts have failed.

The people of Arkansas Fourth Congressional District elected an veteran an outspoken conservative Republican to represent them in Congress. Tom Cotton won over 59% of the vote over three other candidates with the democrat candidate receiving 37% of the vote. Since Congressman-elect Tom Cotton is Arkansas' newest elected member of the new Arkansas Delegation, below are his comments after winning the election:

Congressman-elect Tom Cotton

Thank you!

Thanks to all of you, we’ve won a big victory tonight!

It’s a victory we all hoped for—but maybe larger than we expected. Many other races across the country have yet to be decided. But here in Arkansas, tonight, we’ve shown that the spirit of 1776—the spirit of liberty—is alive and well in 2012.

This campaign, from the beginning, has been about something more than what the government spends or how much we pay in taxes, as important as those things are. Our campaign has been about the future of self-government in America. About returning our government to its constitutional roots; reasserting our natural, God-given rights; and reviving our free-enterprise system.

As I did before in the U.S. Army, tonight I give you my solemn oath that I will support and defend our Constitution and the spirit of our beloved Republic.

That oath is a privilege. It brings to mind the debt of gratitude we owe to those who came before us, and that I in particular owe to so many in this room. To all of you for your hard work. To my campaign team, who had as much political experience as I did when we started—none. To my mom and dad, for their love and guidance. As I grew up on our small farm in Yell County, they always did what was right for Sarah and me, not necessarily what was alright with us. And to Sarah, for her support and friendship.

Finally, I’m grateful above all to the people of Arkansas, who have done me a great honor and given me a great trust. Whether you voted for me or not, I will do my very best for all my fellow citizens. This district is used to sending Democrats to Washington. Now we’re sending a Republican. But just as sure as Grant County is named for one soldier who went to Washington as a Republican, you can be sure I’ll serve every citizen of every party equally and fairly.

Our fellow citizens went to the polls today for the 113th time under our Constitution. This simple but majestic act brings home the founding truth of our republic: we’re all equal in God’s eyes and thus should be under law. In too many places around the world, that’s still not the case. But in America, it doesn’t matter who your parents are or who their parents were, or where you come from, or what you do. All that matters is your loyalty to that great principle, and you’re an American at heart. You can find opportunity here to fulfill your dreams and build a better life, for yourself and your family.

But too often politicians in both parties have lost faith in the American way. They’ve misused the power of government to aid the politically connected and the privileged, to raise up artificial distinctions among citizens where none should exist, to grant preferences and favors to flawed ideas, because in trying to pick winners, politicians almost always pick losers. The best ideas don’t need government aid to succeed in a free economy. And we’re left with the bill: less opportunity, less prosperity, and less liberty.

But more important, the next generation, who are as much a part of America as we are, as our forefathers are, will be left with the bill. There’s no justice in that. Abe Lincoln explained long ago, it’s the same struggle of right and wrong we’ve seen since the beginning of time, “the same old serpent that says you work and I eat.”

Let us today rededicate ourselves to the spirit of our Constitution: to secure the blessings of liberty not only for ourselves, but also and especially for our posterity. Eleven generations of Americans have done it for us; we owe them and the next generation of citizens nothing less.

I’m mindful tonight that we would have nothing to pass on to the next generation without the courage and sacrifice of the men and women of our Armed Forces. They stand guard tonight in Afghanistan and all around the world—just as they have since Lexington and Concord. From the Minutemen who defeated the mightiest empire in the world, to the volunteers who held the Union together so their heirs—like my dad and his dad—would be able to save humanity from Nazi and Soviet tyranny, to the 9/11 generation today, our soldiers have always stood ready to lay down their lives so others may live. We owe them all a debt of gratitude too big to ever repay.

But we can begin to repay them by living up to their example in Washington. Shortly after I began this campaign, an elderly lady came up and asked me, “You were in the Army, right?” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She said, “Now you want to be in Congress?” I said, “Yes, ma’am, I do.” And she said, “Why would you want to leave the country’s most respected institution for the country’s least respected institution?”

Lately, it’s a sad fact that our political institutions have lost respect among our citizens. Our troops, on the other hand, are respected not just for what they do—fight and win our country’s wars—but for who they are, for the character they display. If our political leaders demonstrated some of the same virtues—like duty, integrity, and courage—our political institutions will regain that lost respect.

As it is, one of the most common questions I got asked on the campaign trail was, “Will Washington change you?” I don’t think they meant it in a good way—maybe “change” has developed a bad taste after four years of Barack Obama. Washington too often does change those we send there, and not in a way that General Washington would have approved.

Seven years ago today, I reported to the U.S. Army’s Ranger School. Every day we recited the Ranger Creed, as a reminder of the high standards set for us. I remember those lessons very well. I will take those lessons to Washington in hopes of changing it, not to be changed by it: I volunteered fully knowing the hazards. My country expects more of me. I will shoulder more than my share of the task. I will set the example for others to follow. I will fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.

And what is our mission today? As every soldier knows, it’s to pass on what we’ve been given in better shape than we found it. What we’ve been given is a country that has brought more prosperity and more liberty to more people than any in history. That country was born in the sacrifices of our founders, who knew that government should be limited, that it should treat citizens as equals, and that it must protect a private sphere of economic freedom and religious liberty. Those principles will guide me in Congress and they will restore America’s greatness.

No doubt, we’ve had our challenges recently and I can’t promise we’ll overcome them in the next year or even the next Congress, because they’ve been building for decades. Nor can I promise that you’ll always agree with my votes, because I owe each of you my conscience, my judgment, my unbiased opinion. But I do promise that together we can complete the mission, we can overcome our challenges, we can build a brighter future, and we can pass on a legacy of liberty greater still than the one we inherited.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
Tom Cotton

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Tags: Arkansas, Congressional Races, Congress, republicans, Tom Cotton, Rick Crawford, Tim Griffin, Steve Womack, election 2012 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Romney Concedes . . .

. . . Presidential Race. Enough said. Obama Wins.

Obviously, the re-elected President Obama needs to work with both parties to keep us out of a recession during his second term. Don't know if he can do this without scrapping some of his advisers. If he does not, his legacy, if he cares, will be greatly damaged in history.

Expectation: more of the same policies. Which will mean no rest for conservatives and lots more fodder for future articles. It will also mean growing fear by those who drive and advance the economy upon which the rest of America depends.

But for today, here's hoping.

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Tags: election 2012, presidential race, Romney concedes, Obama wins To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Who Did I Vote For?

Any Doubt?  I Voted For Jobs!

The compassionate decision for America, my friends, my neighbors, and my community!

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Tags: election, 2012 election, voted, jobs To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

By the Numbers: Medicare Costs for Seniors to Rise Under President’s Plan

Sarah Morris, Heritage Investigates: Under current law, as amended by Obamacare, seniors enrolled in traditional Medicare can expect to face higher Part B and Part D premiums. Moreover, President Obama has planned in his 2013 budget proposal to increase income-related Part B and Part D premium coverage by 15 percent. As a result, out-of-pocket costs are expected to rise by 2017 under the president’s budget proposal.

Under Obama’s plan, “seniors will pay more — a lot more — and they will pay this steep price in many different ways,” Heritage’s Robert E. Moffit, Rea S. Hederman and Alyene Senger explain in a new paper analyzing the impact on seniors.

Americans may have diverse opinions on Medicare reform but what remains certain is that Medicare “as we know it” is already a thing of that past.

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Tags: 2013 budget, Affordable Care Act, baby boomers, Chart of the Week, higher cost, insurance, mandate, medicare, Medicare Advantage, nursing homes, Obamacare, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Obama, seniors, Heritage Investigates To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Voting: A Debt of Honor

W. Mitt Romney and Rep. Raul D. Ryan

by Richard L. Johnson, Human Events: Two former Navy SEALs died in a little hellhole called Benhgazi. Still in the employ of their country, Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty fought until the bloody end, while our country stood by and ignored their pleas for help.

Is this the country we have become? A country that turns its back on our warriors and leaves them to die without raising a finger to assist?

Voting is the measure of who we are as a people. Are we a country of cowards who refuse to help our fellow countrymen under fire? That’s what this election comes down to: Are we cowards or are we Americans?

I can point to any number of reasons why President Obama should be run out of town. We can talk about the economy, Fast & Furious, the threatened imposition of a new assault weapon ban or the health care abomination. But, leaving our people to die on foreign soil strikes to the fundamental core of our being.

At no time in my life have I ever been ashamed of my country. Yes, we have made mistakes. Sometimes those mistakes have been awful. But at no time have we ever gotten in bed with our enemies and knowingly left our own people to die. . . . .

To the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice we owe a debt we can only repay by reclaiming what they gave their lives to protect. Woods and Doherty are not the first, nor will they be the last, to die in the service of these United States. The least we can do is get out and take a stand on what kind of country we will be.

We must remember the awe-inspiring words once spoken by President Lincoln during our country’s Civil War:

“…from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Lincoln’s words have never held more meaning than they do today.

Get off your butt and go vote. . . . . [Read Full Article]

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Tags: Navy SEAL, killed, abandoned, Benhgazi, Debt of Honor, vote To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Election Day. When Finished, Somebody is Going to be Bummed

2012 Debate Image Via Article

By Rick Manning, : The left and the right agree on something this morning. Their guy is going to win the presidency.

The left is buoyed by publicly released media polls that show Obama clinging to a lead in swing states, even though the national polls are a toss-up. They have believed the narrative that voter turnout will closely approximate 2008, and if they are correct, Obama wins a second term.

The right knows that the 2008 turnout model is not going to happen, if for no other reason than conservative intensity in this election far exceeds what was seen in that low-water-mark year. Even if intensity on the left remained the same, the turnout numbers will shift due to greater participation on the right. . . .

In 2012, both sides not only expect to win, but are already measuring drapes in the White House. And it all comes down to who votes in our 50/50 America. If voters turn out like they did in 2000 or 2004, Romney is president. If voter turnout is more like 2008, Obama gets a second term.

Strange that after about a billion and a half dollars spent, it all comes down to a simple American concept — whoever gets his people to vote wins.

And on Wednesday, Nov. 7, one side or the other is going to be bitterly disappointed with no soft landing of knowing in your heart that winning was highly unlikely.

It is going to be an interesting day. . . . [Read Full Article]
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Rick Manning (twitter: @rmanning957) is the communications director for Americans for Limited Government.

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Tags: election 2012, final outcome, Rick Manning,  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Mandate Proves You Can’t Trust Obama

Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: President Obama’s closing argument is that you should vote for him based on trust. But he betrayed the most central policy promise of his 2008 campaign when he imposed a mandate forcing Americans to buy expensive health insurance from giant private insurance companies.

Four years ago, Obama was adamantly opposed to the mandate, attacking it as his principal criticism of Hillary Clinton’s domestic agenda. For instance, consider these words from Obama in his 2008 debate against Clinton: “She believes that we have to force people who don't have health insurance to buy it… there's going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses and they may charge people who already don't have health care fines, or have to take it out of their paycheck and that I don't think is helping those who don't have health insurance. That is a genuine difference.”

Once he became president, that “genuine difference” was quickly jettisoned. More interested in corrupt backroom deals and political advantage than genuine reform, Obama cut a deal with the major insurance companies that centered on the mandate. They let him impose all kinds of restrictive regulations on them and in return he forced everyone in America to buy their product – with billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to sweeten the pot.

Four year ago, Obama told us he would oppose the mandate and instead focus on lowering costs. He said: “I believe the reason people don’t have health care isn’t because no one’s forced them to buy it, it’s because no one’s made it affordable – and that’s what we’ll do when I am president.” Another broken promise.

Contrary to its deceptive name, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has not made health care more affordable. Quite the opposite. Obama promised premiums would go down $2,500 – they’ve actually gone up by more than that amount. And they’ll keep going up; for instance in Ohio, premiums are expected to jump between 55 and 85 percent in the individual market.

Even Jonathan Gruber (the MIT economist who was infamously paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Obama administration while he testified as an “independent expert” that the bill would reduce costs) now concedes that PPACA will cause premiums to “dramatically increase.” Gruber has now publicly stated that premiums in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Minnesota will “dramatically increase.” In Wisconsin, he estimates a 30 percent jump.

Mitt Romney is not perfect on this issue. In fact, he supported the mandate at the state level in Massachusetts. But he has consistently campaigned against it on the federal level and promised to repeal PPACA. Moreover, to the extent he was wrong on the issue in the past, he’s right now. Obama flipping from right to wrong is much worse. And less trustworthy.

The American people overwhelmingly oppose the mandate. Notwithstanding the bizarre reasoning of the Supreme Court, Gallup has found that 72 percent of Americans believe the mandate is unconstitutional. Even a majority of Democrats and a majority of PPACA supporters believe the mandate violates the U.S. Constitution’s limits on federal power.

Barack Obama became president by slamming Hillary Clinton on this issue, including running a hard-hitting advertisement in Pennsylvania, saying: “Hillary Clinton is attacking. But what’s she not telling you about her health care plan? It forces everyone to buy insurance, even if you can’t afford it. And you pay a penalty if you don’t.”

Curiously, that ad now says “This video is private. Sorry about that,” when you try to view it on Obama’s YouTube account. Maybe he wants the people of Pennsylvania to forget he did exactly what he attacked Hillary for wanting to do.

On health care, overwhelmingly Obama’s top first-term priority even while the economy suffered, he did exactly the opposite of what he said on the campaign trail. Now he says we can trust him with a second term – but who knows how many promises would be broken if we made that mistake again.
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© Copyright 2012 Phil Kerpen. He is the president of American Commitment where he first shared this article; the author of Democracy Denied: How Obama is Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America – and How to Stop Him. Phil Kerpen is a contributing author for the ARRA News Service.

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Tags: lack of trust, Barack Obama, Obamacare, mandate To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!

Obama Admin Withholding Info On Pending Regulations

Also See: Charles Owens' Article

In 1980 the Congress mandated a regulatory agenda from federal agencies.  The law, called the Regulatory Flexibility Act, requires the Administration to release every April and every October a summary of all rules likely to have a “significant economic impact” on small businesses in America. The Obama Administration has ignored the law for the past year, causing many Americans to wonder what regulatory nightmares may be lurking behind the Obama curtain. ~ Curtis Coleman, Chairman of The Institute for Constitutional Policy.

Either the Obama Administration has come to the conclusion that regulations are hurting businesses and the workers they employ, or it is in the midst of a pre-election regulatory slow down to hide its true agenda." ~ John Vinci, Staff Attorney for the Americans for Limited Government

National Journal reports today, “The Obama administration roared into office four years ago with an openly ambitious regulatory agenda, releasing a higher-than-usual number of major regulations in the first two years. In 2012, the number of new regulations has plummeted in a year in which the president’s regulatory policies have emerged as a major campaign theme.

“Federal agencies are sitting on a pile of major health, environmental, and financial regulations that lobbyists, congressional staffers, and former administration officials say are being held back to avoid providing ammunition to Mitt Romney and other Republican critics. . . The drop-off stands out not just compared to earlier years of Obama’s term but also compared to other years in which presidents are running for reelection, according to analyses from experts at George Mason and George Washington universities.”

According to National Journal, “Sources in regular contact with agencies say they’ve been told that new rules won’t resume until after the election, and many expect an avalanche of new major rules shortly afterward. ‘They’re ready to burst,’ said Susan Dudley, director of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University and a top official at the White House Office of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush administration. ‘Some people use the analogy of a closet door—you keep putting things in, and it’s ready to burst.’”

Importantly, the piece notes, “Much of the delayed regulation is tied to major Obama administration policies, not vestigial red tape. Both the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank require significant regulatory clarification in order to move forward.”

The administration is holding back an avalanche of Obamacare regulations in particular, and is set to release them after the election, according to Politico. “The bottled-up rules to set up President Barack Obama’s health care reform law are going to start flowing quickly right after Election Day. . . . The once-steady stream of regulations and rules from the Obama administration — instructions for insurance companies, hospitals and states on how to put the law in place — has slowed to a trickle in recent months in an attempt to avoid controversies before the election. . . . But work has been going on behind the scenes — both in the Department of Health and Human Services and at the state level. As soon as Wednesday, the gears and levers of government bureaucracy are likely to start moving at full speed again.”

Coleman adds, "Not only is the President defying the law, a lot of Americans – especially small business owners who produce two-thirds of American jobs – are rightfully worried about what might be waiting behind the Obama curtain.  And they have good reason to worry.  Some of the regulations skulking behind the President’s disregard for the law include…

• Hundreds of rules yet to be finalized relating to Dodd-Frank financial regulations, regulations that are destroying community banks across America and making it extremely difficult for consumers to get loans, including new home mortgages.
• Hundreds of more rules related to Obamacare, and their potentially devastating impact on businesses.
• The EPA’s new stricter standards on ozone emissions, estimated to cost $90 billion or more annually and jeopardize millions of jobs.
• New rules to control power plant emissions that will dramatically increase energy costs – estimated to cost as much as $100 billion and thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Missouri and Ohio.

"There is only one way to slow down and maybe stop this tedious destruction of the America economy – and that is to get rid of the Obama curtain entirely."

National Journal adds, “Several people who work closely with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency at the Health and Human Services Department responsible for most of the outstanding health care regulations, say they’ve been told the delays are due to political considerations, not technical difficulties. One congressional staffer who works closely with CMS said they had been told the agency is on ‘lockdown.’ ‘There is clearly a cycle, but people who are career employees in HHS have said this is unusual,’ said Brett Graham, a partner and managing director at the Leavitt Group, which is helping states build exchanges.”

Politico writes, “HHS is expected to begin to release the backlog of regulations. . . . If Obama wins, that work is likely to continue through the early years of his second term. Democrats will want the law put in place as quickly as possible. They face a late 2013 deadline to have the exchanges ready to go. And if Romney wins, the need to get the rules out may become even more urgent for Democrats. Any rules or regulations that are not final by Nov. 22 — 60 days before Romney would be sworn in — can be easily put on hold on Jan. 20. That means the Obama administration would have a huge incentive to have as much of the health law as possible in ‘final’ rule form within two weeks of a Romney victory. Rules and regulations that aren’t final can be more easily changed than those that are. . . .

"That’s all the more reason that David Merritt, managing director at Leavitt Partners, is expecting a ‘torrent of regulations’ after Election Day. ‘I think it’s common knowledge they slow-walked a lot of these. You will see that torrent,’ Merritt said. . . . ‘There’s a lot of chatter that HHS has been very busy working on regulations that they are not wanting to release during the campaign,’ said Gail Wilensky, who led Medicare and Medicaid during the George H.W. Bush administration and is now an economist and senior fellow at Project Hope. ‘My expectation is we will see a flurry [of releases], but we’ll see the biggest flurry if Obama were to lose.’"

Last month, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said, “Right now, federal agencies are at work on 2,700 new rules. These rules will go on top of a pile of regulations measuring millions of pages. Mr. President, if we want to put people back to work, we have to cut the red tape that is strangling our job creators.”

As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell explained earlier, “[President Obama has] hammered small businesses with a barrage of new regulations, with dozens more in the pipeline. He expects them to plan for the future without even knowing what their tax and health care liabilities will be. . . . The President may not want to admit it, but the economic mess we’re in is his legacy. And after three and a half years of finger-pointing, he owes it to the American people to be straight about it.”

Coleman concludes, "The Obama Administration has ignored the law for the past year, causing many Americans to wonder what regulatory nightmares may be lurking behind the Obama curtain."  

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Tags: Obama administration, withholding, regulation information, violating law, election 2012 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!