The Front Page Cover
"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened"
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Featuring:
The ACA’s Unintended Consequences
nObamacare will depress wages and productivity
Casey B. Mulligan
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"Know who you are standing with"
"Show me your friends and I'll show you your future"
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nObama Warns the Coast Guard of Rising Seas, Not Real Threats 
Barack nObama stood before the 200 graduates at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. They may have been sitting there, in their crisp white uniforms, but they would soon go out and enforce maritime law, command ships and lead search and rescue missions. What words could the commander in chief give these graduates that they could take to heart as they serve their country? nObama said, "I'm here today to say that climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security. And make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country. And so we need to act — and we need to act now." Instead of mentioning the growing threat of ISIL that will be around longer than his administration, instead of warning about Russia's belligerence, nObama tried to connect his longtime environmental crusade with national security. In fact, he blamed climate change for civil war in Syria: "Understand, climate change did not cause the conflicts we see around the world. Yet ... [i]t's now believed that drought and crop failures and high food prices helped fuel the early unrest in Syria, which descended into civil war in the heart of the Middle East." nObama's address was full of lies. This speech merely diverted from his failed security policies to focus on his socialist climate change agenda. -The Patriot Post
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Rice Boasts of Ending Two Wars 'Responsibly'
National Security Advisor Susan Rice doesn't have a swell history when it comes to accurately describing things. She faithfully started the YouTube video talking points lie regarding Benghazi, and, perhaps less infamously, she declared deserter and likely traitor Bowe Bergdahl served with "honor and distinction." So it's little surprise that she stuck her foot in her mouth once again, this time at a German Embassy photography exhibit of wounded soldiers. With U.S. vets in attendance angry over the recent fall of Ramadi, Rice had the audacity to claim, "Now that we have ended two wars responsibly, and brought home hundreds of American troops, we salute this new generation of veterans." Neither the war in Iraq nor the war in Afghanistan is over. Barack nObama simply abandoned Iraq, leaving it to the Islamic State, though U.S. forces continue to conduct airstrikes there. American soldiers will remain in Afghanistan for the time being, but the future is uncertain. Either way, "ended" and "responsibly" are not words to describe the actions of this woeful commander in chief.
Finally, a question for Hilly Clinton: Knowing what you know now, would you go along with nObama's plan to retreat from Iraq? -The Patriot Post
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More Governments Fudging Climate Data
Satellite data has found that the mean global temperature has been sitting on a plateau for more than 18 years now, which is in stark contrast to official government numbers. Just this week, NOAA reported that, at 1.33°F (0.74°C) above average, last month was the fourth warmest April recorded globally, and 2015 so far is the hottest on record. But as we've documented, the agency is currently mired in allegations of misconduct after it was discovered that historical data was manipulated to make post 1970s/1980s warming appear more alarming. And more and more foreign government agencies are engaging in the practice. Last year, "The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (ABM) was ... forced to admit it alters the temperatures recorded at almost all the official weather stations in Australia," H. Sterling Burnett with The Heartland Institute wrote in September. Now, "Switzerland joins a growing list of countries whose temperature measurements have been adjusted to show greater warming than actually measured by its temperature instrument," Burnett revealed this week. Interestingly, he notes, "Even with fudged data, governments have been unable to hide the fact winters in Switzerland and in Central Europe have become colder over the past 20 years, defying predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other climate alarmists." Ironically, even data tampering can't hide one inconvenient fact: Temperature trends are defying the science community's predictions.
-The Patriot Post
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EMAILS SHOW BLUMENTHAL DEEP INTO HILLY’S BENGHAZI SPIN
A NYT report says soon-to-be-released emails from Hilly Clinton’s secret server reveal that in 2011 then-Secretary of State Clinton “was circulating information about the attacks in Benghazi that contradicted the nObama administration’s initial narrative of what occurred.”
NYT also detailed several emails on Libya from Clinton retainer Sidney Blumenthal, who initially blamed the Benghazi attack on demonstrators: “[two days after the Benghazi attack] Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a more thorough account of what had occurred. Citing ‘sensitive sources’ in Libya, the memo provided extensive detail about the episode, saying that the siege had been set off by members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan terrorist group. Those militants had ties to Al Qaeda, had planned the attacks for a month and had used a nearby protest as cover for the siege, the memo said. ‘We should get this around asap’ Mrs. Clinton said in an email to [Clinton policy adviser Jake Sullivan]. ‘Will do,’ he responded. That information contradicted the nObama administration’s narrative at the time about what had spawned the attacks.”
Sid who?- Free Beacon: “Controversial Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal is no longer on the Clinton Foundation payroll, but it is still unclear when he left and under what circumstances. A spokesperson for the foundation told the Washington Free Beacon that Blumenthal ”hasn’t worked here in a while,” but did not confirm when he left or why.” -Fox News
A NYT report says soon-to-be-released emails from Hilly Clinton’s secret server reveal that in 2011 then-Secretary of State Clinton “was circulating information about the attacks in Benghazi that contradicted the nObama administration’s initial narrative of what occurred.”
NYT also detailed several emails on Libya from Clinton retainer Sidney Blumenthal, who initially blamed the Benghazi attack on demonstrators: “[two days after the Benghazi attack] Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a more thorough account of what had occurred. Citing ‘sensitive sources’ in Libya, the memo provided extensive detail about the episode, saying that the siege had been set off by members of Ansar al-Shariah, the Libyan terrorist group. Those militants had ties to Al Qaeda, had planned the attacks for a month and had used a nearby protest as cover for the siege, the memo said. ‘We should get this around asap’ Mrs. Clinton said in an email to [Clinton policy adviser Jake Sullivan]. ‘Will do,’ he responded. That information contradicted the nObama administration’s narrative at the time about what had spawned the attacks.”
Sid who?- Free Beacon: “Controversial Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal is no longer on the Clinton Foundation payroll, but it is still unclear when he left and under what circumstances. A spokesperson for the foundation told the Washington Free Beacon that Blumenthal ”hasn’t worked here in a while,” but did not confirm when he left or why.” -Fox News
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WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE
The rise of the machines may be a lot closer than we think. New York magazine takes a dive into IBM’s journey to build, not only an intelligent robot, but one that can express emotion. Their major success, named Watson, won jeopardy when he was just four years old. The robot picks up behavior from mimicking those around it, and can put together connections to make its own ‘thoughts.’ For example, Watson could diagnose a patient after hearing the symptoms, but Watson couldn’t understand the patient’s suffering. So why do we care about smart robots? Well, researchers suggest that if robots can do and think for themselves they could take away some of the work from the rest of us. -Fox News
The rise of the machines may be a lot closer than we think. New York magazine takes a dive into IBM’s journey to build, not only an intelligent robot, but one that can express emotion. Their major success, named Watson, won jeopardy when he was just four years old. The robot picks up behavior from mimicking those around it, and can put together connections to make its own ‘thoughts.’ For example, Watson could diagnose a patient after hearing the symptoms, but Watson couldn’t understand the patient’s suffering. So why do we care about smart robots? Well, researchers suggest that if robots can do and think for themselves they could take away some of the work from the rest of us. -Fox News
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41% of Americans Want Free Speech Restrictions
(Rob Knowles) - The first amendment is the document that secured in pen our pre-existing right to speak freely. The first amendment didn’t create free speech anymore than the civil rights movement made blacks equal to whites—it simply set an already existing human right into man-made law... The freedom to speak openly without fear of reprisal is not just a human right, it is part of our state of being; it’s as essential to who we are as our consciousness. But there are those who want to suppress this intrinsic right because of their own sensibilities. According to a new YouGov poll, when asked the question: “Would you support or oppose a law that would make it a crime for people to make public comments intended to stir up hatred against a group based on things such as their race, gender, religion, ethnic group, or sexual orientation?” a stunning 41% said yes. This is the plurality. 39% opposed. http://lastresistance.com/11756/horror-41-of-americans-want-free-speech-restrictions/
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(wnd.com) - The Federal Election Commission has backed off its plans to regulate political content on the Internet in the face of mounting criticism after it suggested that online political activity should be regulated... During a public meeting, Democrats on the FEC said they were responding to the public outcry in saying that no new rules are required, the Washington Examiner reported in a column by Paul Bedard. Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said the FEC received approximately 5,000 comments demanding the agency keep its hands off the Internet, Bedard reported. In response, she proposed a resolution that directly barred Internet regulation. http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/obamas-attack-dogs-surrender-to-drudge/
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Gov't violates Constitution millions of times daily
(Judge Andrew Napolitano) - What if we didn’t have a Constitution? What if the government were elected by custom and tradition, but not by law?... What if election procedures and official titles and government responsibilities merely followed those that preceded them, and not because any of this was compelled by law, but because that’s what folks came to expect? What if those elected to office, and those appointed to it, as well, took oaths to uphold the Constitution? What if those who took the oaths promised fidelity to the Constitution? What if the Constitution declares itself to be the supreme law of the land? What if the supreme law of the land means what it says? http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/govt-violates-constitution-millions-of-times-daily/
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Clinton AIDS charity was shut down in Massachusetts
(Jerome R. Corsi) - Why does the Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc., registered as an Arkansas non-profit corporation, continue to list its principal business address in Massachusetts, where its registration was revoked under a previous name, the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative?... While the foundation has provided no explanation, after meticulous examination, Wall Street financial analyst and investor Charles Ortel believes he can demonstrate material irregularities in the state registrations and federal filings of what today is known as the Clinton Health Access Initiative Inc., or CHAI. “These irregularities are of sufficient magnitude that if any of the 50 state attorneys general should present the evidence to a federal district judge, I believe an injunction would be ordered, shutting down the Clinton Foundation and placing the organization in receivership,” he said. http://www.wnd.com/2015/05/clinton-aids-charity-was-shut-down-in-massachusetts/
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Leaked Confirm Hilly Had Highly Sensitive Info On Private Emails
(Alex Griswold) - Emails leaked to The New York Times confirms what many critics have suspected: former Secretary of State Hilly Clinton’s insecure private email server contained highly sensitive information... “Mrs. Clinton’s emails show that she had a special type of government information known as ‘sensitive but unclassified,’ or ‘SBU,’ in her account,” the Times reports. “That information included the whereabouts and travel plans of American officials in Libya as security there deteriorated during the uprising against the leadership of Col. Muammar el Qaddafi in 2011.” One of these sensitive emails was from Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was murdered in the Benghazi attacks. “Nearly a year and a half before the attacks in Benghazi, Mr. Stevens, then an American envoy to the rebels, considered leaving Benghazi citing deteriorating security, according to an email to Mrs. Clinton marked ‘SBU.'” http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/21/leaked-emails-confirm-hillary-had-highly-sensitive-info-on-private-emails/
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Pentagon says no one should be held accountable for $34 million
(R. Jeffrey Smith) - Camp Leatherneck in southern Afghanistan was not a particularly hospitable base for the tens of thousands of U.S. Marines and other troops who surged there towards the end of the last decade... Sandstorms regularly swept through the treeless landscape, and attacks on the base by Taliban forces claimed lives. The base's initial name was "Tombstone." So it was perhaps understandable when the Marines declared an “operational need” in 2010 for a huge headquarters building at the site, to be outfitted with air conditioning, plush seating and comfortable offices. But the decision to construct a 64,000-foot command and control facility has since come to exemplify the U.S. military’s careless waste in Afghanistan. After $34 million was spent on its construction, the tall, windowless building was never, ever used, except perhaps for target practice by the Taliban, according to U.S. officials. The facility was officially turned over to the Afghan Army last fall, but it remains empty and lies in a part of Afghanistan where U.S. personnel rarely if ever travel now. http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/05/20/17362/pentagon-says-no-one-should-be-held-accountable-34-million-debacle?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=watchdog&utm_medium=publici-email&goal=0_ffd1d0160d-1beba55e2c-100318285&mc_cid=1beba55e2c&mc_eid=19f9d76dda
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Strategic Failures, the US and the Fall of Ramadi
(Ryan Mauro) - The Sunni tribes in Anbar Province were critical to the success of the 2007 "surge" that ousted the Islamic State's predecessor, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. The deterioration in the relationship between these tribes and the central Iraqi government was likewise critical to the terrorists' comeback in Iraq... The Islamic State remembered these lessons and acted quickly as the Iraqi government began training tribal fighters and the U.S. defense budget allotted $179 million to Kurdish and Sunni tribal forces. The U.S. forgot these lessons and has long rejected Sunni and Kurdish pleas for direct aid to fight the Islamic State. The nObama Administration is now planning to change course and directly arm and train the Iraqi Sunni tribes after the fall of Ramadi. The White House previously chose to work only through the central Iraqi government that has given the Kurds and Sunnis inadequate support. http://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/strategic-failures-us-and-fall-ramadi
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WHITE HOUSE DENIES ISIS HAS ESTABLISHED A CALIPHATE
(breitbart.com) - Thursday at the White House press briefing, when asked if he believes ISIS has a caliphate, press secretary Josh Earnest said, “No, I don’t believe that at all.”... Earnest said, “No, I don’t believe that at all. What we actually see is they do control some territory, but less than they used too. We also see that ISIS leaders are very concerned about their own security. They are not moving particularly freely these days. They are justifiably concerned about their safety because they know that the U.S. and our coalition partners have the capacity to take them off the battlefield.” How can one be so stupid?
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Hilly knew! Benghazi attack planned by fighters tied to Al Qaeda
(foxnews.com) - A longtime Clinton confidant reportedly advised then-Secretary of State Hilly Clinton two days after the 2012 Benghazi terror attack that an Al Qaeda-tied group had planned the deadly assault and used a protest as cover — but despite this warning... Clinton’s U.N. ambassador went on to publicly claim the attack was “spontaneous.” The guidance from ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal was contained in a memo sent Sept. 13, according to The New York Times. It is the latest documentation effectively contradicting the administration’s early narrative that the attack was driven by protests over an anti-Islam Internet video — and raising questions over why officials stuck to that story for days. According to the Times, Blumenthal initially blamed "demonstrators" angry over that video for the attacks. But the next day, he sent Clinton a very different memo. According to the Times, Blumenthal told Clinton the attack was driven by Al Qaeda-tied Ansar al-Shariah members who had planned it for a month and used a protest as cover. He cited "sensitive sources." http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/05/21/emails-reportedly-show-confidant-told-clinton-benghazi-attack-planned-by-aq/
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(gopthedailydose.com) - Elvis Presley is one of the most iconic stars in rock history, as he pretty much invented rock and roll... He inspired so many other artists, it’s impossible to imagine what music would be like today if he had never picked up a guitar. His story is a sad one though, especially towards the end. He got divorced in 1973, and it was pretty much downhill from there. This video is a testament to his strength, filmed only 6 weeks before his untimely death. http://gopthedailydose.com/2015/05/22/video-very-few-have-seen-this-footage-of-elviss-last-performance-just-leaked-to-the-public/ 
The ACA’s Unintended Consequences
nObamacare will depress wages and productivity
Casey B. Mulligan
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(city-journal.org) - As a Supreme Court decision looms next month in King v. Burwell, which could determine the future of nObamacare, much of the economic discussion surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) focuses, understandably, on the law’s effects on insurance premiums and on the delivery of health care. But the ACA also has significant potential to affect the allocation of labor—and thus wages—throughout the U.S. economy, through its penalties for employers that don’t provide health insurance for their workers as well as through its subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance (the latter of which is the subject of the King case). The employer penalties and the individual subsidies will exert a downward effect on average wages and on wage patterns, across industry sectors and income levels. And because the law privileges certain kinds of businesses over others, it will also reduce productivity..
One way to understand this is through Adam Smith’s theory of equalizing differences, through which we can trace and quantify the effects of the employer penalty and the exchange subsidies on wages and productivity. Doing so, I found that, overall, the ACA will reduce wages by $1,000 per year—or about 4 percent of wages for workers from low-income families and nearly 2 percent of wages for workers from higher-income families. Quite distinct from the ACA’s impact on insurance availability and on the quality of health care, these effects should be better understood.
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To help the uninsured get health-insurance coverage, the ACA created what it calls “health-insurance exchanges,” the collection of policies offered to each state’s residents by private insurance companies, subject to state and federal regulations regarding standardization of policy benefits, provisions, and pricing. Many, but not all, individuals shop on the exchanges by visiting a website that gathers customer information and quotes prices. Most people getting insurance through the exchanges receive financial assistance in up to two ways: reduced insurance premiums (administered through an income-tax credit system) or reduced out-of-pocket health costs, such as co-payments and deductibles. I collectively refer to the two subsidies as “exchange subsidies.”
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Because exchange subsidies are available only to persons not eligible for affordable employer coverage, the ACA requires that large employers either provide affordable coverage or pay a penalty, computed according to how many full-time employees they have. The law defines a large employer as one with at least 50 full-time-equivalent employees in the calendar year prior to the one in which it failed to provide coverage. (Part-time employees count toward full-time equivalents in proportion to their hours worked.) Unlike employee wages, the penalty is not deductible for the purpose of determining the employer’s business-income tax—and this fact, together with the law’s procedure for indexing the penalty to health-cost inflation, means that the employer penalty in 2016 (the first year in which it will be fully enforced) would be as costly as $3,163 per employee on the full-time payroll beyond 30 employees.
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Because the cost of the penalty to their employer could cause a reduction in wages or even the loss of their jobs, workers at penalized employers would appear, at first glance, to be losers here. However, as workers leave penalized employers and compete for jobs at employers that do offer coverage (hereafter “ESI employers,” for “employer-sponsored insurance”), they drive down wages at these employers and mitigate some of the penalty’s effect on wages at employers that don’t offer coverage (hereafter, “non-ESI employers”). It would work something like this: among groups of workers earning roughly the same amount, the ACA penalty takes part of the pay of the non-ESI (i.e., penalized) sector. Employees leave the penalized sector to take advantage of the higher ESI-sector pay. The more employees who seek work in the ESI sector, the less ESI employers need to pay for them. At the same time, the more employees who leave the penalized sector, the more the penalized employers are willing to pay the employees who remain. Non-ESI employees, then, will be partially compensated for the penalty-free opportunities existing outside their sector. The newly depressed pay among ESI employees amounts to a hidden tax on these workers: the employer penalty reduces their pay, even though their employers don’t pay it. In effect, penalized employees escape part of their penalty by passing it on to ESI employees.
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Here is how the father of economics, Adam Smith, explained such a dynamic: “If . . . there was any employment evidently either more or less advantageous than the rest, so many people would crowd into it in the one case, and so many would desert it in the other think “employer penalty”, that its advantages would soon return to the level of other employments.”
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The wage cut for ESI employees is known in the economics trade as a “compensating” or “equalizing” difference. In effect, all workers pay part of the employer penalty, even when their employer is not penalized. The effect of the employer penalty on employee pay increases with the size of the penalty itself, but it also depends on the size of the non-ESI sector. The larger the non-ESI sector, the more that ESI wages will have to fall in order to absorb workers leaving the sector. A helpful estimate of the amount that the penalty depresses overall wages is the product of the penalty and the non-ESI share of the labor market. In other words, the larger the penalty, or the larger the number of workers at penalized employers, the greater the wage effect.
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Table 1 shows three estimates, one in each column. The first column pertains to workers in relatively low-income families—those at or below three times the federal poverty line (FPL). The second column pertains to workers in moderate- to high-income families, and the final column summarizes all workers.
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