Tag Archives: Big Government

News

Darrell Issa: e-mails suggest Democrat congressman prompted IRS to target conservative group

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Katie Pavlich reports on Townhall.com.

Excerpt:

New IRS emails released by the House Oversight Committee show staff working for Democratic Ranking Member Elijah Cummings communicated with the IRS multiple times between 2012 and 2013 about voter fraud prevention group True the Vote. True the Vote was targeted by the IRS after applying for tax exempt status more than two years ago. Further, information shows the IRS and Cummings’ staff asked for nearly identical information from True the Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht about her organization, indicating coordination and improper sharing of confidential taxpayer information.

Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, along with five Subcommittee Chairmen are demanding Cummings provide an explanation for the staff inquiries to the IRS about True the Vote and for his denial that his staff ever contacted the IRS about the group.

“Although you have previously denied that your staff made inquiries to the IRS about conservative organization True the Vote that may have led to additional agency scrutiny, communication records between your staff and IRS officials – which you did not disclose to Majority Members or staff – indicates otherwise,” the letter to Cummings states. “As the Committee is scheduled to consider a resolution holding Ms. Lerner, a participant in responding to your communications that you failed to disclose, in contempt of Congress, you have an obligation to fully explain your staff’s undisclosed contacts with the IRS.”

But there’s more – Cummings DENIED that he had contacted the IRS before:

Up until this point, Rep. Cummings has denied his staff ever contacted the IRS about True the Vote and their activities during Oversight hearings. In fact, on February 6, 2014 during a Subcommittee hearing where Engelbrecht testified, Cummings vehemently denied having any contact or coordination in targeting True the Vote when attorney Cleta Mitchell, who is representing the group, indicated staff on the Committee had been involved in communication with the IRS. This was the exchange:

Ms. Mitchell: We want to get to the bottom of how these coincidences happened, and we’re going to try to figure out whether any – if there was any staff of this committee that might have been involved in putting True the Vote on the radar screen of some of these Federal agencies. We don’t know that, but we – we’re going to do everything we can do to try to get to the bottom of how did this all happen.

Mr. Cummings. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Meadows. Yes.

Mr. Cummings. I want to thank the gentleman for his courtesy. What she just said is absolutely incorrect and not true.

After the hearing, Engelbrecht filed an ethics complaint against Cummings for his targeting and intimidation of her organization.

By the way, I did not blog a story that came out a couple of days ago that showed that contrary to the lies spread by the liberal media, not one single liberal/progressive group was targeted by the IRS.

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Commentary

Two families fighting for their religious liberty at the Supreme Court

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The Heritage Foundation reports on the cases that will determine how far the Democrats can go to undermine religious liberty.

Excerpt:

In less than two weeks, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in cases challenging an Obamacare mandate that is trampling on religious freedom. The Hahn family and the Green family will be at the Court on March 25 asking for respect of their religious liberty and the freedom to continue offering their employees generous health plans.

Let’s meet these families and what they’re fighting for.

A Christian Mennonite family, the Hahns have run Conestoga Wood Specialties near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for nearly 50 years. A second-generation family business, Conestoga employs almost 1,000 individuals to produce quality wood products.

The Hahns have always run their family business in accordance with their faith, including offering an employee health plan that aligns with their values. Under the mandate, however, Conestoga Wood could face fines of up to $95,000 per day for sticking to their deeply held beliefs and not complying with the mandate.

Speaking of their fight for religious freedom at the Supreme Court, Conestoga president Anthony Hahn explains the magnitude of their case: “It’s not really only for Conestoga; we’re taking a stand for other businesses as well. This is a religious liberty issue that is concerning to us. We feel that the government has gone too far in too many instances.”

And number two:

“We believe that the principles that are taught scripturally are what we should operate our lives by, so that naturally flows over into the business,” explains Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby, an arts-and-crafts retailer.

Headquartered in Oklahoma City, Hobby Lobby has grown from one 300-square-foot garage to over 500 stores in 41 states employing more than 16,000 individuals.

The Greens’ faith is integral to how they operate their family business. Hobby Lobby storesclose on Sundays and are open only 66 hours a week so that their employees can spend more time with their families. The family’s faith influences not only the way they care for employees but their investment in communities through partnerships with numerous Christian ministries.

Yet under the Obamacare mandate, the government is forcing families like the Greens to violate those beliefs by funding coverage of potentially life-ending drugs and devices or face crippling fines—up to $1.3 million per day in the case of Hobby Lobby. Even if the business is forced to drop employee health care coverage to avoid the mandate, it would still face a fine of $2,000 per employee per year.

There are other victims as well, but these are the two that I am watching.  The Obama administration just recently established in the courts that parents have no human right to homeschool their children. Now there will be a fight to see if government can force Christians to violate their consciences in their business operations. We should all be watching and praying about this, and thinking about what we can do to protect our values.

News

Democrats want government social workers to visit children starting “at birth”

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This is from CNS News.

Excerpt:

Will America be a better and freer country three decades from now if the children who turn four in this decade spend most of their waking hours with members of a government teachers union rather than with their moms?

President Barack Obama’s vision of America, not surprisingly, starts with very young children spending their time in the custody of government employees.

“I believe we should start teaching our kids at the earliest ages,” Obama said last week.

When he used the word “we” here, Obama was not talking about Michelle and himself, he was talking about the government. When he used the words “our kids,” he was not talking about his own children — who attend the most expensive private school in Washington, D.C. — he was talking about other people’s children and grandchildren.

[…]Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius explained at the National Press Club last April — at a lectern shared with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten — that Obama’s vision for federal involvement in the lives of very young children does not stop with 4-year-olds.

Obama’s budget calls for HHS to spend $15 billion over 10 years to fund an Obamacare provision called the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program. An HHS budget document says this program will send government-funded “nurses, social workers, and other professionals” into people’s homes to “improve parenting skills.”

“I think that there still needs to be great understanding of what the president has put on the table is really a birth-to-five proposal, recognizing that you can’t start at 4-year-olds,” Sebelius said at the National Press Club.

“We really need to start at birth,” said Sebelius. “So, there will be an enhancement of home-visiting, which we know is an evidence-based strategy that helps people be good parents from the onset, helps the first and best teacher a child will ever have learn important skills.

[…]Obama, and his allies in government, advocate policies that violate the natural law and destroy human lives. They advocate, for example, the deliberate killing of innocent human lives through abortion (and, in Obama’s case, through intentionally neglecting-to-death born children who have survived abortions). They advocate destroying the family by redefining it to include, so far, carnal relationships between people of the same sex — thus denying that children have a God-given right to a mother and father.

Sebelius has been Obama’s chief agent in attacking the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. At this very moment, she is fighting in federal court to force Catholic schools in Washington, D.C., to secure health coverage for their faculty and staff that would provide abortion-inducing drugs in direct and unambiguous violation not only of the inalterable teachings of the Catholic Church but also in direct and unambiguous violation of the inalienable God-given right to life expressly recognized in the founding document of this nation.

For each of the last five years, according to the CDC, at least 40 percent of the babies born in the United States were born to unmarried mothers. As recently as 1980, it was only 18.4 percent.

Obama’s vision of a government that “educates” babies aims at forming the characters of the tragically increasing number of children born illegitimately in the United States — and as many other children as his programs can reach.

His strategic aim is to make them allies in his cause.

I don’t think that strangers in government can do as good of a job as my future wife and I can do. And I don’t like having to pay them to try. Big government secularists seem to have a deep suspicion of parents, and they seem to want to get the children away from them as quickly as possible, especially the fathers. Fathers are bad, I guess, because we teach children about God and about morality, and we teach them to be practical and independent. These are things that a secular leftist government does not like. But they do like to take money from fathers. And mothers too, if they can get it. None of this taking of money and then using it to influence your children is voluntary either. The whole idea that government will be interfering with my family, should I choose to start one, is really upsetting to me. Why don’t they raise their families with their own money, and leave me to raise mine with my money? What gives them the right to push their views on my children, paid for with my salary?