How Obama blatantly disregards the law

By Paul Sperry

November 30, 2014 | 1:00am

President Obama likes to claim he’s been forced into rogue executive actions, laying the blame on an intransigent Congress. In fact, his lawlessness is coldly calculated, dating back to his days as a Chicago community organizer.

Consider what he wrote on page 276 of his 1995 memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” reflecting on his decision to study law: “I had things to learn in law school, things that would help me bring about real change. I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail, knowledge that I could now bring back to where it was needed…bring it back like Promethean fire.”

Obama fancies himself a modern-day Prometheus stealing laws from the oppressive Founding Fathers for the benefit of the oppressed.

Officer Darren Wilson Resigns

FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — The white police officer who killed Michael Brown has resigned from the Ferguson Police Department, his attorney said Saturday, nearly four months after the fatal confrontation with the black 18-year-old that fueled protests in the St. Louis suburb and across the nation.

Darren Wilson, 28, has been on administrative leave since the shooting on Aug. 9. His resignation was announced Saturday by one of his attorneys, Neil Bruntrager. The resignation is effective immediately, Bruntrager said.

A grand jury spent more than three months reviewing evidence in the case before declining in November to issue any charges against Wilson. He told jurors that he feared for his life when Brown hit him and reached for his gun.

The U.S. Justice Department is still conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting and a separate probe of police department practices.

The shooting struck up a national debate about race and police power.

After the shooting, Wilson spent months in hiding and made no public statements. He broke his silence after the grand jury decision, telling ABC News that he could not have done anything differently in the encounter with Brown.

Wilson said he has a clean conscience because "I know I did my job right." Brown's shooting was the first time he fired his gun on the job, he said.

Asked whether the encounter would have unfolded the same way if Brown had been white, Wilson said yes.

Wilson began his career in nearby Jennings before moving to the Ferguson job a few years ago. He had no previous complaints against him and a good career record, according to Police Chief Thomas Jackson, who called Wilson "an excellent police officer."

A few months before the shooting, Wilson had received a commendation for detaining a suspect in a drug case.

Ode to looters!

Enough already!

Gallup: Peak Number Of Americans Delaying Medical Care Over Costs

Gallup: Peak Number Of Americans Delaying Medical Care Over Costs

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U.S. President Barack Obama delivers an address to the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative in Yangon November 14, 2014. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

One in three Americans has put off seeking medical treatment in 2014 due to high costs, according to Gallup — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2001. 

Thirty-three percent of Americans have delayed medical treatment for themselves or their families because of the costs they’d have to pay, according to the survey. Obamacare, of course, had promised that it would help make health care more affordable for everyone, but the number of people who can’t afford a trip to the doctor has actually risen three points since 2013, before most Obamacare provisions took effect.

The hardest-hit: the middle-class. Americans with an annual household income of between $30,000 and $75,000 began delaying medical care over costs more in 2014, up to 38 percent in 2014 from 33 percent last year; among households that earn above $75,000, 28 percent delayed care this year, compared to just 17 percent last year.

The lowest-income section, some of whom can take part in Medicaid and who are more likely to qualify for significant premium and cost-sharing subsidies on an Obamacare exchange, are less likely to delay care this year. Now, 35 percent of those who earn under $30,000 a year are putting off seeking medical care, down from 43 percent last year.

It’s a remarkable shift: after Obamacare’s redistribution of wealth, the middle class is actually delaying medical care due to high costs at a higher rate than the poorest section of the country, which is highly subsidized by taxpayers.

The growing problem could have serious consequences for the middle-class. Twice as many people (22 percent) have delayed treatment for serious illnesses than than for smaller problems (11 percent).

Part of the problem is an ongoing shift towards higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, while health insurance premiums continue to rise all the same. The trend, which existed to some extent before Obamacare, increased in intensity with the onset of the health-care law. (RELATED: 4 Of 5 Companies May Hike Deductibles Due To Obamacare)

Some health policy experts argue that the trend helps cut down on wasteful health care spending. But those who already had health coverage, in many cases, are seeing their deductibles go up along with their premiums, making it more difficult than ever to afford medical care itself, on top of now-mandatory medical insurance.

Gallup’s results corroborate what many Obamacare supporters have confirmed about the health-care law: while it’s named the Affordable Care Act, its purpose was to increase the number of Americans with health insurance, not to make it more affordable for everyone.

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, admitted this week that congressional Democrats should not have passed Obamacare in 2010 because it didn’t benefit most of the middle class. (RELATED: Chuck Schumer: We Shouldn’t Have Passed Obamacare In 2010)

Pentagon struggles with looming budget deadline

Pentagon struggles with looming budget deadline
By Rebecca Shabad - 11-29-14 17:27 PM EST

The Pentagon has struggled for nearly 20 years to produce financial records that the government and outside groups can accurately audit, and appears to be unable to meet a goal of being fully auditable by September 2017.

“I think there are significant challenges in meeting the 2017 date,” said Asif Khan, the director of financial management and assurance at the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

“To be able to do a financial statement audit by that date, it’s going to be very difficult because of the sheer scale and resources required.”

Former Defense Sec. Leon Panetta set that goal in October 2011, and the Pentagon has made some progress.

In December, it expects to receive an award from Congress that will subsidize financial audits by an independent firm of the Air Force, Navy and Army, a defense spokesman told The Hill. The Marine Corps has already received a contract for one.

Still, officials say they have a ways to go.

“We still have a lot of work left to do to be ready to audit all of our financial statements,” the defense official said. “It is an ambitious goal but we are committed to meeting it.”

The Pentagon has been under pressure for years to make its spending more transparent.

Audits of government agencies are an important tool in the budget process because they track how the funding appropriated by Congress is distributed.

It’s particularly important at the Pentagon — which accounts for more than half of the government’s discretionary spending.

Since 1997, the GAO has been required to audit the federal government’s consolidated financial statements, but the watchdog agency has repeatedly said its reviews of the Pentagon are not based on accurate data.

“It’s pretty clear…the amount that’s been appropriated by Congress. Those numbers are well known. How that appropriated money is apportioned and how the budget execution takes place, that’s where the process gets very fragmented,” Khan said.

In 1995, GAO rated the Pentagon’s financial management operations as “high risk." The watchdog group warns the department is “severely hampered” by the lack of an accurate audit.

The Pentagon needs reliable data, the agency warns, in order to maintain accountability for all of its resources and to make sound budget-related decisions.

While an audit itself wouldn’t necessarily expose government corruption, GAO says the Pentagon will continue to be at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement.

The Defense Department blames old technology and the fact that all of the armed services have their own method of tracking their spending for some of its shortcomings.

Gordon Adams, an American University professor who dealt with the Pentagon’s audit problem while at the Office of Management and Budget in the 1990s, said the lack of a united financial system is a real problem.

 “When I was at OMB in the ‘90s, we struggled with this question—how to whittle down the number of financial systems. Every service had an argument as to why their financial systems…shouldn’t be merged with anybody else,” Adams said.

“The big recommendation I would make is to break that logjam and integrate the financial systems so that you have consistent reporting data across services and across activities,” he added.

Another contributing factor is the Pentagon’s outdated technology, said Todd Harrison, senior fellow of defense studies at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

People at Air Force bases around the country, for example, closely track financial transactions — but that information doesn’t always get to the Pentagon’s comptroller who oversees the development and execution of the budget.

“The problem is when you send that data back to headquarters, the IT systems were built to aggregate all of the expense data in just a summary of data back to headquarters,” Harrison said.  “Well, you can’t pass an audit with that because the auditors want to see traceability all the way from the top to the bottom and back.”

Swiss to vote on massive gold-buying plan

Swiss to vote on massive gold-buying plan

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GENEVA (AP) — In Switzerland, a campaign is on to protect the country's wealth by investing in gold — a lot of gold.

In a test of their sense of financial security, the Swiss are being asked to vote on a proposal to make the central bank hold a fifth of its reserves in gold within five years. That would mean buying about 1,500 metric tons, or 1,650 short tons, of gold worth more than $60 billion.

If the initiative wins the backing of a majority of voters this Sunday, the Swiss National Bank would also be prohibited from spending any of the treasure, which would have to be locked away in vaults entirely on Swiss soil. The prospect risks causing a spike in gold prices globally.

The nationalist Swiss People's Party, the country's largest, has brought the "Save our Swiss Gold" initiative, arguing it will restore trust in the central bank and its paper money. The proposal is opposed by the government and financial leaders but aims to capitalize on a growing sense of caution among the Swiss about the perceived dangers and increasing volatility of financial markets.

Though the country is among the world's most prosperous, the initiative argues that owning physical gold in vaults would protect the country's wealth from trouble in markets beyond the control of this small Alpine nation. The experience of the 2008 global financial crisis, triggered in part by complex investments that brought down multiple banks and bankrupted states, is fresh in people's memories.

Jacques Mayor, a Geneva accountant, said he was wary of the idea of Switzerland buying or selling gold in large amounts in international markets.

"The last time they sold gold, we had an enormous loss," Mayor said, referring to the central bank going $10 billion in the red in 2013, when the value of its gold holdings slumped.

Despite the perception that gold's value is protected by the fact it is a physical good, its market price can in fact be quite volatile. The metal is used often by speculators as a safe haven.

Recently, gold has lost much of its sheen. Its price has fallen 11 percent since the summer to around $1200 an ounce.

Swiss polling firm gfs.bern has found the initiative is likely to fail, with just 38 percent supporting it, short of the required majority. About 47 percent were opposed as of early November.