Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

Organizing for Action: The plot thickens

by

Ed Hubbard
Ed Hubbard

The same day that I was finalizing my last post about Organizing for Action (also known by its acronym, “OFA”), I had lunch with a friend of mine who also is a local lawyer and a Republican.  As our conversation turned to the several scandals now swirling around the Obama Administration, I told him about what I had found about OFA, and we both shared our disgust with the audacity of the Obama team.  One of the key facts addressed in my post, which angered both of us, was that, while 501(c)(4) applications for conservative groups had been delayed for years, the application to perpetuate Obama’s campaign apparatus as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization had apparently sailed through the IRS’ approval process is no more than 73 days.

Then, a few days ago, after my post had been uploaded, my friend forwarded to me this link to an online story from US News & World Report that appeared on May 15, 2013, after the Treasury Audit report had been made public.  In this story, the reporter quotes unnamed “officials” with OFA as saying, for the first time, that OFA had not yet filed its 501(c)(4) application, though it was organized and operating as if it had sought and obtained approval of as a tax-exempt organization.  The reason the “officials” gave for not applying for the tax exemption was that OFA had only been operating for four months and the law allowed the application to be filed anytime within 2 years of the start of operation of the organization.  To lend credibility to this assertion by the unnamed “officials,” the reporter quotes the unusually vague sentence at the end of OFA’s description of its status on its website (which I previously cited in another recent blog):

… OFA will operate as a “social welfare” organization within the meaning of section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code.

I guess, in hindsight, the use of the future tense in this sentence was supposed to tell everyone that OFA had not yet even applied for a tax-exempt status.

To say the least, this revelation from these unnamed “officials” was inconsistent with everything I had read to date.  So, with everything else that was being revealed, I was skeptical of its accuracy.  Regardless of my skepticism, though, I began preparing an update to my last post to acknowledge that I may have made a mistake in stating that OFA had already received its IRS approval, based on what US News & World Report had reported.  In the meantime, however, I also re-visited the available information trail about the formation and operation of OFA since mid-January.  What I found convinced me that a confession of a mistake may be premature.  Instead, I am now convinced that either the unnamed “officials’” assertion is wrong, or something much more troubling may be at work.

But rather than make any further accusations, what I want to do is present you with what I found over the last few days, and with the questions I now have, and then let you decide on your own what is going on.

First, some more background about the approval process for 501(c)(4) status.  Although my friend and I are not tax lawyers (although I am licensed to practice before the U.S. Tax Court, I have only provided procedural and evidentiary advice over the years to help tax lawyers to prepare for and participate in hearings with their clients—I am not a tax lawyer), both of us have enough passing knowledge of tax laws to have been skeptical of what the unnamed “official” of OFA was saying, so we asked a local tax lawyer about the credibility of the “official’s” assertions.  Interestingly, this tax lawyer said he had heard independently that OFA had filed an application, and that it had been approved very quickly.

In any event, what we learned about the process is that, in general, someone can start-up an organization and operate it as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization before the exempt status is finally approved by the IRS.  The reason this practice is allowed is due to the varying time it takes for each application to get approved.  However, there is a risk to taking this approach—if the application eventually is denied, the entity will owe back taxes and interest (as well as possible penalties, if it is found that there was no basis for a good faith belief that the entity could be operated under 501(c)(4)). This is the same procedure used for other tax-exempt organizations recognized under the IRS code.  Also, you apparently do have two years to submit the application, but—and here is the important caveat—because interest and penalties could be significant if the process is delayed and then denied, the standard practice is to get the paperwork filed immediately in order to minimize the costs related to that potential risk.

Again, this summary is not meant to be a legal opinion, but just a lay summary of how the process works.  However, the insight as to the standard filing practice is consistent with what a noted legal scholar, Richard A. Epstein, recently observed as he discussed the present scandals involving the administration:

… few individuals or groups are foolhardy enough to jump the gun and set up shop without obtaining the necessary approvals first.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/defining-ideas/article/147511

So, based on this added insight about the filing process, but giving the unnamed “officials” the benefit of the doubt as to their veracity, I began to wonder why people as allegedly intelligent as those who are the leaders of OFA would not follow the standard, prudent practice and file their application for a tax-exempt status at or before they formed and started operating Organizing for Action.  Remember, the officers and directors of OFA include the cream from Obama’s team:  Jim Messina, Stephanie Cutter, Robert Gibbs, Jon Carson, Jennifer O’Malley-Dillon, Julianna Smoot, Erik Smith, and David Plouffe.  And, that nagging question especially aroused my interest when the news reports over the last few months show the following:

  • Two days after the news broke about the formation of Organizing for Action amid the fanfare of the inaugural festivities last January, OFA held a fundraiser at which it was reported it raised over $500,000; and
  • OFA reported it raised $4.4 million during the first quarter of 2013.

With that much money raised, the potential back taxes, interest and penalties are significant; so, why would any reasonable person significantly increase the risk of being wrong by not at least filing a 501(c)(4) application, let alone by waiting to operate and raise money until you’ve gotten regulatory approval?  The answer is, you wouldn’t, and they probably didn’t either.  To reach that answer you could conclude that either the US News & World Report misunderstood the unnamed “official,” the unnamed “official” was wrong, or these smart people had other prudent reasons to delay filing the application while having a high degree of confidence that the eventual application would be approved.

With those three possible conclusions in mind, I challenge you to now do what I did—take another look at the following articles from various news sources since January 17th (including the video introduction by Michelle Obama contained in several of the articles and the video interview with Jim Messina contained in one of them), as well as a very informative chronology, and decide for yourself what is going on:

After reading these articles, it becomes very clear that, even though a couple of early articles use the future tense to describe OFA, no one in the media or affiliated with independent watchdog groups questioned the present existence of OFA’s tax-exempt status prior to the statement of unnamed “officials” in the May 15th story.  Also, as I showed in my prior post, Democrats like Maxine Waters considered OFA to already be such a 501(c)(4) entity.  Most importantly, no one from OFA denied it was such an entity until news of the Treasury Audit surfaced.

If OFA really had not followed the standard practice and filed these papers before it started operating and raising money, why not?

Why did OFA not disclose that it had not filed its application earlier, when it was clear that everyone was working under the impression that they had actually sought and received 501(c)(4) status?

Remember, the testimony is that Congress made over 130 inquiries about the treatment of applications from conservative groups by the IRS in 2011 and 2012, that by June, 2011 supervisors within the IRS knew of the practice, and that Treasury department leaders knew by the summer of 2012 that an audit of this practice was underway. Could it be that the Obama team was tipped-off about the investigation and told to delay filing the application until the dust settled?

If the Obama team was tipped-off but guaranteed a later approval, could this explain its confidence in taking the risk of incurring back taxes, interest and penalties for operating and fundraising as a tax-exempt non-profit that could result from a later denial of an application?

So, rather than feel that I need to confess a mistake in my last post, I now believe that the report in US News & World Report only raises more questions—and the plot thickens.  I hope as our Congress investigates this matter, that it ask these questions to get to the bottom of what the Obama team in Washington and Chicago knew, when they knew it, and what happened after they learned of it, regarding the IRS tax-exemption scandal.

In the end, though, all of this begs the real scandal that I addressed in the last post:  “If Obama’s campaign apparatus is a “social welfare” organization, then we have a more serious problem with the IRS, and this administration, than just a biased enforcement against conservative groups…”  I still don’t see how a campaign operation whose primary asset is a database it plans to use to mobilize Democrats could ever be a “social welfare” organization as contemplated in our tax laws.

The Real Scandal with the IRS: Organizing for Action and the Chicago-style Misuse of Governmental Power

by

Ed Hubbard
Ed Hubbard

In recent posts I have addressed two distinct issues:  the attempt by the Democratic Party to use new technology to nationalize the urban-machine approach to party building mastered in Chicago during the 20th Century; and the coerced conformity at the root of the modern progressive view of society.  Now I want to show how these issues collided to help create the IRS scandal now plaguing the Obama Administration.

I want to start with a not-so-obvious proposition:  the real scandal is not the mistreatment of conservative groups by the IRS—that was just a necessary by-product of the abuse of power, and the abuse of the tax laws, by this administration.

Instead, the real scandal is how the same abuse of power and law has been used to facilitate and perpetuate the database from both of Obama’s presidential campaigns for future use by the Democratic Party to identify and mobilize voters for their candidates.  What I am referring to is Organizing for Action, which is now a 501(c)4, tax-exempt “social welfare” organization.

Let’s recap what Organizing for Action really is—it is a website that gathers and sorts into a master database information from the contacts it obtains from its followers, which is then used to contact, identify and mobilize voters for Democratic candidates and the causes they support, and to solicit funds to support those candidates and causes.  As I recently quoted from an article in Salon, the database started during Obama’s 2008 campaign as “MyBarackObama, an interface for campaign supporters to create online identities, connect with other supporters and publicize their campaign activity.”  The website address was “my.barackobama.com,” and the email addresses for contacting the site or a campaign operative was “[email protected].”  As the Salon article went on to state, “[s]hortly after Obama took office, Democratic planners moved the MyBarackObama listserv and online community into the apparatus of the Democratic National Committee, converting it into Organizing for America.”  After being maintained by the DNC until the 2012 presidential election cycle, the same “listserv and online community” using the same email address became part of the Obama re-election campaign, known as Obama for America.  Then, after Election Day, November 6, 2012, this “listserv and online community” using the same email addresses used since the 2008 campaign, morphed yet again.

By January 18, 2013, what started out as MyBarackObama, then became Organizing for America, then became Obama for America, and had now become Organizing for Action, a 501(c)4, tax-exempt “social welfare” organization.  That’s right … within just 73 days after the election, the application to convert Obama’s campaign database into a tax-exempt “social welfare” organization to shelter its future donors from disclosure had been prepared for, submitted to, and approved by the IRS—that same group that could not figure out how to “provide good customer service” and evaluate the Tea Party applications since 2009.  The political importance to the Democratic Party of maintaining Obama’s database in this fashion cannot be underemphasized.  In a revealing interview from February of this year, Congresswoman Maxine Waters described the future political importance of this database as follows:

… I think some people are missing something here. The president has put in place an organization that contains the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life. That’s going to be very, very powerful, and … that database will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before. And whoever runs for president on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to have to go down with that database and the concerns of those people, because they can’t get around it. And he’s been very smart. I mean it’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place, and I think that’s what any Democratic candidate is going to have to deal with.

(See http://freebeacon.com/maxine-waters-describes-the-impact-of-the-ofa-database/).

So, the Obama IRS facilitated the use of “social welfare” status by Obama’s Chicago-based campaign apparatus to maintain its database for use by the Democratic Party in perpetuity without ever having to disclose its donors in the future.  If Obama’s campaign apparatus is a “social welfare” organization, then we have a more serious problem with the IRS, and this administration, than just a biased enforcement against conservative groups—it is the biased use of government power to benefit one set of political views and one political movement, while using that same power to suppress the opposing political view or movement.

Welcome to the way of Chicago politics, now playing nationally.

The flip-side of the coin of expanding the block-to-block organizational approach of the Chicago machine to national Democratic Party efforts through groups like Organizing for Action (and Battleground Texas), is the raw use of governmental power by such a political machine to protect itself and suppress its opposition—you don’t get one without the other.  This adaptation of raw machine political power to the administration of our national government is the real scandal that is surfacing.

How did this happen?

I believe the Obama administration’s abuse of the IRS tax emption process was caused by the collision of at least four variables that had to exist to create this scandal.  First, Obama’s political campaign and administration attracted people who believe in the liberal orthodoxy of the benign and beneficial role of an expanded national government in domestic affairs—what I earlier called the “Magical Kingdom” model of government.  Second, the expansion of the national government these people started to implement exposed the natural limits of the liberal orthodoxy—the limits of individual and institutional competence, and the effect of the aggregation of power on human nature.  Third, the exposed incompetence and avarice left the government vulnerable to those who would abuse power for their own gain.  Finally, the Chicago political mindset does not tolerate, or even recognize the legitimacy of political opposition, and it uses political power to suppress its opposition and to win at all costs.  When these forces collided within the Obama administration, the IRS tax exemption process was too irresistible a tool not to use—and abuse—to further their goals.

Now we are seeing an old tactic of machine politicians caught “with their hands in the cookie jar”:  feign ignorance, blame incompetence, and designate a “fall guy,” in order to stop any further investigation of the real scandal—in this case, to stop any further investigation that might focus on the abuse of the IRS to shelter the maintenance and expansion of the database of the Obama campaign for use by the Democratic Party without public scrutiny in the future.

As the committee investigations and the media interviews unfold, remember the questions that probably won’t be asked and the real scandal that will be hovering like a cloud over Washington:  Organizing for Action, and the Chicago-style misuse of governmental power.  To preserve whatever is left of the integrity of our government, we must demand the right questions be asked, and that we get real answers to those questions.

 

Clear Lake Tea Party Reveals IRS Misconduct in 2010

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Received this press release from the Clear Lake Tea Party:

clear-lake-tea-logoCONTACT:
Mary Huls
832-618-6575
[email protected]

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Clear Lake Tea Party Reveals IRS Misconduct in 2010

May 20, 2013 (Clear Lake, TX) – The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) conducted an intrusive and illegal intelligence gathering and intimidation effort against the Clear Lake Tea Party (CLTP) as part of a larger policy directed at American tea parties.  The CLTP submitted an application for a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status on November 23, 2009, and then after unwarranted delay, the founder of the CLTP queried the IRS in the summer of 2010 regarding the status of our application.  We noted that many tea parties that had filed earlier than us had already received their exemption status in a quick and straightforward manner.

However, on July 12, 2010 the CLTP received an additional information request from Elizabeth Hofacre in the Cincinnati, Ohio office of the IRS demanding 19 more non-tax related items to complete our application. The CLTP Board was duly alarmed by the broad and personal nature of the information required which we would be required to declare under penalties of perjury.  We judged the questions to be far outside the normal purview of a nominal request for a tax exempt designation.  For example:

  • Provide a list of speakers and their qualifications for events you have had in the last year (What    qualifications are needed for public speaking under the first amendment?)
  • Provide copies of information found on Facebook and Twitter (Why are they asking for information they can easily access?)
  • Explain your relationship with the King City Patriots (They meant King Street Patriots – but what business is it of theirs what our relationship is?)
  • Explain the Operation Pink Slip program and provide literature concerning this program.  How did you decide who would be “fired”? (This was a viral grassroots strategy in which hundreds of tea parties were engaged, and the IRS demanded to know our thought processes?)

While CLTP was prepared and willing to provide additional clarification of the information on our initial application, we were convinced that we had already been investigated by the IRS case agent and were possibly being set up for a perjury charge.  These questions and others in conjunction with the cover letter demanding, “…the information you submit should be accompanied by the following declaration:

‘Under penalty of perjury, I declare that I have examined this information, including accompanying documents, and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the information contains all the relevant facts relating to the request for the information, and the facts are true, correct, and complete.’”

We determined an inadvertent act of omission by one of our members might set them or us up for federal prosecution.

Consequently, the CLTP withdrew our 501(c)(4) application and filed instead as a Texas nonprofit corporation that scrupulously pays its taxes in order to practice our First Amendment right of free speech. CLTP wants to be clear that we have never given over a list of our members or donors to any outside source.

About the Clear Lake Tea Party:  The Clear Lake Tea Party is a nonprofit corporation made up of conservative Americans who uphold the US Constitution, educate the public, and hold our elected officials accountable.  They are Citizen Lobbyists who monitor & lobby the Texas Legislature and the U.S. Congress.  They are Taxpayer Advocates who stand up for all hard-working Americans.  Mary Huls, of Friendswood, is the current President of the CLTP.  Further information can be found at www.clearlaketeaparty.com. 

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Mary Benton with Click2Houston reported on this abuse Monday.There really isn’t much to add, I mean, how many times can you say “outraged” when talking about the Obama administration. Sen. John Cornyn had it right this morning when he said that the administration isn’t credible.

Clear Lake Tea Party even included the IRS documents to back up their claim:

Clear Lake Tea Party IRS Documents

I don’t think that comparisons to the Nixon administration are adequate. The Obama administration makes Nixon’s team look like amateurs. From Sen. John Cornyn:

 cornyn-header
JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator – Texas
For Immediate Release

CONTACT: Megan Mitchell, (202) 224-0704

Drew Brandewie, (202) 224-0703

Wednesday, May 15, 2013


Cornyn: Administration Has Credibility Gap

‘Unfortunately, so far the Obama Administration has valued its agenda more than its credibility.’

 

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) today called on members of the Obama Administration to begin rebuilding the American peoples’ trust by focusing on their credibility, rather than their political agenda.  You can watch Sen. Cornyn’s full speech here.  Excerpts of his remarks are below:

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our founders pointed out in the Federalist Papers and elsewhere that a concentration of powers in the hands of a few is the very definition of tyranny.

“And we’ve learned from hard experience over the course of our nation’s history that when government thinks it knows best, particularly here in Washington in a country as big and diverse as ours is, that the natural tendency then in Washington is to try to suppress the voices of those who see things differently.

“Over the last week, a series of events have highlighted the Administration’s massive credibility gap. First we learned more details about the coordinated attempt to misrepresent the September 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

“Then we learned this last week that a senior IRS official had acknowledged that her agency deliberately targeted certain political speech and activity for harassment using the instruments of power given to the Internal Revenue Service, perhaps the most awesome, pervasive and potentially intrusive power the federal government has, in the hands of that agency.

“On top of all that, the top administrator of Health and Human Services, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has been soliciting funds from the very industries she regulates.

“So whether the issue is a terrorist attack in Libya, political and partisan abuses by the IRS, or efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services to shake down the health insurance industry they regulate, it appears that the birds have come home to roost, that the founders warned us about, the concentration of government power invariably leads to abuse of that power and it’s the same old story of human frailties over and over again.

“If we will try to work hard to regain the public’s credibility and we will simply do our work and respect the wisdom of the ages when it comes to concentration of power and its impact on individual liberty, and the temptation when power is absolute to see that power corrupted and abuse that power when it comes to dealing with the American people.

“Unfortunately, so far the Obama Administration has valued its agenda more than its credibility. Without regaining credibility, we will never regain the public’s trust, and without that trust, it will be much, much harder to solve America’s biggest problems. That is the biggest single challenge to President Obama’s second-term agenda. And to our ability as Americans to show that this 200-plus year experiment in self-government actually works.”

 

Senator Cornyn serves on the Finance and Judiciary Committees.  He serves as the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee’s Immigration, Refugees and Border Security subcommittee. He served previously as Texas Attorney General, Texas Supreme Court Justice, and Bexar County District Judge.

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Doug Weiskopf: A modest proposal

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Doug Weiskopf

As Congress argues over extending the Bush tax cuts across the board, once again Republicans–especially the Republican leadership in Congress– are proving themselves to be poor politicians, stupidly allowing themselves to be backed into a corner and characterized as “protecting the rich.”   In fact, the Bush tax cuts benefited those in the lower incomes much more than the wealthiest.  But Obama and Congressional Democrats are using this issue to hurt Republican chances in November, and distract the electorate from their abysmal record.  The important issue here is defeating Obama, increasing our majority in the House and gaining control of the Senate.  Then we will be able to radically simplify the tax code and reduce rates for all taxpayers, allowing a free economy to grow, and free workers to earn a good reward for their skills!

To that end, I would like to offer a few suggestions:

Extend the “Bush Tax Cuts,” including the 15{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} rate for dividend and long-term capital gain income, the standard deduction for married couples and the $1,000 child tax credit, for everyone earning less than $379,151, permanently.  This keeps rates low for all but the top bracket, taking that issue off the table for Obama, and encourages Congress to come back next year and begin true tax relief and simplification.

Reduce the threshold for deductible medical expenses to 3{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of adjusted gross income.  This provides real help in meeting real medical expenses for the middle class, giving the people more power over their own health care, while helping protect the average family from rising expenses.

Restore the 2{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} cut in the Payroll Tax, which is robbing from Social Security, and replace it with an additional permanent Income Tax reduction of 2{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} across the board, and 4{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} for the self-employed.  Allowing Obama to cut payroll taxes was one of the stupidest things we could have done because it robbed even more from the already over-burdened Social Security Trust Fund.  This corrects that mistake, but protects working Americans–including many small business owners– from another tax hike!

Permanently increase the Social Security Payroll Tax Rate for all employees who are not United State citizens by a total of 5{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986},  and Medicare (FICA) Tax rate by 2{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} .  This is a “win/win” idea borrowed from Norm Adams.  It immediately provides increased revenue to Social Security and Medicare, and provides a strong incentive for hiring U. S. citizens.

Begin phasing out the Earned Income Tax Credit by reducing it by 2{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} each year until it is eliminated.  This is another poorly thought out, and misleading “entitlement” that suppresses ambition and underwrites low wages.  It promotes unhealthy dependence on “the government” and should be replaced by better job opportunities.

Doug Weiskopf is the Republican Candidate for Texas House District 143.

 

Texas US Senate Race: Tom Leppert releases new TV ad

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US Senate candidate Tom Leppert continues to move forward in his quest to get in a runoff with Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst. From the very beginning of the campaign until now, his team has remained positive and produced some outstanding videos. This one is no exception:

 

NEW TV AD: “Didn’t Do”

“How Did I Do It? Well, I Didn’t Call People Like My Opponents: A Career Politician And A Lawyer. And I Certainly Didn’t Call Barack Obama.”

DALLAS, Texas, April 11, 2012 – Texans for Tom Leppert today began airing the campaign’s third television ad which will be running in major media markets across the state including Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin.

The ad highlights Tom Leppert’s conservative leadership in the private sector, contrasting his experience with the backgrounds of his opponents—a career politician and government lawyer.

Leppert, a conservative businessman, has grown companies, balanced budgets and produced results for over 25 years. During Tom’s tenure as CEO of Turner Corporation, the largest general building company in America, Turner’s revenue more than doubled and Tom helped create 2,300 jobs. He has also served on the Board of Directors at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and as Chairman of the Board of the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce.

As mayor of Dallas, Tom pursued an aggressive conservative economic agenda that helped grow the private sector and shrunk the size of city government. He launched the “Bold Move” initiative in 2009 that targeted out-of-state CEOs to relocate their companies to Dallas and take advantage of the city’s business-friendly climate. Under Tom’s leadership, the Dallas City Council also cut over 1,300 civilian government positions and eliminated or consolidated nearly one-third of the city’s government departments.

 “Didn’t Do” TOM LEPPERT: As the only businessman in this race, I’ve created thousands of good jobs.How did I do it?

Well, I didn’t call people like my opponents: a career politician and a lawyer.

And I certainly didn’t call Barack Obama.

They don’t know how to create jobs.

But I do.

Let’s get government out of the way, so business can do what it does best: create growth and opportunity.

I’m conservative Tom Leppert, I approve this message because creating jobs…is my job.

LINK

###

For more information, contact the Texans for Tom Leppert Press Office, (972) 977-4015.

www.TomLeppert.com

Paid for by Texans for Tom Leppert

If I were Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, I’d take exception to the “career politician” and  the “they don’t know how to create jobs” lines but other than that, it is an accurate assessment of his competition. And I like the creative touch on the required “I approve” line.

Nicely done. I think that people are starting to take notice of the race and are beginning to see the clear differences between the top three candidates. It is going to get very interesting in a really short period of time.

The Fist of the Obama Administration Must Not be Re-Elected

by

Ed Hubbard

My father liked to tinker with writing simple poetry—the type of “greeting card” poetry that can be very touching or funny, or simply lame.  I recently have been reminded of the following part of a funny poem he wrote for me when I graduated from law school, which he entitled “Lawyer to Client”:

 

You say you hit the other guy,
Broke his nose and blackened his eye,
Split his lip and damaged his face.
I think you’ve got an excellent case.

The man is daft and obviously
Was in a place he never should be.
With devious means and grievous twist
He put his face in front of your fist. …

As I’ve followed the debate over the “Obama mandate” for insurance coverage that narrows the conscience exception that had protected religious institutions for many years, I feel as though we conservatives have once again put our face in front of the left’s fist on this issue.  Normally, I would advocate just licking our wounds and changing the subject back to the economic issues facing the country.  But, the problem is that what underlies the thinking of the left on this issue is what also is strangling the long-term neck of our economy.

Before we go further with that point, we first need to understand how our face found its way into the left’s fist. Back in January (it seems like years ago), during one of the many GOP debates over the last few months, George Stephanopoulos asked the candidates about their view of a half-century old Supreme Court ruling that constitutionally prohibited states from banning the sale or use of contraceptives.  Virtually everyone on the stage, and in the auditorium, was shocked by the question because it seemed to come out of left field.  The candidates all answered in one way or another that the issue was irrelevant and no one is advocating banning contraceptives, and Stephanopoulos looked really silly and petty as he continued to press for an answer from the candidates—but the key is that he continued to press for an answer.  Why?  It made no sense—at the time.

Then, not long after that debate, Secretary Sebelius announced that the Obama Administration would mandate that all employers would have to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their insurance plans, including religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools, and charities.  The “conscience exception” that had previously exempted such institutions from such mandates was to be narrowed to just the direct employees of the houses of worship of such religious institutions. 

The negative reaction was stunning and swift, but it was not about women’s health or access to contraceptives—which must have further surprised the likes of Stephanopoulos and Sebelius.  Instead, it was about the use of the governmental fist in violation of the First Amendment to force churches to act at variance with their beliefs, or get fined—the type of direct assault on religious liberty that the U.S. Supreme Court had just told the Obama Administration it could not do as the court struck down another attempted regulatory invasion into the operation of a religious school. Hoping to find a compromise, people of goodwill from all over the political spectrum called on the Obama Administration to reconsider and re-embrace the full conscience exception that both political parties previously had honored, and that had provided a federal safe-harbor from mandates at the state level, while exploring other constitutional ways to maximize women’s access to medical treatments and prescriptions.  Instead of such a compromise, Obama announced a unilateral “compromise” with himself, which—of course—was no compromise at all.  It, instead, was a new fiat that was even more extraordinary for its hubris—mandating that insurers pay for, but not charge for, providing contraceptives to employees of religiously-affiliated hospitals, schools and charities.  Incredible!

Why was the second fiat incredible?  Let’s look closer at Obama’s magnanimous act of self-compromise for a moment:

  • it ignores the fact that, in order to take advantage of the historical safe-harbor provided by the federal conscience exception, many religious institutions became self-insured, and those plans cover both the employees of the churches as well as the affiliated entities;
  • it ignores one of the most basic facts of economics—there is no free lunch.  Regardless as to whether we are talking about free-market or government-planned economies, goods and services (including contraceptives, and the doctor visit and prescription needed to obtain the contraceptives) cost money; and, in this instance, those costs will be paid either directly by the employer or self-insurer, by all the insureds of the insurance company (including the religious institutions and their employees) through higher premiums, or by taxpayers through higher taxes or more public debt;
  • it continues to ignore that these religiously-affiliated institutions only exist in order to fulfill the mission of the church in the community, so that they are an important part of the practice of religious faith  by the ministry of the church, regardless of whether the church employs or serves persons of other faiths (or of no faith) in the performance of such practices; and
  • in making all these mistakes, it shows that Obama refuses to acknowledge and abide by the limitations on governmental power, and the exercise of that power, that our Founder’s enshrined in our Constitution, including the preservation of a separate church and the importance of its separate institutional role in our society.

So, the Obama fist came in a second swing toward the face of those of us who still believe in those limitations on government power, and in religious liberty.  But this time, like on so many other occasions over the last two generations, it is our face that was now alleged to be the aggressor, rather than the victim.  Those on the left who initially had called for Obama to re-consider his decision miraculously found this new fiat to be a welcome compromise, and then fell back in line as the lemmings that they are.  And, of course, their fellow travelers in the media lauded the magnanimity and wisdom of Obama’s act of self-compromise, and fell in line, too.  Then, returning full circle to the Stephanopoulos question, they found further criticism of the second swing of Obama’s fist to be a new assault on women’s health by the face of conservatives—an assault so grave that it could not be tolerated.  Unfortunately, some of our candidates and pundits played into this narrative, by allowing themselves to be drawn into debates about specific religious views of contraception, rather than keeping their focus on the fundamental flaws with Obama’s aggressive mandate.  As a result, in the latest twist in this story, the U.S. Senate could not muster the votes to return federal policy to the full conscience exception, and the left walked away from the debate claiming their fist had been assaulted by our face.

I want to be clear about some things.  I am not a Catholic, though I have great respect for the Catholic Church. I am a father of three girls, and I’m a grandfather.  I care very much about the health of my wife and daughters, and their access to the care they believe they need.  Finally, I see no societal, economic or political benefit to, or wisdom in, re-visiting the legal issue of medical privacy related to the sale and use of contraceptives, which was decided a half-century ago.  Contraception should not be, and really never was the issue in this political debate—we must remember that point as we move forward from here.

Now, back to my the point I started to make.  The shear arrogance of a political leader of this nation who would so cavalierly ignore basic economic principles, ignore basic constitutional rights, and ignore the basic limitations of governmental power that allow us to practice our constitutional rights, in order to advance an agenda to regulate by fiat an industry that represents at least 17{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of our economy, and, in the process, create a new entitlement scheme, has not earned our trust and must not be re-elected.  We will never recover our economic vitality as a nation, let alone our full individual freedoms and responsibilities, if we re-elect this arrogance and give it four more years at the helm of our country.

To those of you who are involved in GOP campaigns this year, I remind you of the seriousness of the mission we have this fall, and ask you to keep your focus on that mission and what the real issues are.  Don’t get sidetracked into the left’s narrative—don’t stick your face into the left’s fist.  Simply fight back based on our narrative of liberty, personal responsibility, limited government and economic opportunity.  As Reagan once told us a generation ago, “there is no substitute for victory.”