Obamacare as Big Brother | Cato Institute

Obamacare as Big Brother | Cato Institute: " a new government bureaucracy will be in possession of these people’s financial, employment, and health information — everything from their income last year to the prescription drugs they take. What could possibly go wrong?"

"If you are among the millions of Americans forced to purchase insurance through an exchange, these navigators will have access to such sensitive information as your Social Security number, date of birth, bank account number, place of employment, and medical history. Some of the funds needed to hire and train the workers aren’t expected to be released until the end of August. This means that, in the 34 states where the federal government is running the exchanges, there will be just a month to hire and train thousands of workers. In a rush to have sufficient numbers of navigators in place by the October 1 deadline, the administration has reduced the amount of training required from 30 hours to just 20. Three training courses will be conducted online."

"late last month, HHS’s Office of the Inspector General reported that the Obama administration has missed repeated deadlines for testing, reporting, and correcting security risks for the hub. HHS does not even expect a final security-control assessment until ten days before the hub is scheduled to begin operations, and it won’t certify the program’s security until September 30 — the day before it goes into effect."

Welfare Can Make More Sense than Work | Cato Institute

Welfare Can Make More Sense than Work | Cato Institute: "a mother with two children in Connecticut would have to earn $21.33 per hour for her family to be better off than they would be on welfare. That’s more than the average entry-level salary for a teacher or secretary. In fact, it is more than 107 percent of Connecticut’s median salary."

Why Are We At War In Yemen? - Campaign for Liberty

Why Are We At War In Yemen? - Campaign for Liberty: "The US claims that everyone killed was a “suspected militant,”"

Only "suspected"?!?!?

Family films as lightning strikes car, recharges phones | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

Family films as lightning strikes car, recharges phones | Technically Incorrect - CNET News: "they also had a number of gadgets in the car that had dead batteries.
However, after the strike, all these cell phones and gaming devices were fully charged."

Fighting Dirty to Save Affirmative Action | Cato Institute

Fighting Dirty to Save Affirmative Action | Cato Institute: "its�Top-Ten Percent Plan�— by which the top 10% (since changed to eight) of graduates in every high school in the state are guaranteed admission — had already created a campus with some of the highest “diversity” in nation"

SAFE Act an Expensive Boondoggle | Cato Institute

SAFE Act an Expensive Boondoggle | Cato Institute: "Since 1933, the federal government has deported over 5.5 million people. Twenty-nine percent of those deportations, or 1.5 million, occurred during the first term of the Obama administration. George W. Bush’s two full terms netted just over 2 million deportations, or 36 percent of all deportations since 1933."

"For American citizens, .2 percent of job applicants run through E-Verify are falsely flagged as unauthorized to work. That may sound small, but it means that hundreds of thousands of Americans will be initially labeled as illegal workers. The appeals process can then be relatively easy in most cases but for some it can take weeks or months.

Embarrassingly, error rates for permanent residents and visa holders have increased from 1.5 percent to 2 percent over the last few years. Nobody should have to ask government permission to work."

"The Legal Workforce Act punishes E-Verify violations with a $5000 fine per violation that can climb to $25,000 for each repeated violation and jail time up to ten years — which is comparable to manslaughter or second-degree murder penalties in some states"

"E-Verify will be far more costly — an average of $141 per check"

OK Preschool Study Provides No Evidence of Lasting Benefits from Preschool | Cato @ Liberty

OK Preschool Study Provides No Evidence of Lasting Benefits from Preschool | Cato @ Liberty: "There is little evidence in the research that these kinds of preschool programs impart lasting gains to low-income students and no evidence that they benefit middle-class kids. The real-world evidence demonstrates that the test scores of children in Oklahoma have eroded significantly, as have our nation’s performance on international tests, at the same time that preschool programs have massively expanded and the quality of those programs has supposedly improved."

Spending by Wisconsin unions on lobbyists plummets, records show

Spending by Wisconsin unions on lobbyists plummets, records show: "In just two years, spending by the state's public employee unions on lobbyists has plummeted from the summit of Wisconsin politics, a new report shows.

The figures show the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teacher union, spent nearly $2.1 million in the first six months of 2011 and $1 million in the first half of 2009, but a mere $84,000 in the first six months of this year.

The new leaders in lobbying spending at the Capitol are large business groups, which are more numerous than large unions.

That means their total spending adds up, though they spend less individually than the largest unions once did. In fact, the top five lobbying groups in the capital for the first half of 2013 spent less combined than what WEAC spent in the first half of 2011."

House narrowly rejects bid to curb NSA domestic surveillance | Politics and Law - CNET News

House narrowly rejects bid to curb NSA domestic surveillance | Politics and Law - CNET News: "In an indication that Edward Snowden's disclosures about broad government surveillances are having a political impact, the U.S. House of Representatives came within seven votes on Wednesday of curbing a program that vacuums up the logs of all Americans' phone calls.
An amendment that would have ended the National Security Agency's use of the Patriot Act to conduct mass surveillance of Americans' phone call metadata failed by a vote of 205 to 217."

Oregon woman wins $18.6 million over credit report mistakes | Fox News

Oregon woman wins $18.6 million over credit report mistakes | Fox News: "A Federal Trade Commission study earlier this year of 1,001 consumers who reviewed 2,968 of their credit reports found 21 percent contained errors. The survey found that 5 percent of the errors represented issues that would lead consumers to be denied credit."