Obama To Launch $1 Billion ‘Climate Resilience’ Fund By Ben Wolfgang February 14 2014 As part of his administration’s broad effort to fight global warming, President Obama will propose in his 2015 budget a new $1 billion “climate resilience” fund, and the White House expects the proposal to gain traction despite the controversy surrounding the issue. “The idea of a climate resilience fund is something that should be and we expect will be supported across all parts of the country … the need to be prepared, the need to take steps that help our farmers and businesses and communities deal with the consequences from severe weather events is evident to everyone across the country,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Friday. Specifically, the effort will be designed to spur new research into how communities and infrastructure can be better prepared for the impacts of climate change and to fund new technologies “that will make us more resilient in the face of changing climate,” the administration said in announcing the initiative. More details about the $1 billion fund will be released when the president unveils his 2015 budget next month, but administration officials are casting it as yet another piece of a bigger plan to mitigate the devastating impacts of climate change. “We’ve always had heat waves, but now the worst ones are longer and hotter. We’ve always had droughts, but the worst one are getting longer and drier. … We’re having 100-year storms that happen every year or every five years,” Mr. Carney said, though he dodged questions on whether the president could establish the fund through executive action if Congress rejects it. Mr. Obama will discuss the fund during his trip to California on Friday, where he’ll tour areas affected by ongoing drought conditions, meet with local leaders and state leaders and participate in a roundtable discussion with farmers and others affected by the drought. More than 90 percent of the state is experiencing drought conditions. The administration also announced $15 million in conservation assistance for the most hard-hit drought areas; $5 million in targeted “emergency watershed protection” to protect vulnerable soil in California; and other measures to help drought-ravaged areas throughout the state.
Rep. Dave Camp: 100 Percent Of Groups Audited By IRS Were Conservative By: Washington Free Beacon Staff February 12, 2014 House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R., Mich.) said Tuesday that the committee’s investigation of the Internal Revenue Service found that 100 percent of the tax-exempt groups that were flagged and targeted with an audit were right-leaning. The Wall Street Journal reports: “We now know that the IRS targeted not only rightleaning applicants, but also right-leaning groups that were already operating as 501(c)(4)s,” Mr. Camp said in a statement. “At Washington, DC’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)(4)s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites and any other publicly available information. Of these groups, 83% were right-leaning. And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100 percent were right-leaning.” House Republicans have been investigating the IRS, after the agency admitted last spring that it had singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. A Washington Free Beacon investigation last May found that the IRS had audited several pro-Israel organizations that had been attacked by White House-allied groups.
The Law You Won’t Be Told By libertycrier.com February 15, 2014 The Law You Won’t Be Told VIDEO BELOW http://libertycrier.com/law-wont-told/utm
Senator Says Obama Creating 'A Government Of One'? Julian Hattem The Hill February 16, 2014
President Obama is creating a “government of one” by ignoring the Constitution and further delaying ObamaCare’s employer mandate, according to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). The Republican senator said on “Fox News Sunday” that the president seemed to be flouting the law in order to improve Democrats’ chances in the 2014 midterm elections. “The president knows this is wrong and it’s not defensible,” Lee said. “He’s violating the Constitution. He’s exercising power that doesn’t belong to him; it belongs to the American people.” Lee added that president’s decision last week was “a shameless power grab that’s designed to help the president and his particular party achieve a particular outcome in an election. And that’s wrong.” The new delay, announced last week, gives businesses with between 50 and 99 employees an additional year to comply with the law that requires all companies with more than 50 fulltime workers offer health insurance or else pay a penalty. The employer mandate was originally set to go into effect last month, but was delayed until 2015 last summer. Companies with 100 or more workers will still have to comply by next January under the most recent delay. The Obama administration has said that the move was simply an administrative decision to help “phase in” the rules. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) defended the initiative on “Fox News Sunday.” “The president is simply providing small businesses with the flexibility they need,” he said.
Critics have said that the employer mandate delay is symptomatic of a larger trend within the White House to bypass Congress and ignore the law. Becerra defended Obama’s intention to use administrative action in instances where Congress won’t act. “I would hope that we would never have a chief executive who would twiddle its thumbs because Congress cant get its act together,” he said. “We need to move” Obama creating 'a government of one'? VIDEO BELOW http://www.infowars.com/senator-obama-is-creating-a-government-of-one/
Obama Pushes TPP Negotiations Despite Mounting Opposition At Home And Abroad EFF February 16, 2014
House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi firmly announced her rejection of the “Fast Track” bill at an event on Wednesday, saying it was “out of the question.” Its passage has become increasingly tenuous since Senate Majority leader Harry Reid came out against it two weeks ago. Fast Track is a mechanism that empowers the White House with sweeping authority to sign off on trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), limiting Congress’ constitutional powers to set trade objectives, choose trading partners, and call hearings and amend all provisions. Opposition from Democrat leaders in the House and Senate is a major setback for the Fast Track bill, and likely comes as a result of public opposition from hundreds of thousands of individuals and organizations across the US. Despite these blows, Obama and the US Trade Rep are still forging ahead to try to bring TPP closer to agreement among the 12 negotiating countries. US Trade Rep Michael Froman will meet this weekend with Japan’s trade minister, who is head of the country’s TPP negotiations, to reconcile differences on
some major remaining sticking points around tariffs and auto trade. The next TPP meeting, already delayed several times, will begin on February 22 in Singapore. Then in April, President Obama is scheduled to make a trip to Asia. A White House press statement this week shows that TPP is clearly on his agenda as he visits two countries participating in the negotiations. However, resistance continues to mount abroad. Over80 senior legislators from seven TPP negotiating countries issued a joint letter demanding that the entire draft text of the agreement be published before it is signed, “to enable detailed scrutiny and public debate.” Vice President of Peru, Marisol Espinoza, is also a signatory to the letter. The next few months will be interesting for the White House as it struggles to pull together support on this sprawling trade deal both at home and abroad. Senator Ron Wyden has become the new Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, where he will face pressure from the President to pass some form of Fast Track legislation to pass TPP as quickly as possible. But Wyden has been a vocal opponent to the secrecy around these trade negotiations. In 2012, hesent a letter to the US Trade Rep calling them to release detailed information about provisions in the TPP that would impact Internet freedoms. He also introduced a bill to the floor demanding the US Trade Rep give Congress members full access to the TPP text—the same access afforded to representatives of corporations like the Motion Picture Association. Members of Congress may also introduce a different Fast Track bill, including provisions aimed at mitigating some of the major opposition to the TPP. But any version of Fast Track that facilitates secret trade agreements enables one-sided copyright laws and threatens users rights is unacceptable. Digital policies must be created democratically and transparently. If you’re in the US: use this tool to contact your lawmakers, call your representatives, and help us keep the pressure on Congress to oppose Fast Track.
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