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In another laughable, irresponsible, and certainly illegal move (far overreaching any possible regulatory claim), the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed a lawsuit against a private company that fired employees who could not effectively communicate in English. The EEOC lawsuit alleges that this violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based on “national origin”.
The EEOC’s logic argues that this includes “the “linguistic characteristics of a national origin group.” The EEOC is in fact saying that a business may not use its own judgment as to whether its employees need to speak English fluently, whether or not there is any evidence of discrimination.
This lawsuit has shades of another ludicrous overreach in June of 2013 by the EEOC that also referenced Title VII “discrimination” in their cases, alleging that,
“BMW manufacturing facility in South Carolina, and the largest small-box discount retailer [Dollar General] in the United States violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act by implementing and utilizing a criminal background policy that resulted in employees being fired and others being screened out for employment”
These cases appear to have been filed soon after a December 2012 “strategic enforcement plan” was issued by the EEOC “that included targeting background checks as a barrier to employment of minorities”. Within six months, both BMW and Dollar General were sued.
However, the rulings did not go quite the way the EEOC would have liked. Judicial Watch noted that, “U.S. District Court Judge Roger Titus lambasted the administration’s expert data, writing that it was “laughable”; “based on unreliable data”; “rife with analytical error”; containing “a plethora of errors and analytical fallacies” and a “mind-boggling number of errors”; “completely unreliable”; “so full of material flaws that any evidence of disparate impact derived from an analysis of its contents must necessarily be disregarded”; “distorted”; “both over and under inclusive”; “cherry-picked”; “worthless”; and “an egregious example of scientific dishonesty.”
There are simply no facts to support a theory of disparate impact, the judge writes, further stating: “By bringing actions of this nature, the EEOC has placed many employers in the “Hobson’s choice” of ignoring criminal history and credit background, thus exposing themselves to potential liability for criminal and fraudulent acts committed by employees, on the one hand, or incurring the wrath of the EEOC for having utilized information deemed fundamental by most employers.”
Having recovered from the sting, the EEOC is back spending taxpayer funds to target private businesses with frivolous lawsuits. According to their press release regarding Wisconsin Plastics, Incs “the EEOC’s pre-suit administrative investigation revealed that WPI fired the Hmong and Hispanic employees based on 10-minute observations that marked them down for their English skills, even though those skills were not needed to perform their jobs”
Furthermore, according to the EEOC Chicago Regional Attorney John C. Hendrickson, “Our experience at the EEOC has been that so-called ‘English only’ rules and requirements of English fluency are often employed to make what is really discrimination appear acceptable. But superficial appearances are not fooling anyone. When speaking English fluently is not, in fact, required for the safe and effective performance of a job, nor for the successful operation of the employer’s business, requiring employees to be fluent in English usually constitutes employment discrimination on the basis of national origin — and thus violates federal law”
Wisconson plastics, Inc, on the other hand, maintains that the EEOC claims are “false and absolutely without merit”. The EEOC counters that English language requirements are justifiable only when “ absolutely necessary “for an employer to operate safely or efficiently.” but simultaenously admits that “there is no precise test for making this evaluation.”
The Wisconsin Plastic, Inc explains that there “the layoff decisions at issue in the fall of 2012 were made on the basis of the employees’ overall comparative skills, behaviors and job performance over time. Though the decisions were difficult, they were necessary in order to ensure the ongoing stability of Wisconsin Plastics for the benefit of WPI’s customers, its shareholders, the community and the roughly 275 current company and temporary employees.”
So a company operates to benefit its customers, shareholders, the community, and its employees. This sometimes results in a hard decision to discontinue the employment of an employee or employees whose performance does not positively benefit the company to a company-decided level of satisfaction.
The fact that the EEOC can instead arbitrarily decide it knows the intentions of a company better than a company itself, and moreover, sue that company for discrimination when the company decides to terminate an employee that is just not working out, is utterly outrageous.
Let’s hope that the next judge is as wise as the one who presided over the BMW and Dollar General court cases.
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What’s going on with oil and energy these days?
Last week, SNL Financial noted that,
“Canada’s crude oil producers are looking to markets other than the U.S. to sell increased output amid delays in pipeline expansions, according to the president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
“In terms of growth potential, Keystone is obviously bogged down and everything behind Keystone in the queue is bogged down because the regulatory process won’t engage on those other projects until Keystone clears its hurdles one way or another,” Collyer said. “The primary focus for Canadian producers, Canadian governments and Canadian pipeline companies is to look east and to look west.”
Canada is tired of waiting. What else?
Besides the current frustration with our Canadian friends, there is another overlooked consequence stemming from the delays with the Keystone XL Pipeline project: high gas prices.
Although the pipeline (and ANWR, and other major oil projects) have multi-year lead times, when a project of this magnitude has the green light to move ahead, it has an immediate effect on the markets by changing the traders’ expectations of future supply. Having more oil available in the marketplace contributes to lower prices for consumers. So when Keystone was delayed — multiple times — the markets have reacted accordingly.
In fact, it was noted last week that July 4th marked a record 1290 days of gas prices above $3.00/gallon. Gas prices climbed above $3.00/gallon on Dec. 23, 2010, and that streak has continued since then.
Of course, don’t forget what Secretary Chu said back in 2012 about the price of gas: Chu “admitted to a House committee that the administration is not interested in lowering gas prices.
Chu, along with the Obama administration, regards the spike in gas prices as a feature rather than a bug. High gas prices provide an incentive for alternate energy technology, a priority for the White House, and a decrease in reliance on oil for energy”.
This helped to explain why Keystone was delayed. While the White House continues to “figure out” how to balance two of his major constituencies (labor is pro-pipeline and environmental is anti-pipeline), Americans are feeling the price at the pump. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
According to Gordon Ritchie, vice chairman of RBC Capital Markets, Ritchie noted,
“I’m at a loss to understand why the Americans wouldn’t approve the pipeline going down south because of the difference between the Brent price of oil — world price — and the North American combined price of WTI (West Texas Intermediate). “That $5 a barrel is really a subsidy by Canada to American consumers of gasoline and it works out to about $20 billion a year.”
To add insult to injury, a new report is out that shows the highway trust fund is losing money due to to more fuel efficient cars, which Obama had repeatedly championed. Additionally, the high prices have kept Americans from traveling as much. The highway trust fund will go from a budgeted $50 billion to around $34 billion. The Highway Trust Fund receives roughly 18 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in this country.
Meanwhile, Canada gets antsy, gas prices are high, the Highway Trust fund is being depleted. Will the Obama Administration finally move forward with Keystone?
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U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton called upon the IRS to defend itself in court on July 11th.
According to the Washington Examiner, IRS lawyers will be asked to explain “why the IRS shouldn’t be required to let an outside expert evaluate whether emails on the computer hard drives of former IRS official Lois Lerner and six colleagues really are lost forever.”
The motion filed seeks an outside computer forensics expert to determine the ability to salvage or not the data apparently lost to a crash. At the very least, the IRS was not following proper laws and procedures to protect information.
“If the IRS’s public statements about ‘recycling’ Ms. Lerner’s hard drive are true, that alone establishes spoliation of evidence that violates federal statutes and regulations, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and professional ethics and responsibility.
You can read the motion here:
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You can’t have anyone that stupid be in charge at NBC.
Chuck Todd, who is NBC’s “Chief White House Correspondent” and also NBC’s “Political Director”, is out there mischaracterizing the IRS scandal. To blame it on 501c4s is utterly incomprehensible.
Yesterday on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown”, Chuck Todd gave this statement:
CHUCK TODD: Time now for my “Takeaway.” The controversy surrounding IRS may be more than a year old but of course we’re still talking about it. On Monday, the IRS Commissioner testified before Congress. A week after the IRS told Senate investigators that two years of e-mails disappeared in a computer crash back in 2011. While this certainly doesn’t make the Obama administration nor the IRS look very good, it’s important to remember what this actual story is about because it’s gotten lost.
The question at hand is whether explicitly political organizations should be filing as tax exempt social welfare groups under the tax code and both political parties are pointing blame. Republicans say that just conservative-sounding groups were targeted by the IRS. That’s why they want to see the e-mails. Democrats have responded by claiming, hey, liberal groups were targeted, too. But here is the story many are missing. Why should primarily political organizations get a taxpayer exemption, basically get a handout from the tax code? Both sides are in an uproar because they couldn’t take advantage of a borderline shady way to raise money for political purposes or launder money for political purposes.
So while the IRS is certainly not a good guy here they have been terrible about being forthcoming. Are there any actual real victims? Folks, this scandal is not black and white since frankly two wrongs don’t make a right. We know what really is working here for Republicans. Beating up the IRS, good for the base. Good politics there makes for great fundraising e-mails. But let’s remember what the controversy itself is about.
The problem is that Chuck Todd is flat-out wrong. 501c4s are not a way to engage in political spending. They are issue advocacy groups, and always have been — for nearly 100 years. Never until this administration has anyone had a problem with 501c4s.
The real crux of the problem is that the IRS attempting to try to turn issue advocacy — which is a first amendment, free speech issue — into political speech, so they can try to curb it. This was clearly evident in the recent uproar with the IRS trying to re-write the rules on 501c4s, which generated tens of thousands of comments in protest.
The short version is that issue advocacy deals with issues (free speech) and is not “political”, whereas advocating for a candidate or a party is “political”. It may not be a perfect divider, but it has worked quite well, and no one has even suggested anything better.
Proving Chuck Todd to be even more clueless is the fact that 501 c4 organizations do not really get any tax benefits from their “tax exemption”. All a 501c4 is, is a group of people pooling their after tax money to pay for a non- deductible expenditure. There are never “profits”, the receipt of funds from its members is not income, and the expenditure of these funds are not “deductions”. Just as there is no tax effect from an individual spending on issue advocacy, there should be no tax effect from individuals pooling their funds for the same spending. The IRS granting of 501c4 status is just recognizing the obvious.
Chuck Todd is either disingenously preying on low-information viewers to not know the differences between 501c4s and other tax-exempt organizations, or else he really is that stupid. Either way, he should submit his resignation today.
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During testimony on June 23rd, the IRS Commissioner could not name a law or statue that he has reviewed to make certain no law has been broken. Rep. Trey Gowdy did the superb questioning.
From the Weekly Standard:
“You have already said, multiple times today, that there was no evidence that you found of any criminal wrongdoing,” Gowdy said. “I want you to tell me: What criminal statutes you have evaluated?”
“I have not looked at any,” the IRS commissioner admitted.
“Well then how can you possibly tell our fellow citizens that there is no criminal wrongdoing if you don’t even know what statutes to look at?” Gowdy followed-up.
“Because I’ve seen no evidence that anyone consciously –”
“Well how would you know what elements of the crime existed? You don’t even know what statutes are in play,” Gowdy said, visibly annoyed. “I’m going to ask you again: What statutes have you evaluated?”
“Uh,” the IRS commissioner stumbled, “I think you can rely on common sense–”
“Common sense? Instead of the criminal code, you want to rely on common sense? No, Mr. Koskinen, you can shake your head all you want to, commissioner. You have said today that there’s no evidence of criminal wrongdoing and I’m asking you what criminal statutes you have reviewed to reach that conclusion.”
“I reviewed no criminal statutes,” said the IRS commissioner.
You can watch the testimony here:
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We now know that the state of affairs within the VA system was abhorrent for years — and that Obama, like his predecessor, knew there were problems. And yet, several well known left-leaning columnists spoke highly about the VA health system anyway, especially ramping up the rhetoric right at the time Obamacare began to take shape in Congress in 2009.
Obama’s objectives regarding the VA were laid out in the Obama Transition Plan for when he took office. Obama had been warned about the problems in 2008, so he stated that he wanted to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible”.
Therefore, shortly after his inauguration, Obama spoke to Congress in February 2009 to discuss healthcare reform, and the process toward the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began.
At the same time in 2009, both Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman of the NY Times and Ezra Klein of the Washington Post heaped praised the VA system. They must have read Obama’s VA talking points:.
Kristof: It is fully government run, much more “socialized medicine” than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effective elements in the American medical establishment.
Paul Krugman: Let’s talk about health care around the advanced world…. By the way, our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs.”
Klein: The “VA is actually socialized medicine, where the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors. If you ordered America’s different health systems worst-functioning to best, it would look like this: individual insurance market, employer-based insurance market, Medicare, Veterans Health Administration”.
It is clear that these writers never had any information, nor had they done any research on the VA, the quality of its services, or its financial and operational efficiency. They write what they wish to be as if it were fact, hoping that their readers won’t find them out. You are certainly free to wonder about the credibility and integrity of their other writings.
The ACA began to be debated seriously during the fall of 2009 and it passed on March 25, 2010. It was during this same time that the secret waiting lists were developed at many VA centers. In the midwest alone, ten facilities have been found with the secret waitings lists, along with the most widely known problem in Arizona. These were clearly not “rogue” employees but signal part of a wider, concerted effort to keep issues quiet.
How did this happen? At least one attempt to fix the problem never got off the ground after nearly a decade of trying.
Apparently a medical scheduling project for the VA was begun in 2000 and was discontinued in 2009, 9 years after it the project began — and it remained utterly unfinished. Nothing seems to have been done for another 3 years until 2012, when the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs launched a contest to create an app for scheduling — a contest which didn’t close until the summer of 2013.
According to a press release in 2013 announcing the winners in the “scheduling app” contest, it was noted that the “VA started to develop a Medical Scheduling Package replacement in 2000. This effort was not successful. When VA ended the project in 2009, none of the planned capabilities were delivered. It had cost more than $127 million”.
And was used at the VA between the end of the Medical Scheduling Package project in 2009 and the Medical Scheduling App Contest of 2012/2013?
We now know there were secret waiting lists as some of the facilities. It also appears the the Obama Administration knew about the “secret waiting lists” as early as 2010. The Daily Caller reports that there was an internal VA investigation in 2010 regarding “paper” waiting lists:
“We conducted this review to determine the validity of an allegation that senior officials in Veterans Integrated Service Network 20 (VISN) instructed employees at the Portland VA Medical Center to use unauthorized wait lists to hide access and scheduling problems,” according to an August 17, 2010 VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report entitled “Review of Alleged Use of Unauthorized Wait Lists at the Portland VA Medical Center”
So, while the merits of the ACA was being debated, the VA’s scheduling system was scrapped, wasting $127 million. $127 million is a lot of taxpayer monies that could have been used on veterans’ treatments over the years.
But who was talking about it? No one. Certainly not the most widely read papers in this country.
Instead, we got reassurances from the press to a nervous public about the government’s ability to overesee healthcare, especially after the ACA passed in a controversial way. What’s more, the VA continued to be offered as a model even when the backlash to the law began.
In 2011, Paul Krugman of the NYT happily explained how successful the VA system: “The V.H.A. is a huge policy success story, which offers important lessons for future health reform. Many people still have an image of veterans’ health care based on the terrible state of the system two decades ago.”
Now we find out that it was clearly not working.
Underfunding the Department of Veterans Affairs is not the problem. From 2007 to 2012, enrollment in VA services has increased by 13% from 2007 to 2012. At the same time, the VA budget went from $82 million to $125 million — a 53% increase, and the biggest jump in the VA’s budget history since records go back to 1940. Yet the VA could not deliver quality services to our Veterans.
Government should not be handling our health systems. The fact that secret waiting lists existed shows just how far the government went to hide its incompetence in running a health system at the very time that Obamacare was being debated both in Congress and then in the public square. And the media supported the narrative that government delivered quality and efficient health care to our Veterans without checking to see if it was actually true.
If Congress and Americans knew the truth of the condition of the VA health system, it is quite possible that Obamacare would never have been allowed to become law.
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Do you know who is on the hook for many student loans? You, the taxpayer.
From CNS News:
“Since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, the cumulative outstanding balance on federal direct student loans has jumped 517.4 percent.
The balance owed as of the end of May was $739,641,000,000.00. That is an increase of $619,838,000,000.00 from the balance that was owed as of the end of January 2009, when it was $119,803,000,000.00, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement”
The largest reason for this is Obama’s “Pay As You Earn” (PAYE) program implemented in 2010.
There are several portions of PAYE that are particularly concerning:
1) PAYE repayment is based on 10% of discretionary income;
2) If the payment doesn’t cover the accruing interest, the government pays your unpaid accruing interested for up to three years from when you begin paying back your loan under the PAYE program.
3) The balance of your loan can be forgiven after 20 years if you meet certain criteria
4) Your loan can be forgiven after 10 years if you go to work for a public service organization
Think the debt balloon is bad now? The program will be severely unsustainable once loans start to be repaid — with interest often being covered by the federal government– and later, loan forgiveness options kick in, with the balance paid by the federal government.
And the federal government is…YOU.
More on how the PAYE program hurts the economy:
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Obama issued an Executive Order today that brought extra relief to some student loan borrowers. A 2010 law allowed for repayment caps at 10% of a borrower’s income, though some loan holders were ineligible. This Executive Order expanded those who could qualify for the income repayment plan.
From the NYT: “Mr. Obama’s main action will be to expand on a 2010 law that capped borrowers’ repayments at 10 percent of their monthly income. The intent is to extend such relief to an estimated five million people with older loans who are currently ineligible — those who got loans before October 2007 or stopped borrowing by October 2011. But the relief would not be available until December 2015, officials said, given the time needed for the Education Department to propose and put new regulations into effect”.
Though this Executive Order — and its 2010 law counterpart — may sound well and good, financially it is a disaster. The 10% income repayment does not help any young person get off on a solid financial footing. Likewise, because some sectors allow for loan forgiveness after a period of time, that amount gets written off by the federal government, thereby substantially adding to the federal debt.
For example, if someone borrows $30,000 a year for 4 years for a degree, that is $120,000 of student loan debt. The debt carries an interest rate of at least 6%. The Obama repayment plans offer an option that allows borrowers to pay 10% (it used to be 15%) of what they earn, and if not fully paid back by the end of ten years, any balance is forgiven.. So for instance, if a new graduate lands a job that pays a generous $50,000/year, he/she would pay back $5,000/year. With interest of at least $7,200 ($120,000 x 6%) which likely does not even cover the interest on the original $120,000 loan.
There is almost no way a borrower can begin to pay back anything on their loan, and by the time they actually can make a dent, the additional interest accrued would have ballooned the total loan amount to at least $150,000. This is financially crippling for a young person.
The costs for the 10% repayment program since its implementation have ballooned from $1.7 billion in 2010 to $3.5 billion in 2013 to an estimated $7.6 billion for 2014.
This Executive Order seems to be a precursor to a bill being pushed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, which Obama has said to endorse. It “would allow borrowers to potentially save thousands of dollars by giving them a chance to effectively pay off their high-rate existing loans in exchange for new loans that carry substantially lower interest rates”.
How would this program be paid for? A new tax or increased taxes on the wealthy, of course.
The real impact of this higher education reform is that the government is now encouraging people to borrow substantially for their education, while simultaneously providing an avenue for students to avoid paying back much of their funds — leaving the taxpayer on the hook, a deficit in freefall, a tax increase for targeted high income earners, and an economy in stagnation.
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Diana Furchtgott-Roth wrote an article this past week outlining the economic impact of Obama’s newest regulations. Obama has decided through Executive Order to institute environmental regulations similar to those in the failed “cap-and-trade” legislation from a few years ago. But Obama will now go a step further than just the regulation of power plants; regulations will include regional emissions.
Regulation is stifling. It creates more barriers for American businesses which drives up costs for consumers. Businesses which are abroad are not subject to such regulation, which means they will often be able to charge less for products than American ones. With the economy at such a sluggish pace right now, of course consumers will purchase the lowest price. With higher costs to run the business, as well as drop in demand for product, employees will face the risk of losing jobs as a cost-saving measure for their employer.
Some lawmakers are waking up to the economic impact over-regulation has on our industries. Several legislators introduced a bipartisan in 2011 aiming to reduce regulatory burdens in particular agricultural endeavors. According to records, “this legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives on March 31, 2011 as H.R. 872, The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2011. Additionally, it advanced out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, but the full Senate failed to consider it during the last Congress”. It is now known as H.R.935, “The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act of 2013”. Yesterday, on June 2, it was placed on the Union Calendar, which means it has not been defeated in Committee. Such legislation is a starting point for raising awareness of the destructive nature of burdensome regulation.
Back to Obama’s new Executive Order environmental rules. Furchtgott-Roth summed up her article nicely when she wrote,”For those concerned about economic growth, poverty, and inequality, cap-and-trade makes no sense, either nationally or regionally. Our air is getting cleaner, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future as new capital replaces old. Cap-and-trade did not pass a Democratic Congress in 2010, and Mr. Obama should not impose it on a regional basis through regulation”.
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The Pease Amendment came into play for high income taxpayers this year once again, after a bit of a hiatus. The Pease Amendment was passed as part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, and named after Congressman Donald Pease, who introduced it. This rule provided that if your adjusted gross income (AGI) passed a particular threshold, then some deductions would be reduced on your taxes — thereby curbing your ability to limit your tax liability.
This rule has the effect of increases tax rates for those individuals by 1.2% — therefore a tax rate that was 39.6% became 40.8%. The way it was done is patently criminal because it uses the tax system to incorporate a complicated formula to hide the fact you are raising tax rates. There is no rational or logical reason for a formula like that to be used unless its intent was to deceive.
Acknowledging the irrationality of the Pease Amendment, Congress slowly scaled it back and then eliminated by 2010 after the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. During 2010 session, Congress passed the 2010 Tax Relief Act which extended the elimination of the Pease Amendment, but only through 2012.
By that time, it was understood that the tax reductions of 2001, including across-the-board rate reductions, the Pease Amendment and Personal Exemption Phaseouts (PEP) would all be gone forever. And yet, Congress declined to extend the Pease Amendment elimination further past 2012 which meant that 2013 saw a return to the previous Pease Amendment rules that existed before 2001.
Also during that time in 2012, Obama insisted as a revenue-raising measure that the rates in the Bush tax cuts be reinstated for the high income earners in 2012. This is a simple, straight-forward tax hike. But in an action that can only be considered mean spirited, and counter to any attempt to simplify the tax laws, Obama personally insisted that both the Pease Amendment and the similarly convoluted Personal Exemption Phaseouts (PEP) be reinstated for high network individuals. Their reintroduction into the tax code by Congress is unconscionable.
The tricky thing about the Pease Amendment is that it actually has very little to do with deductions, because the trigger to implement it is based on earned income thresholds. Eliminating deductions based on income — which then affects the amount of increases tax paid — is underhanded.
Coming on the heels of the actual margin rate increase in 2012 when rates for highest earners reverted to the 39.6% rate of the Clinton years, many taxpayers found themselves with even higher tax bills in 2013 without an actual tax increase due to re implementation of the Pease Amendment. The result of the rule ensured that wealthy taxpayers were squeezed just a little bit more for their “fair share” — now nearly 41% on income tax alone.
The Pease Amendment carefully obfuscates the net effect of raising taxes without having to actually do so. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the amendment is that Pease’s only claim to fame as an eight-term Congressman is that he is responsible for writing a tax rule that tricks people into paying more taxes than they believed they were paying.
