Archives for May 2013

Lower taxes, less spending and fewer federal and state regulations are the key to creating more jobs in Virginia and strengthening the ones already there, according to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor in this year’s campaign.

Cuccinelli also slammed likely Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe for talking a lot about jobs but actually being a consistent failure in creating them.

His economic plan is pretty straightforward.  Cuccinelli wants to lower the state’s personal income tax from 5.75 percent to five percent.  First, he would also lower the state corporate income tax from six percent to four percent.

“The reason we targeted those (rates) is because they have the most impact on job creation and it offers the best opportunity for us to improve job creation and the rate of job creation in Virginia,” said Cuccinelli, who also wants to study reforming some local taxes in areas he believes job creation is being stifled.

Reducing the regulatory burden is also a major goal.  Cuccinelli fought very public battles with the federal government over the individual mandate in Obamacare and defeated the the Environmental Protection Agency in federal court after the government declared storm water a pollutant.  Cuccinelli says government rules, particularly from Washington, are worrying business owners.

“If you talk to a lot of business folks today, what you would find is that, whatever the tax rates might be, the biggest problem they have right now is the uncertainty being imposed through the regulatory process.  We want to take as much of that out as we possibly can that we’re responsible for here at the state level,” said Cuccinelli.

Virginia, like many states, is required to balance its budget.  In addition to the expectation that his tax cuts would spur economic growth and more jobs and revenue, Cuccinelli says there’s one place he expects to find a lot more money for the state coffers.

“The other way we’re going to finance the tax cut, because we have to balance our budgets unlike the federal government, is going to be to take a meat ax to all of the corporate loopholes and exemptions and we literally have hundreds of millions of dollars of them in Virginia.  We’re not unique in that respect, but we’re going to try to level the playing field and make the whole system a lot more fair,” said Cuccinelli.

The roll-out of Cuccinelli’s economic plan comes as term-limited Republican Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell signed a major transportation bill that includes six billion in new taxes.  Cuccinelli opposed the law but says other than the personal and corporate income tax rates, he would not try to reduce the other tax rates involved.

“I didn’t appreciate the course that all took with the large tax increases.  However, the General Assembly decided that.  The governor signed it and I’m going to be facing pretty much the same General Assembly so we need to work with them to spur job creation rather than to fight old fights,” said Cuccinelli.

McAuliffe touts himself as the candidate with real job creation experience and tries to brand Cuccinelli as being from the extreme right wing of the GOP.  Cuccinelli says the facts speak for themselves.

“What he cites for his business experience is failed venture after failed venture.  I think that’s going to be a little bit difficult for him to build a campaign on.  In fact, I’d say they’ve actually abandoned it.  They’re still flopping around on the deck for a new rationale for why Virginians should vote for him because he said he was creating jobs while it turns out he wasn’t,” said Cuccinelli.

“He said he would create many more jobs and it turns out he didn’t.  That raises all sorts of questions.  One, if that’s his credential of being a job creator, he failed and he wasn’t accurate with people about what he was doing and whether or not he was succeeding.  If that’s the track record that I’m being compared to, I’m being compared to a negative on the job creation front,” said Cuccinelli.  “The last big venture he had with Green Tech Automotive, he was taking taxpayer dollars to try and do it  and even then he failed.”

Virginia is economically healthier than most states, but Cuccinelli says the state will need to adapt to the likely reduction in federal government spending in the state.

“With sequestration and what must be the shrinking of the federal government, we need to diversify our economy.  There’s a lot of great businesses and human capital that’s already here and we want to keep them here.  So part of what we’re doing is competing to keep some of the good businesses we’ve got as they move away from as much federal business as they’ve had in the past.  So we have a unique challenge ahead of us that other states don’t have,” said Cuccinelli.

Cuccinelli also addressed the recent battle of words with McAuliffe over new standards for Virginia abortion clinics.  Cuccinelli and other pro-life advocates say clinics should adhere to the same rules for other health facilities while Democrats like McAuliffe say the new guidelines could shutter many of the state’s abortion clinics and restrict women’s rights.  Cuccinelli says McAuliffe is trying to change the subject to social issues but he will remain focused on Virginia’s economy.

McAuliffe’s tax returns are a point of focus for Cuccinelli, however.  Cuccinelli has released his returns for the past eight years and is pressuring McAuliffe to do the same.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see the jury convicted Kermit Gosnell for four deaths and many other crimes.  They also rip the Justice Department for secretly snooping on reporters’ phone calls.  And they react strongly to President Obama’s latest indignation over the lingering questions on Benghazi.

The families of three fallen Navy SEAL Team VI members say President Obama and Vice President Biden are culpable for the deaths of their sons for publicly identifying the unit that killed Osama Bin Laden and pursuing policies that coddle Muslims and put our own troops at a tactical disadvantage.

SEAL Team VI carried out the daring raid in Pakistan in early May 2011.  Three months later, three members of the unit were among 38 killed in a Chinook helicopter crash in Afghanistan.  Twenty-five of the dead were special operations forces.  Larry Klayman is founder of Freedom Watch and is the attorney representing three of the families who lost their sons.  He says the Obama administration carelessly and illegally revealed the role of SEAL Team VI shortly after announcing the successful mission to kill Bin Laden.

“Shortly after that successful raid on Bin Laden, the president – through the vice president for political purposes – released the name of SEAL Team VI.  That’s classified information that even (then) Defense Secretary Robert Gateswas critical of that.  So that was like putting a target on the backs of the sons of my clients,” said Klayman, who says the helicopter may have been infiltrated by the Taliban before the crash because the Afghans on board were last-minute changes from the names on the original flight manifest.

Klayman says Vice President Biden deserves special blame for these deaths.

“Biden did something which was more than irresponsible.  He served on foreign relations committees, intelligence committees.  He knew or should have known what he was doing.  He should be held accountable.  Frankly, he should even be held criminally accountable for doing that,” said Klayman.

In addition to the identification of the the team, Klayman says the Obama administration is culpable for these deaths due to a policy of coddling Muslims and putting tremendous restrictions on U.S. forces.

“This president has set a tone that Muslim outreach…is more important than protecting the lives of our servicemen and that’s crept into the military brass to the point where they can’t engage in preemptive fire,.  They can’t engage in return fire until they’re fired upon once.  They’re sent into battle without adequate equipment,” said Klayman.

Perhaps the greatest insult to the families was at the funeral for their sons in Afghanistan.  The military refused to allow a Christian minister or chaplain at the service and instead brought in a Muslim cleric who proceeded to slander the fallen.

“For some bizarre reason, probably this Muslim outreach again of Barack Obama, they had a Muslim cleric give a prayer.  Why the heck you would have a Muslim prayer and the servicemen are Christian is beyond imagination.  So it has to come from the top down.  And this cleric then proceeded in Arabic.  No one understood it at the time, but we have a video of it and it was translated by certified translators.  It proceeded to damn my clients’ sons, and others who died, as infidels and that they should go to Hell under Allah, the Muslim god,” said Klayman.

“That’s unbelievable.  We’ve never even gotten an apology from the military that they did that,” said Klayman, who is demanding a congressional investigation and says an announcement of litigation will be coming soon.

“This is a major scandal.  This is as big if not bigger than Benghazi because it concerns all of the military,” said Klayman.  “The mid-level military brass are not serving the interests of the brave fighting men that serve behind them.  But the problem is that the tone and substance of these policies come from Barack Obama himself.”

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see the media not only covering the IRS scandal and the Benghazi investigation but being much more critical than usual of the Obama administration.  They also discuss how much deeper and wider the IRS scandal is than the agency admitted last week.  They scold Amb. Pickering for investigating Benghazi without ever interviewing Hillary Clinton.  And they welcome the news that ’24’ will be back on the air next year.

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford scored an unlikely political comeback this week, as he rebounded from a major sex scandal to win an open Congressional seat in South Carolina.  The Capitol Steps observe his victory with the parody they recorded in the wake of his scandal, “Don’t Cry, I’m in Argentina.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says the courage of three Benghazi whistleblowers may well trigger more critical revelations about what happened before, during and after the terrorist attack.  He also says Democrats are unified at the moment in defending President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton but are getting increasingly worried.

At the end of a week focused on Benghazi, including dramatic testimony Wednesday on Capitol Hill, new revelations are calling the Obama administration’s actions into question.  ABC News reports the CIA talking points drafted in the wake of the attack were changed 12 times before UN Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows.  According to ABC’s Jonathan Karl, all references to Al Qaeda and terrorist attacks were scrubbed.  Karl says the order came from State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, who did not want congressional critics to “abuse” the information in the original talking points.

Bolton says this latest news further confirms the critical testimony offered by former Libya Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks.

“This is what happens when you finally allow people who actually were involved in the events of 9/11 to testify,” said Bolton.  “I think the most dramatic aspect of the testimony on Wednesday was the repeated assertion by Gregory Hicks and the others that this was never believed by anybody on the ground in Libya to be anything other than a terrorist attack.

“As Mr. Hicks said, the YouTube video was a non-event for us in Libya.  He said all the embassies reporting from the get-go was that it was a terrorist attack.  He said that he had said this to Secretary Clinton when she called him at 2 a.m. his time,” said Bolton.  ” So there was no question here of conflicting intelligence, no question here of what the White House calls the fog of war.  You don’t need intelligence reports when you can talk to your own employees in the State Department and other agencies who were right there on the ground.  That’s why I think not just the re-writing of the talking points  but the entire administration approach, including what Secretary of State Clinton said and including what the president said at the United Nations about the Mohammed video, were false and known to be false right from the outset.”

Bolton says it seems increasingly clear that the story of the YouTube video was a political concoction designed to minimize the damage of Benghazi during the final stretches of a presidential campaign.  He says as bad as that sounds, the only other plausible explanation would be far worse.

“It was either a political cover-up or it was a demonstration of willful ideological blindness, the refusal to see facts that contradicted their theology that the war on terror was over,” said Bolton.  “For the security and safety of our country, I hope that the explanation is that it was a political cover-up, because that you can expose and fix.  But if it’s an ideological blindness and an unwillingness to see terrorism for what it is, we’ve got four more years of it in front of us.”

Bolton says the retaliation of the State Department against Hicks is nothing new in terms of how the government responds to whistleblowers.  However, he says the fact that Hicks, Mark Thompson and Eric Nordstrom came forward to tell their stories means that this investigation is only beginning to ramp up.

“I’m hoping their courage will inspire others to come forward.  Within the bureaucracy, once people start talking and pointing fingers it’s amazing what comes out, and the effort to maintain message discipline, which the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton’s State Department have been so good at, I think will just blow up in their faces,” said Bolton.

On Friday, congressional Republicans announced they are working to bring CIA operatives to Capitol Hill for testimony or to arrange media interviews for them.  Bolton says there are still some critical questions that remain unanswered.

“There are a lot of questions, why there was a consulate in Benghazi to begin with that didn’t meet State Department security standards, why after two years of turmoil in the Arab world there weren’t more pre-positioned assets to protect against exactly what happened in Benghazi,” said Bolton.

He also says we need answers as to why Clinton was still publicly condemning the video at the ceremony to receive the bodies of the murdered Americans.

Bolton suggested earlier this week that Benghazi could be the downfall for the entire Obama administration.  With Democrats unified in defending Obama and Clinton, that seems unlikely at the moment.  But Bolton says Obama is quickly losing credibility as a result of his handling of Syria and Benghazi and the Democratic solidarity on this issue is getting substantially weaker.

“The behind-the-scenes conversation among Democrats on the hill is while they’ve still got the the front up because they’re trying to protect Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, they are very worried.  They could see the dramatic, emotional effect that that testimony on Wednesday had on anybody who watched it.  I think the more the American people hear from these three witnesses and others that might come forward, the more profound the effect will be,” said Bolton.

The mainstream media is spending more time covering the Benghazi investigation, and Bolton contends that will weaken the Democratic instinct to protect the administration even more.

“They see Jonathan Karl of ABC News, a major network, coming out and reporting and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS, who’s been on this and I think now finally vindicated, that they’ve failed to contain this in the blogosphere and on Fox News.  With the mainstream media now having their competitive juices unleashed, I really do think the dam has burst here,” said Bolton.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Daniel Foster of National Review are glad ABC News is revealing even more about how many changes were made to the Benghazi talking points for Susan Rice.  They also rip Democrats and Gang of Eight Republicans for voting down amendments to the immigration bill that would have significantly strengthened border security.  And they react to the big government uproar over a gun manufactured by a 3-D printer.

Rapid progress continues on oral chemotherapy treatments that are far more effective and far less toxic than conventional alternatives, but the inability of Medicare and insurance companies to offer comparable coverage is draining the resources of many patients and leaving others unable to pursue treatment.

The mapping of the human genome has allowed doctors to determine which parts of cells are compromised by cancer and responsible for spreading it.  As a result, oral chemotherapy allows for much more effective treatment against killers like myeloma, breast cancer and pancreatic cancer.  It’s also far less toxic than traditional chemotherapy because the targeting of the medication requires far smaller dosages that wreak far less havoc on the immune system.

“What we’re seeing as a result of the new oral medicines is what we saw with HIV when you give a combination of treatments that’s matched to the way your genes respond to the disease and drug and you’re saving lives of people who otherwise would be dying early,” said Robert Goldberg, founder and vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, who wrote on the promise and financial frustration of these advancements in the May 8 edition of the New York Post.

So why are Medicare and insurance companies content to cover virtually the entire tab for conventional chemotherapy but not for the more effective and less harrowing oral drugs?  Goldberg says it mostly comes down to money.

“There’s this disconnect between medical innovation and how insurance and Medicare are paying for things.  First, it’s easier to get more payment for injections than it is to get for oral medications.  Also physicians tend to get reimbursed more for injections than they do for dispensing a pill.  They actually get paid for infusing, whereas for running a prescription there’s no extra fee that they can collect,” said Goldberg.  “The second reason is, unfortunately, an obvious one.  If you can shift the cost to the consumer, you see just how much you can get away with paying.

“It’s been hurting many, many patients.  Twenty-five percent of all patients don’t even fill their prescriptions for these products at the first crack.  Many doctors are putting people on less effective and less personalized medicine because it’s not affordable.  Because these medicines keep people out of the hospital and extend their lives with less toxicity, they’re actually saving money.  So in effect, the oral medicines are being subsidized by consumers and they’re saving insurers money,” said Goldberg.

While Goldberg is frustrated by the lack of coverage for oral chemotherapy, he strongly rejects assertions by The New York Times and others that the real problem is how much drug companies are charging for the medicine in the first place.  In a May 2 editorial, the Times points out many oral chemotherapy drugs cost upwards of $100,000 per year.  The editorial references a group of oncologists that considers those costs as “profiteering, like jacking up the price of necessities after a natural disaster.”

Goldberg says that blame is wrongly placed.

“I’m hoping that over the next few months and into the campaign season that we will have a discussion about what the value of medical innovation really is and we get off this silly attack on prices from The New York Times and from physicians and focus on the value,” said Goldberg.  “The value of people living longer and added income and better health and less disability is about $4.2 trillion over the life of an individual, collective lives.  Drug spending is about one percent of all that.  So it’s a great great investment that goes to the bottom line which matters most, which is having more time on the planet to do the things you love and be with the people you care for.”

Goldberg is also hopeful that a solution to the coverage problems on oral chemotherapy drugs is near.  He is strongly supportive of The Cancer Drug Coverage Party Act sponsored by Democratic New York Rep. Brian Higgins.

“You’re not telling the companies what to use but at least give the insurance companies and consumers a choice based upon what’s best for them.  I think that’s a pretty straightforward proposition,” said Goldberg.  “This is a smart 21st century way to reform health care and I’m hoping that this is just the beginning of reforming health care around what people want and what people can do rather than what the government wants the rest of us to do.”

Goldberg says the bill has bipartisan support and he says the Congressional Budget Office has recently alleviated concerns that this legislation would result in additional federal spending through Medicare and other programs.

“To spend something in Washington, in theory you’re supposed to cut somewhere else.  Well the Congressional Budget Office has finally realized that if you spend money on these new medications, you’re going to save money by what you don’t spend in hospitalizations and having to deal with hospice and so on which are also very very expensive,” said Goldberg.

The Cancer Drug Coverage Parity Act of 2013 was introduced April 26.  It has been referred to the House Energy & Commerce, Ways & Means and Education & Workforce Committees for consideration.  The bill is officially known as H.R. 1801.

The chief witness in Wednesday’s congressional hearings into the Benghazi terrorist attack was threatened and ostracized by the State Department for protesting the White House narrative on the deadly strike and largely ignored and disrespected by Democrats in the hearing, according to his attorney.

Former Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that the attack on the consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and had nothing to do with a YouTube video as suggested by President Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.  Hicks further testified that his superiors rejected all efforts to launch a rescue mission during the attack and effectively ruined his career when he objected to the official explanation behind the strike.

“He was not a team player.  He protested about Susan Rice’s talking points being false…and he had a reason for being upset about it.  Not only were they false so our government was speaking with forked tongue, but it was causing problems with the Libyan government.  The president of Libya had been on one of the same shows with Ambassador Rice and he had been humiliated in that he said it was a terrorist attack and she said no, it’s a video.  Can you believe that lack of decorum?” said Hicks’ attorney Victoria Toensing.

Toensing says the next great frustration for Hicks came through State Department restrictions on his visit with Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, when the congressman came to Libya to investigate the attack.  She says the administration refused to allow Hicks to meet with Chaffetz without a State Department “minder” who was there to monitor and potentially object to the conversation, but the private discussion happened anyway.

“The lawyer minder was kicked out of a meeting, a classified meeting, because he didn’t have the right clearances.  So my client then got a nasty phone call from Cheryl Mills, who was the chief staff person for Hillary Clinton, and she just chewed him out,” said Toensing.  “Then he’s told by another superior after that nobody likes him in Libya and nobody wants him to come back.  With that in mind, plus the fact he couldn’t bring his family over there now because conditions had changed, he would not go back there but he was assured by the then-ambassador there that he would not be punished.  He has been in an office in Siberia ever since November.

“He does not have meaningful work.  He cannot get an assignment abroad, and if he doesn’t by September 30, they want to shove him out,” said Toensing, who says Hicks was never given a reason for any of the unusual restrictions imposed on him by the State Department.  She says it’s clear the treatment of Hicks is designed to send a clear message to others who might consider coming forward.

“He, because he wasn’t a team player and because he did all these things about letting Congress know about the security problems, was made an example of to the rest of the people.  ‘Here’s what’s going to happen to you.  You’re going to go back and sit in a desk in Siberia if you cross us so don’t cross us.  That’s the threat.  That’s the threat for government integrity because it’s keeping all these people back,” said Toensing.

Congressional investigators say there are at least two other State Department employees being heavily pressured not to come forward.  Toensing also says the Accountability Review Board did not bring a stenographer when interviewing Hicks and investigators only took notes.  Hicks was subsequently blocked from reviewing those notes or the unclassified version of the ARB’s report.

“That’s just a sloppy way to do an investigation,” said Toensing.

Toensing sat behind Hicks throughout his testimony on Wednesday and was taken aback at the very different approaches of the two parties.

“I had wished that there had been a photographer from my viewpoint because as I looked up at the hearing, all the Democrats were gone, except whoever was on the podium next to ask questions.  It was empty on the left-hand side and all the Republican members were there,” said Toensing, who contends the Democrats had a strategy for the hearing.  It just wasn’t to learn what happened in Benghazi.

“They had a theme.  They would always open up by saying we really respect you guys but you guys are being used, which I thought was insulting,” she said.

Toensing says House Republicans should be prepared to issue subpoenas as the investigation moves forward, specifically for the chairman of the Accountability Review Board and Ambassador Rice.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad more of the troubling truth about Benghazi was revealed on Wednesday.  They also criticize Democrats for trying to diminish and distract from the facts of the case.  And they rip the media for their insane amount of coverage of the Jodi Arias trial and for covering that verdict instead of the Benghazi hearings.