ObamaCare for Illegals

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

ObamaCare for Illegals

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration and a group run by senior Obama White House veterans are encouraging illegal aliens to enroll in Obamacare at Mexico’s consulates across the United States.

Apparently it’s not enough for President Obama to redistribute the wealth of Americans to other Americans. Now he wants to redistribute the wealth of Americans to the Third World.

American taxpayers will undoubtedly foot the bill for these illegal immigrants who enroll in Obamacare.

This enrollment free-for-all appears to be but one prong of President Obama’s program to undermine America’s market-based system of governance by overwhelming it. This subversive approach is called the Cloward-Piven Strategy, named after its creators, Marxist academic-activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

Their method for hastening the fall of capitalism called for overloading the government with impossible demands in order to generate social chaos and economic collapse, which would then clear the way for socialist revolution, as I wrote in my book, Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers. Although the strategy was designed for the so-called welfare rights movement, there is no reason why it can’t be applied to other government endeavors.

Which brings us to a disturbing admission by a community organizer who is pushing illegal immigrants to jump on the Obamacare free-taxpayer-supported-healthcare bandwagon.

“Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition – and if they’re there it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act,” Enroll America field organizer Jose Medrano told Breitbart News.

The Mexican government’s consular office in Brownsville, Texas, hosted an Obamacare enrollment fair last week.

“The Mexican consulate is a very reliable source of information to the Latino community,” Medrano said. “And therefore when they host their events, yesterday being the health fair, there are several hundred people that show up.”

Although illegal aliens aren’t supposed to be getting government healthcare benefits or subsidized coverage under the Affordable Care Act, President Obama seemed to give these individuals the green light to get covered earlier this month. Obama said that the Healthcare.gov website would not be used to ascertain an individual’s immigration status.

Obama’s Illegal Immigration Free-For-All

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Obama’s Illegal Immigration Free-For-All

By Matthew Vadum

The Obama administration is barely enforcing immigration laws against illegal immigrants now and intends to do even less in the future, according to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama).

“The evidence reveals that the Administration has carried out a dramatic nullification of federal law,” Sessions told Breitbart News.

“Under the guise of setting ‘priorities,’ the Administration has determined that almost anyone in the world who can enter the United States is free to illegally live, work and claim benefits here as long as they are not caught committing a felony or other serious crime.”

Sessions’s comments came after his office released a three-page “Critical Alert” prepared by the senator’s staffers. The report asserts that the Obama administration is currently blocking the enforcement of immigration laws in the overwhelming majority of violations and is planning to turn down the heat on illegals even more by further expanding the various de facto presidential amnesties now in effect.

President Obama has taken three separate, legally and constitutionally dubious actions that when considered collectively guarantee that almost no individuals illegally present in the country will be deported if their sole act of lawbreaking consists of being in the country.

Obama has provided executive amnesty and work permits for illegal immigrants covered by the proposed “DREAM Act” that Congress has repeatedly rejected. That legislation, if enacted, would cover individuals who claim to have entered the U.S. as minors under their parents’ guidance.

Celebrating Voter Fraud

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Celebrating Voter Fraud

By Matthew Vadum

Cincinnati-area Democrats made headlines last week when they embraced one of their own, serial vote fraud offender Melowese Richardson, after getting her released early from prison.

At a “voting rights” rally, National Action Network (NAN) president Al Sharpton and Bobby Hilton, president of NAN’s Cincinnati chapter, celebrated criminal overachiever Richardson who was sentenced to five years behind bars last July for multiple counts of fraudulently casting ballots. 

Richardson had bragged that she voted twice in the 2012 presidential election. She also voted illegally in three elections by using the names of others, including her sister who has been comatose for a decade.

Richardson may as well have been embraced by President Obama himself because Sharpton is virtually a roving ambassador for the Obama administration.

While the Trayvon Martin case was unfolding, at the April 2012 annual convention of Sharpton’s sleazy, race-baiting protest outfit, National Action Network, in the nation’s capital, members of Obama’s cabinet praised Sharpton effusively. The leftist group hug came as Sharpton’s group was engaged in a campaign of vilification and public relations vigilantism against George Zimmerman, who was ultimately acquitted in the fatal shooting of Martin.

Attorney General Eric Holder thanked Sharpton “for your partnership, your friendship, and your tireless efforts to speak out for the voiceless, to stand up for the powerless, and to shine a light on the problems we must solve, and the promises we must fulfill.”

Foment Hysteria With This One Weird Trick

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

Foment Hysteria With This One Weird Trick

By Matthew Vadum

Why do so many right-of-center websites run ads for shady-sounding consumer products and services that portend gloom and doom?

When surfing the Internet conservatives can’t avoid sales pitches for miracle cures, magic elixirs, life problem fixers, floating in a sea of Buzzfeed-style listicles and other junk food for the mind. The intellect-bypassing memes are everywhere. Every day we’re told how “this one weird trick” can solve our problems. Many on the Right are enabling this kookiness, joining in with those on the Left for whom conspiracy theories are mother’s milk.

Conservatives shouldn’t be feeding into this trend. All these wacky, wide-eyed ads discredit the conservative sites and media outlets that carry them, possibly leading readers to take the valuable news reported there with a grain of salt.

And in recent years apocalyptic ads, often accompanied by scary videos, are being featured far and wide on conservative sites. The pitches go well beyond the usual breathless warnings about water fluoridation, vaccination, and mysterious chem trails in the sky that appeal to, well, everyone who is conspiracy-minded among conservatives, liberals, and moderates.

The U.S. dollar, we’re told, is months away from collapse. When the currency goes south, 200 million or more Americans will be wiped out financially. One advertiser claims to know exactly when the greenback will take a dive.

Exactly? While it is true that the Federal Reserve’s relentless, reckless expansion of the money supply can only end in tears eventually, predicting exactly when the dollar might collapse is next to impossible, except perhaps when the collapse is imminent. There are far too many economic and political variables to hazard a guess.

But wait; there’s more.

Florida Loss Spells Doom for Democrats

My article in the March 14, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Florida Loss Spells Doom for Democrats

By Matthew Vadum

The defeat of an Obamacare-loving Democrat in a closely watched special election in the Tampa area ought to give comfort to Republicans aiming to control both houses of Congress after the upcoming elections in November.

On Tuesday, Republican David W. Jolly had mainstream journalists across the nation popping Prozac as he polled 48.52 percent in the special election in Florida’s 13th congressional district, triumphing over Democrat Alex Sink who garnered 46.64 percent and over Libertarian Lucas Overby who received 4.84 percent of the votes, according to still-unofficial results.

No matter what they say publicly, Sink’s loss is terrifying to careerist Democrats. President Obama’s party desperately wants to talk about something other than Obamacare now that it’s becoming increasingly clear that they have no chance of retaking the House and are very likely to lose control of the Senate.

The FL-13 race was the Democrats’ to lose. “This wasn’t some random battle; the deck was stacked for Democrats, yet prevailing political fundamentals pushed the W into the Republican column,” notes Townhall political editor Guy Benson.

As even left-leaning Politico observes, the Democratic Party is in chaos right now:

A few Democrats are advocating a drastic rhetorical shift to the left, by criticizing their own party for not going far enough when it passed the law in 2010. Other Democrats plan to sharply criticize the Affordable Care Act when running for re-election. Many plan to stick to the simple message that Obamacare is flawed and needs to be fixed —a tactic that plainly didn’t work for Sink. Taken together, the Democratic Party is heading into an already tough election year divided — instead of united — on the very issue Republicans plan to make central to their campaigns.

Going into the FL-13 vote three days ago, Democrats already had a seemingly impossible task ahead as they lost control of the narrative.

Before Election Day this week, Republicans characterized the vote as a referendum on Obamacare, a program that Democrats across America have been scrambling to distance themselves from. Jolly promised to press for repeal. Sink, who had high name recognition with voters after running for governor in 2010, defended Obamacare in principle but said parts of the program needed to be fixed.

De-Imagining America

My article in today's FrontPage magazine:

De-Imagining America

By Matthew Vadum

A little-known consortium of radical groups, public-funded universities and the federal government is quietly seeking to transform the arts and other academic disciplines into vehicles of left-wing extremism and indoctrination. The initiative, called “Imagining America,” embraces the philosophy of Communist historian Howard Zinn, famous for manipulating historical fact to fit Marxist paradigms of human “progress” and to plant the seeds of radicalism in unsuspecting youth.

Imagining America is headquartered at taxpayer-funded Syracuse University in upstate New York and was virtually unknown until Glenn Beck threw some light on it in a broadcast. Beck described Imagining America and another group that calls itself “The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture” as an “effort to rewrite our history and catalyze a new culture for America.” This “department” isn’t actually part of the U.S. government but describes itself as “the nation’s newest people-powered department, founded on the truth that art and culture are our most powerful and under-tapped resources for social change.”

Active in both groups are “the people that will be teaching and influencing your children” through “art and music and film and history books,” Beck said.

America’s neo-communist radicals figured out a long time ago how to have their cake and eat it, too. U.S. taxpayers have been funding subversive left-wing groups like the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation since the Johnson administration. They advance their objectives, erode civil society, and send you the bill. 

Such is also the case with Imagining America, which occupies a cushy niche at the intersection of taxpayer-funded universities, government agencies and wealthy far-left non-profit organizations.

Imagining America grew out of executive action. President Bill Clinton created the White House Millennium Council by Executive Order 13072 on Feb. 2, 1998. One of the council’s tasks was to “[p]roduce informational and resource materials to educate the American people concerning our Nation’s past and to inspire thought concerning the future[.]” The veritable cultural warfare council was headed by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton.

No, Gov. Brownback, Cruz didn't violate Reagan's 11th commandment

My article in today's American Thinker:

No, Gov. Brownback, Cruz didn't violate Reagan's 11th commandment

By Matthew Vadum

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is the latest Republican to twist Ronald Reagan's "Eleventh Commandment" to suit his purposes by falsely accusing Sen. Ted Cruz of violating it.

According to Brownback, the junior senator from Texas is a big meanie for pointing out the objective fact that Bob Dole's namby-pamby 1996 bid for the presidency was disastrous.  The congenitally outraged Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) agrees with Brownback and is demanding that Cruz apologize.

But what did Cruz actually say to ignite such passions?

“You want to lose elections?  Stand for nothing,” Cruz said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the Washington, D.C. suburbs. 

Look at the last four congressional elections – '06, '08, '10, '12. In three of the four, we followed that strategy: '06, '08, and '12.  We put our head down, we stood for nothing, and we got walloped.  The one election that was a tremendous election was 2010, when Republicans drew a line in the sand.  We said, unequivocally, we stand against ObamaCare, against bankrupting the country, and we won in an historic tidal wave of an election.

But what Cruz said next angered Brownback, himself a former U.S. senator.

And then, of course, all of us remember President Dole and President McCain and President Romney.  Now look: those are good men.  They’re decent men, but when you don’t stand and draw a clear distinction, when you don’t stand for principle, Democrats celebrate.

“I don’t appreciate it,” Brownback told Fox News.  “I understand why people do that, but Bob Dole is a great American.  You can disagree with him on policy, but he’s the iconic figure of the World War II generation.  He’s a wonderful man.  He led the Senate for a good period of time.”

In fact, Cruz expressly disagreed with Dole on policy alone and praised him, calling him a "decent" man.  Cruz didn't get personal.  A media-savvy politician, he deliberately sugar-coated his criticism of Dole.

Cruz failed to make the point that no one has ever accused Dole of being principled.

Of course, Republican relics like Dole and the rest of the RINO chorus are a big part of the problem, because they haven't even tried to take on big government.  They share at least some of the blame with Barack Obama and leftist Democrats for America's ongoing decline.

But Cruz didn't say any of this.  He took the high road, unlike his many detractors in the Republican Party.

Lois Lerner’s Lies and Cover-Up Revealed

My article from today's FrontPage magazine:

Lois Lerner’s Lies and Cover-Up Revealed

By Matthew Vadum

Former IRS mandarin Lois Lerner orchestrated an unprecedented crackdown on Tea Party and conservative groups and then attempted to scapegoat those nonprofits, blaming them for the harsh treatment they received at her instigation, according to a damning report released yesterday by congressional investigators.

The report came out six days after Lerner appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under subpoena and for a second time refused to testify about IRS targeting of right-of-center 501c4 nonprofit advocacy groups during the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. (The full report is available in PDF form at the committee’s website.) At the March 5 hearing, which was a continuation of a hearing started last year, Lerner again opted to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

President Obama has claimed that there was not even “a smidgen of corruption” in the IRS affair but anyone with eyes knows the Obama administration has been stonewalling and intimidating witnesses who know the ugly truth about these Third World banana republic-style tax abuses.

Democrats correctly view Tea Party groups, that is, right-wing populist groups, as an existential threat to the Left. These nonprofits tend to be Republican-leaning organizations and they have been successful so far in derailing, or at least slowing, parts of President Obama’s ongoing transformation of America. Many left-wingers don’t believe such groups are legitimate and don’t want them granted official recognition and tax-exempt status by the IRS.

The report also comes as lawmakers consider whether to cite Lerner for contempt of Congress.

“Many questions remain, including the identities of others at the IRS and elsewhere who may have known about key events and decisions she undertook. Americans, and particularly those Americans who faced mistreatment at the hands of the IRS, deserve the full documented truth that both Lois Lerner and the IRS have withheld from them,” the new report states. 

But “[e]ven without her full testimony, and despite the fact that the IRS has still not turned over many of her e-mails, a political agenda to crack down on tax-exempt organizations comes into focus,” the report continues. ”Lerner believed the political participation of tax-exempt organizations harmed Democratic candidates, she believed something needed to be done, and she directed action from her unit at the IRS.”

Association of Counties Pushes Obamacare for Prisoners

My inaugural news article for Newsmax ran March 5, 2014.

Here it is:

Association of Counties Pushes Obamacare for Prisoners

By Matthew Vadum

At least six states and several local governments are signing up prison inmates on Obamacare exchanges after the National Association of Counties (NACo) began encouraging counties to shift some prisoner healthcare expenses onto federal taxpayers.

Convicted prisoners under sentence may not be covered under the Obamacare law, but inmates awaiting trial can be signed up on the healthcare exchanges under a provision in the Affordable Care Act that expanded eligibility for Medicaid on Jan. 1. 

Giving prisoners Obamacare coverage inflates enrollment numbers for the program and allows states and counties to avoid paying for expensive hospital stays.


To take advantage of the looser Medicaid signup rules, NACo put together a "how to" guide two years ago that encourages counties to apply for Obamacare for prisoners who are in pretrial detention.


Enrolling county jail inmates under the Affordable Care Act will be better for the prisoners and will benefit society as a whole, NACo states in its briefing booklet titled, "County Jails and the Affordable Care Act: Enrolling Eligible Individuals in Health Coverage."


The document states that the expanded coverage offered by Obamacare will "better connect individuals involved in the criminal justice system to appropriate medical and behavioral healthcare services, which in turn has the potential to reduce recidivism rates as well as county jail healthcare costs."


But David Hogberg, a healthcare policy expert at the National Center for Public Policy Research, said putting prisoners into the Obamacare exchanges will drive up insurance premiums and hurt taxpayers.

Will Lois Lerner Be Held in Contempt?

My article in the March 7, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Will Lois Lerner Be Held in Contempt?

By Matthew Vadum

As the Obama administration’s coverup of former IRS official Lois Lerner’s wrongdoings moves into high gear, Democrats are doing everything they can to direct public attention away from the scandal and tamp down growing calls for the president’s impeachment.

Lerner may soon be compelled to testify or be cited for contempt of Congress. After a hearing concluded Wednesday at which Lerner refused to answer questions, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated that Republicans are growing tired of the former IRS executive’s shenanigans. “At some point, I believe that she has to testify, or she should be held in contempt,” he told reporters.

Democrats are also desperate to use theatrics and sideshows to change the subject from the slow-motion 100-car pile up that is Obamacare. To make matters worse for Democrats, President Obama’s already low public approval ratings are cratering in a new Fox News poll whose results have been echoed in recent media-conducted polls.

Obama’s overall approval/disapproval numbers hit an all-time low of 38 percent to 54 percent. A mere 28 percent of Independents, 39 percent of women, and 38 percent of young voters gave the president a thumbs-up for his performance in office. When respondents were asked, “Do you think the country is better off than it was five years ago, or not?” just 34 percent answered yes, compared to 60 percent responding no.

At a Wednesday hearing of the House Government Reform Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who has been dining out for a half century on his civil rights activism in the Sixties, pulled a well-publicized publicity stunt calculated to make committee chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) look mean-spirited.

The days when Cummings courageously stood up to oppressive government measures are long gone. Now he leads the charge on behalf of Big Brother and our increasingly out-of-control federal government.

Glenn Greenwald: Raving Leftist

My article from the March 6, 2014 issue of FrontPage magazine:

Photo: courtesy of USASurvival.org

Glenn Greenwald: Raving Leftist

By Matthew Vadum

Adding to a long tradition of misleading the public with dubious information, Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz recently unleashed a scathing attack on Edward Snowden promoter Glenn Greenwald in a 7,600-word essay published by The New Republic. Although Wilentz never comes out and says it directly, the reader is left with the distinct impression that he believes neo-communist Greenwald shouldn’t be considered a member-in-good-standing of the Left. In fact, Wilentz seems to insinuate that Greenwald is an extreme right-winger at heart, a proposition that cannot survive serious scrutiny.

An unabashed partisan Democrat, Wilentz is known for his televised histrionics on the eve of President Clinton’s impeachment. He warned House members that if they voted to impeach Clinton, “history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness.” TheNew York Times ridiculed him for his outburst, editorializing that his “gratuitously patronizing presentation … marred the Democratic experts’ argument that Mr. Clinton’s misconduct did not meet the constitutional tests for impeachment.”

In the article on Greenwald, whom Rachel Maddow calls “the American left’s most fearless political commentator,” Wilentz artfully suggests that Greenwald might be a right-wing crypto-critic of the president and the Left because he is a zealot on so-called privacy issues and has ferociously attacked the Obama administration for its NSA spying abuses. Instead of making a clear accusation of ideological infidelity against Greenwald, Wilentz cherry-picks statements from Greenwald’s past to put him in the same ideological camp as Ron Paul “paleoconservatives,” who support income tax abolition, isolationism, among other things.

As evidence, Wilentz cites Greenwald’s dalliances with members of the Right in the past. Despite being a crusader for gay rights, in Greenwald’s “online travels, he gravitated to right-wing sites such as Townhall, where he could engage in cyber-brawls with social conservatives,” Wilentz writes. ”Over time, he met some of his antagonists in the flesh and, to his surprise, liked them.”

Greenwald’s work has certainly endeared him to libertarians, with whom the lawyer-turned-journalist has had associations over the years, but the simpler explanation for his outreach is that politics makes strange bedfellows. Just because Greenwald elevates the surveillance issue over all others doesn’t mean he stopped being a dogmatic leftist.

And there is no doubt Greenwald is a committed radical leftist.

It’s doubtful that America could ever move far enough to the left to satisfy Greenwald — the recipient of an award named in honor of Soviet agent and left-wing journalist, I.F. Stone. Greenwald doesn’t want to change a few policies here and there; He wants to overthrow the system and his life’s work is clearly dedicated to precisely that.

Medea Benjamin Booted Out of Egypt

My article in today's FrontPage magazine about anti-American trust fund commie Medea Benjamin:

Medea Benjamin Booted Out of Egypt

By Matthew Vadum

Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin, a frequent teller of tall tales, claims she was detained and physically abused Monday by Egyptian authorities when she flew into Cairo’s airport –on her way to an anti-Israel rally in Gaza.

Benjamin, who has close ties to the Obama White House, was traveling to Egypt for a meeting with international delegates before a scheduled trip to Gaza for what Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now” described innocuously as a “women’s conference.”

Hours later after being deported to Turkey, Benjamin said she had been held at the Cairo airport without explanation and violently handcuffed by Egyptian officials. While in Egyptian custody she took to Twitter to ask for help. She said officials in Cairo dislocated her shoulder and broke her arm before putting her on an airplane bound for somewhere in Turkey.

“I was brutally assaulted by Egyptian police, who never said what I was being accused of,” Benjamin said in a statement, according to CBS News. “When the authorities came into the cell to deport me, two men threw me to the ground, stomped on my back, pulled my shoulder out of its socket and handcuffed me so that my injured arm was twisted around and my wrists began to bleed. I was then forced to sit between the two men who attacked me on the plane ride from Cairo to Istanbul, and I was (and still am) in terrible pain the whole time.”

There appears to be no independent confirmation that Benjamin suffered bodily injury in Egypt.

If the Left knew Christians were coming they'd've baked a cake

My article in yesterday's American Thinker:


If the Left knew Christians were coming they'd've baked a cake

By Matthew Vadum

The religious freedom legislation that gelatin-spined Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed wasn't controversial until the Left started lying about it.

The state-level civil rights bill that Brewer mothballed Feb. 26 was killed by a media-led propaganda campaign that falsely characterized it as "anti-gay."  To no one's surprise, both of the GOP's last two RINO losers, Mitt Romney and John McCain, urged a veto.

As Ed Whelan blogs at National Review,

There has been a blizzard of hysterical misinformation about Arizona’s SB 1062.  As anyone who takes the trouble to consult the text of the legislation will readily discover, SB 1062 does not mention, much less single out, gays or same-sex ceremonies.
As Douglas Laycock (who supports redefining marriage to include same-sex couples) and other leading religious-liberty scholars explain in a letter to Arizona governor Jan Brewer, SB 1062 “has been egregiously misrepresented by many of its critics.”

SB 1062 would not have given Arizona residents the right to discriminate.  Although freedom of association has been under attack by the Left for decades, Arizona law already acknowledged that residents retain the right to discriminate in at least a few aspects of their private lives.