Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew was trotted out for the Sunday morning show circuit again this week, this time to remind everybody that the entire IRS mess is nothing to see here, so move along, peasants

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Sunday the Internal Revenue Service exhibited “equal opportunity bad judgment” in the improper targeting of political groups, and there was no evidence of political pressure.

Just days after President Obama accused Washington of focusing attention on “phony scandals,” Lew said on “Fox News Sunday” mistakes were made in the IRS, but there is no evidence the White House or political officials drove the improper targeting.

“There’s no political official who condoned it or authorized it,” he said, adding that the mistakes that were made were “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable.”

Well, I’m glad that’s all cleared up then. But seriously, I have to ask the same question that Rick Moran did… What did you expect him to say?

Some liberal groups got virtually a free pass from the IRS on the decision regarding their tax exempt status. I have yet to hear of any conservative group treated so gently. And why the difference in the questions asked? If this was “equal opportunity bad judgment,” shouldn’t the questions posed by the IRS have been the same?

This dog ain’t hunting, Jack. You’re going to have to come up with better talking points than this if you want to get your boss off the hook.

Now, Jack would have been remiss if he didn’t reiterate the “phony scandal” meme which the White House has been shopping around for weeks now. Fear not! He didn’t get to it on Fox, but he dashed right over to the set of ABC’s studios and reminded everyone that there are a new set of budget negotiations on the horizon, and President Obama isn’t about to let them get hamstrung by any made up nonsense.

“Congress can’t let us default. Congress has to do its work,” Lew said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” adding the president has has been “crystal clear” that raising the country’s debt limit this fall is not an issue of negotiation between Congress and the White House…

“I certainly hope that Congress isn’t looking to create confrontations and false crises because we did see, in 2011, how bad that is for the American economy,” Lew said. “The mere fact of negotiating over the debt limit, after 2011, would introduce this notion that somehow there’s a question about whether or not we’re going to pay our bills, whether or not we’re going to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The really sad part here is that absolutely nothing has changed in the White House playbook. And I’m not just talking in the broad strokes here, but rather a case where it looks as if they failed to dispose of the daily talking points sheets from last year. It’s the same phrasing, pitch and tone, right down to the letter. Protect the full faith and credit came from everyone on the 2012 campaign team. The whole portion of we’re going to pay our bills was on the menu for these same shows all through the fall. Has George Stephanopoulos undergone some form of selective memory loss, or are we just phoning it in now? It’s as if the last six months never even happened and the Obama team plans to march straight off the same cliff again without so much as looking at the boot prints leading over the edge.

Washington is great town. Everything old is new again, and these days you don’t even have to wait for it to actually get old.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/28/jack-lew-on-irs-scandal-what-political-pressure/

Why Obama doesn't dare speak about Detroit

Obama dare take the latest version of his revive-the-economy-and-boost-the-middle-class speech to the poster city for the bankruptcy of his ideas: Detroit?

Don’t bet on it. 

You don’t hear the president talking about Detroit. Maybe the reason Detroit is bankrupt today is because for decades it was governed, in large part, by the Obama playbook: Soak the rich, choke small businesses, and squeeze the middle class with high taxes (in the case of Detroit that included sky high property, commercial and industrial taxes). 

Out of control taxing and spending by government in Detroit was one reason a staggering 25 percent of the city’s population moved out between 2000 and 2010. 

A study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in 2011 found that Detroit had the highest property taxes among the 50 largest U.S. cities on homes, apartment buildings, commercial buildings, and industrial buildings.

Yet President Obama keeps saying that he wants to tax the wealthy and businesses much more across the country to redistribute income to the middle class, the poor, and government. 

Detroit tried that (with most of the money going down the government spending rat hole instead of to its citizens).

Maybe the reason Detroit is bankrupt is because for decades it was governed, in large part, by the Obama playbook.

Detroit stands as an extreme example of how an Obama tax system of  “spreading the wealth” (actually, confiscating it) inevitably means that since there is not enough rich and business people’s money to create a utopia of income equality -- government must inevitably tax middle income people, too. 

Worse, most of the money ends up in government’s coffers where it gets misspent and siphoned to special interests—instead of in the pockets of citizens whose spending and investing stimulates economic and job growth.   

Here's how that works: Insure that unions and government workers get generous pension, health and other benefit packages that government can’t fund, long-term, in exchange for their votes and political activism. 

According to the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, “Fully 99.6% of [Detroit’s] retiree health-care liabilities are unfunded” and…“unfunded obligations account for $9.2 billion of Detroit’s $18 billion debt.”

Shortly before President Obama delivered his nearly 8,000-word “economic success” speech at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois last week (without once mentioning the word “Detroit”) Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of Obama’s home city of Chicago, Illinois by three notches. This was largely because Moody’s calculated Chicago’s unfunded liabilities at $36-billion—nearly double of what the Windy City reported.

Looking at other cities across the country, Moody’s estimates that cities are using accounting gimmicks to disguise their true unfunded government pension liabilities, which Moody’s says are three times as bad as those cities are reporting. But if President Obama would dare to talk about this in Detroit (or in Chicago, for that matter), he would alienate unions and government workers who are among his biggest backers.

Instead, government officials strive to sell the power of big government to be the savior when it comes to major economic and social problems. 

Detroit’s mayors over the past 30 years tried various forms of government intervention to invigorate the city but clearly that failed. As Steve Malanga recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, as early as the 1970’s, when Coleman Young was Detroit’s mayor, “the increasingly distressed city became a fiscal ward of the state and federal governments…by the late 1970s federal grants paid the salaries of up to one-third of Detroit's workforce.” 

As Detroit continued to demonstrate over the years, government bailouts only forestall problems that only responsible individuals must solve.

Mr. Obama did dare to speak of his economic vision in Detroit, in 2007, just a few months after he declared his first bid for the presidency. 

At the Detroit Economic Club, Obama said, “I believe in America's great cities. I believe in America's great Midwestern cities. We have not had an urban agenda over the last six years. We need to restore an urban agenda.” 

He cited as his top priorities: education, “innovative ways that the federal government can spark economic development,” and then touched on the topics of affordable housing and jobs. 

Obama added that, “Obviously, the marketplace is the best engine of job growth.”

In the six years since Obama spoke those words—and six months into his second term as president—President Obama is still campaigning as if big government can fix major economic and social problems in all the areas he cited as his priorities when he spoke at the Detroit Economic Club.

But the Obama administration’s role in bailing out Detroit’s auto industry didn’t “save Detroit”—certainly not the city. 

While Obama pushes for even more big government taxing and spending, here’s what we see:

-  Failed schools, especially in the minority neighborhoods of big cities. 

- Real GDP growth that is limping along at barely over one percent. 

- When it comes to affordable housing and job growth, Obama is long on claiming credit and short on producing results.     

While the Obama playbook continues to play out in Detroit and elsewhere, the president continues to speak as if he and his administration are on the right track. 

If the president ever does dare to speak in Detroit, expect from him what he accuses his critics of: “an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/07/29/why-obama-doesnt-dare-speak-about-detroit/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2aSNz74vT

Democrats, Republicans hint at shutdown before budget talks involving ObamaCare, sequester.

The routine Capitol Hill negotiations in which Democrats and Republicans try to reach a short-term deal to fund the federal government after September is expected to be especially complex this year as both sides hint they will allow a government shutdown over such key issues as sequestration and ObamaCare.

Republicans essentially have tried to dismantle the president's signature health-care legislation since he signed it into law in 2010, including 38 related votes in the GOP-led House. And Republicans say defunding it next year is their last, best chance.

"If you pay for a budget that pays for ObamaCare ... you have voted for ObamaCare," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. "Some will say, `That is crazy. You are going to shut down the government over ObamaCare.' No. What is crazy is moving forward with this."

The negotiation is to agree on a short-term measure -- known as a “continuing resolution” -- to fund the government for a few weeks or months until a larger deal can be reached on appropriations bills that give federal agencies their full fiscal 2014 operating budgets, which begin Oct. 1.

To be sure, Washington lawmakers would like to avoid the political disaster of 1995-1996 when failed negotiations between congressional Republicans and Democratic President Bill Clinton resulted in a shutdowns for 28 days.

However, Republicans are being pushed especially hard recently over ObamaCare by the Tea Party movement and such conservative groups as the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth, which has a history of backing conservative challengers to GOP incumbents in party primaries.

The anti-tax group Club for Growth is asking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to sign a letter circulated by Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee promising not to fund ObamaCare through any budget or continuing resolution in September.

Lee has signatures from 11 Senate Republican colleagues since Thursday when he began circulating the letter, which is addressed to Majority Leader Harry Reid.    

Meanwhile, some Democrats also are taking a hard-line position this time -- vowing a shutdown unless Republicans agree to replace the austere federal spending cuts known as sequestration with less drastic ones.

Sequestration, which started in March after Washington failed to agree on a more measured approach to spending reductions, has since cut $55 billion -- about 5 percent -- from the day-to-day operating budgets of federal agencies.

"There are lots of progressives who care about domestic discretionary spending who think that the Republicans are winning because with the sequester we have a gradual downsizing of the government going on that nobody's doing anything about,” said Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf. “If we just let it keep happening without having a confrontation about it we're losing. And Sept. 30 becomes a place to have a confrontation about it."

Democrats insist, at a minimum, that spending should continue at rates consistent with the current $988 billion cap on appropriations for the 2013 budget year ending Sept. 30. But current law sets a lower cap of $967 billion for 2014 as required by sequestration.

Both parties have acknowledged a shutdown would just re-enforce voter perception that Washington is dysfunctional, ahead of lawmakers in both Capitol Hill chambers seeking re-election in 2014.

Though the president has made several veto threats over the past several weeks, it remains unclear whether he and his advisers would agree to a vetoing a continuing resolution with sequester-level funding.

"The American people will not look kindly upon action taken here in Washington to shut down the government," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said this week.

At the same time, some Republicans also appear nervous about forcing a shutdown.

"I think it's the dumbest idea I've ever heard," said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. "Some of these guys need to understand that if you shut down the federal government, you better have a specific reason to do it that's achievable. ... At some point, you're going to open the federal government back up, and Barack Obama's going to be president, and he won't have signed a dissolution of the Affordable Care Act."

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., whose views usually reflect those of House Speaker John Boehner said: "Shutting down the government, I think, that's almost never a good tactic. … It wasn't good for us in 1995. It's not going to be good for us in 2013."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/27/democrats-republicans-hint-at-shutdown-before-budget-talks-involving-obamacare/?cmpid=NL_morninghl#ixzz2aSNItUJt

Obama's job pivot is over: Economy not on Organizing for Action’s ‘Action August’ agenda singing up for Death Care is!

Organizing for Action, the nonprofit organization assembled from the remnants of President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, is pushing for the president’s second-term agenda during a month-long “Action August” of advocacy and fundraising — but don’t expect to hear about the economy.

Beginning on Obama’s birthday, August 4, OFA will spend the month promoting the administration’s top issues ahead of the 2014 midterm elections: the benefits of enrolling early in Obamacare (August 4), immigration reform (August 5), climate change (August 13), gun control (August 21), and immigration reform again (August 31).

“I’ve always said that running for office is not just about getting elected. I believe in winning. Winning’s good. But you run for office and you win so that you can actually get things done. All right? It’s the beginning, and not the end of a process,” Obama said in his recent speech at the OFA summit in Washington, D.C., a video of which was sent to supporters Sunday to rally support for “Action August.”

’ve got a little over twelve hundreds days left in office. I am going to spend every waking minute of every one of those days thinking about, and then acting upon, any good ideas out there that are going to help ordinary Americans succeed,” Obama said in the speech, again noting how many days he has left in office. “Thank you very much, OFA. I love you guys. Are you still fired up?,” he added, echoing a 2012 campaign rally mantra.

The economy will not be an OFA focus, despite Obama’s trifecta of speeches late last week at Knox College in Illinois, the University of Central Missouri and in Jacksonville touting his desire to grow the economy from the middle out in his second term. White House press secretary Jay Carney promised that Obama would address the specifics of his economic plan after he was done giving his three speeches.

“After that he will, as we’ve said, give additional speeches focused on aspects of the economy that we can address. And those speeches will have specifics and will have new ideas and both proposals that can be worked on together with Congress, and actions that the president can take using his executive authority and actions he can take through working with outside stakeholders. So that’s sort of the way this will roll out,” Carney told a reporter aboard Air Force One last week.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/28/economy-not-on-organizing-for-actions-action-august-agenda/#ixzz2aSMjCMOG

State after state is opting out of Common Core national assessments. Find out why. Georgia is withdrawing from the Common Core national assessments, and neighboring Florida could soon follow suit.

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R), along with Superintendent John Barge, sent a letter to the district superintendents throughout the Peach State last week announcing the decision.

Georgia’s move highlights both immediate, practical concerns and long-term concerns over Common Core. Deal made clear that “Georgia can create an equally rigorous measurement without the high costs associated with this particular test.”

In 2010, Georgia entered into a partnership among 22 states called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) to implement the Common Core national assessments, which has a price tag of $29.50 per student. Georgia’s current assessment expense is $10 per student. Common Core would add $27 million to the state’s testing budget.

Education leaders in Georgia also understand that doing what’s best for students means keeping educational decisions within the state and in the hands of local leadership—not distant bureaucrats.

Deal and Barge write:

Creating the tests in Georgia will ensure that the state maintains control over its academic standards and student testing, whereas a common assessment would have prevented [the Georgia Department of Education] from being able to adjust and rewrite Georgia’s standards when educators indicate revisions are needed to best serve students.

Meanwhile, the Florida state Senate has recommended immediate withdrawal from the Common Core tests. Florida Speaker of the House Will Weatherford and Senate President Don Gaetz implored Florida Education Commissioner Tony Bennett:

Florida’s strong education policies have made us a model for the nation and have resulted in extraordinary gains in student achievement. Too many questions remain unanswered with PARCC regarding implementation, administration, technology readiness, timeliness and utility of results, security infrastructure, data collection and undetermined cost. We cannot jeopardize fifteen years of education accountability reform by relying on PARCC to define a fundamental component of our accountability system. Our schools, teachers, and families have worked too hard for too long for our system to collapse under the weight of an assessment system that is not yet developed, designed nor tested.… It would be unacceptable to participate in national efforts that may take us backward and erode confidence in our accountability system and our trajectory of continued success. By ensuring decisions are uniquely tailored to our state, we reinforce our dedication to providing Floridians with an education that directly leads to success in the opportunities and challenges of our economy.

Common Core is already proving costly in terms of dollars and will prove even more costly in terms of educational liberty down the road. Educational decisions should be in the hands of those closest to the students: parents and local leaders. Exiting the Common Core national standards push makes it more likely that such decisions will be.

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/07/29/georgia-reclaims-control-of-testing-neighbor-florida-to-consider-the-same/

FBI RESCUES 105 CHILDREN FROM HORRIFIC SEX TRAFFICKING OPERATIONS IN 76 U.S. CITIES

The FBI says it has rescued 105 children who were forced into prostitution in the United States, and arrested 150 pimps in a series of raids in 76 American cities.

The campaign, known as “Operation Cross Country,” was the largest of its type and conducted under the FBI’s “Innocence Lost” initiative.  It all took place in just 72 hours.

“Child prostitution remains a persistent threat to children across America,” Ron Hosko, assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, commented. “This operation serves as a reminder that these abhorrent crimes can happen anywhere and that the FBI remains committed to stopping this cycle of victimization and holding the criminals who profit from this exploitation accountable.”

Reuters related that the youngest victim recovered was just 9-years-old.  However, officials said that the victims, almost all girls, ranged in age from 13 to 17.

The largest numbers of children rescued were in San Francisco, Detroit, Milwaukee, Denver and New Orleans.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/29/fbi-rescues-105-children-from-horrific-sex-trafficking-operations-in-76-u-s-cities/

BLACK CNN HOST SUPPORTS BILL O’REILLY’S RACE COMMENTS, BLAMES HIP-HOP CULTURE — THEN GETS CRITICIZED FOR POSITION BY…WHITE GUEST

Fox News host Bill O’Reilly—whose comments about the problems in the black community raised a firestorm this week—has at least one supporter.

And he’s African-American and a host for rival network CNN.

Don Lemon said Saturday on his “No Talking Points” segment that O’Reilly has “a point. In fact, he’s got more than a point…In my estimation, he doesn’t go far enough.”

Don Lemon (Credit: YouTube)

Lemon’s reaction came after playing a clip of O’Reilly stating, “The reason there is so much violence and chaos in the black precincts is the disintegration of the African-American family…Raised without much structure, young black men often reject education and gravitate towards the street culture, drugs, hustling, gangs. Nobody forces them to do that. Again, it is a personal decision.”

Lemon then listed five essential reforms black men need to make:

• pull up pants
• drop the N-word
• take care of their communities
• finish high school
• lower rate of children born out of wedlock.

“More than 72% of children in the African American community are born out of wedlock,” Lemon continued, emphasizing this point as the top priority. “That means absent fathers. And the studies show that lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison, and the cycle continues.”

“So please…pay attention to and think about what has been presented in recent history as acceptable behavior,” Lemon concluded. “Pay close attention to the hip-hop and rap culture that many of you embrace, a culture that glorifies everything I just mentioned, thug and reprehensible behavior; a culture that is making a lot of people rich—just not you. And it’s not going to.”

After Lemon’s comments, he invited reactions from guests and was deeply criticized by Michael Skolnick, editor-in-chief of Global Grind, who is white.

“I think your comments sounded like a conservative preacher on a Sunday, and certainly Bill O’Reilly should welcome you on his show,” Skolnik said. “I’m disappointed in you.

Skolnik said. “I’m disappointed in you.”

Michael Skolnik (Credit: YouTube)

“You’re talking about sagging pants,” Skolnik added. “I’ve heard this rap for years. Let’s stop talking about sagging pants, and let’s talk about why we incarcerate 2.2 million people in this country, and why young kids look up to guys who come out of jail. We waged a war against black and brown people forty years ago, the War on Drugs, and it failed miserably, and now we’re reaping the repercussions.”

Lemon shot back—and topped it off with a fatal blow: “Not every black kid is in jail. And there are rules, and people should know where that style comes from, whether it’s a black kid, a white kid, or whether it’s Justin Bieber. That is glorifying prison culture. Who wants to see someone’s butt crack?”

Lemon asked another guest, Larry Elder, to expand on his points; Elder did so, naming Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty as the culprit in black American families’ disintegration…and Ronald Reagan as a restorer of employment opportunities for black men.

Larry Elder (Credit: YouTube)

“We’ve been giving people incentives to marry the government, and allow men to abandon their financial responsibilities,” Elder said. “My dad was a janitor, he worked two full-time jobs as a janitor. He never read Adam Smith, but he also said, ‘I never got a job from a poor person.’”

Lemon wasn’t buying it, though: “Larry, you’re gonna have a hard time convincing people that Ronald Reagan is the scion to help African American people. That’s a tough sell.”

Here’s Lemon agreeing with O’Reilly and laying out what he believes the black community needs to do to address issues it faces:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/27/black-cnn-host-supports-bill-oreillys-race-comments-blames-hip-hop-culture-then-gets-criticized-for-position-by-white-guest/

China leaders play safe on reforms as economic growth sags

• 

The financial district in Shanghai. The Chinese government has unveiled plans to step up spending in several carefully selected areas - social housing, urban infrastructure, high-speed rail. Photo: Reuters

For all the strong rhetoric, China’s latest policy actions suggest a shift in focus on the economy to mix relatively pain-free reforms that burnish Beijing’s credentials for change with measures to prop up sagging growth.

While Premier Li Keqiang provides a drip-feed of easy reforms, he will avoid more radical moves for fear of tipping the world’s second-biggest economy over the edge.

Analysts from top government think-tanks say there is no reason to doubt the government’s commitment to rebalancing China’s economy away from an investment- and credit-driven growth model to one that relies more on consumption and innovation.

But the leaders are aware they are walking a fine line and the economy’s weaker-than-expected performance this year has underlined the need to tread carefully. Reform may well secure future growth, but if they push too hard now they could cause an economic shock that forces Beijing to resort to old-school pump-priming, prolonging the very economic model they are trying to dismantle.

“The government has to safeguard its bottom line in growth, while restructuring the economy. It’s very difficult to balance,” said He Qiang, an economist at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing and an adviser to parliament.

“Economic restructuring cannot be achieved overnight and it should be a gradual reform, not a revolution.”

Ground slated for construction projects in the outskirts of Beijing. China’s leaders have said a slowdown in economic growth is needed for reforms. Photo: EPA

Since President Xi Jinping and Li were appointed in March to lead China they have pressed the reform message to wean the country off a diet of breakneck expansion and easy credit that fuelled double-digit growth for three decades and catapulted China to the top table of global economies.

Just last week Xi was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency on the need “to deepen reforms in all aspects” although he also acknowledged the line between “being courageous and walking steadily”.

In a nod to growth concerns, Beijing has unveiled a series of small steps in recent weeks that analysts say are geared to providing quick help to the economy.

Last week, Beijing said it will scrap tax for six million small businesses, speed up railway investment and offer more help to exporters.

That means radical reforms, such as full interest rate liberalisation, are off the table for now although they may be tackled in October, when the Communist Party holds a key meeting that will set its economic agenda for the next decade and which may also include some political reform.

Until then authorities will reach for low-hanging fruit: uncontroversial reforms that move in the right direction and could have some, even if only modest, impact on growth, but which are limited in scope and ambition.

The central bank’s decision earlier this month to remove the floor on bank lending rates is an example. It was welcomed as a largely symbolic prelude to removing caps on deposit rates, a much more difficult task that will take time.

The central bank says a deposit insurance scheme and other preparations are needed before a move on deposits and economists said besides concerns it would squeeze banks’ profits there is also concern about its near-term economic impact.

“They dare not to liberalise deposit rates now as that could push up borrowing costs,” said Liang Youcai, an economist at State Information Centre, a government think-tank. The working assumption is that lending rates would rise to pay for the higher cost of deposits.

China’s leaders have said a slowdown in economic growth is needed in order for reforms to take place since they will be targeting areas, such as rampant investment in infrastructure and factories that is still the main driver of expansion. That’s why they cut the 2013 economic growth target to 7.5 per cent from 8.0 per cent.

But the 7.5 per cent annual growth of the second quarter marked the ninth slowdown in the last 10 quarters and also shows the economy is cutting close to the bone of the government’s this year growth target.

Economists familiar with policymakers’ thinking though say that splashing out on big infrastructure projects now in the way China did during the global financial crisis is out of question.

Part of pressures on the economy stems from reforms already carried out, efforts to curb production by the worst polluters and sectors plagued by overcapacity. Big-scale stimulus would mean backpedalling on those efforts.

While keeping the door shut for big stimulus, the government has unveiled plans to step up spending in several carefully selected areas - social housing, urban infrastructure, high-speed rail.

Analysts believe there is room for the government to support growth further, such as more subsidies for consumers, spending on public hospitals and nursing homes for the elderly.

Ultimately, the government wants to avoid a miscalculation where growth slips too far too quickly as it pushed forward with reforms, causing a sudden rise in unemployment and the potential for social unrest.

Equally though, there is potential risk if the government is too gradual in its reform approach, allowing economic and financial imbalances to build up too far, says Wei Yao, China economist at Societe Generale in Hong Kong.

“At some point all these legacy issues such as the credit risk are going to explode,” she said.

The direction of reform is clear. There are no differences on whether we need reforms, but the key question is how to implement them

ZHANG BIN, ECONOMIST 

Going forward, the key date to watch for is October, when the third plenum is held of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Third plenums have been a springboard for key changes in China in the past, including the sweeping economic reforms of the 1990s spearheaded by former Premier Zhu Rongji.

Analysts expect the committee, presided over by Xi, to hammer out a more systematic road map for reform.

“The direction of reform is clear. There are no differences on whether we need reforms, but the key question is how to implement them,” said Zhang Bin, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a top government think-tank in Beijing.

“What we see so far is a random pattern in reforms – or reforms that face limited resistance,” he said.

Top of the government’s to-do list is land reform to ease restrictions on farmers’ right to own land and relaxing its rigid household registration system. The idea is that such reforms will make it easier for migrant workers to settle in cities, paving the way for a grander long-term plan to draw more rural Chinese into urban areas.

A fiscal and tax overhaul is also needed to wean local governments off their heavy reliance on land sales and borrowing for income, which has led to a splurge of building and high local government debt.

In contrast, Beijing will not rush into full yuan convertibility – a part of its push to make it a global currency – by dismantling capital controls at a time when volatile capital flows in emerging markets are raising concerns about economic stability.

The outcome is still likely to represent a balancing act on the part of the government as it seeks to maintain healthy growth while forcing through changes in the main drivers of that growth, analysts said.

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1292741/china-leaders-play-safe-reforms-economic-growth-sags

Mother of slain Benghazi victim Sean Smith: ‘My son is dead. How could that be phony?’

The mother of a Benghazi victim is furious about the new White House strategy of calling the terrorist attack and many other scandals plaguing the Obama administration “fake” or “phony.”

Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, who was slain in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack, lashed out on “Your World” on the Fox News Channel about that terminology.

President Obama has never revealed what, if anything, he was doing while workers at the Benghazi embassy were urgently requesting support, nor has the administration explained why no forces were sent to protect the embassy. The administration also denied the attack was a terrorist incident,claiming it was a spontaneous protest against an obscure YouTube trailer for a film that may or may not exis

“I don’t believe him anymore,” Smith said. “He’s wrong. My son is dead. How could that be phony?”

According to Smith, she has been given no answers about what happened that night. She said the administration told her she “didn’t need to know.”

“When I was there at the ceremony of the welcoming of the caskets, both Obama and Hillary and Biden and all of the other ones, all promised me they would get back to me to tell me what happened,” Smith said. “I begged them. Please, I must know what happened with my son. How come this happened? They all promised me they would get back to me. You know, not one of them, not one of them ever got back to me in any way shape or form — not by a letter, not by anything other than I got a memo stating that I didn’t need to know because I was not part of the immediate family.”

Smith made one last plea to the Obama administration explaining her desire for answers.

“How can I tell you?” Smith added. “I mean, it is wrong. It is not phony. It is not fake. My son is dead, and why is he dead? All I am waiting for even to this day is just someone to get back to me and tell me what happened. Why did Hillary do as she did? Why was there no security there when there was supposed to be? Who was the general that called back the troops when they were going to help?”

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/25/mother-of-slain-benghazi-victim-sean-smith-my-son-is-dead-how-could-that-be-phony/

College Republicans called ‘security threat,’ banned from Obama speech.

  

Members of President Barack Obama’s crack security staff like Colombian hookers – a lot — but they proved on Wednesday they are afraid of a few College Republicans.

At a recreation center at the University of Central Missouri, security personnel refused to admit 10 members of the College Republicans to a speech by the president on economic policy,  The College Fix reports.

All 10 students reportedly had tickets to the event.

Staffers told Courtney Scott, the group’s state treasurer, and the rest of the College Republicans that the decision somehow wasn’t about the group’s political views, but about the president’s security.

The problem seemed to be that some of the students were wearing shirts emblazoned with tea party slogans, Republican symbols and even patriotic motifs. They had also had done the protest thing earlier in the day with some signs. The group members said they had long put away their signs by the time they were at the gate for Obama’s 5:30 p.m.

Nevertheless, the contingent of the Show-Me State’s College Republicans was prevented from seeing the president speak — but not for their political views, you understand.

“It just didn’t make any sense,” Scott told The Fix. “A lot of us traveled several hours to watch the speech. We were very disappointed not to be able to attend.”

Some 2,500 other people who were not deemed security threats were allowed to see Obama’s latest speech about the perpetually sluggish economy.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/25/college-republicans-called-security-threat-banned-from-obama-speech/#ixzz2aAr1UqAR

Rick Perry: Holder is showing “utter contempt” for the Constitution

In June, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutional, effectively reaffirming states’ sovereignty in determining their own voting procedures and their right to institute their own voter ID laws — but evidently, that doesn’t much matter to President Obama’s Department of Justice. Attorney General Eric Holder is planning to get around that ruling and is currently preparing a fresh bout of legal action across the country to preserve some of the federal government’s power, specifically to force certain states to obtain the DOJ’s “pre-clearance” before they can change their election laws.

Holder has Texas locked in his sights, and Gov. Perry is obviously not pleased about it. ViaThe Hill:

Attorney General Eric Holder’s move to require that Texas seek federal approval before changing its voting laws shows an “utter contempt” for the Constitution, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Thursday.

“Once again, the Obama administration is demonstrating utter contempt for our country’s system of checks and balances, not to mention the U.S. Constitution,” Perry said in a statement.

“This end-run around the Supreme Court undermines the will of the people of Texas, and casts unfair aspersions on our state’s common-sense efforts to preserve the integrity of our elections process.”

Of course the Supreme Court’s invalidation of federal oversight over states’ election laws wasn’t going to go over well with the Obama administration, but the implicit and continuing crusade to disallow states from requiring identification to vote is getting out of control; asKrauthammer put it last night: “It seems utterly logical that you would have to ask for a simple demonstration that you are of age, that you live where you live, you aren’t a felon, and in fact that you haven’t voted an hour and a half before. And in fact, it’s not even a question of logic, it’s a question of law. … What Holder is doing is, he wants to stigmatize [voter ID] and to go after any state that actually institutes it. I think he’s got a very weak case.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/26/rick-perry-holder-is-showing-utter-contempt-for-the-constitution/