Ed Morrisey emailed to let me know about this story. This is huge and well done.

At 9 am ET today, Americans for Tax Reform and the Alliance for Worker Freedom will deliver a letter to both chambers of Congress and to US Attorney Channing Phillips in Washington DC, demanding a federal investigation of Andrew Stern, president of the SEIU. They will claim that Stern, who stopped registering as a federal lobbyist in 2007, has continued his lobbying efforts. They claim to have compiled evidence of Stern’s lobbying from the recently released White House visitor logs, media reports — and Stern’s own Twitter feed, in what has to be a first for the social networking service.

The organizations make out a strong case that Andy Stern is still lobbying and is in violation of federal law.

In seven months, Stern visited the White House 22 times, or more than once every two weeks.

With a pretty loose definition of what a lobbyist is, Stern most likely would be considered one. The problem, of course, is that we’re asking the Obama Justice Department to do the investigating.

Nonetheless, this is well done.

The MSM would like the American public to believe that the Senate Finance Committee bill was scored by the Congressional Budget Office. After all, WaPo, the NYT and the WSJ reported:

WaPo: “The bill would cost $829 billion over the next decade.”

NYT: “The budget office analyzed the bill … its newly projected cost — $829 billion over 10 years.”

WSJ: “The latest Senate health bill will cost $829 billion over a decade.”

But it is a score of a vapor bill — a bill that has no legislative language — and so with much fanfare and pomp the CBO has delivered a Vapor Score of a Vapor Bill. CBO has stated publicly and repeatedly that it cannot accurately score any bill without the legislative language — which does not exist so CBO cannot have it.

Heritage tagged this correctly its Bait and Switch blog:

As the Politico reported yesterday: “While the media and lawmakers often shorthand a CBO letter as a “score” or “cost estimate,” today’s CBO letter is neither. Because the bill is still in “conceptual,” or layman’s terms, CBO’s letter today was a “preliminary analysis.” For it to be an official cost estimate, the bill has to be translated into legislative language.”

And here is a thought from Ryan Ellis at ATR, the reason the latest ObamaCare bill scores so low is because of all the taxes. Here is the list.

For a more wonky analysis of the Vapor Score, see the blog by Donald Marron, a former CBO economist here, and from which the quotes from the MSM above were taken.

There are merely taxes that people pay attention to, and then there are taxes that people forget about. And once they forget about them, the government can safely and quietly make them permanent. Wisconsin’s cell phone tax is a case in point:

In 2003, the state created the cell phone tax to upgrade 911 response services. When the upgrade was done, it left a balance of $20 million in the state’s coffers, which was slated to be returned back to consumers as a credit on their phone bill.

However, Gov. [Jim] Doyle has now proposed extending the cell phone tax, raising it by 75-cents, and then making it applicable to all landlines as well. Oh, then he would then add another 56-cent tax to cell phones for the state’s Universal Service Fund, which has nothing to do with cell phone usage. All told, the proposal amounts to a $100 million per year tax increase on cell phone users.

See also local blogs Wigderson Library & Pub, No Runny Eggs, and Boots and Sabers for more details. I will repeat: this is how permanent tax hikes happen. It’s easy to put them in - and once they’re there, they’re staying there, as Wigderson reminded us about the 100 year old phone tax. Remember that any government will always consider a tax to be justified (otherwise, it wouldn’t impose it in the first place), and will thus think nothing of trying to find some way to keep it, and the revenue that it represents.  That’s just the way the world works - and that’s one reason why the GOP defaults to supporting tax cuts: it’s always a safe bet to make that the government’s taking too much of your money.

Needless to say, both the Governor and the state legislature of Wisconsin are Democratic. Still, that party’s control of the legislature is by thin margins, so pushback is possible. People are coordinating one through here and here; I suggest that people check it out, particularly the ones from Wisconsin itself.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

If you’re like me, you wish there was something to do while listening to the Obama-ganda tonight. Well now there is.

From the people who brought you the Taxpayer Protection Pledge (which almost saved California from higher taxes), and the famous “Wednesday Meeting“, comes a new play-at-home game that is fun for the whole family.

Americans for Tax Reform, providing wholesome family fun since 1984, has created “O-BINGO”. Played just like regular bingo, “O-BINGO” allows you and your family to follow along with Obama’s speech and see who can get the most squares covered in one line.

This soon to be timeless game includes such memorable Obama phrases like “let me be clear”, “vulnerable Americans”, and who can forget the classic “toxic assets”.

Get your “O-BINGO” card below and visit the newly remodeled www.ATR.org for more information and to leave your comments and scores from the game.

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