Memo to Mark Quick, Harvey Roseff, and others

Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin writes a dead-on column today that takes aim at all those people who believe that the blessings of civilization -- things like roads and bridges that don't end up killing you or your family members -- are birthrights instead of things we have to pay for.  Malkin writes:

"News flash, kids: Things aren’t free. Things cost money. And 'free' things provided to you by the government cost other people’s money."

Malkin is using this general principle of conservatism, something every Republican should understand, to make a point about ObamaCare, and a larger point about the behavior of some of our country's younger voters.  Drawing a bead on what she calls one of "the most politically popular provisions of the Orwellian-titled Affordable Care Act" she continues:

"...the so-called 'slacker mandate.' It’s the requirement that employer-based health plans cover employees’ children until they turn 26 years old.

That’s right: Twenty-freaking-six.

Is it any wonder why we have a nation of dependent drool-stained crybabies on college campuses who are still bawling about the election results one week later?

...Who pays for this unfunded government mandate? As usual, it’s responsible working people who bear the burden.

Earlier this year, the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the No Slacker Left Behind provision resulted in wage reductions of about $1,200 a year for workers with employer-based insurance coverage — whether or not they had adult children on their plans. In effect, childless working people are subsidizing workers with adult children who would rather stay on their parents than get their own.

Moreover, according to company surveys and other economic analysis, the slacker mandate has resulted in overall increased health care costs of between 1 and 3 percent. The nonpartisan American Health Policy Institute reported one firm’s estimate of millennial coverage mandate costs at a whopping $69 million over 10 years.

...The Obama White House will brag that the slacker mandate has resulted in increased coverage for an estimated 3 million people. As usual with Obamacare numbers, it’s Common Core, book-cooked math. Health care analyst Avik Roy took a closer look and found that the inflated figure came from counting '(1) young adults on Medicaid and other government programs, for whom the under-26 mandate doesn’t apply; and (2) people who gained coverage due to the quasi-recovery from the Great Recession.'

To add insult to injury, another NBER study found that roughly 5 percent of people younger than 26 dropped out of the workforce after the provision was implemented. They used their spare time to increase their socialization, sleeping, physical fitness and personal pursuit of 'meaningfulness.'

Then there are the hidden costs of the millennial mandate: the cultural consequences. All this 'free' stuff, detached from those actually paying the bills, reduces the incentives for 20-somethings to grow up and seek independent lives and livelihoods. Why bother? The societal sanctions have been eroded.

Now, the nation is suffering the consequences of decades of that collective coddling. Precious snowflakes can’t handle rejection at the ballot box or responsibilities in the marketplace. Appropriately enough, the new virtue signals of tantrum-throwing young leftists stirring up trouble are safety pins — to show 'solidarity' with groups supposedly endangered by Donald Trump.

Safety pins are also handy — for holding up the government-manufactured diapers in which too many overgrown dependents are swaddled."

You can read Michelle Malkin's full column here:

http://www.gopusa.com/?p=17241?omhide=true

Michelle Malkin is a senior editor at Conservative Review.  For more articles and videos from Michelle, visit ConservativeReview.com.  Her email address is malkinblog@gmail.com.

Child rape: The Legislature should express its outrage to Congress

An important column by Michelle Malkin today.  The American military is the representative of the American people.  When it is forced to stand by and look the other way while its so-called allies enslave and rape children, that reflects on each and every one of us -- unless we do something about it. 

We know the New Jersey Legislature can act when it wants to.  Earlier this year, the Legislature passed a resolution that inadvertently labeled the national flags of Scotland and Jamaica as "symbols of hate".  So here is a chance to do something more than symbolic, and to get it right. 

Whether in the regular military, the Reserve, or the National Guard, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines from New Jersey have served in Afghanistan.   A resolution from the Legislature would protect their good name and defend potential whistleblowers among them.  The Legislature must ask Congress to protect those whistleblowers who have already come forward and to hold hearings into the mass enslavement and rape of children in Afghanistan.  Then once it has all the facts, Congress must act. 

Here is the story that started it:

"Bacha Bazi": Obama's Silence on Afghan Military's Child Rape

A Commentary By Michelle Malkin

Friday, September 25, 2015

American soldiers are being punished for blowing the whistle on the systematic rape and enslavement of young boys at the hands of brutal Afghan Muslim military officials.

Honorable men in uniform risked their careers and lives to stop the abuse. Yet, the White House -- which was busy tweeting about its new feminism-pandering "It's On Us" campaign against an alleged college rape crisis based on debunked statistics -- is AWOL on the actual pedophilia epidemic known as "bacha bazi." On Thursday, Obama administration flacks went out of their way to downplay Afghan child rape as "abhorrent," but "fundamentally" a local "law enforcement matter."

This is the price the innocents pay for blind multiculturalism.

A New York Times report on the Afghan Muslim practice this week garnered attention and outrage on Capitol Hill -- and prompted a river of denials from Obama Defense Department brass, who insisted our troops were not ordered to look the other way.

But the subjugation and sexual assault of these children -- and their victimization by Afghan military personnel working alongside our troops -- is not new.

Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi's wrenching documentary on "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan" aired in London and the U.S. in 2010. The United Nations has known and done nothing as Taliban warlords and Afghan police groomed, sodomized and sexually trafficked generations of young boys. The U.S. State Department acknowledged last year that "there were reports security officials and those connected to the ANP (Afghan National Police) raped children with impunity."

In February, I reported on the case of Maj. Jason Brezler. He's still fighting for his reputation and his military career after warning colleagues of an insider attack on an American base in the Helmand province.

Refresher: The highly decorated Marine reserve civil affairs officer had sent a classified document through his personal email account to fellow Marines at Forward Operating Base Delhi in 2012. The correspondence, which came in response to a FOB Delhi Marine's request for information, involved the shady history of Taliban-tied Afghan police chief and accused drug lord and child molester Sarwar Jan.

Jan had been suspected of coordinating Taliban operations, selling Afghan police uniforms to our enemies and raping at least nine boys on base. A few weeks after Brezler's warning, which went unheeded, one of Jan's teenage "tea boys" went on a shooting spree at FOB Delhi. Marine Staff Sgt. Cody Rhode was shot five times, but survived. Three others died of gunshot wounds: Staff Sgt. Scott Dickinson, Cpl. Richard Rivera and Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley. Buckley's relatives filed suit against the government last fall over what they believe has been a coordinated and illegal attempt to suppress details of the insider attack.

Meanwhile, Brezler is forced to watch Hillary Clinton get away with massive email security violations, while he's railroaded for using a personal Yahoo account to try to protect his fellow Marines.

In a separate case, the Army this month denied an appeal by decorated Green Beret Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, who was discharged in 2011 after physically confronting an Afghan police commander accused of kidnapping, chaining and raping a local village boy, beating his mother, and laughing about it when questioned. Another soldier who joined Martland in the confrontation, Cpt. Daniel Quinn, was reprimanded and left the Army.

Asked whether the president had taken steps to review his military's treatment of these whistleblowers, White House spokesman apathetically shrugged: "Not that I'm aware of."

Ho-hum.

A White House that wants to spend billions to stop "climate change" in the name of saving all the children of the planet can't bother to stop the violent sexual assaults of boys held hostage right under our noses by our warmly embraced "allies" in the Afghan military.

A White House that splashed social media with pleas to "Bring Back Our Girls" after Boko Haram jihadists in Nigeria kidnapped 300 girls and women has nothing to say about the legions of boys forced into prostitution and pedophilia rings witnessed by U.S. troops.

A White House bent on whitewashing away radical Islam's sins against Christians, Jews, gays, apostates, cartoonists, genitally mutilated women and child brides would rather celebrate "diversity" than lift a finger to protect the victims of political correctness run amok.

To paraphrase 2009 Nobel Prize winner President Obama: It's on you.

Michelle Malkin is author of the new book "Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs." Her email address is malkinblog@gmail.com.