POLITICS

CONFUSION ERUPTS IN IRS HEARING AFTER LOIS LERNER TRIES TO PLEAD THE 5TH — WATCH IT ALL UNFOLD

The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the political targeting scandal invoked her constitutional right not to answer lawmakers’ questions on Wednesday, but defiantly asserted that she has done nothing wrong — prompting confusion about how exactly she was using her right not to incriminate herself.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told Politico that Lois Lerner, who leads the IRS office that determines which organizations receive tax-exempt status, will be brought before his panel again.

Lerner was the first to publicly disclose earlier this month that the IRS gave extra scrutiny to conservative groups.

“I have not done anything wrong, I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” Lerner told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members. “While I would very much like to answer the committee’s questions today, I have been advised by my counsel to assert my constitutional right not to testify or answer questions related to the subject manner of this hearing.”

Lerner added that by asserting her right not to testify, “I know that some people will assume I have done something wrong. I have not. One of the basic functions of the Fifth Amendment is to protect innocent individuals, and that is the protection I am invoking today.”

http://youtu.be/rxauVtK59xc

Issa noted during the hearing that because Lerner had asserted her innocence in her opening statement, “I believe you have not asserted your rights but have effectively waived your rights” and took her refusal to answer as a refusal to testify.

An incensed Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) spoke up that Lerner should testify, agreeing that she already waived her constitutional privilege.

“You don’t get to tell your side of the story and not be subjected to cross-examination. That’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement, she ought to stand here and answer our questions,” Gowdy said, earning applause from the audience.

http://youtu.be/2i_WconfaVM

Read more at:   http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/22/i-have-not-done-anything-wrong-irs-official-invokes-5th-amendment-right/comment-page-2/

A bushel of Pinocchios for IRS’s Lois Lerner

(Andrew Harrer/BLOOMBERG)

In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.

The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue, as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone, were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged.

“But between 2010 and 2012, we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving, and many of these organizations applying more than doubled, about 1500 in 2010 and over 3400 in 2012.”

Lerner made this comment while issuing a seemingly impromptu apology at an American Bar Association panel. (It was later learned that this was a planted question — more on that below.) In her telling, the tax-exempt branch was simply overwhelmed by applications, and so unfortunate shortcuts were taken.

But this claim of “more than doubled” appears to be a red herring. The targeting of groups began in early 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC was announced on Jan. 21. The ruling led to increased interest in a tax-exempt status known as 501(c)(4). Most charities apply under 501(c)(3), but under 501(c)(4), nonprofit groups that engage in “social welfare” can also perform a limited amount of election activity.

At first glance, the inspector general’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applications actually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735.

But it turns out that these are federal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the Supreme Court decision was announced.

Astonishingly, despite Lerner’s public claim, an IRS spokeswoman was not able to provide the actual calendar year numbers. By allocating one-quarter of the fiscal year numbers to the prior year, we can get a very rough sense of the increase on a calendar-year basis. (Figures are rounded to avoid false precision; 2012 is not possible to calculate.)

2009: 1745

2010: 1865

2011: 2540

In other words, while there was an increase in 2010, it was relatively small. The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented. Also, it appears Lerner significantly understated the number of applications in 2010 (“1500”) in order to make her claim of “more than doubled.”

“I think you guys were reading the paper as much as I was. So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a look.”

Here, Lerner suggests that she found out about this issue only when news reports appeared in February and March 2012 about tea party groups complaining that they were being targeted. But the IG timelineshows this claim to be false.

According the IG, Lerner had a briefing on the issue on June 29, 2011, in which she was told about the BOLO (“Be On the Look Out”) criteria that included words such as “tea party” or “patriots.” The report says she raised concerns about the wording and “instructed that the criteria be immediately revised.” She continued to be heavily involved in the issue in the months preceding the new reports, according to the timeline.

“I don’t believe anyone ever asked me that question before.”

This was Lerner’s excuse during the media call for why she had not publicly addressed the issue before.

But in congressional testimony Friday, outgoing acting director Steven T. Miller said he had talked with Lerner about arranging to make a statement at a May 10 conference sponsored by the American Bar Association, knowing that the IG report would soon be released.

Lerner then contacted a friend, Celia Roady, a tax attorney with the Washington firm Morgan Lewis, to get her to ask a question about the targeting, according to a statement by Roady on Friday. (Roady hadpreviously denied this was a planted question when asked directly by participants at the meeting.)

So Lerner was dissembling when she suggested that a simple well-aimed question prompted the disclosure.

In fact, just two days before the ABA conference, Lerner appeared before Congress and was asked by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) about the status of investigations into 501(c)(4) groups. She provided a bland answer about a questionnaire on the IRS Web site, failing to take the opportunity to disclose the results of the probe. (The clip is embedded below, with the question coming at 5:09.) Small wonder that Crowley is now calling for her to resign, saying that Lerner lied to him.

http://youtu.be/8kZABHzFa-4We gave the IRS the weekend to provide a response. A spokeswoman said the agency was not able to offer an explanation for Lerner’s remarks in time for our deadline

The Pinocchio Test

In some ways, this is just scratching the surface of Lerner’s misstatements and weasely wording when the revelations about the IRS’s activities first came to light on May 10. But, taken together, it’s certainly enough to earn her four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

(About our rating scale)

Read more at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/a-bushel-of-pinocchios-for-irss-lois-lerner/2013/05/19/771687d2-bfdd-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_blog.html

WBZ-TV’s Jon Keller confirmed the announcement Wednesday morning.

‘Sources close to Murray tell WBZ-TV Murray is poised to leave his office as early as today,” Keller said. “There is some speculation he has another position lined up.”

Murray last year, announced he would not run for governor.

He has been no stranger to controversy with ties to the Chelsea Housing Authority scandal and a serious car wreck in Sterling.

Stay with CBS Boston for the latest.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/05/22/lt-gov-tim-murray-to-resign/

“We write to express our serious concerns regarding the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill, S. 744. We oppose this bill and urge you to vote against it when it comes to the Senate floor,” the letter to be released Tuesday and obtained by The Daily Caller reads. ”No matter how well intentioned, the Schumer-Rubio bill suffers from fundamental design flaws that make it unsalvageable. Many of us support various parts of the legislation, but the overall package is so unsatisfactory that the Senate would do better to start over from scratch.”

Signed by conservatives leaders and group representatives including radio host Laura Ingraham, Fox News personality Monica Crowley, Red State’s Erick Erickson, radio host Mark Levin, Hoover Institution’s Victor Davis Hanson, and The Daily Caller’s Mickey Kaus, the letter highlights a number of issues the signers have with the legislation including their concerns that the bill:

• Is bloated and unwieldy along the lines of Obamacare or Dodd-Frank;
• Cedes excessive control over immigration law to an administration that has repeatedly proven itself to be untrustworthy, even duplicitous;
• Legalizes millions of illegal immigrants before securing the borders, thus ensuring future illegal immigration;
• Rewards law breakers and punishes law enforcement, undermining the rule of law;
• Hurts American job-seekers, especially those with less education;
• Threatens to bankrupt our already strained entitlement system;
• Expands government by creating new bureaucracies, authorizing new spending, and calling for endless regulations;
• Contains dangerous loopholes that threaten national security;
• Is shot through with earmarks for politically connected interest groups;
• Overwhelms our immigration bureaucracy, guaranteeing widespread fraud.

The letter also argues that while immigration reform is important, the Senate’s immigration reform bill will only make matters worse.

“Reforming our immigration system is an important priority. But S.744 is such a defective measure that it would do more harm than good. We urge you to vote against it and against any cloture vote to bring up the bill. Only then can a constructive, measured debate take place on how to improve America’s immigration policy,” the letter reads.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/21/over-150-conservative-leaders-groups-sign-letter-opposing-gang-of-8-bill/#ixzz2Twd0LldL

In the mist of all the Obama Administration’s Lies and Deception, let us not forget to Vet, Discredit and Shun Deceivers on our side of the aisle!

Georgia Billboard To Target Marco Rubio And Immigration Reform

AMNESTY WATCH

NumbersUSA

A  New paper analyzes the deceptions in Marco Rubio’s national ad campaign to push his amnesty bill — His poll numbers already were dropping with the conservatives he hoped would be his 2016 base.

WED May 15

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is the center of both Democratic and Republican open-borders enthusiasts’ hopes for passing the massive S.744 bill for amnesty and a doubling of future legal immigration.Both Parties have put him forward as something of the celebrity pitch man on TV and radio shows and now a huge ad campaign in which he touts his Gang of Eight bill as “conservative” reform.But the ads just aren’t true.John Feere at the Center for Immigration Studies has just put out a backgrounder onRUBIO’S DECEPTIVE AMNESTY AD.Feere examines virtually every phrase in the ad and compares them with reality.On the report’s page, you will see an image of the ad which you can watch for yourself. You can tell that his script includes every phrase that pollsters found resonates with conservatives — and Americans in general. But it is rather comical listening to him string them all together, even though his bill backs up hardly any of them.Rubio has been assigned the task of convincing conservative voters to persuade Republican Senators to vote for the amnesty bill.Doing so makes Rubio extremely popular with the billionaires who tend to run the national Republican Party.But what does it do with his popularity among the grassroots?Indications that Rubio hurting RubioA.J. Delgado of Breitbart.com has done some interesting comparisons of the latest results from the firm, Public Policy Polling, and the results of its survey back in February.Just like with fellow Gang member, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rubio has been losing voter support since details of the amnesty bill became public. When asked for their preferred GOP candidate, only 17% of “very conservative” respondents favored Rubio, while only 18% of “somewhat conservative” respondents favored Rubio. This is a steep decline from the same poll’s findings in April, when Rubio’s support was 26% among the “very conservative” and 22% among the “somewhat conservative.” The earlier survey was conducted in late March before the Gang of Eight amnesty bill was released and the public finally began to learn what is in it and that the innards didn’t match the platitudes they had been hearing from the Gang. The latest survey was conducted between May 6th and 9th. National Republican Party leaders and consultants have claimed that Rubio would help the Party pick up more support from Hispanic voters by championing the amnesty bill. But Delgado writes: Notably, Rubio’s support among Hispanics also appears to have decreased following the unveiling of the “Gang of 8″ bill. The previous poll demonstrated 39% of Hispanics had a favorable view of Rubio, while the latest poll demonstrates that number has decreased to 34%. In many ways, the person undermining Rubio’s ad credibility more than anybody is Rubio. Even as his ads have been running making great claims about border security and tough enforcement, he has written op-eds and made press statements about his concerns that the bill doesn’t really guarantee border security, for example. The Washington Times today revealed that it has obtained a list that Rubio is circulating among Republican Senators of a couple dozen criticisms of the bill that he thinks may keep the bill from passing. It doesn’t sound like Rubio the ad pitch man is even believed by Senator Rubio himself. While the Times indicates that Rubio thinks the criticisms may warrant amendments, the Judiciary Committee has already shot down efforts to respond to many of the criticism during its first few days of markup. You can follow the Senate markup of the bill and latest news and views about the amnesty our home page at www.NumbersUSA.com   Roy Beck WED, MAY 15th

Unnamed Defense Department officials have stated that no units could have responded in time and  that there were no Refueling Tankers  available.

However, the unnamed and unknown Defense Department officials failed to mention that we have a U.S. Navy installation at NATO Base Sigonella Sicily Italy  which can refuel any type of military aircraft and is less than two hours away from Benghazi.  In March of 2011, an AP story by Nicole Winfield reported the following regarding Sigonella’s  role against the Gadhafi regime:

The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf)  is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.

David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.

“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”

For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.

The committee is scheduled to resume debate on the package Tuesday.

By David Kravets 05.10.13 6:30 AM

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/05/immigration-reform-dossiers/

Families of Navy SEALs killed in 2011 attack say government is to blame
Published May 10, 2013 FoxNews.com

WASHINGTON –  The families of Navy SEAL  Team 6 members killed in a disastrous August 2011 helicopter crash in  Afghanistan blamed the government for the tragedy, during an emotional press  conference in Washington Thursday.

The family members, speaking at the National Press Club, tried to reopen the  book on the crash, in which 30 Americans were killed, most of them belonging to  the same unit as those who carried out the raid on Usama bin Laden earlier that  year. The helicopter was shot down by insurgents.

During the event organized by a group called Freedom Watch, family members  and former military personnel claimed President Obama turned the SEALs group  into a Taliban target after the administration revealed they had conducted the  bin Laden raid.

Doug Hamburger, whose son Patrick was killed, called the incident an “ambush”  that could have been prevented.

“We’re very concerned that the administration had disclosed that the Navy  SEALs had carried out a successful attack on bin Laden’s compound resulting in  his death. And you know, never before in the history of our county (had) a  sitting president released that type of information to the public, especially  when he was talking about special forces. Their names and their missions had  never been revealed before. And we really feel that this put our guys in an  unnecessary risk,” Hamburger said.

Many military experts at the time, including some of Obama’s top military  advisers, had questioned the White House’s public praise of SEAL Team 6 and said  it put members in danger.

Three months after bin Laden’s death, members of the SEAL Team 6 force –  though apparently not the same ones who carried out the bin Laden raid — were  on board the CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter, along with its Army National  Guard aircrew, several support personnel and seven Afghan commandos. In all, 38  people died that night after the chopper was shot down by a Taliban-owned  rocket-propelled grenade –or RPG – over the Wardak Province on Aug. 6,  2011.

Charles Strange, whose son Michael, 25, died in the attack said Obama  personally promised him a thorough investigation of what happened but has failed  to deliver.

Strange also blamed top military brass for sending the troops into a  situation they were allegedly ill-equipped and unprepared to handle. The team  was responding to an Army Ranger unit that was engaged in a firefight with the  Taliban and needed backup.

Asked for comment, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. James Gregory said: “We share  in the grief of all of the families who lost their loved ones.”

While not commenting directly on the allegations, he called those who were  lost “warriors” who represented “the diversity and talent of America and its  military.”

An official report was released in October 2011 but family members say it did  little to fill in the details and left more questions than answers.

Karen Vaughn says she wants to know why her son Aaron and his team were not  using special operations aircraft which have defenses in place to help allow  helicopters to go deep behind enemy lines. The night her son Aaron died, he was  in a helicopter that was built in the 1960s and last retrofitted in 1985.

Read more:  http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/10/families-fallen-navy-seals-in-2011-attack-say-government-is-to-blame/#ixzz2St9M1bcQ

After viewing the above video and reading the Newsmax  article below, please take our poll.

NEWSMAX

Whistleblower’s Emotional Testimony on Benghazi: More Could Have Been Done

Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/hicks-benghazi-testimony/2013/05/08/id/503526#ixzz2So5cbtji

What planet are they living on? These 3 abettors could have alerted the FBI as soon as they recognized that Dzhokhar was one of the Terrorist Bombers and could have possibly saved the live of  MIT Police Officer  Sean Collier and prevented the severe wounding of Transit Policeman and Academy classmate  of Sean, Richard Donohue.

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev, both on Student Visas from Kazakhstan, were in the US illegally.

” Tazhayakov left school and returned to Kazakhstan in December, which terminated his student visa status. Yet, he was mistakenly allowed to return to the U.S. in January.”

“UMass Dartmouth says Kadyrbayev is no longer a student there. His profile on the VK Russian social network site says he is a member of the class of 2015 at the School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, Sara McDonnell, assistant media relations manager at MIT, said, “There is no registered MIT student of that name.”

“The three men returned to the New Bedford apartment and watched news reports. Kadyrbayev said they decided as a group around 10 p.m. to put the backpack and fireworks in the trash, the affidavit says.”

Actions have consequences, and all three of these perps need to pay the price for both their inaction and their overt action.

Cambridge man held in bomb case seeks release

Advocates say charges against him are ‘refutable’

Now he is targeting your  Social Security benefits. According to Emily Brandon’s April 29th U.S.News & World Report article How the Chained CPI Affects Social Security Payments,  Retirees are likely to get smaller monthly payments using this new measure of inflation.

In a SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT ON CPI,    Shadow Government Statistics, American Business Analytics & Research LLC explains the various inflation indexes and their relationship to REAL Inflation. After you come to understand the impact of Chained CPI Indexing on your retirement benefit, we are sure that you will demand that no changes be made to the current index unless there is a comprehensive plan to deal with our debt by ALL American families. We are willing to pitch in to solve out monumental debt problem but are not willing to carry the  majority of the debt burden on our shoulders when entire illegal Immigrant extended  families like the Boston Marathon Bombers’ Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s receive EBT cards, high school scholarships, housing and college funding among other benefits !

A copy of the Special Supplement on CPI follows:

An Opinion on the Renewed Push to Use the C-CPI for COLA, Inflation Indexing

The Chained-CPI (C-CPI) is a fully-substitution-based version of the CPI-U, which is the primary inflation measure published by the U.S. government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The C-CPI is designed to reduce the level of reported inflation that otherwise would be used by individuals to make decisions tied to their investments and income.  As a vehicle for artificially reducing COLA adjustments for such programs as Social Security, its proposed use here appears to be a rare area of agreement between both sides in the current budget-deficit negotiations.

Those in the federal government who are honest and forthright with the American public—at least about the proposal to understate the official rate of inflation for purposes of budget reduction—have failed to drive a wooden stake through the heart of the C-CPI.  Arising from its second, premature political burial, the C-CPI looks again like it has a strong chance of being used as a new federal parasite to drain consumer liquidity.  Like a vampire bat that sucks only enough blood for self-nourishment—leaving its victims alive for further abuse—the use of the C-CPI as a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) measure is designed to suck real disposable income from the limited cash-flow of Social Security recipients, for the benefit of politicians who do not have the guts to vote against Social Security.

Those receiving, or who will be receiving Social Security payments were forced to pay into the system for all of their working lives, and generally believed the U.S. government would treat them fairly and honestly.  The bloodsuckers in Washington have hit their victims similarly, before, back in the 1980s with the introduction of hedonic-quality adjustments to inflation, and in the 1990s with the change of concept in the CPI to a quasi-substitution-based inflation measure.  Previously, the CPI measured inflation for a fixed-weight basket of goods, which measured COLAs as an inflation adjustment needed to maintain a constant standard of living.

As noted earlier in this missive, these methodological changes have altered the CPI-U and its more narrowly defined variant, the CPI-W, so that they no longer measure those costs of maintaining a constant standard of living (substitution effects) and no longer measure out-of-pocket costs (hedonic-adjustment effects).  Without the changes made to CPI calculations of the last several decades, Social Security payments would be more than double what they are today.  Indeed, with the use of a substitution-based index (the C-CPI is fully substitution based), the resulting cost of living adjustments promise only a declining standard of living.  Expanding the example that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan often used, where, as the price of steak rose, consumers would shift to hamburger, so too with higher hamburger costs have some cash-strapped retirees actually shifted consumption to dog food.

The President and Congress must address Social Security and other programs, such as Medicare, restructuring them so as make them solvent over the long haul, eliminating the horrendous levels of unfunded liabilities that are deteriorating at an aggregate pace in excess of $5 trillion per year on a net-present-value basis (see the Hyperinflation Report).  With discussions instead focusing on using the outright deceit of implementing the C-CPI to cut COLA, those controlling the government appear to lack the political will to make needed changes in a straight-forward manner.  Under those circumstances, there can be no meaningful budget deal structured by the negotiators in Washington.

The government must be honest with its citizens.  If the government cannot afford to pay full COLAs, it is better to indicate that upfront, rather than to try to fool individuals as to the actual level of inflation they have to overcome in order to maintain their living standards.  Cutting benefits by stealth and deceit may be politically expedient for the miscreants playing this game, but it is utterly unconscionable.

Beyond the damage caused by the C-CPI not reflecting out-of-pocket costs, and no longer measuring the cost of living of maintaining a constant standard of living, the C-CPI is not a practical measure for being used as a COLA or other benchmark inflation measure.

No Fixed Index Level for Reliable Cost Escalations in Contracts.  As a separate issue, beyond the C-CPI not reflecting the cost of living of maintaining a constant standard of living or of reflecting full out-of-pocket consumer expenses, it cannot be published on a timely-enough basis to make it feasible as an annual-COLA factor.

The following graph shows the regular net revisions to year-to-year inflation in the Chained-CPI, published February 21, 2013 for the years 2011 and 2012.  In contrast, the CPI-U and CPI-W never are revised on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis (barring an outright error in calculation).

That feature enables the use of the CPI-U and CPI-W as inflation-adjustment and cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) measures in contracts, COLA adjustments to Social Security, etc.  Although designed as a consumer-damaging, budget-cutting replacement for the CPI-W in goverment COLA adjustments, the C-CPI reporting is unstable, since it goes through regular revisions every year, for the two prior years.  As shown in the following graph, the latest revisions would have suggested an upside revision of about three-tenths of a percentage point to any COLA adjustment would have been made previously for 2011.

As discussed by the BLS in its February 21, 2013 press release: “Because the current expenditure data required for the calculation of the C-CPI-U are available only with a time lag, the index is issued first in preliminary form, using the latest available expenditure data at the time of publication, and is subject to two subsequent revisions.  Therefore, C-CPI-U indexes for the 12 months of 2011 [now] are issued in final form – employing monthly expenditure weights from 2011.  Values for the 12 months of 2012 are revised and issued as interim, using expenditure weights from the 2009-2010 period.  Calculation of the initial value of the January 2013 C-CPI-U index, and all subsequent months in 2013, will also be based upon 2009-2010 expenditure weights.”

Notes on Different Measures of the Consumer Price Index

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the broadest inflation measure published by the U.S. Government, through the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Department of Labor:

The CPI-U (Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers) is the monthly headline inflation number (seasonally adjusted) and is the broadest in its coverage, representing the buying patterns of all urban consumers.  Its standard measure is not seasonally adjusted, and it never is revised on that basis except for outright errors.

The CPI-W (CPI for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers) covers the more-narrow universe of urban wage earners and clerical workers and is used in determining cost of living adjustments in government programs such as Social Security.  Otherwise, its background is the same as the CPI-U.

The C-CPI-U (Chain-Weighted CPI-U) is an experimental measure, where the weighting of components is fully substitution based.  It generally shows lower annual inflation rate than the CPI-U and CPI-W.  The latter two measures once had fixed weightings—so as to measure the cost of living of maintaining a constant standard of living—but now are quasi-substitution-based.  Since it is fully substitution based, the series tends to reflect lower inflation than the other CPI measures.  Accordingly, the C-CPI-U is the “new inflation” measure being considered by Congress and the White House as a tool for reducing Social Security cost-of-living adjustments by stealth.

The ShadowStats Alternative CPI-U Measures are attempts at adjusting reported CPI-U inflation for the impact of methodological change of recent decades designed to move the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.  There are two measures, where the first is based on reporting methodologies in place as of 1980, and the second is based on reporting methodologies in place as of 1990.