Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Obama, Translated
Hat tips: BB and @DCMFutures.
Irony-o-meter Kerplodes in Kalifornia
I try never to take pleasure in the misery of others, but in this case I'll make an exception.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
EXPERTS: Obscure Obamacare provision "gives people the green light to commit fraud"
Tucked inside nearly 11,000 pages of the Affordable Care Act is a little-known provision that doles out three months of free health care to individuals who choose to default on their premiums.
People who receive the federal subsidy to be part of Obamacare will be allowed to incur a three-month “grace period” if they can’t pay their premiums and then simply cancel their policies, stiffing the doctors and hospitals.
Their only repercussion is that they have to wait until the following year’s open enrollment if they want coverage on the exchange.
“It will help break the system,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, one of a core group of Republicans who oppose Obamacare. “This is a huge piece of evidence to show this can’t work, you will break the system and bankrupt people involved.“The hospitals, doctors and insurance companies will be left holding the bag. There will be disagreements over who will pay for what. Lawyers will get involved because we are talking about a lot of money,” he said.
Under Section 156.270 of the Affordable Care Act, the insured needs to pay a premium for just one month before qualifying for the three-month grace period. The insurance company must pay the claims during the first month of the grace period; during the second and third month doctors and hospitals are left to collect unpaid bills.
This loophole wasn’t lost on some unnamed individuals who queried the Department of Health and Human Services during an open comment period for the new law in 2011.
While officials at HHS did not respond to requests for comment on this story, they did offer a glimpse into their thinking in a March 27, 2012, report contained in the Federal Register.
“HHS will continue to explore options for incentivizing appropriate use of the grace period,” the register said. “HHS will monitor this issue moving forward and will continue to work on the development of policies to prevent misuse of the grace period.”
Experts say the federal government has given people the green light to commit fraud.
THE GENIUS OF DEMOCRAT GOVERNANCE: Chicago's Detroitification Continues Apace
Triple-notch credit downgrades for government entities are supposed to be rare.
They normally happen only in response to major financial events, such as a sudden fiscal emergency.
But Chicago just received its second triple-notch downgrade in just six months. And that spells trouble for Chicago taxpayers.
Citing skyrocketing pension costs and a lack of meaningful solutions, Fitch Ratings lowered the city of Chicago’s debt to A- from AA- last week. That’s just four notches away from junk-bond status.
Fitch’s downgrade comes on the heels of Moody’s Investors Service’s triple-notch downgrade of Chicago in July, prompted by the agency’s new methodology that nearly doubles the city’s official pension shortfall to $36 billion.
But Fitch didn’t just take Chicago’s credit rating down one notch — they hit Chicago with a triple-notch downgrade. Why?
Fitch Analyst Arlene Bohner said Chicago is approaching an “inflection point where inaction on pension reform will negatively impact the city’s finances and threaten to crowd out spending on city services.”
The city has already shuttered nearly 50 schools in the Chicago Public Schools system. And rather than hiring more police to battle crime, the city is resorting to paying overtime for existing officers. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has warned that property taxes will double if no real pension solution is found.
Fitch agrees. It says that if the city were to properly fund its pension system, city property taxes would “rise a dramatic 136%.”
So far, the Illinois General Assembly’s only response to the pension crisis was to pass a pension “fix” for the Chicago Park District. That fix calls for a tax hike on city residents, forces workers to keep paying into a broken system and does nothing to change the way the city runs retirements for its city workers.
Make no mistake: this bill is bad for city workers and taxpayers and will only perpetuate the problem.
There’s only one real way to change the rating agencies’ outlook on Chicago. And that’s to end defined benefit pensions and move to a system in which workers control their own retirements.
Read more at Illinois Policy Institute
Monday, November 11, 2013
WAPO: Administration So Desperate It's Now Reduced to Lying About How to Count Obamacare Enrollees
The fight over how to define the new health law’s success is coming down to one question: Who counts as an Obamacare enrollee?
Health insurance plans only count subscribers as enrolled in a health plan once they’ve submited a payment. That is when the carrier sends out a member card and begins paying doctor bills.
When the Obama administration releases health law enrollment figures later this week, though, it will use a more expansive definition. It will count people who have purchased a plan as well as those who have a plan sitting in their online shopping cart but have not yet paid.
“In the data that will be released this week, ‘enrollment’ will measure people who have filled out an application and selected a qualified health plan in the marketplace,” said an administration official, who requested anonymity to frankly describe the methodology.
The disparity in the numbers is likely to further inflame the political fight over the Affordable Care Act. Each side could choose a number to make the case that the health law is making progress or failing miserably.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, said insurance companies have received about 50,000 private health plan enrollments through HealthCare.gov. Even combined with state tallies, the figure falls far short of the 500,000 sign-ups the administration initially predicted for both private sign-ups and those opting for the expansion of Medicaid.
This is simply more fraud.
If Amazon attempted to tell its shareholders that sales included items left un-purchased in visitors' shopping baskets, they'd probably be subject to criminal and civil penalties.
But big government seems to be above the law.
Lying Scum (Which Is the Term They Prefer, I Hear) at ThinkProgress Think Their Readers Are Idiots (and They're Right!)
After all, the money he sends these buffoons turns out to help the cause of Constitutional conservatism as often as not.
Today, ThinkProgress has a story on a protest in Dallas, Texas, at which a pro-Second Amendment group called Open Carry Texas rallied against an anti-Second Amendment group called Moms Demand Action... At the top of the ThinkProgress story is this rather alarming picture, in which the group appears to be hunting in a parking lot...
...the picture above is deeply misleading. As one Twitter user showed me, the group was, in fact, posing for a picture. (UPDATE: This Facebook page suggests that it was Moms Demand Action that took both pictures!)...
...What a difference 90 degrees makes.
As for [their] claim that open carry is illegal in Texas? No, not quite. Texas has laws that prohibit the open carrying of handguns, yes. But it does not have laws that prohibit the open carrying of long guns. The group had long guns.
As it is everywhere else, it is illegal in Texas for those carrying guns to disturb the peace, to intimidate, to brandish, or to threaten other citizens. But peaceful carrying is allowed in Texas, and there is no exception for demonstrations.
Writer Charles C. W. Cooke gives the crackpots at TP the benefit of the doubt, but when it comes to the totalitarians on the left, never chalk up to ignorance what can be ascribed to malevolence.
Their ends are pure evil, of that there is no doubt.
Hat tip: BadBlue 24x7 Conservative News.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
The Subprime Final Solution
The MSM did their usual spin job on the consumer credit data released earlier this week. They reported a 5.4% increase in consumer debt outstanding to an ALL-TIME high of $3.051 trillion. In the Orwellian doublethink world we currently inhabit, the consumer taking on more debt is seen as a constructive sign. Consumer debt has grown by 5.8% over the first nine months of 2013, after growing by 6.1% in 2012 and 4.1% in 2011.
Of course, buried at the bottom of the Federal Reserve press release and never mentioned on CNBC or the other dying legacy media outlets is the facts and details behind the all-time high in consumer credit. They count on the high probability the average math challenged American has no clue regarding the distinction between revolving and non-revolving credit or who controls the distribution of such credit. It is fascinating examining the historical data on the Federal Reserve website and realizing how far we’ve fallen as a society in the last 45 years.
Revolving credit is a fancy term for credit card debt. Imagine our society today without credit cards. That sounds outrageous to the debt addicted populace inhabiting our suburban wasteland and urban badlands. What is truly outrageous is the fact we have allowed ourselves to be duped into $846 billion of revolving credit card debt charging an average interest rate of 13% by Wall Street bankers who have used the American Dream of a better life as the bait to lure a dumbed down easily manipulated populace into believing that material possessions purchased with high interest debt represented advancement rather than servitude. Debt accumulation is seen as a badge of honor. Keeping up with the Joneses is all that matters. Our shallow culture has no notion about the concept of deferred gratification or saving to pay for your wants.
A shocking fact (to historically challenged government educated drones) revealed by the Federal Reserve data is that credit card debt did not exist prior to 1968. How could people live their lives without credit cards? It must have been a nightmare. You mean to tell me when people wanted new clothes, jewelry, a TV, or to eat out at a restaurant, they actually had to save up the cash to do so? What kind of barbaric system would make you live within your means? The Depression era adults had somehow survived for over two decades after WWII without buying cheap foreign crap they didn’t need with money they didn’t have using a piece of plastic with a Wall Street bank logo emblazoned on the front.
1968 marked a turning point for America. LBJ’s welfare/warfare state had begun the downward spiral of a once rational country. We chose guns and butter, with the bill being charged to the national credit card. It was fitting that Wall Street introduced the credit card in 1968.
Friday, November 08, 2013
True Unemployment Nears 14 Percent: Thank you, President Subprime Shovel-Ready Clunker Obamacare Dodd-Frank DREAM Act McDowngrade!
The “real” unemployment rate rose from 13.6% in September to 13.8% in October, according to figures released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
...Known as the U-6 unemployment rate, this “real” unemployment figure, seasonally adjusted, includes the unemployed “plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons..." The U-6 rate captures the fuller picture of people who are willing and able to work, but cannot find a job.
Since President Barack Obama has been president, the U-6 unemployment rate rose from 14.25% in January 2009 to a high of 17.1% in October, November and December 2009 and the same rate in February, March, and April 2010. The U-6 rate did not fall below 14% under Obama until March 2013, when it hit 13.8%, the same rate for October 2013.
Even more shocking, the Labor Force Participation Rate dropped yet again, this time to 62.8 percent.
This is the lowest it's been since 1978, when another feckless Democrat named President Jimmy Carter was running things.
Let me recycle this graphic from 2011... because, sadly, it's still relevant:
Arithmetic always trumps ideology. Sadly, Barack Obama has proven himself incapable of learning this simple, immutable fact.
He's a dyed-in-the-wool, radical progressive -- a true believer. Collectivism is his religion and if it means destroying America to impart his wisdom, then so be it.
Hat tips: Weasel Zippers and Badblue News
Thursday, November 07, 2013
Isn't someone in charge of removing embarrassing lies from the White House website?
Here's the closeup:
Oh, and I almost forgot.
They lied again. The White House admits the website won't be fixed by the end of November.
Oh, well. It only cost $1.1 billion to build a completely broken website.
And what's a few billion between Democrats?
TOP 10 LESSONS OF OBAMACARE
1. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
You've heard all of the stories, which can be summarized by the real quote: "I was all for ObamaCare until I found out I was paying for it." Or other other real quote: "Of course, I want people to have health care. I just didn't realize I would be the one who was going to pay for it personally."
The entire middle-class welfare state, to which ObamaCare is the latest addition, is an attempt to make the middle class into a constituency for big government by promising them endless benefits, from free health care to a guaranteed income, with no costs, consequences, or trade-offs, and no strings attached. Everything is supposed to be paid for by "the rich," which means anyone who makes a dollar more than you.
Of course, it turns out that it's not "the rich" paying for everyone else. It's the productive being sucked dry by the leeches.
2. Regulation stifles production.
Speaking of productivity: when you pass 25,000 pages of regulations, you get people who are good at following regulations, not at producing goods or services of value. It turns out that all of the myriad regulations may not, in fact, be wholly compatible with reality. But reality is of no concern to the government.
3. The power to tax is the power to destroy.
Government's only power It is the power to tax, to confiscate, to ban, to jail, to kill -- but not to produce anything of value.
There are already indications that ObamaCare will lead to a shortage of doctors because it's paying them less to do more work... the essence of ObamaCare is summed up in the fact that millions of people are now being booted off of their existing health insurance plans--but the state and federal exchanges that are supposed to offer them new insurance aren't even functioning.
As for who destroyed our health care system?
SO VERY HELPFUL: Illinois Educates Convicts About All of the Benefits They're Due Under Obamacare
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — When you exit prison in Illinois you’ll get your street clothes, a notice of when to check-in with your parole officer and a pamphlet about Obamacare.
The state’s prisons and county jails are taking a proactive approach to enrolling people, mostly into Medicaid, through the Affordable Care Act. They’re starting the process while prisoners are locked up.“When the person is in custody, they’re not eligible for enrollment,” McLean County Sheriff Mike Emery told Illinois Watchdog. “The stance we’re taking here in McLean County…is that we’re starting the process with inmates to get them enrolled for health care.”
Emery said his staff will fill out almost all of the paperwork for Obamacare so that once someone is released they can sign a few pages and be enrolled in Medicaid, or apply for private insurance. Most will go into Medicaid.
In Illinois’ prisons, inmates who are set to be released are told they could be covered by Medicaid well before their last day.
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
BOOM: "Obamacare Shouldn't Have Been Managed Like a Campaign"
Another Sunday, another amazing reported piece on the rather amazing history of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. You’ll have to read the whole thing, because summary won’t do it justice. But here are a few highlights:
- David Cutler, one of the top health-care economists in the U.S., wrote a memo to Larry Summers in 2010 warning him that the team in charge of implementing Obamacare was not up to the job. The memo makes it clear, though not quite explicit, that Cutler was writing to Summers, rather than someone on the health-care policy team, because the team had ignored his concerns. The memo is eerily prophetic: The key people were analysts with no experience in project management, technology, startups or the insurance business; responsibility was too diffused; the staff didn’t understand either the magnitude or the urgency of what they had taken on; and neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, to which most of the job had been delegated, had the personnel or technical experience to manage it well...
- Parts of the implementation were hamstrung by the assumption that all the states would build their own exchanges, and because it was a draft bill that no one had expected to pass, it didn’t contain funding for federal exchanges or, apparently, for the policy wonks needed to put the law together. The Republicans, who continued to oppose the law to the apparent surprise of its architects and supporters, declined to provide funds on top of the nearly $1 trillion that had already been allocated...
- But many of the bad decisions were designed to avoid Republican criticism. There was another reason that the exchanges' architects were tucked away inside CMS: to try to stay out of the public eye. Other such decisions followed. CMS carefully obscured the unwillingness of a large number of states to build exchanges -- despite the fact that this would greatly increase the complexity of the job -- lest Republicans seize on that fact. Then CMS kept extending the deadline to declare, in the hopes that some states would decide to build exchanges after the 2012 elections. The agency also refused to issue a bunch of regulations until after the election. But this is by far the most incredible:
According to two former officials, CMS staff members struggled at “multiple meetings” during the spring of 2011 to persuade White House officials for permission to publish diagrams known as “concepts of operation,” which they believed were necessary to show states what a federal exchange would look like. The two officials said the White House was reluctant because the diagrams were complex, and they feared that the Republicans might reprise a tactic from the 1990s of then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who mockingly brandished intricate charts created by a task force led by first lady Hillary Clinton.
In the end, one of the former officials said, the White House quashed the diagrams, telling CMS, instead, to praise early work on those state exchanges that matched the hidden federal thinking...This has, rather predictably, triggered opposite reactions from left and right. The response from the right is somewhere between schadenfreude and slack-jawed amazement. The response from the left is, I think, summed up by Kevin Drum in “The Lesson of Obamacare: Sabotage Works”:
- The White House was heavily focused on regulations, rather than exchange design, for the first two years... They didn’t even begin writing the specifications for the contracts until spring of 2011. Then they kept changing deadlines and requirements, seemingly oblivious of the havoc they were wreaking on an already impossibly late system...
- Congressional Democrats were not given as much information as you’d expect, which is one reason that Max Baucus started worrying about a “train wreck”; apparently, they found out that the employer mandate was being delayed just a half-hour before the rest of us...
...No federal program that I can remember faced quite the implacable hostility during its implementation that Obamacare has faced. This excuses neither the Obama administration's poor decisions nor its timidity in the face of Republican attacks, but it certainly puts them in the proper perspective.Andrew Sullivan echoes this interpretation.
You will perhaps be unsurprised to hear me say that this response is overblown. Let’s remember what this “sabotage” consists of:
...But Obamacare’s biggest problem, as I have written, was that the architects of the law demanded an enormously ambitious software project on an impossibly hubristic deadline. Whatever slim chance this had of working was ultimately doomed -- not by Republicans, but by the administration’s own paranoid and self-destructive decisions to manage a software project as if it were a top-secret campaign strategy rather than a mission-critical component of the most ambitious federal entitlement expansion in almost 50 years.
- Many states not building their own exchanges, as permitted under the law.
- Republicans did not join together with Democrats to pass extra funding for a law that was already spending nearly a trillion dollars over 10 years.
- Criticism.
Remember that when Cutler wrote that devastating memo, Democrats still had control of both houses of Congress. The administration failed to rectify the shortcomings he identified because it did not understand that making a program happen is very different from writing out a description of it.
The administration did not refuse to issue key regulations and guidelines, or to announce the final number of states that would be building their own exchanges, because Republicans used secret mind-control rays or stole the notebooks they had used to write the draft memo. They delayed because they did not want Republicans to be able to tell the public about them before Barack Obama was safely re-elected to a second term.
In other words, most of the damage was done not by lack of funding, but because the administration was either incompetent or trying to insulate itself from the perfectly ordinary, natural, legitimate and, dare I say, patriotic function of an opposition party, which is to point out to the public when the party in charge is doing something that the public wouldn’t like. Reframing “criticism of the administration” as “sabotage” deserves an Oscar for outstanding lifetime achievement in the field of political spin.
...Unsurprisingly, the massive and unpopular transformation failed to attract any Republican votes. When Republicans had faced similar electoral math on Social Security reform -- an opposition party implacably opposed, and the electorate clearly against it -- they’d abandoned their efforts. That is what parties do when they reach such an impasse; it’s what Democrats did on Clintoncare. No program this large had ever passed on a party-line vote, because this was correctly viewed as political suicide. Nancy Pelosi managed to get it through the House anyway, which should go down as one of the most impressive political achievements in history, and Harry Reid shepherded another version through the Senate. When Republicans protested, they were rather smugly told that “elections have consequences.”
Then Ted Kennedy died. Massachusetts -- Massachusetts! -- elected Republican Scott Brown in an election that often seemed to revolve around the health-care bill. Democrats still pressed forward. Without the votes to overcome a Republican filibuster, they had the House pass a draft Senate bill that had never been meant to become law and used some procedural tap-dancing to push some fixes through the Senate. Such maneuvering wasn’t unprecedented, but it wasn’t popular, either. And the limitations of the method they used left the bill with all sorts of problems, many of which we are dealing with now...Fukushima!
Hat tip: Mtntoppatriot
RUSH GOES BALLISTIC: Attacks on Cruz, North, West and Palin are Attacks on Me
...over [my] 25 years, when anybody, any conservative, Ollie North, I don't care who it is, when they've come under assault, Clarence Thomas, I don't care, whether I knew 'em or not, I ran in there and I defended 'em to the hilt because of the cause, because I knew exactly why they were being targeted. Sarah Palin. I went in there and defended these people because I know that it's an effort to undermine everything I believe. They attacked Palin, they attacked Ollie, they attacked Clarence Thomas, they're attacking us, me.
Well, it's not enough just to come here and tell you, "Oh, look what they're saying about Palin. See ya, folks, have a great day." Then tomorrow, "Oh, look what they said about Newt. See ya, folks, have a great day." Why am I doing this? And the reason I wrote this [children's] book is to try to counter what's going on. Why would you write a book on how the left has corrupted education if you didn't have some desire to fight it? And this is what has frankly stunned me ever since Barack Obama's election. I understand there's a fear of the media, and I understand there's a fear of Obama's race, but it's time to get past that. The guy's president. He's destroying the foundations of this country, as founded. He's literally setting his sights on transforming this country into something it was never founded to be.
I don't think that should happen, and I've been under the impression that everybody else that's not part of the Democrat Party has been of the same mind-set, and that's where I've been wrong. So those of us who fight back upset the applecart, are those who just want to sit there and accept it and try to manage their lives and careers in the midst of this mess because we're upsetting the applecart. So we have to then be attacked as whatever.
That's why they're going after Cruz. What are they going after Ted Cruz for? What's he done to anybody? It's Obama they ought to be going after! Why are they going after Mike Lee? That's why we defend these guys. They're out there actually trying to beat this stuff back, and they're doing it because they love the country. They're doing it because they're shocked and saddened by what they're seeing happening here, and they don't think it's time to give up.
Look how rare that is! Sarah Palin, the same thing. Look at what happens to people that do that. I mean, even Republicans go after 'em. They went after Reagan, too. It's the same thing, but Reagan was able to overcome it. It's a sad thing that there's only been one of him, but that's because they've done everything they can to revise history from that era and make people think it was the exact opposite of what it was. But, folks, the whole point of this latest book has been to join people, 'cause I know there are a lot of you.
This is the thing I know. A lot of you are fighting back, the Tea Party is. A lot of you do want to arrest this stuff and stop it and reverse it. A lot of you do want get rid of the current liberal power structure that's destroying the fabric of the country, cultural, politically, societally, economically, you name it. It's a wrecking ball that's been unleashed each and every day, and I know all of you in the Tea Party and most of you in this audience are trying to stop it.
Rush has written a children's book -- "Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans" -- that makes a great gift for the holidays. It can be used to start fighting the insane collectivist rhetoric of the Far Left Democrat Party at a very young age.
Which, all things considered, could be one of the most important things we can do.
Fundamental Transformation or... a Coup d'état?
America is being fundamentally transformed, as Obama promised. This is one promise that he clearly intends to keep, no matter how many people lose their health insurance policies, their jobs, or their productive futures.
Even the liberal media have been forced to acknowledge President Obama’s lies regarding the Affordable Care Act, especially the whopper about being able to keep your own health insurance policy.
Consider what we have learned so far as the lies are being exposed:
- Despite repeatedly being told we could keep our healthcare plans and doctors, the White House estimated three years ago that 93 million people would lose their plans. Obama knew this and has been lying about it all along.
- Obamacare provides millions of dollars to leftwing community organizers, including ACORN descendants. A radical illegal alien is running the NYC Obamacare “navigator” program.
- Rather than provide healthcare, the Obamacare website is being used to boost low-income Democrat voter registration. Election integrity activists have called it “The biggest voter registration fraud scheme in history.” The Soros-funded Demos has bragged that Obamacare exchanges will register “68 million people to vote.”
...For modern-day progressives, lying is not merely something one does to avoid getting caught, lying is tradecraft. Thus our President lies. But these are no ordinary lies; they are grand, sweeping, all-encompassing lies. He says exactly the opposite of truth, consistently, to confuse people, and tops it off by accusing his opponents of doing what he does...
- Progressive activist Jeanne Lambrew, now in charge of Obamacare implementation, traded confidential taxpayer information with the IRS.
...Prior to the latest debt limit agreement, Obama threatened to default on the federal debt—sending jitters through financial markets. It would have been the first default in history. Obama’s Treasury Department also issued a report titled, The Potential Macroeconomic Effect of Debt Ceiling Brinkmanship. But President Obama was the one engaged in “brinkmanship,” even while accusing Republicans of doing so.
To avoid default, the government needs only to pay interest, about $35 billion per month. The Treasury collects about $250 billion per month, more than enough. But Obama claimed he didn’t have the authority.
To call him on it, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 807, the Full Faith and Credit Act, making the authority explicit, but Obama promised to veto it—implicitly admitting he could avoid default if he wanted. But Obama was willing to threaten a major financial collapse to achieve short-term political objectives.
However, all we heard from the media was a non-stop barrage of angry “news” reports accusing Republicans of trying to destroy the economy...
[...Likewise, b]efore the Obamacare website rollout, the media mindlessly fawned over it. CNN’s new Crossfire co-host, former “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, heralded it “a huge breakthrough” for the uninsured. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz enthused that it was easy to navigate. Bloomberg’s Peter Gosselin equated it to shopping on Amazon. CBS’s Jill Schlesinger thought it was like Travelocity. ABC’s Rebecca Jarvis compared it to mall shopping.
...Considering the debacle it has become, the media should not only expose the glaring problems that continue to unfold, but also examine whether this is the result of incompetence or design.
Following the shutdown/showdown debacle, Obama gratuitously accused Republicans of a “manufactured crisis.” It is interesting that Obama accused Republicans of such a plan, given the title of a viral 2008 article, “Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis.” There is such a strategy; Obama has known about it for decades and is using it now.
It was developed in the 1960s by Columbia University professors Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who published an article in Nation magazine titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty.” By packing welfare rolls with new beneficiaries, they hoped to bankrupt local governments and foment a blazing revolution when benefits dried up. It came to be known as the “Cloward Piven Strategy,” or simply “Crisis Strategy.”
The strategy helped explode welfare rolls in the 1960s and 1970s, and precipitated New York City’s near bankruptcy in 1975. Speaking of that crisis, New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani accused the pair of economic sabotage.
Cloward and Piven created the organizations tasked with executing this strategy, most notably ACORN. Subsequently, the strategy was applied to: 1) Housing, where the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and similar groups colluded with the Clinton White House to foment the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the 2008 crash; 2) Voting, through enactment of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, (aka Motor Voter), again with Clinton complicity; and 3) Illegal immigration.
Cloward and Piven were the authors of Motor Voter, which turns motor vehicle and other state offices into defacto low income voter registration drives. This law allowed the nationwide explosion of voter registration fraud conducted by ACORN, and is largely responsible for today’s 24 million bad registrations nationwide. Motor Voter also made Obamacare’s online voter registration possible.
Obama has connections to Cloward and Piven, ACORN and its voter registration arm, Project Vote, going back to the early 1990s. The Holder Justice Department has been caught colluding with Project Vote in Motor Voter lawsuits. Matthew Vadum, author of the ACORN exposé, Subversion Inc, reports that former ACORN leaders are still working with Obama.
One has to consider the distinct possibility that Obamacare is part of a deliberate strategy to overwhelm the American people with crisis upon crisis until they throw up their arms in despair and give up.
...In 1932, FDR used this same kind of strategy to deliver Democrat majorities in Congress for the next 60 years. Cloward and Piven explained:
Although these [New Deal] measures were a response to the imperative of economic crisis, the types of measures enacted were designed to secure [a] new Democratic coalition.
Today, close to 50 percent of Americans pay no taxes, and lower income groups can obtain government benefits that provide the equivalent of up to $50,000 per year, strongly encouraging welfare dependency.
Democrats don’t care. It was Cloward and Piven’s explicit goal to create misery and strife sufficient to trigger a blazing revolution. As they reported in their “Weight of the Poor” article:
“Moreover, this kind of mass influence is cumulative because benefits are continuous. Once eligibility for basic food and rent grants is established, the drain on local resources persists indefinitely…”
The consequences of welfare state policies are evident everywhere. Consider the following statistics:As they say on the real blogs, read the whole thing.
- 49 percent of Americans receive some kind of public assistance.
- More people collect means-tested benefits today (108.6 million) than there are full-time workers (101.7 million)
- 1.2 million homeless children attend public school, up 72 percent since the recession began.
- 46.6 million people receive food stamps, the highest number in recorded history.
- 46.5 million Americans live in poverty. This is the first time the poverty rate has remained at or above 15% three years running since 1965.
Witness the burned out, abandoned buildings staining our cities, especially Detroit. Think of the entrenched crime, drugs, prostitution, and abandoned children that are the face of inner city ghettos, and reflect on Cloward and Piven’s enthusiasm that “the drain on local resources persists indefinitely…” In Detroit, the response of the Obama administration has been to pour more federal money, an estimated $300 million, into the city, in part to demolish public housing originally constructed with federal funds, and then to construct more.
- Median household income is 9% below what it was in 1999.
Incredibly, Bill de Blasio, poised to become New York City’s new Democratic mayor on November 5, says, “The federal government must get back in the affordable housing business, and the federal government must get back in the mass transit business and infrastructure business.”
...On top of failure after failure, this Obama-backed Democrat wants more of the same. He might as well be a spokesman for the Democratic Party as a whole. Perhaps that will be his role in the years ahead.
Obama and the Democrats are now feverishly working to inflate this roster of the needy by pushing through amnesty for illegal aliens, officially numbering 11 million, but probably more like 30 million people. Congress is currently debating this plan, with some Republicans, such as John McCain, willing to accommodate Obama’s scheme, in the name of “comprehensive immigration reform.”
...Government spending will continue to increase substantially in the coming years. This is a deliberate effort by Obama, who learned from Cloward and Piven how to collapse an economy. The strategy has moved from the local to the national. It will have global repercussions.
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
THE TEA PARTY'S DEAD? 10-to-1 Spending Advantage Plus Obama-Funded Faux Libertarian Eke Out <1% Victory For McAuliffe
You just voted for Obamacare, gun control, illegal immigration, forced unionization, and massive tax hikes. Well done!
With all that said, Ken Cuccinelli just proved that the Tea Party, Constitutional Conservative, and Reagan Coalition is still alive and well. Consider what Cuccinelli very nearly accomplished:
He appears to be trailing Terry "Sign Here, Old Man" McAuliffe by less than one stinking percentage point despite:
• Being outspent by a 10-to-1 margin
• A fake "Libertarian" candidate funded by Obama donors
• Being blitzed with outrageous, lying robocalls
• And an RNC that spent next-to-nothing to help
The fake Libertarian drew nearly 7 percent of the vote. Had the story regarding this SOB's true backers broken a week ago (brilliant research job, media drones!), Cuccinelli would've won in a landslide despite the spending disadvantage and a RINO establishment that undermined his efforts from the get-go.
I'm greatly encouraged by these results.
RCP and all of the so-called experts predicted a 7-point margin for Terry "Fund My Green Energy Company" McAuliffe.
Despite all of the sleaze and criminality, Cuccinelli very nearly pulled off an immense upset.
The Tea Party ain't dead, but the RINO establishment may be.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Thanks to D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, First Amendment Still Hanging on By a Thread
First Amendment: A federal court has ruled that the ObamaCare contraception mandate violates the guarantee of free exercise of religion and forces some to choose between their religious conscience and bankruptcy.
The Supreme Court's decision in June 2012 that ObamaCare was constitutional because its fines for not complying with its mandates made the law a tax within Congress' authority to impose did not end the constitutional or court challenges to this attempt at redistribution of health and wealth.
On Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Gilardi v. HHS that ObamaCare's contraception mandate violates the constitutional rights of plaintiffs Francis and Philip Gilardi, two Catholic brothers who own Freshway Foods and Fresh Unlimited.
The two companies plus Freshway Logistics provide health insurance for their 400 employees through a third-party administrator. The court ruled that they face the choice of violating their religious beliefs in providing insurance to their employees or closing up shop.
THE BERNIE MADOFF OF POLITICS: Who Sabotaged Healthcare.gov?
Never mind that the GOP was excluded from proposing even a single word, a single letter, to Obamacare's thousands of pages. Never mind that Republicans have had literally no involvement with its implementation (or lack of implementation, more properly). Republicans have had zero -- repeat, zero -- influence on HHS, Obamacare, CMS, or any of the other alphabet soup and witch's brew of agencies working on the law.
As James Taranto reveals, the Obama administration's naked fear and rank incompetence led to the ongoing clusterbungle no matter what the kooks on the left may try and claim.
The real deal?
The White House sabotaged Healthcare.gov itself through fear and incompetence:
First, the White House moved control of the project away from HHS.
In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services moved "the on-the-ground work of carrying out" from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's office to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS. "The move had a political rationale," Goldstein and Eilperin report. "Tucked within a large bureaucracy, some administration officials believed, the new Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight would be better insulated from the efforts of House Republicans, who were looking for ways to undermine the law..."
...As a result, "the work of designing the federal health exchange--and of helping states that wanted to build their own--became fragmented." Nobody was in charge of directing the program.
Second, the White House insisted on utter secrecy for its planning efforts.
In the spring of 2011, CMS staffers "struggled . . . to persuade White House officials for permission to publish diagrams known as 'concepts of operation,' " which would have shown what a federal exchange would "look like." The White House balked for fear that "Republicans might reprise a tactic from the 1990s of then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who mockingly brandished intricate charts created by a task force led by first lady Hillary Clinton." Instead, the White House ordered CMS "to praise early work on those state exchanges that matched the hidden federal thinking."
Third, the White House intentionally delayed issuing controversial rules until after the 2012 election.
"Meanwhile, the White House also slowed down important regulations that had been drafted within CMS months earlier, appearing to wait until just after Obama's reelection," Goldstein and Eilperin report. Rules governing mandated benefits and calculations of premiums weren't proposed until Thanksgiving and didn't become final until February. A former Medicare chief actuary describes the delay as "a singularly bad decision" taken "for short-term political gain."
Taranto concludes with a rapier-like coup de grace:
The story Goldstein and Eilperin tell is one not of GOP sabotage but of Obama administration self-sabotage. The geniuses who were sure they were capable of running the entire medical industry were so unnerved by the prospect of political opposition that at every stage of the way they undermined the president's own signature "achievement."
This is in part a story of political incompetence and hubris. Obama and his allies in Congress were unable to win a single Republican vote--and it doesn't seem to have occurred to them that a monstrously complicated law enacted by a slender partisan minority might prove especially difficult to implement. As Obama himself admitted yesterday in a rare truthful statement: "Now, let's face it, a lot of us didn't realize that passing the law was the easy part."
...We should note that this entire discussion has dealt only with the incompetent technical execution of ObamaCare, what we call Phase 1 of the disaster. Phases 2 and 3, respectively, are the exposure that ObamaCare is a massive consumer fraud and the economic inviability of the entire scheme.
The exposure of ObamaCare as a massive consumer fraud--and of Obama as the Bernie Madoff of politics--is well under way.
I like that phrase. Obama really is the Bernie Madoff of politics.
And every day that passes makes that simple analogy more apt.
The Reviews Are Coming In...
<NakedPitch>
A little more than a month ago, I released my first novella (i.e., about half a novel in length).
It has absolutely nothing at all to do with politics. It's a crime novel called Hard-Boiled, based loosely upon the private detective genre popularized first by Raymond Chandler and more recently by Robert B. Parker.
It's available on Kindle for $0.99, which means you can read it online, on your PC, on your Kindle, or even on your phone with all of the various Kindle apps.
If you're into the crime novel genre, give it a shot. You can read the first couple of chapters for free online.
If you do choose to read it, any reviews (good, bad or indifferent) are appreciated.
</NakedPitch>
Monday, November 04, 2013
IT BEGINS: Major Security Breaches Reported on Healthcare.gov
WIS-TV in Columbia, South Carolina reports the details of a major security breach on the main Obamacare website:
About a month ago, attorney Tom Dougall logged on to healthcare.gov to browse for cheaper insurance for him and his wife.
On Friday, the last thing he expected to hear on his voicemail was a man from North Carolina who says he can access all of Tom's personal information... Dougall says he thought it was a scam until he realized his privacy had been breached.
"I believe somehow the ACA, the Healthcare website has sent me your information, is what it looks like," said Justin Hadley, a North Carolina resident who could access Tom's information on healthcare.gov. "I think there's a problem with the wrong information getting to the wrong people."
..."I tried to call healthcare.gov last night and they have no procedure whatsoever to handle security breaches," he said. "All they can do is try to sell you a policy."
Dougall has also contacted his congressmen. He says he's calling the Department of Health and Human Services directly on Monday.
"They're so concerned with trying to fix the problems they currently have that they refuse to acknowledge or won't acknowledge that there's been a major breach," Dougall said...
This should come as no surprise for a website that was basically broken from the get-go.
Moments ago, CBS News's brilliant investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson reported that "HealthCare.gov ducked final security requirements before launch":
The health care website went down again Monday for an hour and a half, and no one is sure why. It's being taken offline on purpose every night from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. for repairs. Millions are still having trouble buying insurance on it, and it turns out that even when the website works, it may not be secure enough to protect privacy.
As HealthCare.gov was being developed, crucial tests to ensure the security and privacy of customer information fell behind schedule.
CBS News analysis found that the deadline for final security plans slipped three times from May 6 to July 16. Security assessments to be finished June 7 slid to August 16 and then August 23. The final, required top-to-bottom security tests never got done.
...[In fact,] four days before the launch, the government took an unusual step. It granted itself a waiver to launch the website with "a level of uncertainty ... deemed as a high (security) risk.
Let me guess: the loathsome and freakish architect of Obamacare named Ezekiel Emanuel will now blame the users themselves for the data breaches, just as he blames insurance companies and the private sector for his catastrophic, stillborn brainchild.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Federal investigations cast huge shadow over Terry McAuliffe on Election Day
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — As Virginians head to the polls Tuesday, a darkening cloud of federal investigations hangs over Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
The inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission are conducting separate inquiries into actions involving McAuliffe’s GreenTech Automotive company and its use of a federal investor-visa program.
The investigations, which began last spring after Watchdog.org started digging into McAuliffe’s activities, target U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas and Gulf Coast Funds Management, GreenTech’s fundraising arm.“Voters should be aware that the two investigations around GreenTech and Gulf Coast may well cripple a McAuliffe administration, as well as the commonwealth’s credibility and ability to move forward,” Virginia state Sen. Tom Garrett told Watchdog last week.
“Literally, from day one, a pall would hang over a McAuliffe administration and over Virginia’s executive branch. Simply put, it would be bad for business,” said Garrett, a Republican and former Louisa County prosecutor.


















According to two former officials, CMS staff members struggled at “multiple meetings” during the spring of 2011 to persuade White House officials for permission to publish diagrams known as “concepts of operation,” which they believed were necessary to show states what a federal exchange would look like. The two officials said the White House was reluctant because the diagrams were complex, and they feared that the Republicans might reprise a tactic from the 1990s of then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who mockingly brandished intricate charts created by a task force led by first lady Hillary Clinton.
Remember that when Cutler wrote that devastating memo, Democrats still had control of both houses of Congress. The administration failed to rectify the shortcomings he identified because it









