Saturday, December 07, 2013
Constitutional Crisis Comix
Related: ArticleFiveProcess.com.
Friday, December 06, 2013
AWESOME NEWS: Feds not required to report security breaches of Obamacare exchange website
Americans who buy health insurance through the federal Obamacare exchange website could have their personal information stolen by hackers and never even know it.
Most of the state-run health exchange websites will be covered by state laws that require notification when government databases are breached by hackers. But there is no law requiring notification when databases run by the federal government are breached, and even though the Department of Health and Human Services was asked to include a notification provision in the rules being drawn up for the new federal exchange, it declined to do so.Other protections for individuals’ privacy, like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, do not apply to the government-run exchange, only to health providers and insurance companies operating within the exchange.
Privacy advocates and cyber-security experts have had concerns about the lack of a federal notification law for years and hope the scrutiny of the Obamacare exchange will finally bringchange.
“The notification requirement is a very important part of overall security,” said Deven McGraw, director of the Health Privacy Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “People should be told when their information is at-risk.”
The lack of a notification requirement is particularly bad for the health insurance exchange website because of all the questions surrounding the site’s security. Poor security, coupled with the website’s high-profile problems, could make it a target for hackers either seeking to steal identities or embarrass the government.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
OBAMA IS RIGHT: We Must Eradicate This Horrific Income Inequality Now!
As Barack Obama rails against "income inequality" (read: free market capitalism) and "trickle-down economics" (read: free market capitalism), it's worth remembering this simple fact.
Obama has been president for coming up on six years. Every one of his many promises: hope, change, shovel-ready, Stimulus, cash-for-clunkers, green energy, Solyndra, Dodd-Frank, Obamacare, keeping your health care plan, keeping your doctor... every single one has been a disaster. Every single one of his Utopian fantasies has increased misery, poverty, and malaise.
And who has benefited the most from his policies? The federal bureaucracy and Democrat apparatchiks around the Beltway:
DC – i.e., government employees – got richer compared to the rest of America. What also happened back then was a newly-Democrat Congress adding hundreds of billions to government spending, followed of course by President Obama and his 2009 “Porkulus”.
Via Zero Hedge, who suggests that Obama should maybe keep this in mind when he gives his speeches on inequality.
Insofar as it applies to D.C. first, I agree with Obama. Income inequality must be addressed. Let's start with the ruling class in D.C. by slashing every non-defense discretionary agency by 50 percent. For starters.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
$1 Billion Obacalypse website forgot tiny matter of... security
“When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time,” said David Kennedy, a so-called “white hat” hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week.
“It’s really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn’t built into it,” said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. “We’re talking multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself.”
...Another online security expert—who spoke at last week’s House hearing and then on CNBC—said the federal Obamacare website needs to be shut down and rebuilt from scratch.
Better still: despite reports that HackMe.gov "only" cost $400 million, well, that turns out to be yet another lie. The real figure is about a billion.
The to-date cost of the glitchy Obamacare website has topped $1 billion, easily surpassing the $394 million originally estimated by the Government Accountability Office, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis.
Perhaps more shocking than the site’s likely price tag is the fact that roughly one-third of that amount was spent on contracts awarded during the six months leading up to the site’s disastrous Oct. 1 launch — when those at the top were reportedly aware of the site’s many problems.It’s important to note that the Bloomberg analysis covers up until Sept. 30, just before the 16-day partial government shutdown. So the final amount awarded to contractors since the launch of healthcare.gov may be more than $1 billion.
“The torrent of late spending — almost $352 million of $1 billion in awards to the top 10 contractors — indicates the magnitude of the work still to be done as opening day approached,” Bloomberg’s Peter Gosselin reported, “and helps explain the information technology problems that have dogged the exchange system since its launch.”
The Bloomberg figure may come as a shock to many Americans. Indeed, despite the GAO stating earlier that its data was incomplete, the $394 million estimate has been widely reported as the final cost...
When Americans get all of the gory realities of government-run health care, they'll be begging for insurance companies.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
EX-SECRET SERVICE DROPS BENGHAZI BOMBSHELL: Obama Refused Help Fearing Another "Blackhawk Down" During Debates
Members of the House Intelligence Committee learned in a closed-door briefing yesterday that more contractors are corroborating the report that the Obama administration had plenty of time to respond to the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic facility ... Nunes said the timeline begs the question: “What if the attack had went on for another 24 hours?”
“Would they have eventually sent help then? I mean, there is no accountability in this process that I’ve seen so far. And nobody knows what the president knew and when he knew it,” he said.
Interviewed late last month on The Mark Levin Show, ex-Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino laid out a timeline that appears to validate Johnson's reporting.
It's worse [than just a scandal]. Having been overseas, having been a Secret Service agent, I walked out of my house with my crying daughters... and I would tell them everything would be okay. This was going to Afghanistan, etc.
I thought the Cavalry would show up! ... I never thought in a thousand years that if we had an "A-to-Z security plan" that "B" would never show up... and that FEST team, the Foreign Emergency Support Team, over a seven-hour fight where our Ambassador was brutally killed, along with Sean Smith and those two heroic SEALs.
It's tough for me to talk about because it brings back really bad memories. I can't imagine if something had broke bad on my end. I can't imagine screaming in the radio calling for help and not one person answered to help. It's a national tragedy and it's worse than people know...
It was an insider attack, planned for months. The administration didn't want to admit that Libya was a failed mess. It had to be a foreign policy success right before the election, they knew there was a foreign policy debate coming up.
He [Obama] had just gotten destroyed during the first debate with Romney because he had nothing to stand on.
So they had to find a scapegoat when this happened. They tried this ridiculous meme about the video, which is basically laughed at now, but back then was accepted by a collaborative media that just wanted to propagate this Aesop's fable.
But I really believe that they just had them stand down because they had memories of "Blackhawk Down."
And if we got stuck over there, we're going to have to tell a story about how Libya is a failure. But they never -- can you imagine listening to the cries for help?
The horror. And now these tapes are apparently out there, there were drones overhead and there's video too, which were there about 90 minutes after the attack started.
They let these people die and suffer grievous injury because of a simple political calculation. It's sick.
In August of this year, unconfirmed but credible reports asserted that Obama consigliere Valerie Jarrett made the call to stand down.
Confidential sources close to Conservative Report have confirmed that Valerie Jarrett was the key decision-maker for the administration, the night of the Benghazi terrorist attack on 9/11/2012...
...at approximately 5 PM Washington time, reports came in through secure-channels that Special Mission Benghazi was under attack. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey summoned the President,and briefed him on the crisis, face to face.
...As that meeting drew to a close, Ms. Jarrett, who is also the Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, went from the living quarters to the White House Situation Room, where the attack in Benghazi was being monitored by Dempsey, Panetta and other top-ranking officials.
Whether she was instructed by the President to go there, or if she went of her own volition, is only known by the President and herself.
Perhaps House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa could subpoena Valerie Jarrett to determine what she knows about the night of September 11, 2012.
That is, if it doesn't impact the 42 other investigations he's "working on".
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
BUCKLE YOUR SEAT BELTS: It's Time for the Anus-Clenching Adventures of Inspector Issa
And, despite the gun-running, the Americans left to die in Benghazi, the politicization of the IRS, the wiretaps of reporters, and numerous other impeachable offenses, the feckless establishment Republican "leaders" in D.C. -- well -- judge for yourself in this installment of Biff Spackle's classic comic strip Inspector Issa.
Yes, I'm getting the distinct impression that John Boehner and Darrell Issa don't have the slightest inclination to truly investigate these outrageous scandals.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Monday, December 02, 2013
Faced with a Collapse of America's Health Care System, Chuck Schumer Secretly Pushes for... Gun Control
Urgent alert: Gun vote could come as soon as Monday in the House.
Washington, DC - With 80,000,000 Americans poised to lose their employer-provided insurance plans, what would you think the Senate’s number three Democrat, Chuck Schumer, is now poised to cram down Republicans’ quivering throats?
ANSWER: More gun control.
Senator Schumer already tried to sneak a gun control bill through the Senate on November 21 — right before Thanksgiving — and according to one congressman, the House could use a parliamentary procedure to pass it as early as today (Monday).
But let’s take a step back to explain.
Earlier this year, Schumer threatened that, if he did not get his way — destroying the “gun manufacturers’ lobby” in the process — your children would be killed. We actually received anonymous faxes and e-mails from Schumer’s allies, telling us that our children should have been killed at Newtown.
Now Schumer is threatening that, if he cannot pass gun control, your plane will be hijacked. Schumer’s new threat is similarly odious and baseless.
At issue is the reauthorization of the 1988 Plastic Gun Ban.
Crammed through in 1988 by a newly Democratic Senate looking for guns to ban, it was passed at a time when there was no actual problem.
Having said that, the poorly drafted law has always been an anti-gun time bomb, waiting to explode in the hands of an anti-gun president — which we now have.
SURELY YOU JEST: President Obama Now Lying About Massive, Fraud-Riddled Food Stamp Program
MADISON, Wis. — President Barack Obama seems to be stretching the truth — again.
But his latest round of deceit doesn’t involve people being told they can keep their health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.This time the commander in chief is stretching the truth about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which faces about $39 billion in cuts under a bill passed last month by House Republicans.
Obama, who is touting the taxpayer-funded program as a fiscal engine that helps boost the economy, claims in a report released this week that SNAP participation and spending will fall significantly as America recovers from tough financial times.
If only that were true.
Since Obama signed into law the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which provided close to $45.2 billion in additional SNAP benefits over four years, the national unemployment rate has dropped from 8.3 percent to 7.3 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
From 2009 to 2012, the country’s gross domestic product increased from $13.9 trillion to $15.6 trillion and the national average wage index also jumped from $40,711 to $44,321.
Yet the number of people who take advantage of SNAP and the money allocated for the program continue to skyrocket every year.
Sunday, December 01, 2013
The Beta Tester
The White House apparently thought seriously about scrapping the entire $500 million Healthcare.gov
THE AWESOME EFFICIENCY OF GOVERNMENT: White House Considered Scrapping $500MM Healthcare.gov Site
Now I'm no computer expert, but that doesn't appear to be what you would call, eh, a working website.
Donald Douglas, writing at American Power, highlights one of the most shocking revelations from today's ludicrous talk shows.
Folks are talking about Obama advisor David Plouffe's psycho statement that the ObamaCare website will be working well in 2017. Jeez, right after Obama leaves office. Talk about leaving a steaming pile behind for your successor. Twitchy has that, "‘In denial at this point’: David Plouffe says Obamacare will work ‘really well’ by 2017..."
.@davidplouffe: #Obamacare Will 'Work Really Well' By 2017. http://t.co/un5r2faUgM #ThisWeek
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 1, 2013
Watch it [here]. But pay attention to the opening segment, where Stepanopoulos reports that, "at one point the White House considered scrapping the site and starting all over again." This is the big story of the day, and it's being underreported amid the David Plouffe clown show and the state-media Orwellianism on the other Sunday shows (Emanuel Ezekiel and Ezra Klein provided the WTF analysis team on "Meet the Press"). That the White House seriously considered shutting down Healthcare.gov is the monumental concession of Democrat incompetence and Republican clairvoyance. It's the equivalent of folding your cards, of packing up and going home. A complete and utter defeat for the administration's marquee policy initiative, foreign or domestic. ObamaCare is the president's brand, and it's a loss leader.
The New York Times has it buried deep down in this report:
WASHINGTON — As a small coterie of grim-faced advisers shuffled into the Oval Office on the evening of Oct. 15, President Obama’s chief domestic accomplishment was falling apart 24 miles away, at a bustling high-tech data center in suburban Virginia.Panic is the key word here. Read the full report at the Times. And note how much fun Althouse has with the story, "'Inside the West Wing, where junior researchers monitor Twitter and other social media, officials knew the political controversy had moved beyond the broken website'."
HealthCare.gov, the $630 million online insurance marketplace, was a disaster after it went live on Oct. 1, with a roster of engineering repairs that would eventually swell to more than 600 items. The private contractors who built it were pointing fingers at one another. And inside the White House, after initially saying too much traffic was to blame, Mr. Obama’s closest confidants had few good answers...
Publicly, Mr. Obama had said “interest way exceeded expectations, and that’s the good news.” But in a meeting in Mr. McDonough’s office that first weekend after the start, someone asked the question on everyone’s mind: Should we just take the website down altogether for a time so it can be fixed?
While the website is the centerpiece of ObamaCare (because its "back end" operations form the lynchpin of this Democrat-socialist health rationing system), it's just the tip of the iceberg for political recriminations, both current and forthcoming. Millions have lost their coverage on the individual health insurance market --- prompting utter fear and desperation among Congressional Democrats facing reelection next year --- but as we get deeper into the rollout next year, when insurance companies start notifying business of policy cancellations, and when employers start dumping tens of millions of workers onto the crappy cookie-cutter ClusterCare programs, all hell is indeed going to break loose, and George Will so accurately predicts.
A half a billion dollars of our money was thrown away on this P.O.S. website?
And they were ready to scrap it?
Who was fired? Who was disciplined?
And this was just the website: the actual Obamacare disaster hasn't even truly begun. What happens to the 129 million Americans who have lost or will lose their insurance?
Here's a helpful hint for John Boehner: you took 40 phony votes on repealing Obamacare.
Now take a real vote. Force Democrats in the House to make a stand.
Repeal this monstrosity and put as much pressure on the Senate Democrats as they can withstand.
Friday, November 29, 2013
DON'T LET THEM CHANGE THE SUBJECT: Seven Lies and Seven Liars of Obamacare
Seven lies from seven Democrats about ObamaCare, just so you don't forget the matter at hand.
When you're as desperate as Barack Obama is right now - with your approval ratings plunging and people no longer even finding you to be an honest person - you're willing to try almost anything to make people focus their minds on something else. Well, I should qualify: That's what you do if your priority is your own political viability. If you're a real leader, you man up and solve the problem. But we don't have a real leader. We have Barack Obama.
So he is desperately trying to change the subject from ObamaCare to just about anything else. As Dan wrote this morning, he sent John Kerry off to get a deal with Iran at any cost so the two of them could wave the piece of paper and pretend they had accomplished something. At the same time, they are once again pushing an amnesty bill that they hope will lock in illegals as loyal Democrat voters fix the immigration system.But none of these are serious policy initiatives. Their purpose is simply to change the subject from ObamaCare, which is quickly turning into a political crisis of historical proportions for the Democratic Party. And we're not going to let them do it. We're not going to let them make you forget that Democrats lied through their teeth about letting you keep your policy, about your premiums going down, about letting you keep your doctor and your hospital, about what the whole thing would cost . . . I could go on, but you get the idea. So in the spirit of refreshing your memory, I herewith present seven lies from seven Democrats, at least one of whom thinks she should be the next president.
I think you know what to do with these:
1. Max Baucus
"If you like what you have you can keep it."
2. Harry Reid
"Those fortunate enough to have health insurance will be able to keep theirs."
3. Mark Begich
"If you have an insurance program or a health care policy you want of (inaudible), you keep it"
4. Mary Landrieu
“While those individuals who like the coverage they already have will be able to keep their current plan. This is a very accurate description of this bill before us - The Patient Protection and Affordability Act. It's very accurate."
5. Hillary Clinton
"You keep the insurance you have if you like it."
6. Nancy Pelosi
"If you like what you have and you want to keep it, you have the choice to do that."
7. Barack Obama
“If you like your health care plan you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period."
Liars. Every single one of them. The only conceivable defense against this charge would be for them to say that they trusted Obama, and if that's what the did, they're fools. But I don't buy it. They're all liars, and that should never be forgotten, especially not at a time when the president is so desprately trying to change the subject to anything else.
Follow Herman Cain at CainTV.com
Thursday, November 28, 2013
After Undermining Efforts to De-fund Obamacare, GOP Establishment Ready to Jam Amnesty Down Our Throats
Is immigration reform dead?
"No, immigration reform is going to happen," Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the House Republican whip, told CBS's Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation."
"But it's going to happen in a step-by-step method. And I will tell you, the president came out and supported that the other day." ...
...The current immigration system is "broken" and "needs to be fixed," McCarthy said on Sunday. "Forty-two percent of everyone that's here illegally came here legally," he said, a reference to people who overstayed their visas. "We need to fix this system."
President Obama has said "there's no reason why we can't get this done before the end of the year."
What's driving Amnesty? Here's a hint: it starts with the letter M and ends with the letter Y. And has cash in the middle.
After decades of political quietism during which Silicon Valley entrepreneurs expressed libertarian sentiments but mostly voted Democratic and funded Democratic candidates who shared their elite-class social and political views, Silicon Valley has finally mobilized—for immigration expansion. In April Mark Zuckerberg, with help from Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist John Doerr, launched FWD.us, a $25 million-and-counting lobbying group aimed at lawmakers in both political parties. FWD.us, unlike other pro-immigration groups, isn’t much interested in amnesty for illegal immigrants or easier border-crossing for lettuce-pickers. Its chief interest is in expanding the H-1B work visa program for “highly skilled” workers that’s mostly used by tech employers to hire temporary guest-workers from foreign countries, usually from East and South Asia….
...The anti-H-1B faction has a response to that: statistics. One of them, from an April 24 briefing paper produced by the liberal Economic Policy Institute, is that only one out of every two U.S. college graduates with a degree in engineering or computer and information science is hired into those fields, despite a doubling of the number of homegrown computer-science graduates between 1998 and 2004. Others argue that employers mostly don’t use H-1B workers to fill “best and brightest” jobs, but, rather, relatively low-paying routine programming positions, and that the most avid users of the visas are India-based outsourcing companies that use the visas to provide a few months of U.S. training for their employees, who then return to India.
Most damning of all is that, despite persistent claims of tech-worker shortages, programmer salaries overall have inched only slightly higher from what they were 20 years ago: from $60,000 a year to about $75,000 a year in 2012 dollars, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Engineers fare somewhat better: The average annual starting salary at top valley employers such as Google is about $100,000, with the median for experienced engineers at about $150,000...
Put simply, the oligarchs in Silicon Valley are spending millions lobbying Congress to import cheaper technology talent. They don't want to pay American wages, they want to pay Indian (or Chinese, or wherever) wages here in the states.
As for McCarthy, Cantor, Boehner, Karl Rove and the rest of the GOP Old Guard? They want some o' that Silicon Valley Cash!
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is, as usual, on top of the imminent debacle:
Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions wants wealthy CEOs to butt out of immigration policy.
“America is not an oligarchy… A Republic must answer to the people,” Sessions said today, in a direct response to President Barack Obama’s latest effort to get wealthy California CEOs to increase their support for his unpopular push for increased immigration... “Congressional leaders must forcefully reject the notion, evidently accepted by the president, that a small cadre of CEOs can tailor the nation’s entire immigration policy to suit their narrow interests..."
...Obama has been working with top CEOs since summer to push the Senate’s immigration expansion that would welcome 30 million immigrants, plus millions of temporary guest workers, over the next decade...
The push is being supported by numerous billionaires, including New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Fox News’ Rupert Murdoch and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg... Since 2007, progressive and business groups have spent more than $1.5 billion on advocacy and lobbying to pass an immigration bill, despite massive unemployment, stalled salaries and negative polls. Other business groups have been pressured by the federal government and progressives to provide rhetorical support for the push.
So once again I ask Karl Rove:
Say, @KarlRove - next time you're on @FoxNews please show us on your whiteboard how the @GOP wins without the conservative base. Schmuck.
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) August 1, 2013I give thanks for many things in this great country, but the Republican crony capitalists ain't among them.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
IT BEGINS: New York Gun Confiscation Letters Arrive
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Robert Farago, writing at The Truth About Guns:
[New York] requires people to register, sell or transfer (out of state) “assault rifles” and “high capacity” magazines. Many Empire State gun and standard capacity ammunition magazine owners have complied. Many have not. So, at some point, the State’s gonna go get ‘em. People on both sides of the law enforcement divide will die and the s will hit the fan. Meanwhile, there it is: the reason why expanded background checks, indeed all background checks and any type of registration, set the stage for confiscation. And tyranny.
The Constitution is written in what we normal folks call "Plain English".
It was designed to be read by all citizens at the time of the founding, so that they could read, understand, and ratify it. The Constitution -- no matter what temporary politicians, activist judges and other leftists may tell you -- is the highest law in the land.
The Constitution protects your rights, no matter what the Statists, the Marxists and the Progressives tell you.
Molon Labe.
Hat tip: BadBlue Guns
White House Uses Taxpayer Funds to Promote Goldman Sachs While Massively Expanding the Welfare State
Now let's think this through.
1. The government takes $10 from you, which prevents you from spending it on something you want...
2. The government launders that $10 through the federal bureaucracy, which leaves roughly $5 for benefits...
3. The government takes the remaining $5 it hasn't wasted and sends it to those who may or may not need it...
Hold up. My first point is wrong. The government doesn't take $10 from you... it takes $6 from you and borrows the rest by issuing debt.
And that borrowing program is executed by a certain number of "Primary Dealers" -- enormous, powerful banks like Goldman Sachs -- that make billions managing the sale of U.S. debt.
Furthermore, the fraud endemic in the food stamp program is legendary. Billions upon billions of your money is stolen each year, much of it in plain view on sites like Craig's List.
Therefore, in order to believe the collectivist propagandists in the Obama White House, you'd have to ignore all of the fraud, ignore Goldman Sachs, ignore the borrowing, ignore all of the money laundered through the federal bureaucracy, ignore the money confiscated from you... and pretend all of that is more efficient than you spending your money freely on things that you need or want.
You'd have to be completely mad or completely ignorant to believe that -- and it would seem the White House thinks you're either one or the other.
Hat tip: G-Man.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Rep. Charlie Rangel demands Americans embrace totalitarianism and dictatorship: “Drop the charade of democracy”
It appears one Democrat member of Congress has decided to drop the mask and reveal who he really is. Unbelievably, Charlie Rangel told NY1 that “President Obama should drop the charade of democracy and rule directly through executive orders.” I mean, why not? After all, Rep. Rangel’s own relationship with following laws is fuzzy at best, given his problems with tax evasion.
According to Politicker, Rangel said “I’m gonna see why we can’t use executive orders for everything.” Why not Charlie? Because of our pesky Constitution, which states executive orders are only to be used in case of national emergency, not as a means by which the executive branch circumvents the legislative branch, or our established process of checks and balances.Of course, the House of Representatives, which holds the government purse strings, can simply not fund these imperial edicts as handed down from on high.
Have other American presidents utilized the executive order? Absolutely, but none as prominently as President Obama, and perhaps Rangel clues us in as to why.
It was President Obama who stated to a cheering crowd he would bypass Congress to further his agenda, and I guess that’s one thing he didn’t lie about.
Rangel says a precedent has been established – and it’s a very dangerous one when a president believes himself (or herself) above the rule of law and makes decrees to be obeyed outside the legislative branch. This would indeed represent the end of our beloved Republic and the rise of someone similar to a Caesar – which did not end up so well for ol’ Julius.
Rangel’s comments are a window into the mindset of these liberal progressives. They simply do not believe the rule of law should constrain their intentions to fundamentally transform the United States of America. It’s as if they’re sitting back and daring the American people to defy their will. Sadly, I don’t believe the Republican Party has the intestinal fortitude to fight this ideological war. The mission, as it should, falls squarely upon the shoulders of us, We the People. Are you up for this fight? I sure as heck am.
Read more at AllenBWest.com
Monday, November 25, 2013
DEMOCRAT DEADBEATS: Illinois Now a Paltry $9 Billion Behind on Payments to Suppliers
...The backlog of bills waiting to be paid in the [Illinois] comptroller’s office has grown by $3 billion since the spring, when the state was flush with tax revenue... “As the numbers grow, so too do payment delays to vendors throughout the state,” said Brad Hahn, spokesman for Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka.
...At the start of April, the bill backlog in Topinka’s office stood at $8.5 billion. That number included bills on hand and the office’s best estimate of bills held in state agencies.
...In early April, Hahn said, vendors were waiting at least four months for payments from the state, although some bills took longer than that to be paid... A strong tax season this year allowed the office to “aggressively pay down bills” in April and May. By the end of May, the backlog was down to $5.8 billion and vendors were waiting a minimum of two months to be paid, half what they were waiting at the start of April.
That was, however, the high-water mark in the state’s efforts to pay bills on time. By the end of June, also the end of the state’s fiscal year, the backlog was sitting at $6.1 billion.
By Oct. 1, the backlog was up to $7.5 billion, including bills that hadn’t been turned in for payment. And as of late last week, the total was at $8.8 billion.
Hahn said the office believes the total will hit $9 billion by the end of December, exactly where Topinka predicted it would be last summer. It is the second year the backlog will sit at $9 billion at the end of the calendar year...
Hahn claims the state is "treading water", which would mean they're staying afloat.
Gee, didn't I just read that Illinois state pensions are also underfunded by roughly $100 billion?
Uh, yeah, I did.
Hat tip: BadBlue Money.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The Secret Goal of the Obamacare Ruse
McCarthy and other Constitutionalists grasp what few in the Republican establishment seem to: Obamacare is a ruse.
Fraud can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial thing is not so much the fraud. It is the scheme.To be sure, it is the fraud — the individual false statements, sneaky omissions, and deceptive practices — that grabs our attention. As I’ve recounted in this space, President Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period.” The incontrovertible record — disclosures by the Obama administration in the Federal Register, representations by the Obama Justice Department in federal court — proves that Obama’s promises were systematically deceitful...
Still, to show that politicians lie is like pointing out that it gets dark at night. The lie, the fraud, does not tell us why they lied in this instance. The fraud does not tell us what the stakes are. To know that, we must understand the scheme — the design.
The point of showing that Obama is carrying out a massive scheme to defraud — one that certainly would be prosecuted if committed in the private sector — is not to agitate for a prosecution that is never going to happen. It is to demonstrate that there is logic to the lies. There is an objective that the fraud aims to achieve. The scheme is the framework within which the myriad deceptions are peddled. Once you understand the scheme, once you can put the lies in a rational context, you understand why fraud was the president’s only option — and why “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” barely scratches the surface of Obamacare’s deceit.
McCarthy notes that in 2003 Illinois state Senator and perennial back-bencher Barack Obama was plain-spoken about health care for all. He was a noted fan of single-payer, a completely centralized, Soviet-style form of health care, and there is no reason to doubt that was always his endgame.
That is the Obamacare scheme.
It is a Fabian plan to move an unwilling nation, rooted in free enterprise, into Washington-controlled, fully socialized medicine. As its tentacles spread over time, the scheme (a) pushes all Americans into government markets (a metastasizing blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and “exchanges” run by state and federal agencies); (b) dictates the content of the “private” insurance product; (c) sets the price; (d) micromanages the patient access, business practices, and fees of doctors; and (e) rations medical care. Concurrently, the scheme purposely sows a financing crisis into the system, designed to explode after Leviathan has so enveloped health care, and so decimated the private medical sector, that a British- or Canadian-style “free” system — formerly unthinkable for the United States — becomes the inexorable solution.
Single-payer was always Obama's goal and that is why he had to lie. As McCarthy notes, his are the tactics of Alinsky.
...He stressed pragmatism: a gradual campaign that kept the ultimate prize in sight. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately,” he told his hard-Left base at a 2007 SEIU health-care forum. “There’s going to be potentially some transition process. I can envision a decade out or 15 years or 20 years out.”
There’s that word: transition. It’s the route “change” takes to reach its final destination: “fundamental transformation.” If you’re paying attention, you’ll hear the word transition a lot in Obama’s health-care speeches. You’ll also find it in that Justice Department brief the administration no doubt wishes Eric Holder’s minions had edited more furtively:
The [Affordable Care Act’s] grandfathering provision’s incremental transition does not undermine the government’s interests in a significant way. Even under the grandfathering provision, it is projected that more group health plans will transition to the requirements under the regulations as time goes on. [Officials of the Department of Health and Human Services] have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end of 2013 [emphasis added].
Understand what this studiously unthreatening, gradualist gobbledygook means. A “group health plan” is employer-provided insurance; the phrase thus blithely refers to the “transition” of 156 million Americans who get health insurance for themselves and their families through work...
It is clear that well over 100 million Americans will lose their health insurance in pursuit of a Utopian fantasy that centralizes the entire health care industry into a labyrinth of government agencies. Legions of bureaucrats -- unelected, unaccountable and uncontrollable -- will mestastasize into the medical analogue of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Socialized medicine has been the Holy Grail for the progressive, Fabian socialists for 100 years. Now that it has been cemented into place -- with establishment Republicans unwilling or unable to fight it -- the death of the Republic is all but certain.
OH, MY: Even California Tells Obama to Pound Sand Over His Costly and Illegal Obamacare "Fix"
ObamaCare: California's health insurance exchange has decided not to allow insurance plans that do not meet the law's standards, rejecting the president's attempt to rewrite the law through executive action.
Recognizing the impracticality and illegality of President Obama's proposed "fix" for insurance policies canceled due to the Affordable Care Act's coverage mandates, the board of Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange, voted 5-0 against extending the 1 million California health care plans that were dropped under the law.The Golden State follows several other blue states — including New York, Washington, Rhode Island and Minnesota — that announced they won't go along with the administration's proposed solution. State insurance commissioners make it clear that just in practical terms the fix is unworkable in the time available.
Reality bites, as they say, and the reality is insurance companies that altered insurance plans and computer software in a long, Herculean effort to comply with the law can't restore the status quo in weeks just because the president pulls an Emily Litella and says "never mind," without a constitutional or legal leg to stand on.
Obama's fix allegedly lets insurance companies continue selling the same individual health insurance plans they sold before the law, but only to those who currently own such policies, and only for another year.
"There's no way to make the federal law work without this transition to ACA-compliant plans," Covered California board member Susan Kennedy said. "Delaying the transition isn't going to help anyone; it just delays the problems. I actually think that it's going to make a bad situation worse if we complicate it further."
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Fraudulent Unemployment Numbers and 5 Other Huge Lies the Obama White House Is Telling You
According to a whistleblower that has recently come forward, Census employees have been faking and manipulating U.S. employment numbers for years. In fact, it is being alleged that this manipulation was a significant reason for why the official unemployment rate dipped sharply just before the last presidential election.
What you are about to read is incredibly disturbing. The numbers that the American people depend upon to make important decisions are being faked. But should we be surprised by this? After all, Barack Obama has been caught telling dozens of major lies over the past five years. At this point it is incredible that there are any Americans that still trust anything that comes out of his mouth. And of course it is not just Obama that has been lying to us. Corruption and deception are rampant throughout the entire federal government, and this has been the case for years. Now that some light is being shed on this, hopefully the American people will respond with overwhelming outrage and disgust.
The whistleblower that I mentioned above has been speaking to John Crudele of the New York Post. In his new article entitled "Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report", he says that the huge decline in the unemployment rate in September 2012 was "manipulated"...
In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington.Two years earlier, the Census had actually caught an employee "fabricating data", but according to this whistleblower the corruption at the Census Bureau goes much deeper than that...
The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated.
WILE E. COYOTE: Super-Sleuth Darrell Issa Opens Yet Another Huge Probe While Other Scandals Lie Unresolved
An anonymous whistleblower in a New York Post column by John Crudele is alleging that unemployment jobs data in the current population survey conducted by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics was manipulated in 2012 to help Barack Obama get re-elected... According to the source, specifically the Oct. 5, 2012 jobs report was faked — just in time for the election. Worse, the practice reportedly continues to date.
...Nathan Mehrens, president of Americans for Limited Government, said the allegations were "extremely serious," noting "financial markets and economic policymakers all over the world depend on the integrity of jobs data to make informed decisions."
Mehrens warned, "This is a case where distorted data will result in distorted policies that harm the well-being of the global economy." Particularly, the Federal Reserve has said it is waiting until unemployment drops below 6.5% before it begins raising interest rates.
...To that end, Mehrens called for Rep. John Kline, chairman of the House Health, Education & Workforce Committee, and Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to investigate any potential wrongdoing.
Unfortunately, Issa has plenty of experience in opening -- not closing -- investigations. To date, the following major Obama administration scandals lie largely dormant, yet in a normal era each would result in cries for impeachment.
• Issa, Treasury Wrangle Over Subpoena to IRS for Tea Party Documents: "“As of today, almost five months since the committee’s initial request, the department has produced almost no internal communications about the substance of the investigation and has only produced material in response to a few of the committee’s multiple document requests,” Issa said."
• Issa calls denial of dismissal in Fast and Furious lawsuit ‘repudiation’ of DOJ: "This ruling is a repudiation of the Obama Justice Department and Congressional Democrats who argued the courts should have no role in the dispute over President Obama's improper assertion of executive privilege to protect an attempted Justice Department cover-up of Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa claimed."
• 12 Oversight Committe Democrats Flee Benghazi Hearing Before Family Members Testify: "When the second panel began, however, Issa tweeted a picture showing a Democratic desertion. Only Representatives Jackie Speier (Calif.) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (Md.) stayed for the second panel to hear testimony from Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer, and Charles Woods, father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods."
• Issa, House Oversight Panel Probe Healthcare.gov: "Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is exploring a long list of issues: insufficient testing, possible security flaws, design shortcomings — even allegations of political meddling."
• DOJ’s Phone Sweep of AP Reporters Draws Dual House Inquiries: "“From a constitutional standpoint, the First Amendment, it’s very clear that Judiciary will have the lead on this,” said Issa, who is also a member of Judiciary. He added that he has “a fairly full plate” with investigations into the Benghazi attacks and alleged Internal Revenue Service misconduct, among other things... However, in a follow-up statement later in the day, Issa signaled he might be more closely involved than he had previously suggested."
This is insanity.
The Obama administration is the Roadrunner and Issa is Wile E. Coyote.
The proper way for Congress to investigate these impeachable offenses is to name Select Investigative Committees. These dedicated committees would not be burdened by multiple investigations or extraneous activities.
Whether it is hubris or fear of exposure of their own secrets, the House Republican leadership is operating irresponsibly and without regard for the best interests of the American people.
We must demand that Republicans name select committees, before it's too late to make a difference. Call the House Oversight Committee at (202) 225-5074 and make your voice heard.



























