Bloomberg gun-control group facing internal backlash amid growing profile

Mayors Defect From Anti-Gun Group

WASHINGTON –  New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is losing part of his arsenal of local leaders as more and more long-time members of his gun-control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns say they aren’t happy with the coalition’s trajectory and want out.

While the group apparently is growing in membership overall amid an effort to assume a larger profile in the national gun debate, it's turning some members off. In the past five months, 50 members of the group have quit. Many say they did so because the organization abandoned its mission statement of going after illegal guns, and instead used its political clout to go after lawmakers who supported gun rights.

Most recently, the mayors of Rockford, Ill., and Nashua, N.H., dropped out after saying they felt misled by Bloomberg.

Nashua Mayor Donnalee Lozeau says she called it quits after the group launched television attack ads against New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte. Ayotte voted against legislation that would have expanded background checks to cover almost every gun purchase in the country.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute. I don’t want to be part of something like that,’” Lozeau told The Manchester Union Leader. “I told them, ‘You’re Mayors Against Illegal Guns; you’re not mayors for gun control.’”

Rockford’s three-term independent Mayor Lawrence Morrissey bowed out over similar concerns.

Via Fox News

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Republicans hit Obama on Keystone

Senior Capitol Hill Republicans hope to transform President Obama’s comments that downplay the number of potential Keystone XL pipeline jobs into a political liability as the White House focuses heavily on the economy.

“President Obama has resorted to a curious tactic in the administration's latest pivot back to jobs and the economy — disparage and dismiss jobs,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a statement Monday.

Upton’s comment is part of wider GOP and industry pushback against Obama, who said that there’s “no evidence” Keystone would be a major jobs engine.

Obama, in a New York Times interview published Saturday, said TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline would create an estimated 2,000 jobs during construction, and noted it’s a “blip” relative to the need.

“Just days after the president’s most recent ‘pivot’ to the economy, we were more than a little stunned by his cavalier attitude about the new and needed jobs that Keystone XL would unquestionably create,” said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Industry and GOP critics, including Upton and Murkowski, also allege Obama is badly low-balling the jobs potential of the project that would bring oil from Canadian oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.

Here’s more from the Times transcript of Obama’s interview:

“[M]y hope would be that any reporter who is looking at the facts would take the time to confirm that the most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline — which might take a year or two — and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 [chuckles] jobs in a economy of 150 million working people,” Obama said.

Dillon, Murkowski’s aide, said that even those estimates were right, the project would be worth it.

“[L]et’s stipulate that the president is somehow correct, and Keystone XL creates 'maybe' 2,000 construction jobs and then an apparently 'chuckle'-worthy 50-100 permanent jobs. We would contend that with unemployment at 7.6%, and millions of Americans in need of a high-paying job, this project is absolutely worth approving on that basis,” Dillon said in an email to reporters.

TransCanada’s permit application remains under federal review, and Obama reiterated in the new interview that he won’t approve the project unless he’s sure it won’t significantly add to carbon pollution.

Via: The Hill

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Second-Term Nightmare

ObamaCare's chickens come home to roost.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. The Obama administration and its allies in Congress are faced with the challenge of trying to convince Americans there are wide-ranging benefits to their 2010 takeover of our nation's health-care system, while at the same time working to delay it so as to minimize the negative consequences before the 2014 elections.

The last thing congressional Democrats want is a repeat of the drubbing their party took in 2010, courtesy of the ObamaCare backlash. But recent events have put ObamaCare and its outcomes front and center, adding to a growing fear on the left that Republicans not only will hold the House but could take the Senate.

Voters anxious for job growth cannot help but notice recent discussions about the law's detrimental effect on employment.The employer mandate, which requires entities with at least 50 full-time employees to provide costly federally approved insurance, acts as an incentive to keep payrolls at 49 or fewer or move workers to part-time status. The administration apparently agrees, as it announced it is postponing the start of the employer mandate by one year, to 2015. Even casual observers of the electoral calendar may note that's on the other side of the midterms.

Leaving aside for a moment whether it is legal for an administration simply to decree that a law won't be enforced until next year, such action keeps ObamaCare in the news. Earlier this month the House passed legislation that would make it legal to delay the employer mandate. The House passed another bill to delay the individual mandate by a year, with the logic that individuals and families deserve the same break busineses are getting. Both bills will languish in the Senate, but they have led to the rather odd situation of the president actually vowing to veto legislation that would put his extralegal action on solid footing.

Via: The Wall Street Journal

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Obamacare Fallout: More Doctors Opting Out of Medicare

Three times more doctors are refusing Medicare patients than three years ago, many citing Medicare's increasing rules and lowered payment rates.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers the program, even doctors who still see some Medicare patients are limiting the number of Medicare patients they will treat, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The declines are in addition to the growing number of doctors who won't accept new Medicaid patients, and come just as millions of Americans are poised to become eligible for coverage under Obamacare. 

Editor's Note: Should ObamaCare Be Repealed? Vote in Urgent National Poll 
The numbers of doctors refusing both Medicare and Medicaid payments won't completely undermine Obamacare, health experts say, but some patients may have problems finding doctors who will accept their new coverage under the healthcare-reform law. 

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 9,539 doctors who had accepted Medicare payments opted out of the program last year. That seems like a large number, but 685,000 doctors nationally were enrolled as participating Medicare physicians in 2012. 

Eight-one percent of them were family doctors, a drop from 83 percent in 2010, the American Academy of Family Physicians reports. The journal Health Affairs, however, reported this month that one-third of primary-care physicians did not accept new Medicaid patients in 2010-2011.

Part of the problem is that Medicare payment rates have not kept pace with inflation, and Medicare reimbursements could be slashed by 25 percent next year unless Congress delays the cuts. In addition, the amount of paperwork and information required from doctors and providers is massive
Via: Newsmax

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