Obama administration knew of key Obamacare delay in August, emails say

House Republicans released emails Friday that suggest the Obama administration knew as early as August that the small-business exchange tied to Obamacare would not be ready on time.

“Despite this knowledge, the Obama administration waited to finalize the delay until November 27, as Americans across the country were off celebrating Thanksgiving with their loved ones,” the Energy and Commerce Committee said in a press release.

The emails from between July 26 and Aug. 13 suggested the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services knew the federal insurance marketplace, or SHOP, that assists firms of less than 50 workers would not be available until mid-November at best. But they said at the time it would be ready Oct. 1 and did not announce any type of delay until late September.

One email from the lead vendor, CGI Federal, suggested a timeline that started with webinars on Oct. 1 and ended with the SHOP portal going live on Nov. 15.

“Can we sign this with blood?” Henry Chao, the project manager at CMS, wrote back.

Last week, the administration announced a one-year delay of the SHOP feature.

“As the paper trail broadens, we see more and more evidence that the administration was fully aware its signature health care law was not ready for prime time,” Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Repbulican, said. “The documents we are now reviewing tell a much, much different story than what officials testified to Congress.”

Via: Washington Times

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The Minimum Wage and the Rise of the Machines

After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?

But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee’s announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili’s already made this move earlier this year. 

With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay their checks without dealing with a waiter or waitress. Both companies insist that they won’t be changing their staffing levels, but if you’ve read any science fiction, you know that’s what the masterminds of every robot takeover say: “We’re here to help. We’re not a threat.”

But the fact is, the tablets are a threat. In 2011, Annie Lowrey wrote about the burgeoning tablet-as-waiter business. She focused on a startup firm called E La Carte, which makes a table tablet called Presto. “Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table — making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn’t forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either.”

Via: NRO

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Anatomy of shutdown: How collapse of governing led to closing of D.C.'s WW II memorial BY DAVID LIGHTMAN

WASHINGTON — The World War II veterans from Mississippi’s Gulf Coast had been planning their trip to Washington’s World War II memorial since the spring.

On Oct. 1, at 7 a.m., the 91 veterans boarded a US Airways charter at Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, bound for the nation’s capital.

They flew into a media firestorm.

Their buses pulled up to a memorial surrounded by metal barricades, closed as part of the partial federal-government shutdown. A handful of congressmen and senators awaited them, many accusing President Barack Obama of coldly ordering the memorial closed just to show the human toll of a shutdown driven by Republicans. All of it played out for the TV cameras.

In fact, the decisions that put the memorial at risk of being closed were made at key points months earlier, not just in the week the government shut down. More than a single flash point in a partisan clash, the closing of the war memorial serves as a case study in the collapse of governing in Washington.

Today, little has been resolved. The shutdown ended with a temporary spending pact that will expire soon. Congressional negotiators have until next Friday to craft a federal budget before money runs out again on Jan. 15. Even if they forge an agreement, it probably will be an affirmation of the new reality of lurching from crisis to crisis, not a return to the deliberative process of deciding spending item by item.

Via: McClatchyDC

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/06/210737/anatomy-of-shutdown-how-collapse.html#storylink=cpy

We Bet You Haven't Heard This About Obamacare

Another push is underway to raise the minimum wage. But what you probably haven’t heard is that Obamacare has already done that.

The plan on the table in Congress would raise the federal minimum wage above $10 an hour (which is higher than all existing state rates). Obamacare’s mandate on employers, however, is already scheduled to raise the hourly cost of hiring a full-time worker past $10 an hour.

>>> See how much Obamacare adds to labor costs in your state

The idea behind a minimum wage is to help low-income workers. But Obamacare’s mandates will hurt the job prospects of these very workers—and raising the federal minimum wage would further limit the number of jobs available.

Combining federal (or state) minimum wage rates, payroll taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and soon Obamacare’s employer mandate, employing a worker full-time will cost a minimum of $10.30 an hour. The government has made hiring more costly without raising workers’ pay.

Unfortunately, this will make entry-level jobs harder to get. And these jobs are important. For the majority, they are stepping stones to higher pay and higher-skilled positions. As Heritage’s James Sherk and Patrick Tyrrell explain:

Two-thirds of minimum wage workers earn raises within a year. Entry-level jobs pay off in the long run for many workers. But if Congress adds a minimum-wage hike to the Obamacare mandate, many employees will never get that chance.

Of course, companies with 50 or more employees can avoid Obamacare’s mandate by cutting workers’ hours below 30 hours per week. An increasing number of employers announced plans to do exactly that before the Administration delayed the mandate a year. Fewer hours is not a good outcome for workers.

Via: The Foundry

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[VIDEO] Cotton Invites Obama To Visit Arkansan Obamacare Victims

Congressman Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) released a video Friday inviting President Obama to visit those who have been negatively affected in Arkansas.

“This week, President Obama announced a 23-day PR blitz to tout his signature program, Obamacare. I’d like to invite the President to bring his Obamacare roadshow to Arkansas, so he can see firsthand the devastating effects the law is having on Americans who live outside Washington DC.”

Cotton listed a number of demographics that have been hurt by Obamacare in his state: 50,000 families who have lost their insurance plans; workers who have been laid off or had their hours cut; families with higher premiums and deductibles; and seniors who have seen their doctor dropped from Medicare or their insurance network.

“The President can meet with them if had the courage to come to Arkansas,” Cotton said.

Cotton also referenced Sen. Mark Pryor, the Congressman’s Democratic opponent in the state’s Senate race, saying Pryor has called Obamacare good for America and an “amazing success story”. “Obamacare is not working,” Cotton asserted, “and it’s time for the President and Senator Pryor to admit it.”

Pryor and Cotton are currently neck-and-neck in recent polling.

Via: WFB

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Obama dismisses IRS targeting of conservatives: ‘They’ve got a list, and suddenly everybody’s outraged’

President Obama rejected the notion that the IRS’ targeting of Tea Party groups was illegal — or even improper — during his interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Thursday.

Obama was at American University to sell his flailing healthcare law to the young people upon which the insurance exchanges heavily rely. As promised, Matthews allowed him to make his pitch with no tough questions or pushback.

But the interview became interesting when the Hardball host asked why Americans were growing increasingly skeptical of government. Obama noted that the media never seems interested in government success stories. “When we do things right, they don’t get a lot of attention,” he said.

OBAMA: That’s not — that’s not something that’s reported about. If, on the other hand, you’ve got an office in Cincinnati, in the IRS office that — I think, for bureaucratic reasons, is trying to streamline what is a difficult law to interpret about whether a nonprofit is actually a political organization deserves a tax exempt agency. And they’ve got a list, and suddenly everybody’s outraged.

MATTHEWS: 501(c)(4) is tricky to begin with, how to define it.

OBAMA: To begin with.

The president even appeared annoyed that liberal commentators once dared to challenge him on the point:

OBAMA: And by the way, Chris, I’ll point out that there are some so-called progressives and, you know, perceived to be liberal commentators who during that week were just as outraged at the possibility that these folks, you know, had — had been, you know, at the direction of — the Democratic Party, in some way — discriminated against these folks.

One of those so-called progressives was Obama himself, who in May called the targeting of conservative groups “outrageous” and “something that people are properly concerned about.” (Related: Obama steps up criticism of IRS targeting)

Also in May, the Obama Justice Department pledged to investigate the targeting of conservative groups by the IRS. As of last week, none of the affected groups had been contacted by any federal investigators. (Related: Federal investigators still not contacting conservative groups targeted by IRS)

President Obama later passed blame for his failures onto his cabinet agencies — claiming that “somebody somewhere at this very moment is screwing something up” — and repeated the nauseating platitude that “government’s not somebody else. Government’s us.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Next up: Obamacare worst-case scenario?

Enrollment surge or no enrollment surge, the next Obamacare challenge is a big one: How will the White House make sure all those people with canceled policies get new coverage by Jan. 1?

At the rate the signups are going — even with the speedier, newly functioning Obamacare website — the administration has a vast distance to travel before the estimated 4 to 5 million people with canceled policies get new health coverage.

In fact, health care experts say, it’s not out of the question that the Obama administration could face the worst-case scenario on Jan. 1: the number of uninsured Americans actually goes up.

(Also on POLITICO: White House aims to build on HealthCare.gov’s numbers)

That’s a long shot, and there are plenty of reasons why it might not happen, since there are other ways those people could replace their health coverage, like signing up directly with insurers. Not all of the policies will expire in December. And even if the ranks of the uninsured did increase, it could be such a brief event that no one would ever be able to confirm it.

But even with all the variables, one thing is for certain: the Obama administration has one seriously long road to travel from the signups it has now to the number who will likely need to replace their coverage. That’s a bad place to be, given that the point of the law was to cover more people, not fewer people.

Via: Politico

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Jeremy Scahill: Obama WH Doesn’t Want Journalists, It Wants Fawning ‘State Media’ Like MSNBC

Jeremy Scahill, a national security journalist joining a new independent media venture with Glenn Greenwald, talked about the British parliamentary hearing over the Guardian‘s NSA scoops on Democracy Now! Thursday, and ended up going after the Obama White House’s hostility to adversarial journalism, mixed with their preference for friendly “state media” outlets like MSNBC.

Reacting to the Guardian hearing, Scahill said, “There is a war on journalism right now.” He mockedPresident Obama‘s claims of being the most transparent administration in history, while at the same time cracking down on journalists left and right, “trying to compel journalists to testify against their sources,” and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any other previous administration.

The United States, thankfully, has a First Amendment, but Scahill argued that contrary to what the Constitution says about a free and honest press, the Obama White House, like others before it, acts rather hostile to any critical media outlet.

“It’s the responsibility of journalists and journalism at large to hold them accountable. But this White House, like Bush before, Bushes before, they seem to want only state media. They want everything to look like MSNBC. And that’s not real journalism.”

Whether or not he did it intentionally, Scahill’s comments come on the very day Obama is sitting down for a long, wide-ranging interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. So… yeah.

Via: Mediaite.co

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RYAN BUDGET DEAL MAY HIKE TSA FEES

Congressional Budget Committee chairs Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray are working to finalize a deal on the federal budget. Reportedly, the two are just "a few billion" away from an agreement to fund government and replace the automatic sequester cuts. The deal may also increase government revenue through higher "fees" for airline security and other government services. This idea should never get off the ground. 

“That sort of thing is a user fee, it’s not a tax,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a party to the negotiations. “It’s not something that I would have an objection to as a tax increase. But we’ll see where [Ryan and Murray] end up.”

Calling higher government revenue a "fee" rather than a "tax" is mostly a distinction without a difference. Money to pay a fee still comes from a consumer's wallet, not some magical "fee" account. 

Reportedly, Ways and Means Chairman Rep. David Camp, has briefed several Republican colleagues about the possibility of including "revenue raisers" in any budget deal. As if the federal government had a revenue problem.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, government revenue currently equals about 15% of GDP. Next year, the amount the government takes out of the economy will spike to 17.5%. Over the next two decades, the government's take will gradually increase to equal 19.5% of the economy, higher than its historical average. Over the past 4 decades, government revenue has averaged 17.5% of the overall economy. 

If anything, the government should be trimming its revenues. 

Via: Breitbart

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AFTER DENYING THEY MET, WHITE HOUSE ADMITS OBAMA LIVED WITH UNCLE

In yet another example of White House dissembling and our subservient media rolling over, the White House admitted Thursday that President Obama not only knows a Kenyan uncle who faced deportation, but that the president lived with this uncle in the eighties. When asked in 2011, the White House said there was no record of the two ever meeting. Apparently, our crackerjack media accepted that false information without ever following up or even asking if the president had been asked.

The Boston Globe reports that at a recent deportation hearing, the president's uncle, Onyango Obama, testified that "his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks. At the time, Onyango Obama was here illegally and fighting deportation."

Obviously, this testimony directly contradicted the 2011 statement from the White House. Faced with the contradiction, the White house offered the following explanation:

[T]he press office had not fully researched the relationship between the president and his uncle before telling the Globe that they had no record of the two meeting. This time, the press office asked the president directly, which they had not done in 2011.

Only with a Democrat in office would "we have no record of the two meeting" not sound like a non-answer answer to the media. And once again it wasn't our media that dug up an Obama scandal or embarrassment; in this case it was the uncle.

During his briefing Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said that he personally chose to ask the president about the relationship. The Boston Globe adds:

“The President first met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school,” said White House spokesman Eric Schultz. “The President did stay with him for a brief period of time until his apartment was ready. After that, they saw each other once every few months, but after law school they fell out of touch. The President has not seen him in 20 years, has not spoken with him in 10.”

Via: Breitbart

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'HIDDEN TAX': Red Tape Tab Nears $2T

For America's businesses, the Obama administration has an unpleasant holiday surprise.

A new report on the government's regulatory actions was released just before Thanksgiving, and it contains more than 3,300 rules -- which the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) estimates will cost more than $1.8 trillion to implement on an annual basis.

At a time when the economy is still struggling to zoom out of its post-recession rut, businesses worry that the crush of regulation is another sandbag weighing down the recovery.

"Back in the '90s, the federal budget itself was not even $1.8 trillion," said Wayne Crews, vice president of policy for CEI. "Now we have this entire $1.8 trillion hidden tax, you could say, of government compliance and intervention cost imposed in the economy."

The latest monthly jobs report from the Labor Department showed gains in hiring in November, which helped push the unemployment rate down to 7 percent, a five-year low. But many of the new jobs added in the last several months were low wage, and more growth is needed for the economy to truly rebound.

Via: Fox News

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U.S. unemployment rate hits 5-year low, eyes on the Fed

* Non-farm payrolls rise 203,000 in November

Related Stories

• Unemployment rate hits five-year low, eyes on the Fed Reuters
• Upbeat U.S. data points to growth momentumReuters
• U.S. retail sales signal rise in demand; inflation tame Reuters
• Jobs report headlines big data week aheadMarketWatch
• U.S. 3rd-quarter GDP revised higher as inventories bulge Reuters

* Jobless rate falls to 7.0 percent from 7.3 percent

* Average hourly earnings, workweek rise

By Lucia Mutikani

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 (Reuters) - U.S. employers hired more workers than expected in November and the jobless rate fell to a five-year low of 7.0 percent, which could fan speculation the Federal Reserve could start reducing its bond purchases this month.

Non-farm payrolls increased by 203,000 new jobs last month,the Labor Department said on Friday. The unemployment rate dropped three tenths of a percentage point to its lowest level since November 2008 as some federal workers who were counted as jobless in October returned to work after a 16-day partial shutdown of the government.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising 180,000 last month and the unemployment rate falling to 7.2 percent from 7.3 percent.

Job gains for September and October were revised to show 8,000 more jobs created than previously reported, lending strength to the report. Other details were also upbeat, with employment gains across the board, hourly earnings rising and the workweek lengthening.

Via: YAHOO

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L.A. County social workers strike over salary increases, caseloads

In the first strike by Los Angeles County employees since 2000, more than 1,000 social workers took to the picket lines Thursday in a major escalation of a labor dispute over salary increases and caseloads.

The timing of a 6% raise is among the main sticking points in contract negotiations. But union leaders focused the public face of the dispute on social workers' caseloads, which protesters said were so high that they jeopardized the safety of the county's most vulnerable children.

"We don't have enough manpower to thoroughly investigate the cases," said Gerson Salazar, a dependency investigator who said he handles cases for 67 children. "They're extremely complicated cases and you can't resolve these issues in two weeks with [the size of our] workforce and be competent."

Political observers called the focus on child safety a smart move at a time when public sentiment about government-employee unions is dismal and many Angelenos in the private sector are still suffering from the recession.

"It's a public relations job unions have been forced into," said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. "You have to start pleading a case that you feel is going to resonate with the public more than protecting pensions, more than getting raises. I think it's smart politics."

Negotiators for the county and SEIU Local 721, which represents 55,000 workers who have been without a contract for more than two months, did not meet Thursday and have no plans to return to the bargaining table this week. In addition to social workers, the union represents many of the county's lowest paid workers.

Via: LA Times

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[VIDEO] Chris Matthews to Obama: 'Everyone Knows' Republicans Want to Stop Minorities From Voting

Chris Matthews received his long-desired wish on Thursday, an exclusive interview with Barack Obama. The Hardball anchor didn't exactly live up to the title of his show, wondering about Republican efforts to "make it difficult for minorities to vote" and questioning who was better, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden?

Talking to the President at American University, Matthews read a question from a viewer via Twitter: "What can we do to stop the GOP, the Republicans, from rigging the states, rigging the votes, state by state, to disenfranchise voters and destroy our democracy?" The host added, "Thirty six states right now led by Republican legislatures have been trying to make it difficult for minority people to vote, especially in big cities and older people. Everybody knows the game." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Tossing a softball to Obama, he queried, "What's your reaction?" 

At one point, the MSNBC host playfully teased the President, joking, "I have to ask you a little question you may not like to answer." He continued, "It's an essay question. The qualities required of a president. Vice President Joe Biden, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, compare and contrast."

Smiling at the cozy question, Obama laughed and then responded, "Not a chance I'm going there."

In areas where Matthews wasn't totally sycophantic, he still fell far short of any reasonable definition of playing "hardball." On the subject of ObamaCare, he gently wondered:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You have a great audience here of-- college age-- people and some graduate students and faculty. There's some resistance out there among young people-- We've seen it in the polls-- to, to enrolling in the-- in the exchanges and to get involved in taking responsibility for their health care. What's your argument why they should do that?

On the issue of faith in government, the anchor sympathized with the President: "I know we had Watergate. We had the Vietnam War, of course, all that together. But what's gonna stop and arrest that decline in faith of you doing the right thing, you being honest, I mean, anybody who's president?"

Via: Newsbusters
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