Tuesday, March 18, 2014

State-Based ObamaCare Breakdowns

State-Based ObamaCare Breakdowns

Facing Audits And Website Bungles, ObamaCare’s State-Based Exchanges In 2014 States Have Yet To Get It Together

State-Based ObamaCare Exchanges In Democrat-Led States Have Become “The Biggest Laggards” In Enrolling People In A Health Plan. “With the federal online insurance exchange running more smoothly than ever, the biggest laggards in fixing enrollment problems are now state-run exchanges in several states where the governors and legislative leaders have been among the strongest supporters of President Obama’s health care law.” (Abby Goodnough, “Glitches In State Exchanges Give G.O.P. A Cudgel,” The New York Times, 2/2/14)

The State Exchanges Have Performed So Poorly, That The Obama Administration Has Had To Bail Them Out By Changing The Law

Last Month, The Obama Administration Announced An ObamaCare Bailout For States That Have Had ObamaCare Website Problems. “Now, in states that have experienced technical problems with their ObamaCare websites, some consumers can get tax credits for purchasing insurance on the individual market, even outside of the ObamaCare marketplace.” (“ObamaCare Rule Eased For States With Website Troubles,” CBS News, 2/28/14)
  • The Fix Will Benefit Democratic-Led States Such As Oregon, Maryland, Massachusetts And Hawaii. “The administration quietly issued the health law fix Thursday to help those states. Several Democratic-led states, including Oregon, Maryland, Massachusetts and Hawaii, are still trying to solve website problems that have eclipsed those experienced earlier by the federal HealthCare.gov site, now largely repaired.” (“ObamaCare Rule Eased For States With Website Troubles,” CBS News, 2/28/14)
The New Fix Will Allow ObamaCare Shoppers That Sought Health Coverage Outside The Exchange To Qualify For ObamaCare Subsidies. “HHS said state residents who were unable to sign up because of technical problems may still get federal tax credits if they bought private insurance outside of the new online insurance exchanges.” (“ObamaCare Rule Eased For States With Website Troubles,” CBS News, 2/28/14)

The Worst Performing State-Based ObamaCare Exchanges Will Be Audited

State-Based Exchanges Are Facing An Audit By The Government Accountability Office With The Inspector General Of Health And Human Services Focusing Its Attention On The Exchanges In Oregon, Maryland, Massachusetts And Hawaii. “The probe by the inspector general’s office of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department was disclosed just days after the Government Accountability Office said it would conduct an audit of state-run ObamaCare marketplaces, several of which have had serious technical problems despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants. In addition to Maryland, those exchanges include ones in Oregon, Hawaii and Massachusetts.” (Dan Mangan, “Feds Probe Maryland’s Disastrous ObamaCare Marketplace,” CNBC, 3/10/14)

Tax Revenues Hit Record in First 5 Months of FY14; 5-Month Deficit Still $377B

Jack Lew with President Barack Obama on Jan. 10, 2013, the day Obama nominated Lew as Treasury secretary. (AP Photo)(CNSNews.com) - Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $1,104,947,000,000 in the first five months of fiscal 2014, but the federal government still ran a $377,379,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for February.
Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”
In constant 2014 dollars, the $1,104,947,000,000 that the federal government collected from October through February in fiscal 2014 was $90,193,750,000 more than the $1,014,753,250,000 it collected in October through February in fiscal 2013.
Inflation-Adjusted Tax Revenue
After the current fiscal year, the second highest federal tax intake in the first five months of a fiscal year occurred in the first five months of fiscal 2007, when the government collected $1,076,721,860,000 in 2014 dollars—or $28,225,140,000 less than in the first five months of this fiscal year.

Fox News #1 in Prime Time for All of Cable TV Last Week; Ahead of USA, History

For the second time this year, Fox News was the most-watched cable network in prime time last week with an average 2.049M total viewers. That put Fox ahead of USA, which had 1.907M and The History Channel, which had 1.898M. Comparatively, CNN and MSNBC did not crack the top 20 and 25 respectively.
The victory for Fox came during a week in which much of the news media was consumed by the story of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. And while CNN’s Anderson Cooper made huge strides by beating Fox’s Bill O’Reilly during the 8pm hour in the 25-54 demo on three consecutive nights for the first time ever, he and his network still trailed significantly in total viewers.
The last time Fox topped all of cable news in prime time was earlier this year when President Barack Obama delivered his fifth State of the Union address. Before that it was in April 2013 following the Boston Marathon bombing.

Dem Sen. Chris Murphy Literally Going Door To Door Selling Obamacare…

Keystone Foes Seek to Disrupt Natural Gas Export Terminal

Environmentalists fighting the Keystone XL pipeline are rallying to block a Maryland natural gas export terminal as momentum builds to use the U.S. fuel as a weapon against Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

The energy required to liquefy and ship gas at Dominion Resources Inc.’s proposed Cove Point terminal in Maryland will raise the fuel’s greenhouse-gas emissions to the level of coal, says Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. Such terminals threaten the climate like pipelines tied to developing oil in Alberta, such as Keystone, he said.

“This issue is a lot like the fight over tar sands,” Tidwell said in an interview. “It’s gone from non-existent to the biggest environmental fight in Maryland, and is on its way to being the biggest environmental fight in the Mid-Atlantic.”

Comparing Cove Point to the $5.4 billion pipeline project that’s fueled stiff environmentalist opposition shows a challenge advocates face in pushing to use gas, America’s newfound energy bounty, as a geopolitical tool. The export terminals are a “whole new category of fossil fuel trouble,” Bill McKibben, co-founder of the environmental group 350.org, said on a conference call with reporters today.

House Republicans introduced legislation to speed approval of applications for more than 20 terminals like Cove Point, in response to Russia’s actions. Russia, the second-largest global producer of natural gas after the U.S., twice since 2006 has cut supplies to Ukraine, a conduit for energy to Europe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called today for Russia to absorb Crimea, where voters overwhelmingly backed secession, after signing a draft treaty to take the Ukrainian peninsula. He said Russia wasn’t interested in annexing other parts of the former Soviet republic.

Dominion said a study it commissioned by ICF International Inc. found that liquefied natural gas exports would cut greenhouse gas emissions if the fuel replaces coal as a way to make electricity.

“Slowing or preventing natural gas exports from the United States is a step in exactly the wrong direction for those who are concerned about climate change,” said Pamela F. Faggert, Dominion’s chief environmental officer and vice president- Corporate Compliance.

Via: Newsmax
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SEIU Hit With Second-Biggest Campaign Finance Fine in Michigan History

Labor Day Parade in Detroit / AP
The Service Employees International Union will have to pay the second-highest fine in Michigan history for its failed 2012 campaign to preserve forced union dues among home care workers.
Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said that the politically powerful union agreed to pay the state nearly $200,000 for failing to properly disclose donors and file timely campaign reports.
The union funneled more than $9 million into two 501(c)(4) non-profit groups, Home Care First Inc. and Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care, which served as the public face of a ballot initiative.
“These organizations cannot be used as a means to conceal the identity of the true contributors,” Johnson said in a release. “This agreement reflects our commitment to transparency and accountability in the campaign finance process, especially in an election year.”
The union could have faced millions of dollars in fines if it did not settle with the Secretary of State’s office. SEIU said in a statement that reporting oversights were inadvertent.
“We have decided not to dispute the preliminary findings of the Secretary of State and SEIU Michigan consider this matter closed,” the union said. “The mistakes were a result of errors and reports by the Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care regarding the receipt and transfer of funds.”
The fine stemmed from an August 2013 complaint filed with the Secretary of State’s office. It alleged that the union and its 501(c)(4) groups misreported its campaign disclosures. For example, SEIU reported more than $4 million in direct contributions to the 501(c)(4)s in September filings, but those contributions were later scrubbed from an October campaign report, according to the Secretary of State’s complaint.

Democratic Strategists in 2014 Are Like French Generals in 1940

It is reminiscent of the quandary faced by Gen. Maurice Gamelin on the evening of May 15, 1940. Suddenly he realized that German panzer troops had broken through the supposedly impassable Ardennes.
French troops to the north were cut off and rendered useless, troops to the south were falling back in disarray on all sides and no reserves were available between the front and Paris. "Yes," he told the prime minister, "it means the destruction of the French Army."
Now, analogies between military history and politics are never exact, and no one in American politics remotely resembles the Nazis. But there is some resemblance between the plight of Gen. Gamelin and the plight of Democratic strategists in key Senate and congressional races this year.
The general had run out of feasible alternatives. His one hope was that the other side would make a mistake. Alas, the Germans didn't, and a great nation was lost within a few days.
Today's Democrats face losing an election, not a nation, and the cause is Obamacare. They stand on ground of their own choosing, which they suddenly find themselves unable to defend, and they must hope that the opposition makes disabling mistakes.
That has been made starkly clear by Republican David Jolly's defeat of the better-known Democrat Alex Sink in the Florida-13 special election on March 11. The margin wasn't large, 49 percent to 47 percent, and the dropoff in Democratic vote not huge -- President Obama carried the district 50 percent to 49 percent in 2012.
What was more significant is that the well-financed, national party-selected Sink was unable to defend her ground.
Entirely missing from her campaign was a message along the lines of "hands off my Obamacare." You would have heard something like that if a Republican had advocated repealing Social Security or Medicare a year or two after these programs were passed.
But support for Obamacare has been under 50 percent since before it was passed. Democrats would be running ads showing happy Obamacare consumers if they could find any.
Via: Real Clear Politics
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