State-Based ObamaCare Breakdowns

State-Based ObamaCare Breakdowns

Posted March 18, 2014

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)

Via: GOP.com

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28 OBAMACARE DELAYS TOTAL 15 YEARS AND 3 MONTHS

The Obama administration's unilaterally instituted 28 Obamacare delays cumulatively add up to 15 years and three months, a Fox News analysis reveals. 

Out of the 28 delays the White House has decreed, 13 have involved changes designed to delay features of the law for one year or more so they will not hit before the 2014 midterm elections.  

Critics of the unpopular Obamacare program argue that President Barack Obama's 28 Obamacare changes trample on the Constitution because they were made without the consent of Congress. 

"This is a shameless act, a shameless power grab that is designed to help the president and his political party achieve a particular outcome in a partisan election," said Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). 

According to the RealClearPolitics average of polls, just 39% of Americans support Obamacare. 

Via: Breitbart

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Obama Admin Denies New Jersey Quick Access to Rock Salt

The Obama Administration has not approved a waiver that would allow New Jersey quick access to tons of salt for ice-covered roads at a port in Maine despite the state being at dangerously low levels.

Townsquare Media reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the state’s request for a waiver of the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring that all cargo and passengers moving between points in the United States be transported on American vessels.

A waiver would have allowed New Jersey to get the salt within days from a foreign transport in Searsport, Maine.

New Jersey Department of Transportation Spokesman Joe Dee told the Washington Free Beacon that a waiver from the Jones Act appears “unlikely.”

“We were pursuing a waiver, but we’ve been advised we wouldn’t get one,” Dee said. “It seems unlikely we will get it.”

DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The numerous winter storms this year have left New Jersey low on salt to treat their roads.

“The recent series of winter storms in New Jersey have reduced the supply of rock salt to critically low levels,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R.) wrote in an executive order prior to the latest Nor’easter that hit the state last week.

“Rock salt is an essential to maintaining safe travel on state, county, local, and interstate roads as a result of the dangerous and icy conditions during these winter storms,” Christie wrote.

The state is now scrambling to access rock salt.

Via: WFB

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Question for ObamaCare: Where's the money?

More numbers from Obama Care but we still don't know what the health of the program is.

According to POLITICO:

"The administration's monthly enrollment update showed 2.2 million people had picked health plans in the federal or state health exchanges from Oct. 1 through Dec. 28. It's not yet clear how many have paid their first monthly premium, a requirement before coverage can begin. An additional 3.9 million people have been deemed eligible for Medicaid. 

 

More than half of those who have signed up are between 45 and 64, an age range that tends to be sicker and costlier to cover, according to the enrollment figures released Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services."

So let me get this straight:

1. No young people, or the ones who will fund the ACA;

2. Too many older and sick people, or the ones who will very likely use the service; and,

3. We do not have official reports on the premiums collected.  Is the Obama administration afraid of releasing premium info because so few have paid?

It looks to me that The Affordable Health Care Act is in very bad health. The death spiral is literally here.

Via: American Thinker
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Is There An Obama Doctrine?

Six days before completing his negotiations with Iran, Secretary of State John Kerry told a somewhat confused assembly of Latin American diplomats that “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.” Greeted with (as the transcript has it) “tentative applause,” Kerry left his script to assure the audience “that’s worth applauding–that’s not a bad thing”–and accidentally to provide, as we’ll see, the best summary yet of the President’s foreign policy.

The uncertainty of Mr. Kerry’s audience should be excused, since the Monroe Doctrine as represented in his speech is wildly different from the historical original–and in all the ways we’ve come to expect from the Obama Administration. Monroe’s speech was a bold pronouncement by a still-young republic that European nations seeking to expand their empires should look elsewhere than the Americas. It was anti-colonial and explicitly reciprocal:

Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and manly policy, meeting in all instances the just claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none.

The actual Monroe Doctrine protected American independence and, by extension, the self-determination of the newly-independent South American republics. It was, in other words, the opposite of the imperialistic policy Mr. Kerry (perhaps ignorantly) repudiated and implicitly apologized for. One can never expect accuracy to get in the way when this Administration has an opportunity to score cheap political points (“that’s worth applauding”) at the expense of its always benighted predecessors.

Via: The Federalist

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HealthCare.gov team claims victory: 'We have met the goal'

The Obama administration claimed victory Sunday for making HealthCare.gov workable for the vast majority of users, a standard that will be tested as millions of people flood the site in the next three weeks.

Sunday marked the passage of the administration's self-imposed deadline for fixing the broken ObamaCare enrollment website, which serves consumers in 36 states.

The agency that oversees HealthCare.gov said "we believe we have met the goal" of making the system navigable for most people, but cautioned that more problems may lie ahead.

"Dramatic progress has been made," the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) stated in a report released Sunday morning. "[But] there is more work to be done to continue to improve and enhance the website."

The mixed message highlights the challenge facing the Obama administration as it seeks to ensure that millions can sign up for individual health plans online by the end of March.

HealthCare.gov debuted with serious technical problems on Oct. 1, plunging President Obama into a political firestorm that engulfed the White House for weeks.

The question now is whether the system can handle the high volume of user traffic expected in December.

Via: The Hill

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There’s No Fixing ObamaCare

Those who thought President Obama had “fixed” the inequities in his signature health-care legislation with an announcement last week should have been paying attention on Monday to the results of a meeting held in the White House with insurance industry CEOs. If the companies thought the administration was planning on helping them deal with the fallout from the president’s edict that those who had lost their coverage as a result of ObamaCare could get their old policies back, they were in for a rude awakening. Shifting gears to allow the president to claim that he is making good on his oft-repeated promise after following the law and cancelling those policies is going to create chaos for the industry as well as cost them a fortune. But though the whole mess is his fault, the president made it clear they will get no subsidies or help. Since the president’s solution will rely on companies to take a bath on this as well as the permission of state insurance commissioners, its highly doubtful that those negatively affected by the legislation will get much relief.

This is significant not just because it shows that the president’s hour-long press conference last week during which he apologized for his false promises–even as he made it obvious that he knew all along that his blanket proclamations that no one would lose their coverage or their doctor was false. Nor is it only important because it is one more of a series of problems about ObamaCare that began but certainly did not end with a dysfunctional website. The real issue here is that the problem that has been dumped on the insurance companies and the states with little hope that they can sort it out to the satisfaction of consumers is a foreshadowing of problems to come that we haven’t even imagined.

Via: Commentary

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Dems try going on offense: It’s Obamacare versus ‘Cruz Care’

I

n 2012, the meta-pundit narrative turned on whether the election would be a choice between two visions for the future (as Dems hoped) or a referendum on the anemic Obama status quo (as Republicans predicted). The outcome surprised observers who thought the weight of the bad economy made the latter inevitable.

Now Democrats are going to attempt a repeat performance around Obamacare, at a time when the law’s travails have triggered widespread predictions that it, too, will serve as the focus of a referendum, just as the Obama economy was supposed to last year.

I’m told the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is set to launch a new campaign designed to refocus the debate on the Republican position on health care, which Dems will widely label as ”Cruz Care.”

With Ted Cruz set to roll out his own health plan — one that will probably look like the usual grab bag of GOP reform ideas, which just aren’t a reform alternative to Obamacare – Dems plan to tar GOP Senate candidates across the country with it, by hitting them as proponents of “Cruz Care.” Many GOP candidates also embraced Cruz’s Obamacare-driven government shutdown.

Via: Washington Post

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Sen. Harry Reid Gets Ready to Go Nuclear

"The American people believe Congress is broken," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the floor Thursday morning. "The American people believe that the Senate is broken. And I believe that the American people are right."

With that, the Nevada Democrat set in motion a fight over changing the Senate's filibuster rules that has been years in the making. There were roughly 67 senators on the floor for Reid's remarks, which is very rare for the Senate.

The move for a rule change comes after a series of Republican filibusters on Obama nominees to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Reid said on the floor that he would like to see an up-or-down vote on nominations, not including the Supreme Court. Currently, those nominees need to receive 60 votes in order to cut off debate and move to the up-or-down vote.

The Senate, Reid said, has "wasted hours and wasted days between filibusters." The need for change, he said, "is so, so very obvious." He added, "It's time to change the Senate before the institution becomes obsolete."

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, second in command in the Republican Senate leadership, has already tweeted to call Reid's floor speech a "temper tantrum." Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke for about three minutes before Reid spoke.

McConnell came to the floor following Reid's speech, calling the rules debate a failed distraction from Obamacare. "This strategy of distract, distract, distract is getting old," he said. The filibuster challenge reminds Americans, McConnell said, of the Democrats "power grab" on Obamacare. Democrats, McConnell said, have attempted to "cook up a fake fight over judges."

The Kentucky Republican managed to squeeze in a joke at the expense of President Obama: "If you like the rules of the Senate, you can keep them!"

Via: National Journal

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2019: The Future of Doctors Under Obama Universal Coverage for Health (O.U.C.H.)

The year was 2019, in the third term of the Reign of Obama the Secular. Owing to an extreme left wing Supreme Court stacked with four Obama appointees, who managed to declare the United States Constitution itself unconstitutional to the extent that it limited the ability of the Great One to serve no more than two terms, Obama was well on his way to becoming the first President since Roosevelt to be elected to four terms.

A generation that voted for free stuff in 2008, 2012, and 2016 begat another generation of voters who wanted free stuff. In time, the number of voters expecting free stuff—and knowing they would get it from Uncle Sugar—reached a tipping point. They soon outnumbered those who worked, paid taxes, and created jobs. For the next decade they continued to vote for politicians who promised free stuff.  Of course, this ensured that the King of Free Stuff, Obama the Secular—who never met a government program he did not like—would be re-elected for life.

By 2019, the government had acquired Government Motors—which produced the Obamobile—a tinny scaled-down, politically correct Smart Car powered by chicken manure, which got 150 miles per gallon and rode two people and one sack of groceries comfortably. If you did not hit anything harder that a marshmallow, did not want to ride farther than ten miles, and did not need to carry anything, the Obamobile was great—and guaranteed not to crush you in an impact less than 5 miles per hour.

The government also owned the press, which had willingly volunteered to merge into a new federal agency comprised of ABC, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, named “The Department of ObaMedia,” whose mission it was to announce the whereabouts and accomplishments of the Great Leader, do Obama Infomercials and feed the people news as to any new government controls on their lives.  All banks were nationalized and combined into one mega bank—“ObamaNational.”

Via: Canada Free Press

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[VIDEO] Actor Steven Seagal Criticizes Obama Regime And Its Control Of Press, Defends Right To Bear Arms

Interesting RT interview with Steven Seagal; he praises Putin to some degree which no doubt RT appreciates since it is a media arm of the government.

Criticism of Obama starts around 6:00. He says basically the media are propaganda masters for Obama, we’re not getting the truth.

He also defends gun rights, the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms to protect against evil governments. He also suggests that some of the mass shootings are engineered. “Armed guards are in stores” Seagal said, “Why can we not protect our children?”. He went on to say the issue is really mental health and parenting. He notes that japan has some of the most violent movies, yet don’t have the issue of violence.

Via: Weasel Zippers

After Years Of Promising That Americans Can Keep Their Health Plan, Obama’s ObamaCare Spin Finally Comes Undone

SINCE 2010, OBAMA HAS KNOWN AMERICANS WON’T BE ABLE TO KEEP THEIR HEALTH PLANS UNDER OBAMACARE

The Obama Administration Has Known “For At Least Three Years” That Americans Who Like Their Health Insurance Won’t Be Able To Keep Their Plans Under ObamaCare. “President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under ObamaCare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.” (Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance,” NBC News, 10/28/13)

• NBC News Headline: “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance” (Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance,” NBC News, 10/28/13)

According To “Sources Deeply Involved In The Affordable Care Act,” 75 To 80 Percent Of Americans Who Buy Their Insurance Individually Can Expect To Receive A Cancellation Letter. “Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience ‘sticker shock.’” (Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance,” NBC News, 10/28/13)

“Buried In ObamaCare Regulations From July 2010” Is An Estimate That Found 40 To 67 Percent Of The Individual Insurance Market Will Not Be Able To Keep Their Plan.“Buried in ObamaCare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, ‘40 to 67 percent’ of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, ‘the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.’” (Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance,” NBC News, 10/28/13)

• “That Means The Administration Knew That More Than 40 To 67 Percent Of Those In The Individual Market Would Not Be Able To Keep Their Plans, Even If They Liked Them.” (Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance,” NBC News, 10/28/13)

After ObamaCare Was Signed Into Law, The Obama Administration Drafted Rules That Disqualified Certain “Grandfathered” Health Plans. “None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be ‘grandfathered,’ meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.” (Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye, “Obama Admin. Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance,” NBC News, 10/28/13)

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney Admitted “It’s True” That Some Americans Will Not Be Able To Keep Their Existing Individual Insurance Plans Due To ObamaCare. JAY CARNEY:  “Well, let’s just be clear.  What the President said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act that create minimum standards of coverage …  So it’s true that there are existing health care plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.” (White House Press Briefing, 10/28/13)

OBAMA HAS REPEATEDLY PROMISED AMERICANS THEY CAN KEEP THEIR OWN INSURANCE

Since July 2010, Obama Has Assured Americans – Over And Over – ObamaCare Would Allow Them To Keep Their Own Insurance 

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During The First 2012 Presidential Debate, Obama Promised ObamaCare Would Not Mean A “Government Take Over” And Would Allow You To “Keep Your Own Insurance.” BARACK OBAMA: “And let me tell you exactly what ‘ObamaCare’ did. Number one, if you’ve got health insurance it doesn’t mean a government take over. You keep your own insurance. You keep your own doctor. But it does say insurance companies can’t jerk you around.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks At Presidential Debate, Denver, CO, 

Via: GOP.com

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Questions Rarely Asked—and Never Answered

It Can't Happen Here?

What does it take to warn Americans about unchecked pension growth, socialized medicine, vast increases in entitlements, higher taxes, and steady expansion of government? In other words, what is it about Detroit, Italy, or Greece that we do not understand?

In the last five years, the Obama administration has raised taxes on the top income rates, implemented Obamacare, added millions to the disability and food stamp roles, grown the size of the federal work force, run up the national debt, and vastly expanded the money supply, along with insuring near zero interest rates. Are there any historical examples where these redistributive efforts have brought long-term tranquility and prosperity?

To put it another way, does anyone ask basic questions about human nature anymore? If one gives more incentives to obtain government support while unemployed, why would not fewer people be working? If the food stamp, unemployment, and disability rolls are markedly up, and if it is almost impossible to verify that recipients are also not working for unreported cash wages (we hear mostly of government efforts to add more to these programs, rather than to audit those already on them), why would one seek a “regular” job that would lose such subsidies and make all one’s income reportable? (We know two basic truths about the IRS in the age of Obama: first, it goes after political opponents in partisan fashion, and second, it gives away billions of dollars in federal income tax rebate credits to those who did not deserve them.)

If you allow illegal immigrants to enjoy full government subsidies, driver’s licenses, in-state tuition discounts, sanctuary cities, participation on juries, and all without fear of deportation, then why (a) would people not flock here illegally from Mexico, and (b) why after arriving would they go through the hassle of seeking citizenship when residency provides almost all the same benefits?

Via: PJ Media

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Court Lets FBI Keep Authorized Racial Profiling Secret

The U.S. has been side-swiped by a robust wave of political correctness, so it may be tough to believe that the nation’s Attorney General actually authorizes federal agents to engage in “limited racial and ethnic profiling” when conducting assessments of criminal and terrorist threats.

It’s probably something the Obama administration would prefer to keep quiet so as not to upset or alienate the president’s liberal base, but evidently it’s considered a valuable homeland security tool. Otherwise, why would this, the most leftist and politically correct administration of modern times, allow it to continue? Furthermore, why would the Obama Justice Department engage in a legal battle to make sure details of the “FBI’s use of ethnic and racial data” are kept secret?

The authorized racial and ethnic profiling began after the 9/11 Commission report determined that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) should be restructured to be the domestic equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). That included overhauling the FBI and revising its internal manual, known as the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide (DIOG). Among the manual’s revisions was permission for FBI agents to engage in limited racial and ethnic profiling when conducting proactive assessments of criminal and terrorist threats.

Specifically, the DIOG allows FBI agents to identify and map “locations of concentrated ethnic communities” if doing so would “reasonably aid the analysis of potential threats and vulnerabilities” and “assist domain awareness for the purpose of performing intelligence analysis.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) asserted this would encourage unlawful racial profiling and took the administration to court to obtain internal documents about the FBI’s use of ethnic and racial data.

As is often the case when a group or individual seeks government records, the FBI turned over some files, would neither confirm nor deny having a portion of the records and refused to provide a large stash. A federal judge ruled in favor of the government’s right to withhold hundreds of pages of documents and the ACLU appealed, determined to expose the administration’s racial profiling initiative.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the ACLU’s argument, ruling last week that the FBI has the right to protect the information. In its 21-page decision the court also rebuffs the ACLU’s claim that release of the limited public source information it seeks would not tip off targets or impede investigations. “This argument misses the obvious point that while the demographic data itself may be public, its use by the FBI is certainly not,” the court writes.

Via: Judicial Watch

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World’s anger at Obama policies goes beyond Europe and the NSA Published: October 25, 2013

WASHINGTON — Whether miffed over spying revelations or feeling sold out by U.S. moves in the Middle East, some of the United States’ closest allies are so upset that the Obama administration has gone into damage-control mode to ensure the rifts don’t widen and threaten critical partnerships.

The quarrels differ in their causes and degrees of seriousness. As a whole, however, they pose a new foreign policy headache for an administration whose overseas track record is seen in many quarters at home and abroad as reactive and lacking direction.

In Europe and the Middle East, rifts that once would’ve been quietly smoothed over have exploded into headlines and public remonstrations.

The uproar in Europe over revelations from fugitive former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the United States spied on as many as 35 government leaders, including Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, has become so great that early Friday 28 European leaders said Merkel and French President Francois Hollande would open negotiations with the United States over a “no-spying agreement.”

Via: McClatchy.com

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/25/206552/worlds-anger-at-obama-policies.html#storylink=cpy

When the Have Nots Become the Haves

All these transfer payments impoverish the working middle class who pay the biggest share of their income in taxes and empower those who receive the benefits

Saul Alinsky the political thinker who seems to have had more impact on President Obama than any other was very clear in his most important book about what his motives were and what he was aiming at, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. ‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

With the November Revolution of 2008, which gave us one party rule for two years, the Progressive Democrat party saw their chance and they took it. Within the two years it took for the people to realize they needed some balance the Progressives passed ObamaCare which effectively gives government control of 1/6 of the economy. They passed Dodd-Frank which gives them extensive control over the financialsector. When they couldn’t push Cap-N-Trade even through a rubber-stamp Congress the President imposed it by executive order. When they likewise failed to muster enough of their own hacks to pass the Dream Act once again it was imposed by fiat.

The anti-capitalist programs of the Progressive Bush Administration’s final days were continued and amplified by the Obama Administration. TARP was followed by the Stimulus. The takeover of AIG was joined by the take-over of the auto industry and by force feeding money into the economy for years of quantitative easing as the casino we call the stock market soars.

Unemployment reporting has become totally unhinged from reality as the real rate stays at levels which would easily shine the light of truth on the fiction of a recovery.

According to the government’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics the real unemployment rate (U-6) has been continuously above 13% for the last year. This information is readily available (one click of the mouse) and yet the media (including Fox) have told us day-by-day that it is falling and is now down to 7.2. This typifies the manufactured reality the federal government and the Corporations Once Known as the Mainstream Media shovel into the public trough. If the plagiarized opinions I hear my fellow citizens share everyday are any indication the average person accepts the fiction as reality.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Bitterly clinging to Obamacare

Campaigning during his first presidential run over five years ago, then Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was overheard at a private fund raiser among the extremely wealthy in San Francisco infamously stating: 

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

So how is the now President Obama (still D) helping these bitter clingers?  He's not.  As a matter of fact he is making their lives worse with Obamacare and his other laws and policies.  As the New York Times discovered about the (Un)Affordable Care Act.

Via: American Thinker

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Administration Grants Itself 3-Month Exemption from Individual Mandate

The Obama administration is granting itself a three-month exemption from the Obamacare mandate that requires individuals to buy health insurance—even though the exemption, as written into the law itself, was plainly intended to provide forbearance to individual citizens who failed to meet the mandate, not to an incompetent administration that has failed to effectively implement the law.

In July, the administration similarly unilaterally suspended for one year the Obamacare mandate that requires large employers to provide insurance to their workers.

In neither case did President Obama seek congressional action to change the terms of the law--even though Article 1 Section 3 of the Constitution says the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

“The Obama administration said Wednesday night that it will give Americans who buy health insurance through the new online marketplaces an extra six weeks to obtain coverage before they incur a penalty,” the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

“The announcement means that those who buy coverage through the exchange will have until March 31 to sign up for a plan, according to an official with the Department of Health and Human Services,” said the Post.

“The law also says that people will be fined only if they do not have coverage for three months in a row,” says the Post.

However, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act expressly mandates that individuals “shall” have government-approved health care coverage by January 2014, or else pay a fine. It then extends an exemption to the individual mandate to certain classes of people and also provides exemptions from the Obamacare penalty to individuals under certain circumstances—including those who have a continuous coverage gap of three months or less in any year after the mandate kicks in in January 2014.

Via: CNS News
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Al Gore: Keystone XL Is 'Ridiculous'

Former Vice President Al Gore speaks during the Center for American Progress' 10th Anniversary Conference in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 24. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images) | Getty

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WASHINGTON -- The proposed Keystone XL pipeline is "ridiculous" and "an atrocity," said former Vice President Al Gore on Thursday.

Speaking at an event honoring the 10th anniversary of the progressive think tank Center for American Progress, Gore praised President Barack Obama's efforts on climate change, stating that he thinks the president is sincere and that it will be a legacy issue for him. But on Keystone XL, which is waiting to hear its fate from the Obama administration, Gore was unequivocal. 

"I hope as he gets down to the licklog, as he gets down to the decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, that he understands what this means," Gore said. "This should be vetoed. It's an atrocity, it's a threat."

Gore, who just concluded his third annual 24 Hours of Reality event, compared the reliance on fossil fuels -- particularly those derived from tar sands, which the Keystone pipeline would spur further development of -- to a drug addiction.

"Junkies find veins in their toes when their arms and legs go out," Gore said. "We are now at a point where we are going after dangerous and dirty fuels."

Because the proposed pipeline crosses an international border, the northern part of it must get approval from the State Department before it can go forward. The issue has been a major source of controversy for the Obama administration, as environmental groups argue that the pipeline would exacerbate global warming.

In his climate speech last June, Obama said the pipeline should be approved only if it "does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution."

Via: Huffington Post

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