Monday, July 27, 2015
[VIDEO] FCC SHOULD FINE PEOPLE FOR ‘MISGENDERING’ TRANGENDERS, SAYS NBC’S ‘BLACK COMMENTATOR’
I’ve never heard of this nutty lady but she thinks that everyone should be fined by the FCC if they dare “misgender” a transgender person. That’s the loony liberal term for referring to a transgendered person with pronouns they don’t prefer.
Judge orders Obama administration to release illegal immigrants from 'deplorable' facilities
A federal judge in California has ruled that hundreds of illegal immigrant women and children in U.S. holding facilities should be released, another apparent setback for President Obama’s immigration policy, according to The Los Angeles Times.
U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said Friday that the conditions in which the detainees are being held are “deplorable” and violate parts of an 18-year-old court settlement that put restrictions on the detention of migrant children.
The ruling also raises questions about what the administration will do with the estimated 1,700 parents and children at three detention facilities, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania.
Last year, tens of thousands of women and unaccompanied minors from Central America arrived at the Southwest border, with many believing a rumor that unaccompanied children and single parents with at least one child would be allowed to stay.
More than 68,000 of them were apprehended and detained while officials decided whether they had a right to stay.
Many were being released and told to appear at immigration offices until the administration eventually opened new detention centers.
Gee said in her ruling that children in the two Texas facilities had been held in substandard conditions and gave the administration until Aug. 3 to respond.
“We are disappointed with the court's decision and are reviewing it in consultation with the Department of Justice,” Marsha Catron, press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a prepared statement given to The Times.
Many of the Central Americans who crossed the Southwest border illegally last summer said they were fleeing poverty and escalating gang violence.
The Texas facilities are run by private companies, while the one in Pennsylvania is run by a county government.
In February, a federal judge blocked Obama's 2012 executive action to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from being deported.
And a federal appeals court in New Orleans refused three months later to allow the program to go forward, denying an administration request to lift the lower court decision.
Gee’s decision is also seen as a victory for the immigrant rights lawyers who brought the case.
The ruling upholds a tentative decision Gee made in April and comes a week after the two sides told her that they failed to reach a new settlement agreement as she had requested.
The 1997 settlement bars immigrant children from being held in unlicensed, secure facilities. Gee found that settlement covered all children in the custody of federal immigration officials, even those being held with a parent.
The Justice Department had argued it was necessary to modify the settlement and use detention to try to deter more immigrants from coming to the border after last year's surge. The department also said it was an important way to keep families together while their immigration cases were being reviewed, but the judge rejected that argument in her decision.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
[VIDEO] Planned Parenthood President: ‘Militant’ Group Using ‘Sensationalized Videos’ to Smear Us
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards appeared on This Week Sunday morning and defended the women’s health organization against undercover videos released in the past two weeks purporting to show officials attempting to sell fetal organs for profit, something group strongly denies.
“This has been a three-year, well-funded effort by the most militant wing of the anti-abortion movement of this country to entrap doctors,” Richards said. “They were completely unsuccessful [at entrapping doctors], so now they’re using very highly edited videos, sensationalized videos, to try to impugn and smear the name of Planned Parenthood. They have zero credibility.”
Planned Parenthood in rare cases arranges the transfer of fetal tissue for medical research purposes, but denied it sold body parts for profit or altered its procedures in any way to make the sales more viable.
“If there’s no financial benefit to the clinics, why are they haggling over the cost?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“They’re not,” Richards said. “The only people that are haggling in these videos are the undercover folks…It’s completely taken out of context.”
Richards repeatedly maintained that the clinics did not benefit financially from the sale of fetal tissue, stressing that Planned Parenthood was 100% non-profit and that any money that changed hands was merely to cover transport costs. “This entire effort is a complete political smear campaign to cut off funding for basic health care for women in America,” she said.
She also defended the decision of woman to allow fetal tissue to be sold, which she said was a rare transaction anyway. “This isn’t something that should be criticized, this is laudable, that woman and their families choose to make fetal tissue donations in order to potentially save lives of other folks,” Richards said.
CA Dems push ambitious energy bill
A bold and controversial new bill, introduced by Senate President Pro Tempore and leading Democrat Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, advanced through the Assembly on the strength of Gov. Jerry Brown’s vociferous rhetoric on climate change.
As CBS Los Angeles reported, Brown tied his support for the legislation to his broader climate agenda, which has seen him praise Pope Francis’ recent encyclical on environmental matters and earn a trip to Vatican City to push for global change.
“‘We’ve got a serious problem here,’ he told KCAL9 Political Reporter Dave Bryan via satellite. ‘Burning oil and gas and coal and diesel is a big part of the problem. We’ve got to find new bio-fuels. We have to be more efficient. We’ve got a lot to do. And by the way, if we do nothing, the cost is unimaginable.’”
Brown has done his best to use his final term in office to amplify that message whenever possible. His trip to the Vatican, Sci-Tech Today noted, will be just “the latest of several international trips the governor has taken to urge others to do more to curb global warming. He’s also been rallying states and provinces to sign an agreement to match California’s target for reducing emissions by 2050.”
Stricter standards
While Brown has pushed the message, Democrat allies in Sacramento have crafted the content of regulations to match. De Leon’s bill, SB350, “imposes three significant clean-energy goals by 2030,” U-T San Diego’s Steven Greenhut observed: “Reducing the use of petroleum products in automobiles by 50 percent; increasing to 50 percent (from a current 33-percent goal) the amount of energy that uses renewable sources such as solar and wind power; and doubling energy-efficiency in current buildings.”
In fact, the legislation was crafted around achieving the outsized goals Brown set for ratcheting down California’s statewide emissions levels. As an interim step, the governor has proposed that the state “cut emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2030. It’s an ambitious target that members of his administration insist is achievable,” according to Sci-Tech Today.
De Leon himself has not shied away from using aggressive language to characterize the bill’s sweep and ostensible urgency, as Greenhut noted. “We need to break the stranglehold the profit-driven oil companies have on our economy and give consumers better options to power their homes and cars in cleaner, healthier and more sustainable ways,” de Leon said in remarks posted to his website.
Brown, for his part, has openly acknowledged the level of industry outrage the bill guarantees. “Well, of course, the people who are gonna sell 50 percent less petroleum are not only gonna have questions, they’re gonna have a fierce, unrelenting opposition,” he told KCAL-9.
But the coming regulatory shakeup has made for some strange industry bedfellows. “One of the issues both utilities and solar installers have raised,” according to GreenTech Solar, “is that distributed solar should not be treated any differently than utility-scale solar as the state crafts the rules around meeting the new 50 percent target.
UCLA Article: Government Should Provide ‘Free Tampons’ For ‘Individuals Who Menstruate As Women’ To ‘Slow Flow Of Gender Inequality’
Editor’s note: This blog post refers to individuals who menstruate as women because the author wanted to highlight gender inequality in health care. We acknowledge that not all individuals who menstruate identify as women and that not all individuals who identify as women menstruate, but feel this generalization is appropriate considering the gendered nature of most health care policies.
To most government officials, feminine hygiene products are a luxury item. But, every day, women are being poisoned by their own bodies because they lack access to even the most essential health products.
Meanwhile, most men have no problem getting covered for pills that will help them get a boner.
Although still greatly outnumbered and underpaid compared to their male counterparts, women have made so much progress. Yet inequality still lies in the most basic areas of human well-being. Women are still facing unequal treatment when it comes to health care and are paying out of pocket for necessary female health products, particularly tampons and pads.
It’s about time that the federal government recognizes that even the most basic health care needs to start subsidizing the cost of tampons and pads for women, or covering the cost completely. This is only fair, since health insurance is supposed to cover the major aspects of a person’s health. But more importantly, cutting the cost of these products is a crucial step in normalizing menstruation within society, and it provides women who may not have access to these resources the opportunity to feel clean and comfortable during their period.
Access to tampons would not only allow for healthy living during that time of the month, but also every day of the year. The provision of tampons, or at least a subsidy, would give many women, especially those living on the streets or living paycheck to paycheck, access to these necessary items and the ability to change them often without the fear of running out. Not changing a tampon frequently enough can lead to complications like toxic shock syndrome or blood poisoning, among other things, which can lead to permanent damage in women’s lives.
Aside from some forms of birth control or medical complications, nothing will stop a woman’s period. It’s a natural part of having a uterus that just can’t be helped.
Health care currently covers services such as sexually transmitted infection testing, birth control, abortion and even access to erectile dysfunction treatments such as penile implants.
Although erectile dysfunction is a problem, it is not one that all men are inherently born with. Menstruation, on the other hand, is something almost every woman deals with at some point in her life. It’s a bit ridiculous that surgeries for sexual needs are covered before everyday feminine hygiene products.
Once necessary items needed to maintain feminine wellness are made attainable, public amenities outside of health centers and doctors’ offices should join in normalizing access to feminine products. Public facilities such as restrooms, schools and theaters should provide tampons and pads to women who need them, when they need them.
[VDIEO] Kerry Repeats Claim – Evidently Wrong – About UN Resolution Language on Iran Missiles, Arms Embargo
CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration’s assertion that a key U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution predicates the lifting of arms and ballistic missile restrictions on Iran to Tehran’s willingness simply to come to the negotiating table, is evidently wrong.
Security Council resolution 1929 of 2010 does not say the restrictions will be lifted if Iran merely enters negotiations, as Secretary of State John Kerry and others have stated repeatedly since the nuclear deal was finalized on July 14.
Instead, paragraph 37 of the resolution says the measures will be lifted after Iran “suspends all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities,” to allow for negotiations; and after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified that Iran has fully complied with its obligations under relevant Security Council resolutions passed earlier, as well as with IAEA requirements relating to its nuclear activities.
Iran has neither suspended “all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities,” nor has the IAEA determined that Iran has complied with all of the relevant obligations and requirements. On the contrary, the IAEA has stated in numerous reports that Iran is contravening its obligations to suspend uranium enrichment and other activities.
Since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was announced, the administration has come under fire over the fact that it provides for a lifting of the conventional arms embargo and missile trade restrictions.
The two areas – conventional arms and ballistic missiles – are not directly linked to the nuclear program (even though they were included in earlier Security Council resolutions relating to the nuclear issue). This prompted critics to ask why the U.S. allowed Iran to insert them into the nuclear talks, even as it acceded to Iran’s refusal to include other non-nuclear issues on the agenda, such as the imprisonment of U.S. citizens in Iran.
Pushing back, the administration has characterized the issue as a diplomatic victory on its part, saying that P5+1 partners Russia and China wanted those sanctions lifted immediately, but that the U.S. and European allies stood firm, and succeeded in winning a five-year delay for a lifting of the arms embargo, and an eight-year delay in the case of the missile sanctions.
And in making the argument, Kerry in particular has pointed repeatedly to resolution 1929.
Most recently, he did so at an event at the Council of Foreign Relations on Friday.
Ann Coulter: Trump Could Win The Election
In a D.C.-based radio interview, best-selling author Ann Coulter Friday defended GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump and believes he could be a “nominee who could win” the election.
“Trump is different. We have been lied to for thirty years about immigration. That’s why Trump is striking this chord. He’s attractive. He’s tall. He’s hilariously funny. I think he could be not only a nominee who could win but a third party candidate who could win,” Coulter told WMAL Friday.
She admitted in the interview she has reversed her stance on opposing candidates who were not governors.
“The more I see Trump talk, the more it diminishes the other candidates,” Coulter said.
The “Adios, America!” author told WMAL a third party candidate would “be fantastic” considering the current Republican field for president.
“I promise you that if the nominee is Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry or really any of those midgets, our fate is sealed,” Coulter said. “The Republican isn’t winning if it’s Marco or Jeb Bush. It’s absolute madness… The polls show Donald Trump is way ahead.”
Coulter dismissed Trump’s “war hero” comments about Sen. John McCain in comparison to what other presidential candidates have done.
“Marco Rubio spent three years trying to push amnesty on the country. I think that’s a bigger mistake than some flip remark that was he was instantly retracting. And Jeb Bush who campaigned for about five years to give illegal aliens driver’s licenses and 13 of the 19 hijackers on 911 had Florida driver licenses. He calls illegal immigration an ‘act of love’ and those are rather more important mistakes,” Coulter told WMAL host Brian Wilson.
[VIDEO] NEW CALIFORNIA: MASS IMMIGRATION TURNING VIRGINIA BLUE
A remarkable transformation is underway in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The birthplace and final resting place of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson—and once one of the most reliably-red of red states—is being rapidly turned into a progressive stronghold.
These changes are not the result of an inside agency, or a natural evolution in political thinking, but rather the result of one of the most impactful yet least-discussed policies of the federal government.
Each year the federal government prints millions of visas and distributes these admission tickets to the poorest and least-developed nations in the world.
A middle-aged person living in parts of Virginia today will have witnessed more demographic change in the span of her life than many societies have experienced in millennia.
A census study entitled “Immigrants in Virginia,” released by University of Virginia (UVA) researchers, documented the phenomenon: “Until 1970, only 1 in 100 Virginians was born outside of the United States; by 2012, 1 in every 9 Virginians is foreign-born.”
Fairfax Connection, a community newspaper, offered more detail:
In the span of one generation, Fairfax County has seen an explosion in its immigrant population. In 1970, more than 93 percent of Fairfax County’s population was white and middle-class. In the fall of 1970, a white 6-year-old child beginning elementary school in one of the county’s developing towns… could look to his left, or look to his right, and see a classroom full of children who, at least 90 percent of the time, looked like him and who spoke English. By 2010, a child entering elementary school in Fairfax County would almost certainly encounter a classmate who did not speak English as a primary language, and whose parents or grandparents immigrated from places such as Vietnam, India, Korea or a country in Africa.
UVA’s report explains that more than three out of four of Virginia immigrants (77 percent) are coming from either Latin America or Asia—immigration from Europe, the report writes, “lag[s] far behind” representing only 10 percent of Virginia’s immigrant population. This is consistent with trends nationwide. According to the 2013 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Immigration Yearbook, only 8.7 percent of green cards issued by the federal government went to immigrants born in Europe, a product of immigration changes pushed through by Ted Kennedy in 1965.
WHEN SAM CRIED UNCLE
Never eat with your fingers, my late mother said, but when I am really hungry all bets are off. Never start driving with a cold engine, my mechanic said, but when I have to get somewhere fast all bets are off. Never extrapolate a principle from an anecdote, my logic teacher said, but when I need to report the voice of the people as a journalist all bets are off. The first Joe Sixpack I talk to is nominated as the Oracle of Delphi.
This brings us to the story of how I came to appreciate the greatness of the first Reagan Tax Cut at 30,000 feet.
Airborne over the heartland, sipping watered-down Diet Coke and munching on stale peanuts, having snickered my way through the pap in the airline “magazine” and made three abortive stabs at writing a column on the barf bag, I was left with no other choice: it was time to stop ignoring my seat neighbor. He was a nice guy about forty-five, with a thriving business, and the rare bird who would admit out loud to being a Republican.
The subject got around to my career and the evolution of my political consciousness. I talked about getting behind Reagan back in 1976, when I was just eighteen, talking him up to skeptics for four years, and then the exhilarating ride to victory in 1980. I described the legislative battles that began after that, pushing for the 1981 and 1986 tax cuts, and what a huge sea change was accomplished by getting the top tax rate down from seventy percent to as low as twenty-eight before it began inching its way back up to its current 39.6.
“Wait a minute,” he says, clearing his throat apologetically. “Are you trying to tell me they used to take seventy cents of tax off a dollar of earnings?”
OMG! It hit me like a sudden airplane lavatory flush, like a food service cart behind the knees, like a spasm of turbulence, like the credit card bill after the vacation. This guy who is forty-five now was just ten in 1980. He cannot even conceive of a world where you make a hundred dollars, 70 for Uncle Sam, 30 for you. Richard Daley getting the dead guys to vote in Chicago is not an image he can register. Tip O’Neill smoking his huge cigar poolside in Florida and cutting deals with labor leaders is not in his database.
This is a source of great pride for the GOP. Its accomplishments in the Reagan Era are what define the perimeter of today’s political spectrum. A politician who suggested a return to a seventy-percent rate could not get one percent of the vote even if he was running against Michael Vick for dog-catcher.
But I would argue the key to all of it, the Caitlyn Jenner moment when there was no turning back, came in the first Reagan tax cut, the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. Lowering the top rate from seventy to fifty provided the moral pivot. By rejecting the notion that the government can ever own more of your human output than you do, it revived the principle of the autonomy of the individual citizen. People can no longer be brainwashed into believing the ruling class knows better than we do how to run our lives.
All this happened in twenty-one days of astonishing leadership. The newly elected President Reagan had the Congress running scared. His popularity was immense and Democrats challenged him at their peril. A tide in the affairs of men had turned against them, and there were slings and arrows preventing them from stealing outrageous fortunes. With Reagan lifting the country’s spirits after the Carter malaise, and promising that his tax cut would restore the sovereignty of the individual without cutting the Treasury’s bottom line, the Democrats were stymied.
Twenty one days. The bill was introduced in the House on July 23, 1981. There were some wrangles and modifications; at one point the President had to go on TV and appeal to the citizenry. Popular opinion stood overwhelmingly with the President; on August 3rd and 4th, the two Houses of Congress passed the bill. By August 13, a scant three weeks after the bill began its odyssey, it was signed by a casual Ronald Reagan on his ranch in the hills of California. It was High Noon for Republicans, film noir for Democrats.
Via: American Spectator
Continue Reading....
Let’s Finish the Job: An Agenda for a New America
After careful deliberation, I am declaring my candidacy for President of the United States.
I know where our party is headed and I believe that we can reach our destination within a single term.
While other candidates may shrink from the tough decisions, or shroud them in euphemism, I will say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done.
I launch my campaign today, fellow Democrats, with a seven-part plan to realize the dream.
Under my administration, we will:
1. Manage aggressively the decline in American wealth, power and influence.
The agreement with the regime in Tehran can serve as a model for a new diplomacy, not only in the Middle East but elsewhere around the globe. That agreement will guarantee, in return for subventions from us, the acquisition of nuclear weapons by them. This asymmetrical approach turns conventional diplomacy on its head. With fresh approaches of this kind, we can establish a post-American international order that is long overdue.
2. Shrink the tax base.
We have demonstrated in recent cycles that, while we can win elections with the half of the electorate currently on public assistance, this constituency alone cannot govern with a strong hand. Our objective should be to exempt at least three-fourths of all eligible voters from income taxes, thus isolating and exposing the residual taxpayer class. This initiative will contain and ultimately extinguish so-called “taxpayer revolts” that have repeatedly disrupted progressivism’s advance.
3. Sap the authority of local law enforcement.
Whenever politically feasible, both POTUS and DOJ should “lean” toward citizen complaints over against city and state police personnel. Such Federal interventions should collaborate, openly where appropriate and off-screen where prudent, with both house media and our front-line grievance activists. Taken together with our efforts in prison reform, gun control and drug legalization, this initiative can break the grip of repressive police power over at-risk communities.
4. Secure the political base.
In political terms, legal immigration has been little better than a wash for us over the years. Moreover, it is a slow and operationally tedious approach to the rapid societal change we seek. Our proximate goal must be to secure voting rights for the millions of resident aliens who are currently “illegal,” to parrot the mindless rhetoric from the Right. The associated costs in health, welfare, and other public benefits are a small price to pay for this electoral game-changer – and our supporters won’t be paying it.
Bernie Sanders inadvertently makes the case against a $15 minimum wage
This is why socialists are economic ignoramuses. Even while they promote their income redistribution schemes, they inevitably run afoul of basic economic laws that any freshman in college learns in Econ 101.
Forbes Tim Worstall shows how Senator Bernie Sanders actually proves the case against a $15 an hour minimum wage on his own webpage:
This isn’t, perhaps, quite what Bernie Sanders thinks he is saying over on his Senate page but it is indeed what he is saying. He’s providing us with the proof perfect that a rise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour will costs jobs. For he’s telling us that the rise in the minimum wage will be paid for by a combination of three things. Firstly, a rise in prices of goods made by minimum wage labour. This will reduce the volume of such goods purchased (no, really, demand curves do slope downwards) and thus lead to less minimum wage labour being employed. Part of it will be paid for by lower profits. And yes, demand curves really do slope downwards meaning that fewer people will be interested in the profits that can be earned by employing minimum wage labour: thus less minimum wage labour will be employed. Finally, he tells us that there will be a forced rise in the productivity with which labour is used: and a rise in productivity is the same thing as stating that less labour will be used.
The problem with socialist/Marxist economics has always been that they attempt to create an alternate universe where up is down, black is white, and because they mean so well, the normal laws of economics simply do not apply. Seattle, which began to phase in a $15 minimum wage in May, is already reaping the whirlwind.
Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don’t lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent.
Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.
“If they cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn’t actually help get them out of poverty, all you’ve done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people,” said Jason Rantz, host of the Jason Rantz show on 97.3 KIRO-FM.
The twist is just one apparent side effect of the controversial -- yet trendsetting -- minimum wage law in Seattle, which is being copied in several other cities despite concerns over prices rising and businesses struggling to keep up.
The notion that employees are intentionally working less to preserve their welfare has been a hot topic on talk radio. While the claims are difficult to track, state stats indeed suggest few are moving off welfare programs under the new wage.
Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state’s welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376.
Prices are going up and those businesses most sensitive to labor costs are closing.
Looks like Bernie was right.
This isn’t, perhaps, quite what Bernie Sanders thinks he is saying over on his Senate page but it is indeed what he is saying. He’s providing us with the proof perfect that a rise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour will costs jobs. For he’s telling us that the rise in the minimum wage will be paid for by a combination of three things. Firstly, a rise in prices of goods made by minimum wage labour. This will reduce the volume of such goods purchased (no, really, demand curves do slope downwards) and thus lead to less minimum wage labour being employed. Part of it will be paid for by lower profits. And yes, demand curves really do slope downwards meaning that fewer people will be interested in the profits that can be earned by employing minimum wage labour: thus less minimum wage labour will be employed. Finally, he tells us that there will be a forced rise in the productivity with which labour is used: and a rise in productivity is the same thing as stating that less labour will be used.
Evidence is surfacing that some workers are asking their bosses for fewer hours as their wages rise – in a bid to keep overall income down so they don’t lose public subsidies for things like food, child care and rent.
Full Life Care, a home nursing nonprofit, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that several workers want to work less.
“If they cut down their hours to stay on those subsidies because the $15 per hour minimum wage didn’t actually help get them out of poverty, all you’ve done is put a burden on the business and given false hope to a lot of people,” said Jason Rantz, host of the Jason Rantz show on 97.3 KIRO-FM.
The twist is just one apparent side effect of the controversial -- yet trendsetting -- minimum wage law in Seattle, which is being copied in several other cities despite concerns over prices rising and businesses struggling to keep up.
The notion that employees are intentionally working less to preserve their welfare has been a hot topic on talk radio. While the claims are difficult to track, state stats indeed suggest few are moving off welfare programs under the new wage.
Despite a booming economy throughout western Washington, the state’s welfare caseload has dropped very little since the higher wage phase began in Seattle in April. In March 130,851 people were enrolled in the Basic Food program. In April, the caseload dropped to 130,376.
Watchdog report: Fake applicants were automatically re-enrolled in Obamacare
It shouldn’t come as a surprise anymore, but a new report has found yet another issue with Healthcare.gov.
A new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, found that 11 fictitious image: http://cdn.redalertpolitics.com/files/2014/11/Health-Overhaul-Open-_Dobs.jpg
people created as part of a watchdog effort to test for fraud detection were able to automatically re-enroll in Obamacare coverage.
This report, released by Congressional Republicans Wednesday, is a follow up to one from last year.
It found that the Healthcare.gov marketplace still had no way to test for fake documents.
Eleven out of the 12 people created for the test were able to maintain their coverage through the end of 2014 and then were automatically re-enrolled for 2015. Some were even re-enrolled despite not providing the additional documentation requested.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services defended its process by saying that there has been “no indication of a meaningful level of fraud,” but the GAO pointed out point that there could be fraud that officials do not know about because they are not equipped to detect it.
Congressional Republicans slammed the report’s findings.
“That the administration failed to weed out fake applicants one year later is yet another shocking development that, unfortunately, continues the trend of ObamaCare’s gross mismanagement at the expense of hardworking taxpayers,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), as quoted by The Hill.
“Last year, this committee warned that weaknesses in HealthCare.gov could put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk, and the GAO undercover review has confirmed our concerns,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said. “One year later, this investigation continues to reveal alarming flaws in the ObamaCare system.”
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Uber is the perfect poster child for the Republican economic agenda
When Uber got into a big fight with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Republican candidates for president leaped to Uber's defense. Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul have all praised the company. Ted Cruz has even compared himself to Uber.
Meanwhile, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton recently warned that the "on-demand, or so-called 'gig economy'" is "raising hard questions about workplace protections" — not an explicit reference to Uber but an allusion to a class of companies of which Uber is the largest and most prominent.
There's something a little bit backward about this, as Uber is most popular in big cities with less than universal car ownership and lots of Democratic voters. But that's part of the reason talking about Uber is good politics for Republicans. It could help the party appeal to young, urban professionals who lean toward Democrats on cultural grounds but might find things to like in the GOP's economic message. It helps to drive a wedge between Uber-using urban professionals and more traditional — or more deeply ideological — liberals who see Uber's "gig economy" model as a threat to worker rights.
Of course, Uber itself cares less about presidential politics than about local regulation, where things tend to be less partisan in practice. Some Republican officeholders have been hostile to Uber, while many Democratic ones have been supportive. When the rubber meets the road, ordinary interest-group politics wind up mattering more than ideological considerations. But that doesn't stop Uber from being a potent tool in national politics, serving as a symbol for liberal fears and conservative hopes.
Why Republican candidates love Uber
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Marco Rubio points toward a sharing-economy future. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Innovative businesses being held back by outdated regulations is a favorite conservative theme. And Uber makes an ideal poster child for this message. Uber was enabled by the invention of smartphones, and it solved a concrete problem — slow and unreliable taxi service — that many people encountered in their regular lives.
Taxi companies and their allies in city government are cast as the villains in the Uber morality play, trying to impose burdensome and arbitrary requirements on a company that had invented a better way of doing things.
Republican candidates for president have talked about Uber a lot on the campaign trail.
Jeb Bush made a point of riding in an Uber earlier this month during a campaign stop in San Francisco. Marco Rubio has been touting Uber for over a year, and he tweeted in support of Uber during this week's confrontation with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Ted Cruz compared himself to Uber last December, saying he hoped to disrupt Washington in the same way Uber has disrupted the taxi business. Rand Paul tweeted in defense of Uber earlier this month, and Scott Walker signed Uber-friendly legislation in May.
It's natural for conservatives to side with a business fighting regulators, but the inclination to highlight this particular business has a lot to do with political demographics. Republican voters tend to be older and more rural than Democrats. Uber has a young and disproportionately urban customer base. If Republicans can turn Uber into a salient example of government regulation, it could broaden the GOP's demographic appeal without compromising on conservative principles.
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