Why President Obama keeps the press away – playing golf with Tiger Woods doesn’t look good with 12 million Americans out of work and a $16 trillion debt
More details on the president’s golfing getaway at a highly exclusive club are provided by the Associated Press, which reported earlier:President Barack Obama played golf Sunday with Tiger Woods, the White House said Sunday. Once the sport's dominant player before his career was sidetracked by scandal, Woods joined Obama at the Floridian, a secluded and exclusive yacht and golf club on Florida's Treasure Coast where Obama is spending the long Presidents Day weekend. The two had met before, but Sunday was the first time they played together.
The White House, which has promised to be the most open and transparent in history, has prohibited any media coverage of Obama's golf outing.
The foursome also included Jim Crane, a Houston businessman who owns the Floridian and baseball's Houston Astros, and outgoing US Trade Representative Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Crane and Kirk also were part of Obama's foursome on Saturday, the White House said.President Obama’s latest mini-vacation follows in the wake of his lavish Christmas/ New Year holiday on Kailua Beach in Oahu, Hawaii, which cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $7 million. As veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler noted at the time:
In a move that is rich in irony, President Obama agreed Tuesday night to sign an emergency deficit reduction bill that does almost nothing to rein in spending and then jetted out to Hawaii to resume his vacation at an extra cost of more than $3 million to taxpayers.
The price tag is in addition to more than $4 million that is already being spent on the Obamas’ Hawaii idyll, bringing the total cost of the excursion to well over $7 million. The added cost was incurred because by the time the Obamas return from Hawaii – whenever that is – the president will have used Air Force One to travel to Honolulu and back twice.According to Koffler, "the total cost to taxpayers of Obama’s vacations to Hawaii since becoming president is likely in excess of $20 million, and possibly much, much more."
It is not hard to see why Barack Obama is rather camera shy over his latest golfing outing, this time with sports superstar Tiger Woods. The optics certainly don’t look good for a president who has in the past called on Americans to make sacrifices, while blatantly refusing to do so himself. It’s certainly not an image the president wants to project to the 12.3 million Americans who are out of work, or the millions more who are also seeking full-time employment. Nor does it suggest he is serious about reining in the $16.5 trillion of debt his government owes, $6 trillion of which was racked up in his first term of office. Flying Air Force One to Florida at a cost of about $180,000 per hour hardly sends the right message to US taxpayers, who have just seen their payroll taxes go up. This is the latest demonstration of an overwhelming culture of impunity in a celebrity-obsessed Obama White House, frequently coupled with a disturbing lack of transparency that would be roundly condemned by the likes of The New York Times, NBC, or CBS if a Republican were in office. It is also a presidency that is rife with hypocrisy, as Obama’s words in Virginia in April 2011 perfectly convey:
We are going to have to ask everybody to sacrifice. And if we’re asking community colleges to sacrifice, if we’re asking people who are going to see potentially fewer services in their neighborhoods to make a little sacrifice, then we can ask millionaires and billionaires to make a little sacrifice.http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100202609/why-president-obama-keeps-the-press-away-playing-golf-with-tiger-woods-doesnt-look-good-with-12-million-americans-out-of-work-and-a-16-trillion-debt/
Updated: Ohio Poll Worker Voted For Obama...6 Times?
Two weeks ago, John Fund brought us news from Ohio of democratic poll watcher Melowese Richardson proudly voting for President Obama twice in November. Now, it looks as though Richardson may have voted as many as six times for Obama, twice under her name and four times under the names of others.The Obama/Biden lawn sign remains proudly planted in front of Melowese Richardson's Cincinnati home, three months after the presidential election.If these allegations prove to be true, that's a lot of votes and these are only the people who got caught.
It seems that President Obama has an especially ardent supporter in the veteran Ohio poll worker.
Richardson told a local television station this month that she voted twice for Obama last November. She cast an absentee ballot and then voted at the polls as well.
"Yes, I voted twice," Richardson told WCPO-TV. "I, after registering thousands of people, certainly wanted my vote to count, so I voted. I voted at the polls."
Authorities also are investigating if she voted in the names of four other people, too, for a total of six votes in the 2012 presidential election.
"I'll fight it for Mr. Obama and for Mr. Obama's right to sit as president of the United States," Richardson vowed when asked about the voter fraud investigation that is now under way.
Richardson is one of 19 people suspected of illegal voting by the Hamilton County Board of Elections in the last election.
"It appears she not only attempted to vote more than once, but was actually successful at it and having those additional votes counted," Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, who is in charge of the state's elections, told Fox News.Although Ohio has a voter identification law in place, it doesn't have many teeth considering people can still vote without proper identification so long as they swear they are who they say they are.
"She appears to have used her position as a poll worker to cover her tracks. That would be someone who is an official in the elections process, using that position to commit a fraud. That is especially troubling to me, as the chief elections officer of the state, because it is my responsibility to make sure the system runs effectively, that it has integrity. When I find issues like this, I know that it undermines voter confidence in our elections, and we must pursue it."
A voter presenting an Ohio driver’s license that shows the voter’s former address is permitted to cast a regular ballot so long as the voter’s current residential address is printed in the official poll list of registered voters for that precinct. Voters who do not provide one of these documents at the precinct will still be able to vote using a provisional ballot. Voters who do not have any of the above forms of identification, including a Social Security number, will still be able to vote by signing an affirmation statement swearing to the voter’s identity under penalty of election falsification and by casting a provisional ballot.In early 2012, another woman in Ohio was convicted of a felony for falsifying signatures.
A Fairfield County woman will serve jail time for providing two false signatures on a liquor-option petition filed with the county Board of Elections last year.http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/02/19/updated-ohio-poll-worker-voted-for-obama6-times-n1515548
County Common Pleas Judge Richard E. Berens sentenced Melissa R. Schilling, 46, of Baltimore, on Friday, after she pleaded guilty to two counts of the fifth-degree felony, a court spokesman said.
PK'S NOTE: a.k.a. We must avoid these dangerous spending cuts that I signed into law
Video: Obama Angrily Denounces His Own Idea
Fresh off his weekend golf trip with Tiger Woods, President Obama attacked Republicans this morning for refusing to raise taxes as part of a deal to avert the looming "sequester" cuts -- which his administration championed and he signed into law. Here's a particularly alarmist snippet from Obama's prepared remarks (he took no questions from reporters), via the Examiner:"[First responders'] ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded. Border patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go...These cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will hurt our economy, they will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls."
And who, pray tell, is primarily responsible for these "not smart , not fair," job-destroying, chaos-creating cuts? Over to you, liberal reporter Bob Woodward:
"It was the White House. It was Obama and Jack Lew and Rob Nabors who went to the Democratic Leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, and said, '[the sequester] is the solution.'"
Woodward went on to say that "everyone has their fingerprints" on the package of cuts -- which is true to a large extent. The idea was the Obama administration's brain child, they proposed it, members of both parties in both houses voted for the 2011 debt deal (in which the sequester was embedded), and the president affixed his signature to it. He also threatened to veto Republicans' attempts to make the cuts more responsible and targeted. But now, as Obama tells it, America faces a sequester-induced apocalypse, and it's all the GOP's fault. Criminals will run free. Airport delays will get worse. Fires will burn unfought. Puppies will go uncuddled. All because Republicans are willing to allow the president's own proposal to go into effect. Has Obama offered a detailed plan to offset sequestration? He has not, but he's hitching his wagon to Senate Democrats' plan -- half of which is paid for through new tax increases, while the other half remains heavy on defense cuts. Obama refers to these tax increases as "tax reform," because they would reduce and close loopholes and tax subsidies for certain families and corporations. This would include gimmicks like the Buffett Rule and corporate jet depreciation tweaks. But the genuine tax reform that Republicans have agreed to in principle refers to cutting out clutter in our tax code by closing loopholes and deductions in exchange for lowering tax rates. This approach tracks closely with the recommendations of Obama's own fiscal commission, which he promptly ignored. Indeed, Obama just raised tax rates on families and small businesses, and now he's demanding that Uncle Sam come back for another big bite. He insists that Republicans replace hundreds of billions in previously-agreed-to spending reductions that he signed into law with additional tax increases -- which will likely end up funding more spending. This is a total nonstarter.
The American public recognizes the federal government's spending problem, which is driven by precisely the sort of political demagoguery that we saw this morning. These cuts amount to 2.4 percent of the overall budget, which has been wildly out of balance for five years. It's true that these cuts aren't structured ideally, which is why Republicans have offered several rounds of offsetting cuts, all of which have been dismissed by Democrats. If Obama is truly horrified by the implications of these spending reductions, he should stop looking for people to blame and take a look in the mirror. If he honestly believes the sequester will set violent criminals loose to terrorize the public, perhaps he should have thought about that consequence when he signed it into law. If he really thinks these cuts will decimate the middle class, maybe he shouldn't have reflexively rebuffed GOP attempts to revise them. And if he's convinced that his own plan will spike unemployment, why did he brag about it on the campaign trail as as evidence of his "deficit reduction" commitment? Congressional Republicans must combat Obama's dishonest bullying and shut down his latest tax-hiking class warfare ploy. Be very afraid, America:
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/02/19/video-obama-angrily-denounces-his-own-idea-n1515539
Higher Education: Ivy League Prof Strips Down to Underwear and Plays Footage of 9/11, Hitler on First Day of Quantum Physics Course
On the first day of his quantum physics
course at Columbia University, an Ivy League institution, professor
Emlyn Hughes figured it best to strip down to his underwear to change
outfits in front of his class and play footage of the 9/11 attacks,
Adolf Hitler, North Korea and Saddam Hussein.
The “Frontiers of Science” course is
reportedly one of Columbia University’s core classes. Watch the video
taken by someone in the classroom (Warning: Music in clip contains explicit language):
FroSci Gone Wild from Bwog on Vimeo.
As Gawker points out, the Columbia University gossip blog “Bwog” provides some insider information:
According to our reports, the first class of the physics unit was running a bit late when the lights went out. When they came back on, professor Emlyn Hughes was in the spotlight.[...] and he started to undress and put on a hoodie and sunglasses. After that, he curled up into a fetal position in his chair as images of 9/11, Nazi Germany, and North Korea started playing on the projector.
And just when students thought it
couldn’t get any more strange, ninjas appeared and smashed puppets
onstage with what looks like a samurai sword. The entire scene occurred
while Lil’ Wayne’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” played in the background.
While the majority of the song is literally too explicit to include, here’s a very small taste of some of the lyrics (WARNING: Explicit language):
First I need you to bend both knees, wobble that a** right
Then pop that p****, to the left one time, the right two times
Show a ni**** something, put it on a ni**** mind, come on, come on
Now twerk it b**ch, ain’t no need to hold in it, what you working with
You want a hot boy, is it worth it b**ch?
Then break a ni**** off, let me hurt you b**ch, let me hurt you b**ch
If you want to hear the entire song that was played for students at Columbia University, you can listen to the song on YouTube. But again, we stress that the song is extremely graphic and profane.
“In order to learn quantum mechanics,
you have to strip to your raw, erase all the garbage from your brain and
start over again,” the professor says after the presentation. “Quantum
mechanics — nothing you have learned in your life up to now has in any
way helped prepared you for this. Because everything you do in your
everyday life is totally opposite of what you are going to learn in
quantum mechanics.”
Keep in mind, it costs about $22,000
a semester to attend Columbia. While the crazy antics displayed by
Hughes were clearly entertaining to some of the students, some of the
parents who are footing the bill so their kids can get a quality
education are probably not as thrilled with this particular “lesson.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/18/higher-education-ivy-league-prof-strips-down-to-underwear-and-plays-footage-of-911-hitler-on-first-day-of-quantum-physics-course/
PK'S NOTE: You should have let them see the golfing this weekend, Barry, some of them woke up for a moment.
‘Obama Is a Master at Limiting, Shaping and Manipulating Media Coverage’: The 10 Most Scathing Remarks From Politico’s Anti-Obama Media Column
“President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.”
If anyone asked you where those remarks
came from, you’d likely say it was some conservative news outlet or
blog. You might even say it was the rant of a Republican pundit.
But you would be wrong on all levels.
That quote is actually the opening line to a scathing, four-page column by Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen on Politico.
“Not for the reason that conservatives
suspect: namely, that a liberal press willingly and eagerly allows
itself to get manipulated,” the column continues, offering a defense for
the press and placing full blame on the White House. “Instead, the
mastery mostly flows from a White House that has taken old tricks for
shaping coverage (staged leaks, friendly interviews) and put them on
steroids using new ones (social media, content creation, precision
targeting). And it’s an equal opportunity strategy: Media across the
ideological spectrum are left scrambling for access.”
Still, in the accompanying video
version of the story, Vandehei admits that while the critique of Obama
being a “puppet master” who pulls strings to get favorable coverage is
generally a conservative critique, it is an “accurate one”:
The anger from the press came to a head this past weekend when the press
corps wasn’t allowed full access to the president’s golf vacation (read our original story here).”That
breached the tradition of the pool ‘holding’ in the clubhouse and often
covering — and even questioning — the president on the first and last
holes,” Politico explains.
The practice of self-insurance, whereby companies assume the financial risk for their employee’s health care costs, has traditionally been a game for big-companies. But Obamacare incentivizes smaller companies to take advantage of this method for avoiding paying premiums to commercial insurers.
Self-insuring companies protect themselves from big health care claims (like cancer treatments, for example) with what is colloquially called “stop-loss” insurance. Stop-loss insurers are exempt from many of the restrictions placed on traditional insurers and are able to deny coverage to companies with older, less healthy workers.
The worst-case scenario here seems plausible. The healthiest companies, both big and small, self-insure, while those with older, sicker workers are forced to stick with Obamacare after being denied stop-loss insurance. Traditional health insurers will be left with a customer base disproportionately in need of medical services, while the young and healthy who used to subsidize these costs enjoy the unfettered world of self-insurance. This will cause premiums to rise for older workers, creating a system that is unsustainable in the long run.
The Obama administration seems to have realized that this might be a problem and is considering rules that would discourage small companies from self-insuring, but Republican Senators are vowing to block any further regulations.
The core problem with Obamacare is that it depends on ripping off the young and healthy to subsidize the old and infirm. On the one hand, we’re glad that young people are able to escape the clutches of this trap, but we can’t help but notice that their escape will bankrupt the system. It’s almost as if the politicians didn’t read the law before they passed it, and had no idea how its various provisions would cause car crashes as they tried to roll it out.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/02/18/another-day-another-crack-in-obamacare/
Colorado morons want to leave women defenseless: “Vomiting or urinating” better than carrying a gun
By Michelle Malkin
Two items for you that will make your blood boil, especially the womenfolk out there:
1) The first via Jesse Byrnes here in Colorado…here’s what the University of Colorado- Colorado Springs advises innocent victims to do when they fall prey to attackers:
What To Do If You Are Attacked
These tips are designed to help you protect yourself on campus, in town, at your home, or while you travel. These are preventative tips and are designed to instruct you in crime prevention tactics.
Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.
Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.
Don’t take time to look back; just get away.
If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.
Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.
Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.
Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.
They forgot a surefire deterrent: Dress up as a Code Pink activist.
More UCCS Tips to come…
- Offer your attacker a joint. It’s legal in Colorado!
- If vomiting or urinating doesn’t work, try passing gas.
2) Via Dana Loesch and Revealing Politics, Colorado state rep. John Salazar doesn’t think women need a gun to protect them from rapists. Instead, they should be happy with rape whistles. Click the links for video.
“Passive resistance” is what the gun-grabbers want to impose on all of us.
Time to fight like a girl.
Contact Colorado Democrat Rep. Joe Salazar…
JOSEPH SALAZAR
State Representative – District 31
Office Location: 200 East Colfax
Denver, CO 80203
Capitol Phone: 303-866-2918
E-Mail: joseph.salazar.house@state.co.us
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/02/18/colorado-morons-want-to-leave-women-defenseless-vomiting-or-urinating-better-than-carrying-a-gun/
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its second batch
of emails from former administrator Lisa Jackson’s secret email address
Friday, but the researcher who sued the agency to obtain the records
says it improperly redacted nearly all of the information.
The emails, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), are from Jackson’s pseudonymous, secondary email account under the name “Richard Windsor.”
The emails are the second of four batches of roughly 12,000 emails from the “Richard Windsor” account the EPA has been ordered to disclose.
CEI senior fellow Christopher Horner first reported the existence of Jackson’s secret email address in his book, The Liberal War on Transparency.
EPA officials heavily redacted Friday’s release, omitting all but the most mundane communications. Meeting schedules, discussions of media coverage, and nearly all other content were redacted.
The EPA relied mostly on the “deliberative process” FOIA exemption, which allows agencies to redact intra-agency communications. The argument for the rule is that disclosing internal debates could chill officials’ ability to have forthright discussions about policy. However, critics say the exemption gives agencies wide latitude and potential for abuse.
For example, an aide forwarded an email to Jackson from a corporate headhunter seeking a recommendation for a “Climate Change Practice Leader in the Washington D.C. area” for an unnamed firm.
Jackson’s response was redacted.
Portions of emails were redacted in some instances, yet those same emails were quoted in full later on in the email chain.
“The only saving grace of this debacle is that, on their face, the overwhelming majority of these claims of ‘deliberative process’ appear to have nothing to do with the sort of agency deliberation that qualifies for withholding,” Horner told the Washington Free Beacon.
He said the exemptions “look to be abusive efforts to avoid embarrassing revelations about mystery meetings on Jackson’s schedule, planning spin for, and then characterizing, interviews and media coverage, and so on.”
Attorney General Eric Holder issued new FOIA guidelines for federal agencies in 2009, instructing them to adopt a presumption in favor of disclosing information to the public.
“On its face this offers promiscuous abuses of what Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged was FOIA’s most-abused provision, which he swore would no longer be so abused,” Horner said. “But, like all of this administration’s ‘transparency’ rhetoric, they were only thinking about Bush administration documents when striking the grand poses. It never occurred to them that transparency could soon involve them.”
The EPA also invoked a privacy exemption to redact information in several bizarre instances.
According the Justice Department, the privacy exemption permits the government to withhold information about individuals when disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Among the redacted information was an email from EPA General Counsel Scott Fulton to Jackson in which he inquired about the existence of turducken—a meat dish in which chicken is stuffed in a duck, which is then stuffed in a turkey.
“Separate and more important question: is there such a thing as a turduckin [sic] (a New Orleans dish)? Was [REDACTED] and they mentioned this. Not sure if they were pulling my leg.”
EPA Facilities Management & Services Director Bridget Shea, in another email, wrote to the EPA deputy chief of staff regarding several paintings the agency was trying to obtain on loan from the Smithsonian.
However, the names of the paintings in question were redacted under the privacy exemption.
“The painting entitled [REDACTED], while available, may not be an appropriate fit as it is 8 feet tall,” Shea wrote.
EPA officials have previously told the Free Beacon Jackson’s use of a second account was standard practice and a necessary one because of the hundreds of thousands of emails that flood her public inbox. The agency also said Jackson’s secret account was included in FOIA disclosures.
However, government watchdogs contend Jackson’s use of a secret email address is a possible violation of federal record laws.
“Administrator Jackson’s practice of using fictitious email accounts to conduct official EPA business, shielding the contents from public view, conflicts directly with her responsibility to follow federal records law,” said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Executive Director Melanie Sloan in a statement. “The fact that others may have engaged in such conduct before her tenure is no justification.
‘Everybody does it’ is an excuse for kindergarteners, not cabinet officials.” The Daily Caller first identified Jackson’s secret alias in November.
Politico later reported “Richard Windsor” is the name of the Jackson family dog. The EPA inspector general is currently investigating Jackson’s use of the secret email address, as are several congressional committees. Jackson stepped down as EPA administrator in December.
The EPA was not available for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/whole-lotta-redactin-going-on/
Also Reads
The Politico article is filled with
plenty of shots at the president and administration that vowed to be the
most transparent. So we’ve included 10 of the most scathing sections
that capture just how icy the press relationship has become.
10. President Barack Obama is a master at limiting, shaping and manipulating media coverage of himself and his White House.
9. “The White House
gets away with stuff I would never have dreamed of doing. When I talk to
White House reporters now, they say it’s really tough to do business
with people who don’t see the need to be cooperative.” — Former Bill
Clinton Press Secretary Mike McCurry
8. The president has
shut down interviews with many of the White House reporters who know the
most and ask the toughest questions. Instead, he spends way more time
talking directly to voters via friendly shows and media personalities.
Why bother with The New York Times beat reporter when Obama can go on
“The View”?
7. Obama boasted
Thursday during a Google+ Hangout from the White House: “This is the
most transparent administration in history.” The people who cover him
day to day see it very differently.
6. “The way the
president’s availability to the press has shrunk in the last two years
is a disgrace,” said ABC News White House reporter Ann Compton, who has
covered every president back to Gerald R. Ford. “The president’s
day-to-day policy development — on immigration, on guns — is almost
totally opaque to the reporters trying to do a responsible job of
covering it. There are no readouts from big meetings he has with people
from the outside, and many of them aren’t even on his schedule. This is
different from every president I covered. This White House goes to extreme lengths to keep the press away.” [Emphasis added]
5. But something is
different with this White House. Obama’s aides are better at using
technology and exploiting the president’s “brand.” They are more
disciplined about cracking down on staff that leak, or reporters who
write things they don’t like. And they are obsessed with taking
advantage of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and every other social media
forums, not just for campaigns, but governing.
4. Conservatives assume a cozy relationship between this White House and the reporters who cover it. Wrong. Many reporters find Obama himself strangely fearful of talking with them and often aloof and cocky when he does. They find his staff needlessly stingy with information and thin-skinned about any tough coverage. He
gets more-favorable-than-not coverage because many staffers are fearful
of talking to reporters, even anonymously, and some reporters
inevitably worry access or the chance of a presidential interview will
decrease if they get in the face of this White House. [Emphasis added]
3. *The super-safe,
softball interview is an Obama specialty. The kid glove interview of
Obama and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by Steve Kroft of
CBS’s “60 Minutes” is simply the latest in a long line of these. Obama
gives frequent interviews (an astonishing 674 in his first term,
compared with 217 for President George W. Bush), but they are often with
network anchors or local TV stations, and rarely with the reporters who
cover the White House day to day.
2. * There’s the
classic weekend document dump to avoid negative coverage. By our count,
the White House has done this nearly two dozen times, and almost always
to minimize attention to embarrassing or messy facts. “What you guys
call a document dump, we call transparency,” the White House’s Earnest
shot back. If that’s the case, the White House was exceptionally
transparent during the Solyndra controversy, releasing details three
times on a Friday.
1. * While White House
officials deny it is intentional, this administration —like its
predecessors — does some good old-fashioned bullying of reporters:
making clear there will be no interviews, or even questions at press
conferences, if aides are displeased with their coverage.
PK'S NOTE: My favorite quote: “This administration loves to boast about how transparent they are, but
they’re transparent about things they want to be transparent about,”
said Mark Knoller, the veteran CBS News reporter. “He gives interviews
not for our benefit, but to achieve his objective.”
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/19/obama-is-a-master-at-limiting-shaping-and-manipulating-media-coverage-the-10-most-scathing-remarks-from-politicos-anti-obama-media-column/
Another Day, Another Crack in Obamacare
Self-insurance is the latest loophole that could implode Obamacare. The news comes courtesy of the New York Times, which was a strong supporter of the measure when it was working its way through Congress but has lately devoted much of its coverage to the law’s numerous problems.The practice of self-insurance, whereby companies assume the financial risk for their employee’s health care costs, has traditionally been a game for big-companies. But Obamacare incentivizes smaller companies to take advantage of this method for avoiding paying premiums to commercial insurers.
Self-insuring companies protect themselves from big health care claims (like cancer treatments, for example) with what is colloquially called “stop-loss” insurance. Stop-loss insurers are exempt from many of the restrictions placed on traditional insurers and are able to deny coverage to companies with older, less healthy workers.
The worst-case scenario here seems plausible. The healthiest companies, both big and small, self-insure, while those with older, sicker workers are forced to stick with Obamacare after being denied stop-loss insurance. Traditional health insurers will be left with a customer base disproportionately in need of medical services, while the young and healthy who used to subsidize these costs enjoy the unfettered world of self-insurance. This will cause premiums to rise for older workers, creating a system that is unsustainable in the long run.
The Obama administration seems to have realized that this might be a problem and is considering rules that would discourage small companies from self-insuring, but Republican Senators are vowing to block any further regulations.
The core problem with Obamacare is that it depends on ripping off the young and healthy to subsidize the old and infirm. On the one hand, we’re glad that young people are able to escape the clutches of this trap, but we can’t help but notice that their escape will bankrupt the system. It’s almost as if the politicians didn’t read the law before they passed it, and had no idea how its various provisions would cause car crashes as they tried to roll it out.
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/02/18/another-day-another-crack-in-obamacare/
Colorado morons want to leave women defenseless: “Vomiting or urinating” better than carrying a gun
By Michelle Malkin
Two items for you that will make your blood boil, especially the womenfolk out there:
1) The first via Jesse Byrnes here in Colorado…here’s what the University of Colorado- Colorado Springs advises innocent victims to do when they fall prey to attackers:
What To Do If You Are Attacked
These tips are designed to help you protect yourself on campus, in town, at your home, or while you travel. These are preventative tips and are designed to instruct you in crime prevention tactics.
Be realistic about your ability to protect yourself.
Your instinct may be to scream, go ahead! It may startle your attacker and give you an opportunity to run away.
Kick off your shoes if you have time and can’t run in them.
Don’t take time to look back; just get away.
If your life is in danger, passive resistance may be your best defense.
Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating.
Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone.
Yelling, hitting or biting may give you a chance to escape, do it!
Understand that some actions on your part might lead to more harm.
Remember, every emergency situation is different. Only you can decide which action is most appropriate.
They forgot a surefire deterrent: Dress up as a Code Pink activist.
More UCCS Tips to come…
- Offer your attacker a joint. It’s legal in Colorado!
- If vomiting or urinating doesn’t work, try passing gas.
2) Via Dana Loesch and Revealing Politics, Colorado state rep. John Salazar doesn’t think women need a gun to protect them from rapists. Instead, they should be happy with rape whistles. Click the links for video.
“Passive resistance” is what the gun-grabbers want to impose on all of us.
Time to fight like a girl.
Contact Colorado Democrat Rep. Joe Salazar…
JOSEPH SALAZAR
State Representative – District 31
Office Location: 200 East Colfax
Denver, CO 80203
Capitol Phone: 303-866-2918
E-Mail: joseph.salazar.house@state.co.us
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/02/18/colorado-morons-want-to-leave-women-defenseless-vomiting-or-urinating-better-than-carrying-a-gun/
Whole Lotta Redactin’ Going On
EPA releases thousands of heavily redacted emails from secret account
The emails, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), are from Jackson’s pseudonymous, secondary email account under the name “Richard Windsor.”
The emails are the second of four batches of roughly 12,000 emails from the “Richard Windsor” account the EPA has been ordered to disclose.
CEI senior fellow Christopher Horner first reported the existence of Jackson’s secret email address in his book, The Liberal War on Transparency.
EPA officials heavily redacted Friday’s release, omitting all but the most mundane communications. Meeting schedules, discussions of media coverage, and nearly all other content were redacted.
The EPA relied mostly on the “deliberative process” FOIA exemption, which allows agencies to redact intra-agency communications. The argument for the rule is that disclosing internal debates could chill officials’ ability to have forthright discussions about policy. However, critics say the exemption gives agencies wide latitude and potential for abuse.
For example, an aide forwarded an email to Jackson from a corporate headhunter seeking a recommendation for a “Climate Change Practice Leader in the Washington D.C. area” for an unnamed firm.
Jackson’s response was redacted.
Portions of emails were redacted in some instances, yet those same emails were quoted in full later on in the email chain.
“The only saving grace of this debacle is that, on their face, the overwhelming majority of these claims of ‘deliberative process’ appear to have nothing to do with the sort of agency deliberation that qualifies for withholding,” Horner told the Washington Free Beacon.
He said the exemptions “look to be abusive efforts to avoid embarrassing revelations about mystery meetings on Jackson’s schedule, planning spin for, and then characterizing, interviews and media coverage, and so on.”
Attorney General Eric Holder issued new FOIA guidelines for federal agencies in 2009, instructing them to adopt a presumption in favor of disclosing information to the public.
“On its face this offers promiscuous abuses of what Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged was FOIA’s most-abused provision, which he swore would no longer be so abused,” Horner said. “But, like all of this administration’s ‘transparency’ rhetoric, they were only thinking about Bush administration documents when striking the grand poses. It never occurred to them that transparency could soon involve them.”
The EPA also invoked a privacy exemption to redact information in several bizarre instances.
According the Justice Department, the privacy exemption permits the government to withhold information about individuals when disclosure “would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Among the redacted information was an email from EPA General Counsel Scott Fulton to Jackson in which he inquired about the existence of turducken—a meat dish in which chicken is stuffed in a duck, which is then stuffed in a turkey.
“Separate and more important question: is there such a thing as a turduckin [sic] (a New Orleans dish)? Was [REDACTED] and they mentioned this. Not sure if they were pulling my leg.”
EPA Facilities Management & Services Director Bridget Shea, in another email, wrote to the EPA deputy chief of staff regarding several paintings the agency was trying to obtain on loan from the Smithsonian.
However, the names of the paintings in question were redacted under the privacy exemption.
“The painting entitled [REDACTED], while available, may not be an appropriate fit as it is 8 feet tall,” Shea wrote.
EPA officials have previously told the Free Beacon Jackson’s use of a second account was standard practice and a necessary one because of the hundreds of thousands of emails that flood her public inbox. The agency also said Jackson’s secret account was included in FOIA disclosures.
However, government watchdogs contend Jackson’s use of a secret email address is a possible violation of federal record laws.
“Administrator Jackson’s practice of using fictitious email accounts to conduct official EPA business, shielding the contents from public view, conflicts directly with her responsibility to follow federal records law,” said Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) Executive Director Melanie Sloan in a statement. “The fact that others may have engaged in such conduct before her tenure is no justification.
‘Everybody does it’ is an excuse for kindergarteners, not cabinet officials.” The Daily Caller first identified Jackson’s secret alias in November.
Politico later reported “Richard Windsor” is the name of the Jackson family dog. The EPA inspector general is currently investigating Jackson’s use of the secret email address, as are several congressional committees. Jackson stepped down as EPA administrator in December.
The EPA was not available for comment.
http://freebeacon.com/whole-lotta-redactin-going-on/
Also Reads
No comments:
Post a Comment