PK'S NOTE: Please oh please let the person going up against Baucus hammer this during the election. If Baucus loses, I will do the Snoopy happy dance.
Obamacare Co-Author: This Puppy's Looking Like a "Huge Train Wreck" So Far
"Train wreck." Say, where have I seen that phrase recently? A top Obamacare administrator warned last month that many Americans may encounter a "third world experience" upon the law's implementation, and now one of its principal authors is speaking out, too. Remember, these rave reviews are coming from Obamacare supporters:
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus warned this morning that he sees a "huge train wreck coming down"
as the Obama administration implements the health reform law. He
sharply criticized the administration’s outreach efforts, telling HHS
Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a budget hearing that people and businesses “"have no idea what to do, what to expect...I am concerned that not every state, including Montana, will have an insurance marketplace established in time."
This sounds like a man who is exceedingly worried about the political
shockwaves of Obamacare and is desperately trying to blame the executive
branch for the coming you-know-what storm. This also sounds like a red
state Democrat up for re-election next year who's hoping that his
state's voters will forget who wrote the law. We've been chronicling the reasons why he should be jittery for the last three years and counting (plus, see several of the links above), but here are a few more from the last 24 hours alone:
(1) Wages lost, hours cut - "The
nation's largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of
employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to
blame. Regal Entertainment Group, which operates more than 500
theaters in 38 states, last month rolled back shifts for non-salaried
workers to 30 hours per week, putting them under the threshold at which
employers are required to provide health insurance. The Nashville-based
company said in a letter to managers that the move was a direct result
of ObamaCare."
(2) More evidence of a looming doctor shortage
- "With 30 million new people expected to enter the health-care system
in 2014 under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, experts say a looming doctor shortage isn’t a chance—it’s a fact.
“These 30 million new patients have either not gone to the doctor or
[have been] going to the emergency room so that is putting pressure into
the system. You have a foundational supply and demand shift,” says
Mitch Rothschild, CEO of Vitals, a consumer tool physician evaluation
company. He expects the shortage to hit the primary care physician (PCP)
arena the hardest and explains that there is approximately one PCP for
every 15,000 people in the U.S. but come 2020, there will be about 70,000 less doctors available to consumers as a direct result of the law." That Fox Business story also cites a new national survey
by Deloitte which reveals that roughly six in ten US physicians see the
new law as a threat -- and a similar number expect a spike in
retirements due to the law. MKH has more.
UPDATE - A pro-Obama union has officially called for the full repeal of Obamacare (via Erika):
Our Union and its members have supported President Obama and his
Administration for both of his terms in office. But regrettably, our concerns over certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some instances, totally ignored.
In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the Act’s provisions were
not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are
inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their
employer sponsored coverage could keep it. These provisions jeopardize
our multi-employer health plans, have the potential to cause a loss of
work for our members, create an unfair bidding advantage for those
contractors who do not provide health coverage to their workers, and in
the worst case, may cause our members and their families to lose the
benefits they currently enjoy as participants in multi-employer health
plans...I am therefore calling for repeal or complete reform of
the Affordable Care Act to protect our employers, our industry, and our
most important asset: our members and their families.
That'll leave a mark. Reminder: The three quotes highlighted in this post are all from Obama supporters.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/04/18/prominent-democrat-on-obamacare-huge-trainwreck-coming-n1570826
The Collapse of Leadership
Carnage in Boston, ricin in Congress and devastation in West, Texas
make this the worst week in years for the U.S. That the parents of some
of the victims of Newtown were disappointed in the Senate yesterday adds
to the gloom, and the president’s unbelievable timing for his fit of
pique Wednesday added to the sense that the country is, genuinely,
leaderless.
President Obama could not have known that a fertilizer factory would
blow a couple of hours after he went on his rant against people who
disagree with him. But he could not have not known that all day long the
hapless media had been broadcasting speculation and rumor about bombs
and bombers in Boston and poison letters in D.C. and that unease is back
in the land in a way not felt since 2001.
The killers of Sandy Hook, Aurora and Tucson are monsters, hatched in
a diseased culture and certain to have future versions already plotting
their mayhem. They are, in a word, insane.
Terrorists, though, are a much colder, much more dangerous sort of fanatic, and as any reader of The Looming Tower
knows – and shame on you if you haven’t bothered to read even this
basic primer of the origins of Islamist terror – the threat is not going
away any time soon, whether or not any particular bomber or terrorist
in this country is an Islamist.
The president’s job is to rally the country against all threats, both
foreign and domestic, not to berate and belittle Americans of opposite
political opinions, especially in a week of terror.
Recall President Obama's words from his first inaugural address:
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope
over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we
come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the
recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled
our politics.
That theme was missing from the Rose Garden yesterday. The
president’s anger at being so visibly and thoroughly defeated – a defeat
inflicted in part by members of his own party – led to his display of
anger. That anger served no purpose, but it did reveal much.
It is really up to other people to proclaim national goals and nation
purposes now – Marco Rubio is doing a fine job this week though there
will be disagreements ahead about his legislative goals as well – and
others will emerge from among governors and perhaps temporarily retired
former secretaries of state.
But the president has lost it, choosing a week of terrible anguish
and no little fear to divide the country rather than unify it and to
chide an opposition rather than rally it to a common cause.
His failure is not singular. The GOP-led House of Representatives has
sunk into a morass of the personal rule of Committee chairs that
obstructs even the most obvious reforms such as the repeal of the
jobs-destroying medical device tax. Majority Leader Eric Cantor and his
chief deputy Kevin McCarthy seem to have adopted a
wait-out-the-Speaker’s-last-two-years strategy and trust to the power of
redistricting and the enmity engendered by an angry, divisive president
to protect their majority through the travails of 2014.
That’s a bad bet. It is people like Marco Rubio and Rand Paul –
people who are visibly leading and tackling real and difficult problems,
often face-to-face with critics – and governors like Scott Walker and
John Kasich who are grappling with hard choices who are winning the
admiration of voters.
There are real leaders in the country. They just aren’t in power in
D.C. Yet. Eric Cantor should be among them, leading and visibly calling
for his colleagues to rally around hard things that need doing now. The
country is hungry for people who will do just that.
It is good to remember that principled leadership – firm but never
angry, articulate and passionate in defense of its beliefs but open to
argument and persuasion – is genuinely charismatic and always necessary.
It is important to remember that in a week when so many things and
people failed, most obviously the president.
Catastrophe illumines suffering but also capacity and character, and their absence.
http://townhall.com/columnists/hughhewitt/2013/04/18/the-collapse-of-leadership-n1571714/page/full/
Welfare Programs Now One-Sixth Of Federal Budget
Federal welfare programs now account for one-sixth of the federal
budget ($588 billion), a figure that does not even include unemployment
benefits, Social Security, and Medicare, reports Bill Frezza of Forbes.
The bleak Obama economy, however, is only factor driving welfare's
growth, says Frezza. Corporate cronyism that profits from poverty
programs has helped fuel a welfare industry that uses taxpayer dollars
to generate corporate profits in ways that grow government:
Today, agricultural interests are still among the biggest
advocates for these programs, but other industries are learning that
they too can make a buck by promoting America’s war on poverty…
Details are hard to come by as they are not broken out in earnings
reports, but a 2012 study from the Government Accountability Institute “Profits From Poverty”
indicates that since 2004, 18 of the 24 states that contract with J.P.
Morgan to provide welfare benefits have paid over half a billion dollars
in fees. That may not sound like much relative to the size of some of
these firms, but it provides a nice steady income for an industry happy
to shower members of the House and Senate Agricultural Committees with
annual campaign donations now exceeding $300,000 per year.
The result, says Frezza, is the distortion of genuine competition that drives free market capitalism.
“What could be better for the myriad civil servants and wing-tipped
bankers who dole out benefits as ever more ‘clients’ join the ranks of
the poor and unemployed?”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/17/Welfare-Programs-Now-One-Sixth-Of-Federal-Budget
Postmaster General: USPS Losing $25 Million A DAY
"The postal service is currently
operating with a broken business model. Since the economic recession of
2008 we have been experiencing a significant imbalance between revenues
and costs. This imbalance will only get worse in the coming decade
unless laws that govern the postal service are changed. The past two
years the postal service has recorded $21 billion in losses including a
default of $11.1 billion in payments to the United States Treasury. The
postal service has exhausted its borrowing authority and continues to
contend with dangerously low liquidity. We are losing $25 million a day
and we are on an unsustainable path."
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/04/17/Postmaster-General-USPS-Losing-25-A-DAY
Issa to CIA: Get your lawyers ready on Benghazi
Suddenly, it seems that the terror attack on our consulate in
Benghazi last September may become relevant all over again. Yesterday
afternoon, CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson reported that a number of whistleblowers had emerged to talk to the House Oversight Committee,
in news that may have slipped under the radar of other emerging (and
non-emerging) developments in the Boston Marathon attack story:
CBS News has learned that multiple new whistleblowers are
privately speaking to investigators with the House Oversight and
Government Reform Committee regarding the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist
attacks on the U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya.
The nature of the communications with the whistleblowers and their
identities are not being made public at this time. But in response, the
Oversight Committee yesterday sent letters to the three federal agencies
involved: the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.
What stories do these new witnesses have to tell? Apparently nothing
too complimentary. Otherwise, Oversight Chair Darrell Issa probably
wouldn’t need to remind the CIA to refrain from retaliation against
these whistleblowers — or warn the agency to get their lawyers on standby (via Instapundit):
“During the course of the investigation, numerous
individuals have approached the committee with information related to
the attack,” wrote Issa in the letters, which were obtained by The Hill.
He asked agencies to provide details on how to grant outside
attorneys the security clearances necessary for them to adequately
represent employees discussing classified matters with congressional
investigators.
“Some witnesses may be required to retain personal counsel to
represent them before the committee and in the event the agency
subsequently retaliates against them for cooperating with the
committee’s investigation,” he said.
“Additional witnesses may be compelled by subpoena to give testimony
to the committee and can be reasonably expected to retain personal
counsel at that time.”
Ever since the initial probe stalled a few months ago, many have
wondered why the administration hasn’t made the survivors of that night
available to House investigators. Some have also wondered why those
survivors haven’t come forward on their own, but if they still work in
intelligence agencies, they may not have been allowed to do so. These
new whistleblowers may or may not be the Benghazi survivors, but clearly
they’re coming from within the intel community — and Issa’s letter
strongly suggest that they are pointing fingers upstairs.
Four Americans were killed in that attack, and the US was forced to
publicly retreat from an area we had claimed to have help liberate and
safeguard. That defeat raises a lot of questions about US actions
before, during, and after the attack on the consulate, and perhaps some
of those questions will finally get answered in the next few weeks.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/04/18/issa-to-cia-get-your-lawyers-ready-on-benghazi/
Police buried Trayvon's criminal history
'Good kid' Martin should have been arrested twice
Some deaths are more politically useful than others.
Twenty years ago this week, the Clinton administration ordered a tank
assault on the Mount Carmel community, killing 39 racial minorities, 26
of them black. The Clintons and the media suppressed the racial data so
rigorously that I doubt even Al Sharpton knows about the black dead at
Waco.
A year ago Feb. 26, neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman shot
and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and within a
month every sentient person on the planet knew “Trayvon” by name.
What they did not know was Martin’s background. Sanford Police
Department (SPD) investigator Chris Serino, for instance, said publicly
of Martin, “This child has no criminal record whatsoever.” He called
Martin “a good kid, a mild-mannered kid.” The media almost universally
sustained this tragically false narrative.
Martin had the seeming good fortune of attending school in the
Miami-Dade School District, the fourth-largest district in the country
and one of the few with its own police department.
For a variety of reasons, none of them good, elements within the SPD
and the Miami-Dade School District Police Department, or M-DSPD,
conspired to keep Martin’s criminal history buried.
As part of its mission the M-DSPD was allegedly trying to divert
offending students, especially black males, from the criminal justice
system. As the Martin death would prove, the M-DSPD diverted offending
students to nothing beyond its own statistical glory.
The exposure of M-DSPD practices began inadvertently on March 26,
2012, when the Miami Herald, the one mainstream outlet to do real
reporting on the case, ran a story on Martin’s background.
The Herald’s headline, “Multiple suspensions paint complicated
portrait of Trayvon Martin,” should have caused the other media to seek
the truth about the very nearly sanctified Martin.
It did not. What it did do was to cause M-DSPD Police Chief Charles
Hurley to launch a major Internal Affairs (IA) investigation into the
possible leak of this information to the Herald.
At the end of the day, Hurley rather wished he had not. The
detectives questioned told the truth about Martin and about the policies
that kept him out of the justice system. Hurley would be demoted and
forced out of the department within a year.
We now know what the detectives revealed thanks to a recently
fulfilled Freedom of Information Act request filed by the dogged
researchers at a blogging collective known as The Conservative Treehouse. The “Treepers” have literally done more good work on the Martin case than all the newsrooms in America combined.
On Feb. 15, 2012, 11 days before Martin’s death, the Miami-Dade
County Public Schools put out a press release boasting of a 60 percent
decline in school-based arrests, the largest decline by far in the
state.
“While our work is not completed, we are making tremendous progress
in moving toward a pure prevention model,” Hurley told the Tampa Bay
Times, “with enforcement as a last resort and an emphasis on education.”
Hurley’s detectives, all of them veterans with excellent records,
told a different story under oath when questioned by Internal Affairs.
They knew the shell game was about to be exposed upon first learning
that Martin was one of their students and outside agencies would be
requesting his records.
“Oh, God, oh, my God, oh, God,” one major reportedly said when first
looking at Martin’s data. He realized that Martin had been suspended
twice already that school year for offenses that should have gotten him
arrested – once for getting caught with a burglary tool and a dozen
items of female jewelry, the second time for getting caught with
marijuana and a marijuana pipe.
In each case, the case file on Martin was fudged to make the crime
less serious than it was. As one detective told IA, the arrest
statistics coming out of Martin’s school, Michael Krop Senior, had been
“quite high,” and the detectives “needed to find some way to lower the
stats.” This directive allegedly came from Hurley.
“Chief Hurley, for the past year, has been telling his command staff
to lower the arrest rates,” confirmed another high-ranking detective.
When asked by IA whether the M-DSPD was avoiding making arrests, that
detective replied, “What Chief Hurley said on the record is that he
commends the officer for using his discretion. What Chief Hurley really
meant is that he’s commended the officer for falsifying a police
report.”
The IA interrogators seemed stunned by what they were hearing. They
asked one female detective incredulously if she were actually ordered to
“falsify reports.” She answered, “Pretty much, yes.”
Once the top brass understood that the Martin case had the potential
to expose the reason for the department’s stunning drop in crime, they
told the detectives “to make sure they start writing reports as is;
don’t omit anything.”
“Oh, now, the chief wants us to write reports as is,” said a Hispanic
detective sarcastically, “and not omit anything, as we have been
advised in the past?”
The IA investigation delved into the paranoid concern that the M-DSPD
was sharing information about Martin with other relevant police
departments as it routinely did in other multi-jurisdictional cases.
The one detective who sent information to the Sanford PD came under
heavy fire. He was appalled. “Currently, our department is functioning
and operating out of fear,” he told the IA. “It is tragic to see that
I’ve been disciplined at the direction of Chief Hurley.”
As it turned out, Hurley need not have worried about the SPD. As the
Conservative Treehouse reports, the information sent by the M-DSPD
“disappeared down the rabbit hole and was not included in the final
victimology report filed by Sanford Detective Serino.”
Serino was the Martin-friendly detective who had insisted that Martin
“has no criminal record whatsoever,” calling him, “a good kid, a
mild-mannered kid.”
In Hurley’s defense, school districts across the country had been
feeling pressure from the nation’s race hustlers to think twice before
disciplining black students. Last year, the White House formalized the
pressure with an executive order warning school districts to avoid
“methods that result in disparate use of disciplinary tools.”
Jesse Jackson brought this nonsense home to Sanford during a large
April 1, 2012, rally. He implied that Martin had been profiled by his
high school for being a black male and suspended for the same reason.
“We must stop suspending our children,” Jackson told the crowd.
In a way, Jackson was right. Martin should not have been suspended.
He should have been arrested on both occasions. Had he been, his parents
and his teachers would have known how desperately far he had gone
astray.
Instead, Martin was “diverted” into nothing useful. Just days after
his non-arrest, he was allowed to wander the streets of Sanford high and
alone looking, in Zimmerman’s immortal words, “like he’s up to no good
or he’s on drugs or something.”
At the end of the day, Martin had avoided becoming an arrest statistic, only to become a statistic of a much graver kind.
Re: Immigration Bill
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) warns that passing the Senate immigration
reform bill would have devastating effects on the U.S. job market and
fiscal outlook
Rep. Lamar Smith says that the Senate immigration bill is even worse
than feared, since it legalizes illegals' relatives and even those
previously deported.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) says the new immigration bill will "provide
safe harbor to those who have committed a variety of offenses" and "even
those with criminal records."
Tragic Evil and Stupid Journalism
Despite various excuses and rationalizations, it seems pretty clear
that the mainstream media failed in their obvious responsibility to
cover the evil-drenched story of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit
Gosnell because they feared it would reflect badly on the practice of
abortion. Having shamelessly used the horrific Newtown massacre to push
useless and unconstitutional infringements on our right to bear arms,
the lefty press naturally assumed that those they despise would use the
same sort of tactics here, shamelessly using baby murders to push
legislation against… well, baby murders.
Likewise, their coverage of the recent Boston massacre has been
fraught with the same sort of anxiety. As I write, a suspect has been
reported to be arrested — God send it’s the right one — but as we waited
for law enforcement to do its work, speculation as to the possible
motives of the bomber was powered by the question: Who will get to use
this murder to make his case? Would those who see Islam as wicked get to
point their fingers at the brain-dead multi-culturalist establishment?
Would the media be forced to play down the murderers’ connections to
Occupy Wall Street or the Democratic party? Would Chris Matthews get to
draw false comparisons between white supremacy groups and the Tea Party?
A particularly worthless look-at-me post at Salon was headlined “Let’s
hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American.” Oh yes, let’s!
It’s all just so suspenseful, isn’t it? Whose evil is it and who will
get to turn it into political hay?
That all this eagerness to claim bragging rights over the dead is low
and degraded and shameful goes without saying. But it’s stupid too.
Whether we close our eyes to the Gosnell case or not, the nature of
abortion will remain exactly what it is. Whether the Boston killer is a
Muslim or not, a cancer of violence continues to eat into that religion,
raising questions for its millions of innocent practitioners. White
Supremacy is an ugly and despicable philosophy whether supremacists are
the killers this time or not — and conflating the Tea Party with such
bigotry will still be slander either way. And socialism is still
stealing by force of government, whether or not the bombing is another
in the long list of rotten acts by Occupiers.
And finally it’s our mainstream media’s commitment to tell only one
side, to protect only one party, to make only one case, to decide for us
what should be deduced from the details they provide and what should be
hidden with those details they try to ignore — that’s what makes them
traitors to the basic principles of their profession, and they’ll be
traitors to those principles whether their prejudices are borne out this
particular time or not.
The truth stays true, eyes open or eyes shut.
http://pjmedia.com/andrewklavan/2013/04/17/tragic-evil-and-stupid-journalism/
PK'S NOTE: This is my shocked face
A growing sense that we're not getting the truth about Boston bombing
While the media are bearing the brunt of public skepticism
over the handling of the Boston bombing, the behavior of government is
also eroding public trust. Yesterday's promised but cancelled news
briefing is just one symptom. Andrew McCarthy of PJM
notes that "Misinformation rather than enlightenment has been the order
of the day in the investigation of Monday's terrorist bombing of the
Boston Marathon," and that part of it is the natural outgrowth of the
desire of investigators to keep the details of their investigations
secret, so as not to alert suspects. In these circumstances, the media,
hungry for something to say in their wall-to-wall coverage,
press law enforcement sources, to whom they offer anonymity, for
information. In the circumstances, misinformation is almost certain to
get reported.
But there is something else at work: a taboo, widespread in the MSM and government, on suspecting jihadists. McCarthy writes:
We
don't know what the investigators know, but on our state of
information, it would be irresponsible to discount the possibility that
this is an instance of jihadist terror. Of course, other ideological
motivations cannot be ruled out, either. My point is that it is
ludicrous to enforce a politically correct filter in which the most
plausible explanation must not be spoken on pain
of being cast out as a racist "Islamophobe," yet every other theory, no
matter how half-baked, is given a respectful airing. (snip)
...no
radical ideology that urges violence should be ruled out at this point
when, apparently, no perpetrators have been identified. How strange,
though, that what experience suggests are the least likely scenarios -
conservatives or anti-government extremists striking savagely at their
defenseless fellow citizens - are being embraced seriously (even
wistfully) by some media pundits, while one must walk on eggshells to
describe scenarios whose proving out would surprise no one.
The
avoidance of jihad as an explanation is particularly ridiculous given
the initial suspicions focused on Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi, the 20 year
old Saudi student, who is now rather mysteriously being deported, we are told. Jim Host of Gateway Pundit reports:
Tonight Steven Emerson told Sean Hannity that the non-suspect Abdulrahman Ali Alharbi is being deported back to the Saudi Kingdom.
Barack Obama met with the Saudi foreign minister today. It was not on public schedule.
In addition, Walid Shoebat focuses attention of the Alharbi Clan:
Out
of a list of 85 terrorists listed by the Saudi government shows several
of Al-Harbi clan to have been active fighters in Al-Qaeda:
#15 Badr Saud Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
#73 Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awufi Al-Harbi
#26 Khalid Salim Uwaid Al-Lahibi Al-Harbi
#29 Raed Abdullah Salem Al-Thahiri Al-Harbi
#43 Abdullah Abdul Rahman Muhammad Al-Harbi (leader)
#60 Fayez Ghuneim Humeid Al-Hijri Al-Harbi
Source: http://aalhameed1.net/vb/showthread.php?t=1565
Then you have Al-Harbi clan members in Gitmo:
Salim Salman Awadallah Al-Sai'di Al-Harbi
Majid Abdullah Hussein Al-Harbi
Muhammad Abdullah Saqr Al-Alawi Al-Harbi
Ghanem Abdul Rahman Ghanem Al-Harbi
Muhammad Atiq Uwaid Al-Awfi Al-Harbi
Source: http://www.muslm.net/vb/showthread.php?169019-أسماء-(90)-سعودياً-لا-زالوا-محتجزين-في-جوانتانامو
Americans are unaccustomed to thinking of clans as an important variable in human behavior, so Daniel Greenfield of Front Page Magazine provides some helpful background:
Americans often disregard basic structural differences between the east and the west. And that is a dangerous mistake.
The
differences between the Muslim world and the Western world aren't just
religious. There are basic structural differences at the social level.
They don't think the way that we do, because they don't live the way
that we do. We think in terms of the country as defining us. They think
in terms of the tribe as defining them. We sanction countries, but their
countries are often a sham. It's the clans that count. (snip)
It's
not just Saudi Arabia. A closer look at the antics of the Al-Awlaki
clan in Yemen (though the Saudis have a long history of using Yemen as
their backyard) would have told us to watch out for Anwar Al-Awlaki. But
that's not the way we think. It is the way they think.
So what is going on? Why is the j-word (Jihad) unthinkable in media reporting? Why was Alharbi quietly deported, and why the urgent meeting of the president and the Saudi FM not on the president's pubic schedule?
It certainly appears that we are not getting the straight story.
Correction: The Saudi national is being deported, but has not yet been deported. The blog has been updated.
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