National Park Service Hovers Over Veterans With "Essential" and Expensive Helicopter
By Katie Pavlich
Sunday, hundreds of veterans descended upon Washington D.C. to protest the barricading of open air memorials on the National Mall. Memorials were barricaded by the Obama administration, citing the government shutdown. Yesterday, the barricades were stormed, taken down and then carried by veterans to the White House, where they were left outside the gate on the front lawn.
But according to Ace of Spades' Gabriel Minor, National Park Service rangers were buzzing around in a helicopter yesterday during the veterans' protest of barricaded memorials on the mall.
It costs around $15,000 per hour to keep a helicopter in the air. As a reminder, the government is still shutdown and "non-essential" services are still unavailable. Apparently monitoring veterans with a helicopter is an "essential" function.
About that NBC/WSJ Poll that Killed Republicans on the Shutdown…
A sharp reader caught a statistical problem with that much-cited NBC/WSJ poll that shows Republicans are getting whooped in the shutdown:
Tampa @S1CT
@texasbryanp In today's NBC/WSJ poll, 1 in 5 respondents work for govt. Only 8% of general pop works for govt. See last page.
The demise of America found in a single computer glitch
By Meredith JessupIn case you missed the news over the weekend, a small software glitch temporarily halted the use of food stamps debit cards. Predictably, people lost their minds....
...In Mississippi, a “mini riot”. In Louisiana, local police were called in. In states across the country, people were fighting and clambering over one another because EBT cards couldn’t be used for about 10 hours. TEN HOURS. Not 10 days. Not even half of a single day. It’s not like these people were on the verge of starvation. In fact, I’d venture to bet that most of them weren’t even moderately hungry....
...Meanwhile the citizenry, who are supposedly the masters of their own destiny in this two-century old Republic, almost riot when they can’t buy their government-subsidized crackers and Cheez Whiz.Generosity often breeds contempt and not gratitude in the recipient. That’s been true for the entirety of human history. Yet somehow it always takes us by surprise when we see it.People used to laugh and roll their eyes when I told them that a second Civil War was becoming all but inevitable in this country. They don’t laugh any more.
Obamacare site asks applicants to register to vote
By Meredith Jessup
However, prior to the website crashing, which was not the first time during the application process, it was discovered that the Obamacare website actually tries to register individuals to vote.The link is optional, but the question remains, what does registering to vote have to do with signing up for Obamacare?
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Brian Cook tells the Washington Post that applications in the insurance marketplace must
include the offer of voter registration because the law “requires
states to offer voter registration [at] all offices that provide ‘public
assistance’ (including Medicaid applications). Because people applying
on healthcare.gov could be eligible for either Medicaid or Marketplace
coverage, we will be providing info on voter registration to people who
request it.”
PK'S NOTE: This is what is supposed to happen. That's what nonprofit organizations are for, this is their purpose-- the government was never intended to be a charity/welfare agency.
Across the country, donors chip in to help programs hurt by federal government shutdown
Across the country, donors big and small are opening their wallets to
help keep afloat programs that protect people in need as the government
shutdown persists.
Exciting new high-tech solution to ObamaCare website disaster: Paper applications
“Solution” suggests that people are now being successfully enrolled via
paper applications. Not so. Turns out that the info on those
applications needs to be input into the same wheezing, error-riddled
computer system that’s forced website users into using paper in the
first place. The “solution,” in other words, is simply to create a paper
backlog that will need to be manually entered into the ObamaCare database by the insurance companies themselves
if/when the system ever becomes stable enough to let them do that. How
long will that take? How much extra labor will it involve? Good
questions....
...In Connecticut, where the state online exchange is working comparatively
well, it takes a week and a half to process a single paper application.
Meanwhile, the deadline for people to enroll if they want coverage next
year is December 15, i.e. just two months from tomorrow. Some insurers
and ObamaCare “navigators” say they’re telling would-be enrollees to sit
tight for now and wait a few weeks before trying to apply, in the hope
that most of the bugs on Healthcare.gov will be gone by then.
Feds reviewed only one bid for Obamacare website design
By Richard Pollock
...Rather than open the contracting process to a competitive public
solicitation with multiple bidders, officials in the Department of
Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare and Medicaid accepted a
sole bidder, CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company with
an uneven record of IT pricing and contract performance.CMS officials are tight-lipped about why CGI was chosen or how it happened. They also refuse to say if other firms competed with CGI, or if there was ever a public solicitation for building Healthcare.gov, the backbone of Obamacare’s problem-plagued web portal.
ObamaCare's Serious Complications
For the IRS alone, implementing the law involves 47 different statutory provisions.
By Gordon Crovitz
...Software glitches are no surprise with such a complex system. For
example, signing up uses a Byzantine process to check if a family is
entitled to a subsidy, requiring data from dozens of federal and state
agencies using databases built on different technology platforms.
These include Medicaid to determine eligibility, the Internal Revenue
Service to determine insurance-premium subsidies based on income, and
Homeland Security to confirm citizenship. To make sure the family isn't
covered elsewhere, the sites have to retrieve data from the Veterans
Health Administration, the Office of Personnel Management and state
Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Programs. Assuming a family is
cleared and purchases a plan, the information has to be handed off
cleanly to an insurance company. The Government Accountability Office last year calculated that for the IRS alone, implementing ObamaCare would be a "massive undertaking that involves 47 different statutory provisions and extensive coordination." Among them: "disclosure of taxpayer information for determining subsidy eligibility," "drug manufacturer tax" and "high-cost health plan tax." Senate staffers created a mind-boggling graphic showing ObamaCare's various agencies and regulators, which can be viewed at http://1.usa.gov/acamess.
Doctors Fired, Administrators Hired: America’s Naivety Leads To Bad Medicine
By Austin Hill
...Despite the national news media’s near-complete refusal to report it,
the news was no less real. United Healthcare, a managed care health
services company based in Minnesota, is underway with laying-off “thousands” of physicians in Connecticut. The reason? The company won’t dare say this, but they had to do something to stave-off their decline in revenues, a phenomenon brought about by – you guessed it – the new federal healthcare law, AKA “Obamacare.”..
...Our government is well on its way to producing less healthcare and more bureaucratic red tape, all the while the cost of healthcare rises for those who actually pay for it. Will Americans ever wake up to the most basic principles of economic and public policy issues? Or will we continue to childishly continue to believe in the magical promises of politicians?
Obamacare ‘navigator’ in Kansas has outstanding arrest warrant
A woman with an outstanding warrant for her arrest is currently serving as an Obamacare “navigator” in Lawrence, Kansas....
....Wells was certified as an Obamacare navigator despite her financial history, which includes a bankruptcy in 2003, a 2007 civil charge from a local check cashing business called Midwest Checkrite for writing a bad check, and being more than $1700 behind on her state tax bill, and having an outstanding arrest warrant in nearby Shawnee County. Wells lives and works in Douglass County....
Liberals Must Destroy Conservative Traitors Like Us
By Kurt Schlichter
...After all, what should happen to traitors? Not so-called “traitors”
like Hanoi Jane Fonda, who actually went to an enemy country and
cavorted with its military as Americans were tortured down the street.
She’s cool. Remember - dissent is the highest form of patriotism if
there’s a Republican in office.No, I mean real traitors – you know, American citizens like us who exercise their rights of free speech, of the press, to assemble, and to petition for the redress of grievances in opposition to what the progressive overlords command. The overlords are right not to forgive this outrageous affront to their personal policy preferences. Our task is submission and obedience as we work hard to generate tax receipts that can then be used to buy off vast numbers of Democrat-voting losers eager to embrace serfdom in exchange for a few crumbs in the form of EBT cards and Obamaphones.
Nope, we must be destroyed. It’s tough but fair. Using the IRS to intimidate and harass us was a good start, but it’s time to take the next step. Plouffe, I bet you can find Bill Ayer’s number on the White House rolodex – ask him for his insights into dealing with recalcitrant kulaks.
I’m not wrong about what you meant, am I? I mean, you used the words “treason,” “secessionist,” and “coup,” and I can’t imagine you’d use words and not understand their implications. Traitors and secessionists and coup plotters are really bad people, and they need to be punished. You wouldn’t knowingly use inflammatory language just to dehumanize your opponents and pump up your pinko fanboys as they sit in their biker shorts gazing at their iPads while sipping locally-sourced chai tea. You meant what you said, right?
Of course you did. Why, otherwise, you’d just be mouthy little posers.
Most powerful White House Obamacare official at center of IRS scandal
The White House official who exchanged confidential taxpayer information with the IRS is a longtime Obama advisor and progressive activist who is currently the most powerful official on Obamacare implementation within the White House.By Allen West
....The promise of America is at stake: the promise that inspires us to the “pursuit of happiness” now faces a competing belief, namely that the government can “guarantee your happiness.” This past week on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill posed an interesting question to guests Juan Williams and Mary Katharine Ham:
Can we punish some in order to enable all?....
...Progressivism is antithetical to the American idea. In our collective
ignorance, America is falling for something that has never succeeded on
the face of the Earth. Per Thomas Sowell:
We have exchanged that which works for that which sounds good.Why must we stand up for the future? We currently are the first generation of Americans that will leave less for subsequent generations than we inherited. Reversing this tragedy is our challenge.
US Army defines Christian ministry as 'domestic hate group
By Todd StarnesSeveral dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association
,
a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic
hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.
...Later in the briefing, the soldiers were reportedly told that they could face punishment for participating in organizations that are considered hate groups.
Obama's leadership proves presidency is no place for amateurs
By Edward Klein“I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them,” Harry Truman once lamented. “That’s all the powers of the President amount to.”
As usual, the plain-speaking Truman got it right: presidential power is the power to persuade. Too bad the current occupant of the White House has never learned this basic lesson.
...Barack Obama’s refusal to negotiate with the Republicans in Congress on the government shutdown is proof once again that he doesn’t understand the first thing about presidential leadership.
Strangely enough, this one-time constitutional lawyer fails to grasp the fact that the president of the United States does not obtain results by giving orders.
Thanks to our Constitution’s separation of powers, he can’t get action without bargaining with Congress. The presidency and Congress are inextricably linked; one can’t govern without the other.
...But now, faced with a prolonged shutdown and a debt-ceiling crisis to boot, he finds that he can’t politic his way out of the mess, so he’s trying to campaign his way out, calling the Republicans every name in the book.
...But his job is to govern, to lead, to find common ground, to persuade.
Unfortunately, Barack Obama is not wired to do that....
...He is, in short, a strange kind of politician, one who derives no joy from the cut and thrust of politics, but who clings to the narcissistic life of the presidency.
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