By Mike Flynn
Lobbyists and the GOP political establishment applauded Speaker John
Boehner's strident attacks against the Tea Party and conservatives as
the House prepared to approve the Ryan-Murray budget deal. Boehner had said that conservative groups had "lost all credibility" for opposing a budget deal that increases the
national debt. While business groups may get a tingle hearing Boehner's
harsh words, one wonders how alienating the grass roots will help them
curtail the next government overreach.
...What lobbyists like Van Dongen fail to appreciate, however, is that
Boehner's remarks were not so much against particular organizations as
they were against the party's base voters. The same voters who delivered
the GOP into a House majority and acted as a bulwark against the most
ambitious plans of the Obama Administration. Often, the activism of
conservatives helped business groups block expensive and overbearing
regulation. Van Dongen and other establishment figures take this for
granted at their peril.
According to Americans for Tax Reform, each Obamacare enrollee costs taxpayers $14,000.
ATR calculated that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
spent $4.5 billion to promote Obamacare and $677 million to build
healthcare.gov.
Health and Human Services says 364,682 people have selected plans under Obamacare.
Using those numbers, ATR estimated how much each enrollee cost to taxpayers.
Connecticut’s Obamacare exchange commissioned three murals for $75,000.
Optimus Health Care in Bridgeport, Conn. paid another $4,000 to have
one of the three pieces of art installed into Hartford’s Hispanic Health
Center. According to the National Review:
Just before Thanksgiving, state officials gathered at
Optimus Health Care in Bridgeport to unveil the Cornier mural, which,
according to the New Haven Register, is intended to inspire New Haven
residents to “embrace health and wellness.”
“Healthcare reform isn’t just about getting people insurance for
unexpected medical emergencies, it’s also about providing access to the
preventative care and wellness programs that will help people become and
stay healthier,” said Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, a co-chairman of
the AccessHealthCT board. “This mural is a creative way for us to
express that commitment to building healthier communities.”
By Guy Benson
A new report produced by Rep. Darrell Issa's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
reveals that Obamacare's controversial "Navigator and Assister" program
has suffered from chronic poor management, resulting in widespread
disarray, since the law's October 1 launch date. An advanced copy of
the document obtained by Townhall raises a number of competency and security concerns.
...The Wall Street Journal reported
in August that efforts to hire and prepare navigators were "barely off
the ground," forcing the Obama administration to scale back training
requirements related to the program. Various state-level officials also raised concerns
about whether citizens' private data would be safe in the hands of
under-vetted government employees hired to walk consumers through the
application process. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius confirmed
in Congressional testimony last month that the president's signature
law does not preclude convicted felons from being hired with taxpayer
money to handle the public's sensitive personal information. An
undercover investigation by the conservative group Project Veritas
exposed unethical and illegal behavior by a series of government
employees operating under Obamacare's navigator umbrella. According to
the organization's reporting, five navigators have been dismissed as a result of its investigation. The Obama administration on Friday declined to comply
with a House Oversight Committee subpoena regarding the state of
Healthcare.gov's IT security measures. In a letter to the committee,
HHS officials stated that providing such information to Congressional
overseers could itself constitute a security risk, flatly indicating
that the administration doesn't trust Rep. Issa to handle such sensitive
information -- which is his committee's task. The full staff report
will be released to the public later today.
By Matthew Boyle
House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) misled his
colleagues in the House of Representatives about several major areas of
the budget deal he cut with Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Sen.
Patty Murray (D-WA), Breitbart News has learned.
Misrepresentations include serious budget details ranging from how
much deficit reduction is actually in the plan to how spending in this
plan compares to spending if the current law, the Budget Control Act
(BCA), remains the law of the land.
By Ed Lasky
Valerie Jarrett, Obama's Rasputin, unwittingly provided us an answer to the question of why the Obama Presidency is such a man-caused disaster.
... And
when she described Barack Obama as having been "bored to death his
whole life" she helped explained what lies behind a failed presidency.
People familiar with Barack Obama's history realize he has a very low threshold for boredom. This is a trait shared
by many millennials (PK'S NOTE: He is a baby boomer). they bore easily, and that character flaw is one
reason employers refrain from hiring them. Yet they feel entitled to
promotions as a way for others to display gratitude towards them and to
give them an ego booster shot. They want to be stimulated and
entertained all the time and find work tedious and...boring.
...He has repeatedly refused to meet with economic experts, skipped more than half
of his daily intelligence briefings, turned his Cabinet (trumpeted by
an obedient media in 2009 as a Lincolnesque "Team of Rivals") into a Team of Idolizers that he almost completely ignores -- both as individuals and as a group; and , if one believes his protestations (a big "if") was out of the loop or, as Charles Krauthammer
wrote, oblivious to the NSA, IRS, and AP scandals (as well as Benghazi,
Fast and Furious, the vendetta against James Rosen at Fox News -- the list
is endless). Of course, the most recent revelation is most revealing:
even as he staked his reputation and legacy on his signature
"achievement" (he called it his most important initiative) ObamaCare, he reportedly met only once
with the official he chose to head the program, Kathleen Sebelius.
Talk about being outside the beltway! Actually, that is where he can
often be found: on the golf courses, on vacations, in front of adoring
crowds, or shaking the money tree at glitzy fundraisers in Hollywood -- a
natural environment for a faux president. A President has to set
priorities after all.
PK'S NOTE: Great piece. Read the whole thing.
By Ed Driscoll
“We have a great sense this week again of the [Obama administration] making it up as they go along, as kind of government by teenagers,”
George Will said yesterday on the Fox News All-Star Panel, but
actually, that’s an insult to teenagers. All of us learn by age 17 that
government is a non-functioning Leviathan mess, during our first visit
to the local branch of the DMV, as Charles Krauthammer writes in his
latest column. All of us, that is, except the president.
Krauthammer notes that at age 52, Mr. Obama has made a breakthrough discovery:
“We have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which
are not designed properly,” he told Chris Matthews during his recent
vanity interview with NBC. As Krauthammer responsd, that’s a rather
“interesting discovery to make after having consigned the vast
universe of American medicine, one-sixth of the U.S. economy, to the
tender mercies of the agency bureaucrats at the Department of Health and
Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service.”
Naturally, she was pilloried by the American left — very likely including the same people the New York Times quotes above — for pointing out that the Lightworker’s brilliantly creased bespoke clothing contained no emperor inside them.
First successful nuclear test was more than four years ago.
Secretary of State John Kerry told ABC News in an interview that North
Korea "potentially" having a nuclear weapon would be "even more
unacceptable." North Korea first tested its nuclear weapons capabilities
in 2006 and had a more successful test in 2009. The country's most
recent nuclear test was earlier this year.
...Kerry’s gaffe, if that’s what it is, isn’t on the level of potato vs
potatoe. It’s on the level of having America’s top diplomat dealing with
one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods, and not knowing the
very first thing about his job.
...Boustany and Reichert also seemed optimistic about the chances of
getting Congress to approve Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which would
allow the Obama administration to negotiate the TPP without worrying
about Congress making any changes.
Fast-track legislation – also known as Trade Promotion Authority –
is the process by which Congress allows the president to negotiate trade
deals and pledges to approve them swiftly without amendments or delays.
This empowers the executive branch to negotiate trade agreements with
foreign partners without them worrying the deal will be undermined or
renegotiated by congressional pressure.
...The TPP has faced criticism due to its secretive process. The draft
texts of the treaty are not publicly available, and even members of
Congress do not have access to all documents.
Many industry advisers, however, have access to the drafts. These
advisers represent several business sectors, such as the pharmaceutical
industry groups, the record industry, and firms like Verizon, Johnson
& Johnson, and General Electric.
Many copyright and Internet freedom activists have criticized a
leaked chapter on intellectual property laws, saying elements of the
controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) have been slipped into the
trade agreement.
....What the RNC and other conservative groups should be producing,
instead, are gazillions of one-minute-long commercials and YouTube
videos, as well as easy-to-share
posters for Facebook and Twitter, all of which focus on ordinary
whites, Asians, Blacks, and Hispanics engaging in good acts of the type
that thoughtless, but disenchanted, Democrats can understand. Each
video or poster should end with the tag line “I’m [fill in the name] and
I’m a Republican.”
For example, you might have a video showing an Asian woman working at
a homeless shelter, and have it end with her saying “I’m [fill in the
name] and I’m a Republican.” Or you have a poster of a black volunteer
hard at work for Habitat for Humanity, over the tag line “I’m [fill in
the name] and I’m a Republican.” Another video might show someone
getting out of a Prius and into a wheelchair, again with the tag line “I’m [fill in the name] and I’m a Republican.
The possibilities are endless, because Republicans are good people,
and they actually do many things that make Democrats happy. Posters and
videos of beach clean-ups, animal
shelter work, homeless shelter work, Big Brother/Big Sister work,
tutoring kids at inner city schools, and raising money for African
orphanages, would humanize a group of people who have been demonized
simply because they believe in the worth of the individual and in
maximum individual freedom. When it comes to speaking out to Americans,
we need to stop focusing on the politicians, whom the media finds it
easy to ridicule and denigrate, and start looking into the Republican
community, which is brimful of wonderful, caring, people, for whom being
wonderful and ordinary is just a part of their lives.
We cannot convert people to our ideas unless we can convince them
that their “conservatives are evil” syllogism is utterly false. The new
syllogism should go like this:
Republicans/conservatives are good people.
I share most of their values.
Since the Democrat party has lied and broken its promises, and its ideas have failed, I should vote Republican.
By Rhonda Robinson
Understanding the reason behind the violence takes the movie to
another level. Which is exactly what makes this movie an excellent place
to start.
3. In the fantasy world of Panem, it’s played like this: “We don’t have to destroy her, just her image.”
In the real world where our children are growing up, that same tactic is taught like this:
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Saul Alinsky
In the first installment of the series,
Katniss emerges as the winner of a barbaric tournament the government
uses as a show of power.
In the course of the gladiator-style
battle, Katniss maintains her humanity by choosing to kill only in
self-defense. When she outwits the game and saves not only herself but
her partner as well, hope is ignited among the people. They see a crack
in the wall of their oppressive government.
This new hope is seen as a threat to those
in power. As the president warns, “Hope is more powerful than fear.”
Therefore, she must be eliminated. The president is persuaded to destroy
her image, thereby crushing the spirit of the people with one blow.
While your children might know the name of
Sarah Palin, my guess is their first introduction to her might well have
been in the form of a joke.
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