Interior Dept. Nominee Helped Steer Millions to Environmentalist Groups

Could potentially obstruct energy projects in new role

By Lachlan Markay
A nominee for a top post at the Interior Department helped create a financing apparatus that has steered hundreds of millions of dollars to some of the nation’s most prominent environmentalist groups.
President Barack Obama nominated Rhea Suh in October to lead Interior’s fish and wildlife and parks division, which oversees the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Suh has been Interior’s assistant secretary for policy, management, and budget since 2009. Before joining the administration, she worked at a number of left-wing foundations whose support for radical environmentalist groups has some senators concerned that she would work to stymie fossil fuel production if confirmed.
“Given your lifetime of funding activist groups opposing natural gas production, how can the members of this committee suddenly expect you to change your views if you’re confirmed?” asked Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) at a confirmation hearing on Monday.
Suh would not have direct control over federal policy as it relates to natural gas extraction. However, she could obstruct energy projects in other ways by, for example, classifying species as endangered.
“This is not a position to which you’ve been nominated to promote any movement,” Barrasso added, “so I question whether this is really the right position for you given your deeply held views.”

What This School Did to ‘Silent Night’ Isn’t Going Over Well With Some Parents

By Billy Hallowell

A Long Island, N.Y., school district has apologized after it came under fire following a fifth grade choir’s removal of some key lyrics from the traditional Christmas song “Silent Night.”

Many of the religious lines that point to the very heart of the Christmas season were simply axed from the students’ Dec. 12 performance at Ralph J. Osgood Intermediate School.

“Christ the Savior is born,” “Holy infant so, tender and mild,” “round yon virgin, mother and child” and “Jesus, Lord at thy birth” were strategically removed from the student rendition.

The Kings Park Central School District has since apologized to members of the community who were outraged over the changes, WNBC-TV reported. “The Board of Education sincerely apologizes to our community members who were offended by the change of lyrics to the song Silent Night and we share in your sentiment,” read a statement published on the district’s website. “This action was not approved by the Board of Education or district administration, nor is it their role to approve the songs chosen for our concerts.”

Should we stop being mean to Pajama Boy?

By Jim Treacher

...Hang in there, young Mr. Krupp. Sure, the Internet is forever, and you’re the latest face of the worst American law in living memory. But at least you still have your– Oh wait. You won’t be able to count on having your health for much longer, will you? Well, I’m sure you’ve still got something going for you. Maybe this whole thing will earn you a cameo on Big Bang Theory?
BTW, the teabaggers are only laughing at this kid because “Pajama Boy is yet another emblem of an increasingly non-white electorate.” Well, duh! Why don’t you leave Smirky McFlanneljammies alone, you racists?
Caleb Howe gets the last word:

‘A slap in the face’: Marco Rubio’s chief of staff on receiving end of truth-boom

CesarConda ‏@CesarConda

This is a slap in the face to the thousands of Americans who have already purchased expensive insurance through the ObamaCare exchanges

DrewMTips ‏@DrewMTips 14h

@CesarConda Much like amnesty for illegal aliens is a slap in the face to millions of people who wait and obey our immigration laws.

Boom! That’s Sen. Marco Rubio’s chief of staff on the receiving end of a truth bomb.

'On Behalf of a Grateful Nation, Please Accept This Flag...'

By Russ Vaughn
....Now, our Democrat Senate, with the aid of nine Republican senators has just passed legislation which denies the promise of the above referenced ceremony, that is, that we are in fact a grateful nation. Looking for ways to cut the national budget, an ungrateful congressional conference has targeted our military community for reductions in their retirements while maintaining billions of dollars of support for far less worthy federal programs such as one providing federal assistance to illegal aliens. Yes, that's right, this Democrat senate is willing to put constraints on pension benefits for those Americans who have served honorably, all while maintaining welfare for those who have entered our country illegally. The Democrats choose to reward those who have no regard for the system of laws growing out of our constitution, the same document our military personnel all must swear an oath to uphold, even at the cost of their lives.

Obama to allow 'hardship exemptions' from individual mandate

By Rick Moran
The Department of Health and Human Services issued a bulletin on Thursday night outlining the latest "tweak" for Obamacare.

In essence, if your plan was cancelled because of Obamacare coverage mandates, you will be able to either keep that plan for a year if your insurance company and state agree to offer it, or you can apply for a 'hardship exemption' from the indivudal mandate.

Washington Post:

This second change, prompted by a group of Democratic senators - most of whom face tough reelection campaigns next year - goes substantially further in accommodating people upset about losing their policies. The latest rule will allow consumers with a canceled health plan to claim a "hardship exemption" if they think the plans sold through new federal and state marketplaces are too expensive.
The ability to get an exemption means that the administration is freeing these people from one of the central features of the law: a requirement that most Americans have health insurance as of Jan. 1 or risk a fine. The exemption gives them the choice of having no insurance or of buying skimpy "catastrophic" coverage.

...."This latest rule change could cause significant instability in the marketplace and lead to further confusion and disruption for consumers," said Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's main trade group.

Another health insurance official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he lacked authorization to discuss the matter publicly, pointed out that the hardship exemption also gives one group the ability to buy coverage whenever they want, rather than during annual open-enrollment periods. As a result, he said, more people might not buy insurance unless they get sick.

Story of the year

By Charles Krauthammer
...But it’s not just individuals seeing their medical care turned upside down. The insurance providers, the backbone of the system, are being utterly transformed. They are rapidly becoming mere extensions of the federal government.
Look what happened just last week. Health and Human Services unilaterally and without warning changed coverage deadlines and guidelines. It asked insurers to start covering people on Jan. 1 even if they signed up as late as the day before and even if they hadn’t paid their premiums. And is “strongly encouraging” them to pay during the transition for doctor visits and medicines not covered in their current plans (if covered in the patient’s previous — canceled — plan).
On what authority does a Cabinet secretary tell private companies to pay for services not in their plans and cover people not on their rolls? Where in Obamacare’s 2,500 pages are such high-handed dictates authorized? Does anyone even ask? The bill itself is simply taken as a kind of blanket warrant for HHS to run, regulate and control the whole insurance system.
Remember the uproar over forcing religious institutions to provide contraception coverage? The president’s “fix” was a new regulation ordering insurers to provide these services for free. Apart from the fact that this transparent ruse does nothing to resolve the underlying issue of conscience — God sees — by what right does the government order private companies to provide free services for anyone?
Three years ago I predicted that Obamacare would turn insurers into the lapdog equivalent of utility companies. I undershot. They are being treated as wholly owned subsidiaries. Take the phrase “strongly encouraging.” Sweet persuasion? In reality, these are offers insurers can’t refuse. Disappoint your federal master and he has the power to kick you off the federal exchanges, where the health insurance business of the future is supposed to be conducted.
Moreover, if adverse selection drives insurers into a financial death spiral — too few healthy young people to offset more costly, sicker, older folks — their only recourse will be a government bailout. Do they really want to get on the wrong side of the White House, their only lifeline when facing insolvency?
I don’t care a whit for the insurance companies. They deserve what they get. They collaborated with the White House in concocting this scheme and are now being swallowed by it. But I do care about the citizenry and its access to a functioning, flourishing, choice-driven medical system.

By Tom Blumer
....Web site security issues have been ignored from the get-go, to the point where IT security experts insist that no one who cares about the privacy and safety of their personal information should even think about logging on to HealthCare.gov. The government’s response has been to give itself a security waiver and pretend that nothing’s amiss.
Then there’s the system for making subsidy payments to insurance companies for eligible enrollees. There isn’t one.
Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a House committee in mid-November that “the payment systems, they still need be built.” The government’s response has been to let the insurance companies wing it and estimate the subsidies they’re owed — subject, of course, to “negotiations” on an obviously not level playing field. It’s a safe prediction that this situation will endure well into 2014. One begins to wonder if those systems will ever be built.
Chaos skeptics will have an especially difficult time explaining away the administration’s December 12 move.
That day, it announced that it would “ask” insurance companies to cover virtually any patient who requests medical care in early 2014, whether or not there is any tangible evidence that they have paid their monthly premiums, or have even enrolled. Note that the lack of said evidence is entirely due to the government’s billion-dollar failure to build reliable enrollment and payment systems.
It would appear that doctors, hospitals and other medical providers who have agreed to serve Obamacare patients will also have to see and treat any patient who claims to have enrolled, regardless of whether that provider is in the related insurance plan’s network.
A Wall Street Journal editorial summarized the situation fairly well — “the White House wants to transfer political accountability to the insurers.” But medical providers and all who work for and provide services to them will also be unwilling participants in this purely political accountability avoidance ploy. They and their insurers are being forced to take on completely unacceptable and potentially bankrupting financial risks in a $7 billion per day industry.
Kathleen Sebelius’s Department of Health and Human Services has ways to deal with any insurance company which might consider rebelling at the prospect of seeing their owners and shareholders lose everything because of government-orchestrated chaos: “The regulatory fine print reveals that HHS intends to kick insurers off the exchanges if they don’t obey.” Some “marketplace” this is.
Now we can begin to see, with the help of the Daily Caller’s Mickey Kaus, where this is all heading:

HHS has pretty clearly escaped the rule of law and entered a world of corporatist haggling, where political leaders and a few big industry types sit around the table and work everything out.

The health insurance industry blithely ignored the authoritarian and extra-legal warning signs which were clearly visible to all with open eyes as far back as Obama’s first presidential campaign in 2008 — his announced plan to use regulations to “bankrupt” anyone who dared to start up a new coal-based energy plant, the campaign’s deliberate lack of controls over online contributions, and the organized attempts to shout down opponents, to name just a few. Lured by the false promise of millions of new and theoretically profitable customers, it chose to live with state-run health care instead of fighting it tooth and nail, as it successfully did against HillaryCare two decades earlier.
The industry’s reward will be to spend countless hours haggling with their only real customer who is not their equal, but their master.
What will happen if their conduct doesn’t meet the administration’s arbitrary and ever-changing definition of acceptability? Ask Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Obama’s home state. They’ll exploit any resistance as an excuse to slow but surely accomplish the left’s Holy Grail goal: “put the private insurance industry out of business” and impose a de facto single-payer, completely government-controlled regime on the entire nation. The insurance companies may continue to exist for a while for appearances’ sake, but they will be firmly under the government’s boot, perhaps in relatively short order.
Is it only a coincidence that this is exactly how budding tyrannies often work in their early stages? Is it really reasonable to believe that all of this “just happened”? I think not.

PK'S NOTE: This NDAA is like George Bush's Patriot Act on steroids

Late Thursday night, the Senate passed the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2014, in a sweeping bill now being sent to the president which reports suggest he will sign.

The bill, is infamous for its language on indefinite detention, and “disappearing” of American citizens. Once again, the bill was past via Fast-Tracking while most of the country was sidelined on the Phil Robertson issue with Duck Dynasty.

The bill, now being sent to President Obama, also leaves out an amendment by Sen. Gillibrand on sexual assault prosecution, which in and of itself is curious. The bill passed the Senate in an 85-14 count, with the roll-call unavailable at this time.

“It’s a failure of leadership on the part of the majority leader,” Arizona Sen. John McCain told reporters, echoing Republican colleagues who said the accelerated process was designed to prevent tough votes on Iran sanctions and other controversial issues.

Also, the bill would authorize a release of $527 billion in base defense spending for the current fiscal year, plus funds for the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons programs overseen by the Energy Department, among numerous other controversial measures.

- See more at: http://www.thedailysheeple.com/senate-passes-ndaa-2014-via-fast-tracking-president-to-sign_122013#sthash.DD4l012b.dpuf

Senate Passes NDAA 2014 via FastTracking, President To Sign

Late Thursday night, the Senate passed the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2014, in a sweeping bill now being sent to the president which reports suggest he will sign.

....Also, the bill would authorize a release of $527 billion in base defense spending for the current fiscal year, plus funds for the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons programs overseen by the Energy Department, among numerous other controversial measures.

NDAA in the Senate: Why We Should Be Prepared to Defend Ourselves from the Defense Authorization Bill

By Joshua Withrow

....The CBO scores the current Senate NDAA bill at $545 billion in base defense spending (not including OCO), whereas the sequester levels would be $498.1 billion.

While sequestration is certainly not the best instrument for making rational budget cuts, the Budget Control Act is the only spending reduction of any kind that Republicans have achieved since gaining the House majority in 2010. Allowing Congress to bypass even these modest spending reductions belies Republicans' claim that they are serious actually addressing our obscenely large national debt by balancing the budget.
Unfortunately, the talk of the town is that Senate Democrats are likely to make a bad bill worse by attaching a number of unrelated ("non-germane") amendments to the NDAA. Because it is considered a "must-pass" bill (Congress has passed an NDAA each of the past 50 years), Harry Reid and company may use it as an opportunity to try to get bad policies passed along with it. These could include the "Marketplace Fairness Act" (internet sales tax), and even an increase in the minimum wage. The Marketplace Fairness Act, in particular, is a dangerous and unconstitutional policy that conservatives should be ready to fight against tooth and nail.