Tag Archives: morality

The Next Democratic Party Government Shutdown

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…is shaping up.  Never mind that a budget deal might actually otherwise be beginning to come together; many in the Democratic Party leadership are perfectly willing to shut down the government if they don’t get their way.  Again.

And in so many words.  House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D, MD) opposes even a continuing resolution to keep government funded if it doesn’t address the existing sequestration cut schedule.  But he won’t offer spending cuts elsewhere to offset them—just increase the damned spending.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) has said she’ll oppose any sort of budget deal that doesn’t include an extension to unemployment benefits to pay folks for not working (which also is her tacit admission that President Barack Obama’s economic policies have been a dismal failure these past five years).

The House Democratic Party leadership’s colleagues in the Senate, where any deal can be blown up and the government shut down by the Democrat majority, are being cagily silent.  Here it comes.

Obamacare: Year Two

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President Barack Obama, through his HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, has decided to delay the open enrollment period for the second year of his Obamacare by a month.  Obama has said, through his Press Secretary Jay Carney, that the delay will give insurance companies more time to evaluate the results of this year’s enrollments and so to adjust their premiums for that second year.

A carefully anonymous “HHS spokesman” also claims

This change is good news for consumers, who will have more time to learn about plans before enrolling and an open enrollment period that’s a week longer[.]

Both of these claims, of course, are nonsense.  Manhattan Institute Fellow Yevgeniy Feyman pointed out Friday

You are delaying open enrollment [in 2014] for one month.  Premiums are submitted in April, so whether you have open enrollment on Oct 1 or Nov 1, those premiums are already set in stone.  People will just be enrolling a month later.

What else is happening then?  Let’s see….  Oh, yeah—mid-term elections, which has become a referendum on Obamacare as the program has its effects on Americans.  The delay puts enrollment, which would have begun in mid-October, some three weeks prior to the mid-terms, into mid-November—after those elections.

With the premiums already determined—some months prior—Obama’s plain hope here is that the American voter will remain ignorant of the costs of the policies they’re stuck with buying or stuck with renewing and that they will have forgotten the costs already inflicted over the current year from the  cancelations of policies that Americans wanted and the policies’ replacement with poorer policies that have higher premiums, higher deductibles, and “coverage” for things that aren’t wanted or needed.

This is Progressives’ politics at their ugliest.  Yes, even worse than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D, NV) pernicious destruction of the Senate filibuster.

Democrats are Terrified of Democracy

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Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) destroyed the Senate filibuster.  Breaking Senate Rules to do so (it takes a two-thirds majority to change the rules), the Senate Democrats voted to eliminate the filibuster for Executive Branch and non-Supreme Court judicial nominees.  The rule these Democrats violated?  Rule XXII, which says in pertinent part [emphasis added]

…if that question [to suspend debate] shall be decided in the affirmative by three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn — except on a measure or motion to amend the Senate rules, in which case the necessary affirmative vote shall be two-thirds of the Senators present and voting — then said measure, motion, or other matter pending before the Senate, or the unfinished business, shall be the unfinished business to the exclusion of all other business until disposed of.

Of course, this is just the first step.  These Democrats now will move quickly to the despotism of one-party rule.

Reid’s rationale?  The Republicans had “unprecedentedly” filibustered President Barack Obama’s appellate court nominees.

Never mind that it was Reid’s Party of Jim Crow that invented the process and label of Borking judicial nominees with their shameful assault on the character of Judge Robert Bork when President Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court.  Not satisfied with simply blocking his confirmation, this Party chose to smear his character.

Recall, further, that this Party of Jim Crow also attempted, not merely to block confirmation, but to destroy with blatantly racist smears President George Bush the Elder’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas, an American of black heritage.

These Democrats, with this vote, have said to the minority party, “You refused repeatedly to do what your Betters instructed you to do; you kept objecting.  Now we’ve cut out your voice.  Sit down, and shut up.”

Remember this in the upcoming primaries and the fall election cycle.

Some Lies of Obamacare

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It seems, now, that President Barack Obama’s administration knew of the potential for the ObamaMart failure as early as last March (but, no, not Obama himself; he only hears about things from the newspapers, not from anyone in his employ).  Then, apparently, they promptly lied about that potential ‘way back then.

Key administration officials at the White House and Department of Health and Human Services received briefings this past spring from McKinsey & Co, a private consulting firm that reviewed more than 200 documents and conducted interviews with HHS staff to identify potential problems before the Oct 1 rollout.

…including insufficient testing and evolving requirements. The report also warned that the program relied too heavily on outside contractors.

And

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Medicare Chief Marilyn Tavenner, and Gary Cohen, a Medicare and Medicaid oversight official, attended a briefing on the firm’s analysis on April 4[.]

Then

Sebelius testified at an oversight committee hearing two weeks after being briefed on the McKinsey report that the implementation of ObamaCare was on track[.]

The seeming lie nature of Sebelius’ testimony—certainly, problems identified in March could have been addressed by Rollout Date—is indicated by the fact that when Healthcare.gov ObamaMart launched, those problems, or problems very like those identified by McKinsey, remained in place, unresolved.

Mendacious Public “Service” Unions

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The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1028, which represents 1,300 employees of the Will County, IL, government, has taken its members out on strike.

The county offered to pay 90% of their health insurance costs along with a 14.5% pay increase.  This isn’t enough, though.  Anders Lindall, spokesman for AFSCME, objected: the pay raise is too little, and the 10% the union employees must pay for their health insurance is “double their current premiums.”

It’s “not fair.”

Cry me a river.