Tag Archives: political parties

Easter and the Obama Sequester

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National Review Online carries another example of President Barack Obama’s pettiness.  It seems that last Friday, when he was asked, through his pressman Jay Carney, whether the annual—and traditional—White House Easter Egg Roll would be cancelled as he had cancelled the White House tours, Carney got self-righteous and popped off:

Well actually, Jenna [Lee, of the WH-hated Fox News], again, if you did a little reporting…it’s paid for by the sale of those eggs that come out, as well as from donations on the outside, so it’s a totally different budget.  These are apples and oranges.

This time it’s Politico that has the facts relevant to Obama’s snark.  The WH had, indeed, warned Congress that “budget uncertainties” could force cancelation of the Easter Egg Roll.  This notice was sent to Congressional members along with their tickets to the event:

[B]y using these tickets, guests are acknowledging that this event is subject to cancellation due to funding uncertainty surrounding the Executive Office of the President and other federal agencies.  If cancelled, the event will not be rescheduled.

It gets better.  In response to the uproar over Obama’s behavior through Carney, “a White House official” emailed this to Politico Monday:

Because we distribute tickets to the Easter Egg Roll far in advance, we alerted all ticket holders that this event is subject to cancellation due to funding uncertainty, including the possibility of a government shutdown.  However, we are currently proceeding as planned with the Easter Egg Roll.

Because a shutdown was such a likelihood in their minds.  There was no denial that the “funding uncertainty” flowed from the WH and not from intake from egg sales or donations.

This is another example of President Barack Obama’s Sequester and his honesty about it.  Will the Easter Egg Roll actually happen?  I guess we’ll find out about it on 1 April, the day for which it’s scheduled.  Appropriately enough, that’s April Fool’s Day….

The Obama Sequester in Action

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From Fox News:

The top US immigration enforcement official acknowledged Thursday that the Obama administration has in fact released thousands of illegal immigrants from local jails over the last month despite prior claims that the release was only in the hundreds.

The sequester clemency:

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton, at a House appropriations subcommittee hearing, said the agency released a total of 2,228 illegal immigrants from local jails “throughout the country” between Feb. 9 and March 1 for “solely budgetary reasons.”

But DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano says she knew nothing of this.  Of course.  She’s Sgt Schultz.

Something about Missile Defense

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I won’t go into the older history of the Progressives’ vilification of President Ronald Reagan over his push for a missile defense, and I won’t mention then-Senator John Kerry’s (D, MA) denunciation of such a system as

a dream based on illusion, but one which could have real and terrible consequences[.]

But we do need to think about Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s 2008 promise to gut missile defense development programs and—in one of the few spending cuts to which Progressives have agreed in recent history—to cut spending on such things.

We do need to think about President Barack Obama’s betrayal of Poland and the Czech Republic when he cancelled agreements to deploy missile defense systems there on the basis of Russian demurral.

We do need to think about spending $2 billion to add a whole 14 interceptors to our existing de minimis system in this time of world-ending sequester.

We do need to think about Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s analysts justifying all of this:

Although American and South Korean intelligence officials doubt the North is close to being able to follow through on a nuclear strike, or that it would even try, given its almost certain destruction, analysts say the country’s aggressive behavior is an important and worrying sign of changing calculations in the North.

After all, this “analysis” comes in light of the Russians and the Iranians having or being allowed to achieve this capability, yet we withdraw missile defenses from European locations that could defend Israel and Europe.

We do need to think about DoD delaying deployment at additional sites, including the East Coast, in order to do an environmental study, first.

We do need to think about whether this administration has any sort of clue at all about a coherent national defense policy.

Congressman Mike Rogers (R, AL), Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, is saying

Four years ago, the Obama administration began to unilaterally disarm our defenses and deterrent in the hope our enemies would follow suit.  President Obama is finally realizing what President Reagan taught us 30 years ago—the best way to keep the peace is through strength.

But is he?  Or is all of this just the loud posturing of a paper tiger?  After all, Pentagon officials are dismissing Rogers’ criticism, insisting that northern Korean technology was considerably less developed four years ago.  Yet surely they know that Russia’s wasn’t, when Reagan’s missile defense efforts were so loudly pooh-poohed, and surely they know that Russian technology was 30 years improved when Obama acceded to Russian demands to cancel our missile defense plans in eastern Europe.

Hmm….

Gun Control, Progressive Style

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Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has jammed into a gun control bill making its way through the Senate an amendment that adds Draconian Federal government control over our individual right to keep and bear arms.  Schumer first Dragoons the states.  Section 102 of the gun control bill, with his amendment, is aptly titled:

SEC. 102. PENALTIES FOR STATES THAT DO NOT MAKE DATA ELECTRONICALLY AVAILABLE TO THE NATIONAL INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK SYSTEM.

Under this section, the US Attorney General is allowed to withhold up to 4% of Federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies in any state that respects its citizens’ privacy vis-à-vis the Federal government by refusing to provide its state’s data to the NISC.  After a five-year “grace” period from implementation of the Senate’s legislation, the US Attorney General is required to withhold 5% of that funding.

Charles Cooke, writing for National Review Online, provides a description of other parts of the Schumer Amendment.  On the matter of “transfers” of firearms between household members, Cooke summarizes thusly:

If, for example, a gun owner leaves his home for more than seven days—leaving his firearms with his roommate, or gay partner, or landlord—he’ll be committing a felony that carries a five-year prison term.  And while married couples are exempted from falling afoul of that provision, the family exemptions apply only to recorded “gifts” and not to “temporary transfers.”

Don’t take that business trip of eight days without incurring the hassle  of taking all of your firearms with you (or the jail term in New York, if you do).  If you leave them behind, you and your spouse will become Schumer-felons on the eighth day.  Unless you formally “gifted” those weapons to your spouse, using the attendant paperwork to effect the transfer, before you left.  After which, your spouse better not leave for more than seven days without exercising one of those same options.

Cooke understates the problem of “transfers” of firearms between friends, though.  Cooke summarizes thusly:

[I]t would be illegal to lend a gun to a friend so that he can go shooting.  Want to give your pistol to your neighbor so he can pop down to the range for a few hours but don’t have time to go with him?  Sorry, better make sure you look good in orange.

But Schumer’s amendment says, in SEC. 202. FIREARMS TRANSFERS, paragraph (2)(D), that the transfer must occur at the firing range.  The owner still has to take the time to accompany the friend to the range and effect the “transfer” there.

Moreover, Schumer’s amendment requires that regulations be written to require a paper record be created for every transfer:

(ii) shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee….

Want to lend your piece to your friend for his use at the firing range?  Go with him to the range to make the weapon loan, and then fill out a ream of Federal paperwork concerning that loan.  Every time.

Welcome to Progressivism.

Schumer’s amendments can be viewed here and here.

Obamacare…Gifts

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Welcome to ObamaWorld.  Health insurance premiums—which President Barack Obama has been promising for the last three years will be going down, courtesy of his Obamacare—are about to jump up.  High.  The AP is reporting that we can look forward to 20%-100% premium jumps beginning in just nine months—next January.  Here’s what some of those increases will look like, with my editorial comments interspersed.

  • Changes to how insurers set premiums according to age and gender could cause some premiums to rise as much as 50 percent, according to America’s Health Insurance Plans.  NOTE: this is because Obamacare drives insurers steadily away from market-oriented, risk-based premiums.  Age and gender drive differing risks for a given insured malady.  As the AP went on:
  • The law will prohibit insurers from setting different rates based on gender—something they currently do because women generally use more health care.  That means premiums for some men could rise, while they fall for women.  NOTE: this is a redistribution, and a subsidy of one group (here, women) by another.
  • Young people who currently have low-cost coverage may see some of the biggest hikes.  NOTE: or they may start out with no coverage at all, because they don’t need it.
  • In many states, insurers charge a 60-year-old customer $5 in premiums for every $1 they collect from a 24-year-old.  The logic behind that is that older people use health care more and generate more expensive claims than younger customers, so insurers need to collect more to help pay their bills.  …  But the overhaul will narrow that ratio to 3-to-1.  That alone could cause the premium for a 24-year-old who pays $1,200 annually to jump to $1,800, according to AHIP. Meanwhile, the 60-year-old who currently pays $6,000 will see a 10 percent drop in price.  NOTE: This is naked wealth redistribution and a subsidy.  Only this time, the victim has no wealth to redistribute—the 24-year-old is only just starting out.
  • Prices also may change depending on a person’s current coverage.  Many policies on the individual market (coverage not sold through employers) exclude maternity coverage, but that will be considered an essential health benefit under the overhaul.  That could mean higher prices for some.
  • Vikki Swanson, 49, of Newport Beach, CA, resents that the added benefit may lead to higher costs for her.  “I had a hysterectomy, I have no need for maternity coverage, but I have to now pay for it.  I have to pay not only my own premium but I have to subsidize everybody else[.]”  NOTE: Yeah….
  • A new tax on premiums could raise prices as much as 2.3% in 2014 and more in subsequent years, according to a study commissioned by AHIP.  Policyholders with plans that end in 2014 probably have already seen an impact from this.  NOTE: this tax on the top-line revenues of medical equipment manufacturers will suppress development and/or production of items ranging from pacemakers to suits that let paraplegics walk again.
  • Requirements that insurance plans in many cases cover more health care or pay a greater share of a patient’s bill than they do now also could add to premiums, depending on the extent of a person’s current coverage, according AHIP.  NOTE: because insurance companieswelfare agencies aren’t allowed to charge for elective items like contraceptives, they’ll have to recoup these losses from other areas.

Once again, coverage under Obamacare isn’t health insurance, it’s privately funded, Federally mandated health welfare.