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Readers!

 

It is now July, time once again to celebrate the start of this webpage in 2010 with my annual July fund-raising campaign.

 

This year I celebrate the fifteenth anniversary since I began Behind the Black. During that time I have done more than 33,000 posts, mostly covering the global space industry and the related planetary and astronomical science that comes from it. Along the way I have also felt compelled as a free American citizen to regularly post my thoughts on the politics and culture of the time, partly because I think it is important for free Americans to do so, and partly because those politics and that culture have a direct impact on the future of our civilization and its on-going efforts to explore and eventually colonize the solar system.

 

You can’t understand one without understanding the other.

 

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The Obama administration has quietly decided to arbitrarily delay implementation of another Obamacare requirement.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration has quietly decided to arbitrarily delay implementation of another Obamacare requirement.

The New York Times first reported on Tuesday that the administration is giving some insurers and employers a one-year grace period to adhere to the limit, which otherwise would have capped individual costs at $6,350 a year. The full requirement will go into effect in 2015, rather than 2014. The change means some employers — namely, those with more than one benefit provider — could use plans with higher limits or no limit at all on out-of-pocket costs during that period. The grace period apparently was granted earlier this year, though was buried in reams of regulatory material and was not publicly reported until now. Department of Labor guidelines published in February had addressed the delay.

As Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) correctly notes, “The president doesn’t get to write legislation, and it’s illegal and unconstitutional for him to try and change legislation by himself.”

By allowing a president to do this kind of thing, we are losing our democracy.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

8 comments

  • R. Cotour

    Why no general public outrage?

    “President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended a cocktail party this evening at the Martha’s Vineyard home of National Public Radio host and special correspondent Michele Norris, according to the White House pool report. Norris’s husband, Broderick Johnson, is a lobbyist who worked on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.”

    The general public has not been instructed to be outraged.

  • wodun

    “The grace period apparently was granted earlier this year, though was buried in reams of regulatory material and was not publicly reported until now. ”

    This is the problem with congress outsourcing law making to government organizations.

  • Pzatchok

    It sounds like this one was asked for by the industry and not because of general problems.

    Exactly what problems would happen when a price limit is set on a product? Certainly not one for the people.

  • R. Cotour

    Is there a general extra Constitutional philosophy in our governments operation today? Maybe even a kind of parallel nature to it, answerable essentially to no one?

    “Journalist Michael Hastings Was Investigating CIA Director John Brennan Before He Was Killed in Fiery Car Crash”

  • R. Cotour

    “IRS’s Lerner Used Personal E-mail to Conduct Official Business, Investigators Say “

  • R. Cotour

    “Sharyl Attkisson: More Fast and Furious Guns Recovered in Mexico”

  • R. Cotour

    “Federal Appeals Court: Obama Administration Is Violating Federal Law ‘Without Any Legal Basis’”

  • R. Cotour

    “Obamacare Exemption: None Dare Call It Treason”

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