The law is such an inconvenient thing: A second appeals court has ruled that Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional.
“They simply did what their bosses ordered.”
Remember this story when the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress try to pin the IRS scandal on a handful of low level IRS employees.
Did the writings of a prominent Catholic professor, critical of Obama and Democratic Party policies, cause the IRS to audit her? Key quote:
Her writings for the Catholic Advocate soon ceased because, Hendershott admits, the IRS audit silenced her. If her suspicions are true, this may have been its chilling intention. “I haven’t written for them since the audit, because I was so scared,” she said (records show her last article for the organization was on July 10, 2010 — the same month the IRS audit unfolded).
So far, she has only shared her story with friends and those close to her, but in light of the recent IRS scandal, she has decided to speak out. “It was clear they didn’t like me criticizing the people who helped pass Obamacare,” she said of the audit,” later adding, ”The IRS is very frightening.”
Good news? New estimates of the 2013 federal deficit show it will be the lowest deficit since 2008.
The CBO claims that much of the reduction comes from new revenue, but I suspect that the real cause was sequestration, which actually forced real cuts in federal programs for the first time since Obama took office.
I put a question mark on the “good news” above in that the deficit will still be higher than $600 billion, and that spending is still out of control. This drop is merely the tiniest glimmer of hope in a black storm of disaster.
Finding out what’s in it: The IRS scandal and the fact that Obamacare uses the IRS for enforcement now has the public increasingly frightened.
What could go wrong? No one at the IRS would ever target you and your healthcare coverage because of your politics. Such things never happen in America!
According to two Congressman, almost 500 conservative organizations were targeted for harassment by the IRS, significantly more than the IRS has admitted to.
Working for the Democratic Party: When the IRS harassed this tea party group in Toledo in 2011, demanding what books they read or discussed, they responded by sending the IRS a copy of the Constitution.
“They wanted a synopsis of all the books we read,” Bower said. “I thought, I don’t have time to write a book report. You can read them for yourselves.”
Sadly, I doubt the IRS did that.
Finding out what’s in it: Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.
Now ain’t that a surprise? The rates go up when you require insurance companies to provide more services while simultaneously requiring them to insure more sick people! Who wudda thunk it?
Actually, every Republican and conservative in the nation, as well as millions of Americans at townhall meetings in 2010, were screaming these basic facts of reality to the Democrats. They just refused to listen.
Working for the Democratic Party: Documents now show that IRS officials in Washington DC and California were also involved in targeting conservative organizations.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
The IRS tried at first to make it sound as if only low level employees in Ohio were involved. That lie isn’t standing up very long.
The state of Obamacare in Hawaii: “We’re not going to have any health care.”
The article is a compilation of stories from Hawaii about the train wreak that is Obamacare and the difficulties it is causing to the healthcare industry there.
Working for the Democratic Party: There is now evidence that the IRS illegally leaked the tax records of conservative groups to their liberal opponents.
Mickey Kaus notes that this abuse did not have to be ordered by the big bosses in the Democratic Party. The people at the IRS are mostly Democrats, and will do it naturally if they simply feel that their bosses will look the other way.
Remember Romney supporter and businessman Frank VanderSloot? First attacked by the Obama campaign, he was then subjected to two audits, from the IRS and Labor.
Gee, I wonder why?
And here’s a story describing five other examples of the IRS being used to punish opponents of the Democratic Party.
A report to be released this week says that senior IRS officials knew that agents were targeting tea party groups in 2011, even as they were denying that this was happening.
Increasingly it appears the Obama administration used the IRS as a tool for harassing its opponents.
Ten crazy and unconstitutional demands made by the IRS to conservative organizations in its effort to harass opponents of the Democratic Party.
All of the examples above are taken from actual IRS correspondence received by ACLJ’s 27 clients. There were many versions of the in-depth questionnaire sent to different organizations, suggesting there was more than one agent or one office involved. Though IRS officials blamed “low-level” employees in the Cincinnati office, which is the central IRS office in charge of tax exemptions, French said the abuse was far more widespread. ACLJ’s clients dealt with inquiries from IRS offices from “coast to coast.” Of ACLJ’s 27 clients, 15 finally had their status approved after 6-7 months with legal help. There are 12 groups whose status remains in limbo.
The IRS admitted today that it targeted conservative political organizations during the 2012 election campaign.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups. In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
The IRS also claimed that this action was “initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.” And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell them.
The words of those who falsely blamed the Benghazi terrorist attack on an obscure YouTube trailer, and were then willing to abandon the First Amendment to defend their lies.
Yesterday’s dramatic congressional testimony about the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. interests in Benghazi, Libya convincingly corroborated what was widely reported within days of the attack: that senior American officials on the ground knew immediately, despite the Obama administration’s storyline to the contrary, that the assault did not arise out of a “spontaneous” demonstration outside the U.S. Consulate in protest of an obscure YouTube trailer of a homemade anti-Islam movie called Innocence of Muslims.
Falsely assessing partial blame for the violence on a piece of artistic expression inflicted damage not just on the California resident who made it—Nakoula Basseley Nakoula is currently serving out a one-year sentence for parole violations committed in the process of producing Innocence—but also on the entire American culture of free speech. In the days and weeks after the attacks, academics and foreign policy thinkers fell over themselves dreaming up new ways to either disproportionately punish Nakoula or scale back the very notion of constitutionally protected expression.
The article then shows us who in American politics was willing to abandon freedom of speech for political reasons. If we have any courage, we should throw these words back in their face again and again and again and again.
House Republicans have refused to recommend anyone to the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), labeled “the death panel” by some.
“We believe Congress should repeal IPAB, just as we believe we ought to repeal the entire health care law,” the Boehner and McConnell letter reads.
Finding out what’s in it: Head Start teachers now expect Obamacare to severely impact their work and income.
What’s not to like? Obamacare’s got everything: Complex regulation, big fines, and high cost, all rolled up in a single package that just keeps surprising us.
The Obama administration has given up trying to force a bible publisher to pay for contraceptives under Obamacare.
At the government’s own request, a federal appellate court Friday dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of an order that stopped the president from enforcing the HHS birth control mandate against a Bible publisher. The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any abortion pill mandate case.
Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing Tyndale House Publishers say the administration is apparently nervous about trying to defend its position that a Bible publisher is not religious enough for a religious exemption to the mandate. “Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,” said Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “The government dismissed its appeal because it knows how ridiculous it sounds arguing that a Bible publisher isn’t religious enough to qualify as a religious employer.”
Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennesee will raise premiums to its customers 3 to 30 percent in 2014.
Gee what a surprise: Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) says the federal government isn’t spending enough to implement Obamacare.
Even if the federal government was not spending money it doesn’t have and was in the black, there will never be enough money to fund this monstrosity. Too bad Reid and the rest of the Democrats couldn’t figure that out. (Or maybe they did and simply wanted the country to go bankrupt. I wonder.)
Finding out what’s in it: The total benefits paid by private companies declined outright in the first quarter of 2013 as employers prepare for the onset of Obamacare.
More Democratic senators discover that Obamacare is a train wreck about to happen.
They wrote it. They rammed it through Congress. It is their baby, lock, stock, and barrel.
Now Congress has found out what’s in it: Lawmakers are considering exempting themselves and their staffers from Obamacare.
If they think the law is too onerous for themselves, then maybe they might finally realize that it is too onerous for everyone, and repeal the damn thing. Unfortunately, such common sense is not likely to appear in Washington.
Update: The story above suggested the exemption was being pushed by both parties. This apparently is not entirely true. There does appear to be some common sense in Washington, at least among some on the Republican side, as indicated by Republican statements from both the House and Senate. As noted by Speaker John Boehner’s office,
» Read more
And then there’s this: “Why does evil make liberals stupid?” Key quote:
This piece in The Atlantic is a good exemplar of the mushy liberal commentary that has proliferated in recent days. Authored by one Megan Garber, it is titled: “The Boston Bombers Were Muslim: So?” Before taking a close look at Ms. Garber’s article, let’s advise The Atlantic not to put away that headline. It could come in handy so often. “The Cole Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Embassy Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The First World Trade Center Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The September 11 Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Madrid Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The London Bombers Were Muslim: So?” “The Shoebomber Was Muslim: So?” The Underwear Bomber Was Muslim: So?” “The Fort Hood Shooter Was Muslim: So?” “The Beslan Child-Murderers Were Muslim: So?” “The Times Square Bomber Was Muslim: So?”
We could keep this up for a very long time, but let’s move on to Ms. Garber’s soulful meanderings.
Idiot: Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Wednesday he fears a “train wreck” as the Obama administration implements Obamacare.
Baucus was one of the key architects of Obamacare and voted for it, along with every other Democrat in Congress. That he is only now discovering what a bad law it is is just further proof that he should fired.
The real question is whether the voters will fire him. After the last election I have my doubts.
The house of cards begins to fall: A union is calling for the repeal of Obamacare.
Our Union and its members have supported President Obama and his Administration for both of his terms in office.
But regrettably, our concerns over certain provisions in the ACA have not been addressed, or in some instances, totally ignored. In the rush to achieve its passage, many of the Act’s provisions were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences that are inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer sponsored coverage could keep it.
These provisions jeopardize our multi-employer health plans, have the potential to cause a loss of work for our members, create an unfair bidding advantage for those contractors who do not provide health coverage to their workers, and in the worst case, may cause our members and their families to lose the benefits they currently enjoy as participants in multi-employer health plans.
But don’t worry, come the next election this same union will continue to support the same Democratic politicians that gave us Obamacare, because party partisanship is far more important than common sense and rational leadership.
Finding out what’s in it: The nation’s largest movie chain is turning its employees into part-time workers to avoid the cost of Obamacare.
