Finding out what’s in it: According to a new report, half the insurance brokers nationwide plan to leave the healthcare industry because of Obamacare.
Link fixed!
Finding out what’s in it: Because their doctors are no longer accepting their Obamacare health plans, patients are flocking to emergency rooms in California, thus increasing the average wait time for treatment to five hours.
I think this quote from the article summarizes the situation quite nicely:
California doctor Robert Subers told his local news station he cannot accept some Obamacare insurance because the payments are so low he would end up owing money out of his own pocket for each visit. “If it was supposed to increase access to care, Obamacare, and if it was supposed to bring down healthcare costs, I’m trying to find out where it’s done either,” he said.
Seven school suspensions that were insane and completely unjustified.
I’ve posted about most of these stories previously, but it is important to read about them again to see how completely ridiculous and oppressive they were. Each one of these actions was a good reason for everyone to pull their kids from these public schools, especially when the school officials who perpetrated these obscenities were not fired.
The first and third were especially egregious, but the third illustrates how best to combat the schools when they act this way.
Fourteen year old Jared Marcum wore a NRA “Protect Your Rights” t-shirt to school with a hunting rifle on it. Despite the fact that the shirt didn’t violate the school’s dress code, a screaming teacher demanded that he turn the shirt inside out. Marcum was then removed from class, suspended, arrested, and faced a year in jail for “obstructing an officer” because he wouldn’t stop protesting his innocence while he was being hauled away. In this case, 100 kids wore the same shirts to school as part of a protest without being challenged and the family lawyered up and got the charges dropped. [emphasis mine]
If one student is suspended for making his pop tart look like a gun, every student in the school should do the same. If one student is suspended for innocently using the word “gun” in conversation, then every student in the school should use the word repeatedly in conversation. If students and parents inundate the school with more examples of the behavior the school was trying to ban, the schools stop this insanity very quickly.
The religion of peace: ISIS supporters are now demanding a new Jewish holocaust.
Facts remain facts. The world of Islam is poor, ignorant, bigoted, violent, and oppressive. Where there is wealth, such as in the Middle East, it is fueled entirely by oil that was found by Western capitalist companies and pumped to the surface using Western-developed technology. Without that help, the oil would still be underground and these Islamic countries would still be poor.
The oppressive nature of Islam, however, remains obvious and widespread. If we are intellectually honest we must ask: Why is that? What is it about Islam that results in this consistent cultural and social failure? An open-minded look at the language of the Koran and the history of this religion will give you a straight-forward answer, and that answer is not a pleasant one.
That the American intellectual community and many American politicians from both parties seem unwilling to take this hard look at Islam says a great deal about their lack of intellectual honesty. It also tells us something about their own attitude towards oppression. Maybe they don’t dislike tyranny that so much.
Another environmental claim turns out to be vastly exaggerated: The scientist who claimed that islands of plastic bags were filling the oceans has found that his claim was bogus.
The scientist whose findings environmentalists used to shame us into bringing our own reusable bags to the grocery store now says that his estimate of one million tons of plastic floating in the ocean may have been off by a factor of perhaps 143. His latest estimate ranges from 7,000 to 35,000 tons, and even most of that has biodegraded into granules. …
Also doubtful: The environmentalist claim that 1.5 million marine animals choke to death each year on plastic bags that ran away from home for a life at sea. They’ve revised their estimates downward to 6.6 percent of that, but even the new figure has no empirical support.
But remember, Barack Obama says the science is settled, and that anyone who questions him or expresses any doubt is the equivalent of a Holocaust denier.
Finding out what’s in it: Obamacare is forcing health insurers in New York to request premium increases from 12 to 20%.
NASA and Boeing today signed a $2.8 billion contract for Boeing to build the core stage of the SLS rocket
Scheduled for its initial test flight in 2017, the SLS is designed to be flexible and evolvable to meet a variety of crew and cargo mission needs. The initial flight-test configuration will provide a 77-ton capacity, and the final evolved two-stage configuration will provide a lift capability of more than 143 tons.
It would be nice for the U.S. to have this heavy-lift rocket, but I fully expect the funds to run out immediately after it makes its inaugural flight, despite the wonderful pork it provides to so many Congressional districts. It just costs too much per launch.
Pushback: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) today filed lawsuits against the speech codes at four universities.
Read the article. The specific examples are quite oppressive. For example:
At Citrus College in California, student Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle is challenging three unconstitutional policies, including a free speech zone that the school already agreed to abolish after a 2003 lawsuit. Not only did Citrus College reinstitute its “Free Speech Area,” comprising a miniscule 1.37% of campus, but it also requires student organizations to undergo a two-week approval process for any expressive activity.
Federal officials have admitted that, of the 2.9 million Obamacare applications that have problems and thus cannot be processed, 85% cannot be resolved.
You ask a government bureaucracy to run things, you get these kinds of problems. Everyone knows this, even liberals, which is why I am endlessly puzzled that they still demand the government to do things for us.
A third lawsuit against the IRS, this one by True the Vote, will demand answers at a hearing on July 11 about those lost emails.
This lawsuit is in addition to the Z-Street and the Judicial Watch suits. Thus, we now have three different judges in three different courts pushing back at the IRS coverup, with hearings scheduled for July 10 and July 11.
As I said, things should get very hot for the IRS and the Obama administration come mid-July.
True the Vote, the organization harassed by the IRS and the Obama administration for investigating fraud at the polls, has sued the Mississippi Secretary of State over alleged voter fraud in last week’s Republican primary.
Though I found some of Cochran’s campaign efforts quite disgusting, I was not offended that blacks came out to vote for him. As long as their vote is legal, that is their right. However, the allegations of fraud that have been swirling around this election suggest that maybe a closer look is warranted.
The Supreme Court today struck down the Obamacare contraceptive mandate imposed by the Obama administration on all businesses.
Despite the opinions of many on the left, some of whom have even threatened to burn Hobby Lobby to the ground for making this challenge, this is a victory for religious liberty. Since when in this country did the government get the right to force religious people of any religion into doing things that directly violate their religious beliefs? This rules clearly says the government does not yet have that right.
No one who supports freedom, however, should rest easy. The decision was 5-4, and with a Democratic Party today quite willing to put restrictions on free speech, we must be prepared for more assaults on freedom.
The Democrats have rewritten their attempt to repeal the first amendment, adding one word in the hope no one will notice that it really changes nothing.
This is the new language:
To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process, Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.
The phrasing is slightly different than the original, with the addition of the word “reasonable,” thus making believe that this makes their constitutional amendment more palatable. It does not. What it does do is illustrate once again that the modernDemocratic Party is not in favor of free speech. 42 Democratic Senators have endorsed this amendment. As John Hinderaker so cogently notes in the article above — paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson — the Democrats “have sworn eternal hostility against every limitation on government’s tyranny over the mind of man.”
The fantasy land of global warming science: Despite a stable and robust population for emperor penguins, combined with a new record in Antarctica this very week for the size of its icecap, scientists today issued a report demanding that this species be declared endangered because global warming will make them all die.
Global warming will cut Antarctica’s 600,000-strong emperor penguin population by at least a fifth by 2100 as the sea ice on which the birds breed becomes less secure, a study said on Sunday. The report urged governments to list the birds as endangered, even though populations in 45 known colonies were likely to rise slightly by 2050 before declining. Such a listing could impose restrictions on tourism and fishing companies.
It’s insane. It is as if facts have no relevance. For example, the recommendation of the report is based entirely on computer models, the same models that have failed 100% to predict anything in the past twenty years. Moreover, the report admits the emperor penguin population is stable and large and is likely to increase in the next three decades.
But who cares! We have to save these cutsy penguins, so let’s make them endangered so they can be used as a political weapon against any disagreement about global warming!
The lawsuit of a pro-Israeli organization, filed in August 2010, makes the IRS extremely vulnerable to deep legal investigation.
[Y]esterday saw the beginning of the discovery phase in the lawsuit by Z-Street a pro-Israel organization that was told its application for tax exempt status was being delayed because “…these cases are being sent to a special unit in the DC office to determine whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.” …
Judge Jackson gave the IRS until June 26 to respond to Z-Street. That deadline has now passed, so the case enters discovery. This means that Z-Street can subpoena IRS officials, place them under oath, and ask them questions about how they acted, and cross examine them closely. They can also subpoena documents and require their production. This is much different than a House committee hearing in which members have only a few minutes to ask questions, and when friendly Democrats have their opportunity to apologize for the impertinence of daring to ask questions of our IRS masters. Depositions taken under oath can last many hours and involve detailed questions.What makes the Z-Street case unique and potentially extremely damaging is that its lawsuit was filed in August 2010. That filing placed the IRS under legal obligation to preserve records.
As the article notes, as a legal proceeding it will be practically impossible for the IRS to stonewall, as it has done during Congressional hearings. Like the Judicial Watch case that will have a hearing on July 10, the IRS was required under the law to make sure evidence was not destroyed, and failed to do so. And like that case, the court will have the right to demand answers about that failure and get them.
I want to underline the basis of the Z-Street case: An IRS official admitted that this organization’s tax exempt status was being delayed merely because its “activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.” Think about that. The IRS believes it can decide your tax liability and status based on your political opinion.
Doesn’t that capture in a nutshell the entire scandal, in which the IRS was used as a weapon to harass opponents of the Democratic Party and specifically of Barack Obama.
The judge with whom the IRS failed to notify about the lost emails and is holding a hearing on the matter on July 10 has in the past aggressively pursued corruption in the Department of Justice.
Judge Sullivan is the judge who held federal prosecutors in contempt, dismissed an unjust indictment against a United States Senator, and publicly excoriated the Department of Justice. He also had the moral conviction, courage and gumption to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Justice Department and the individual prosecutors. …
In the [Senator Ted] Stevens case, Judge Sullivan publicly upbraided the government lawyers before an overflow courtroom, “In nearly 25 years on the bench, I’ve never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I’ve seen in this case. . . . When the government does not meet its obligations to turn over evidence, the system falters.”
Judge Sullivan was taking the extraordinary step of appointing a special prosecutor. He chose highly respected DC attorney Henry Schuelke III to investigate the prosecutors for possible criminal charges. The judge ordered the department to preserve all of its files, electronic correspondence—everything—and cooperate fully in the investigation, including providing Schuelke access to investigative files and all witnesses.
It is very possible Sullivan will get as incensed on July 10. Stay tuned. Things could get very hot for the IRS and the Obama administration on that day.
Cover-up: Even though the IRS knew it had lost a significant chunk of Lois Lerner emails in February, it failed to notify the court even as it released in April emails demanded of them as part of a court case.
No mention was made in that production of the lost Lerner emails, even though the original Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit filed in May 2013 specifically sought them.
Judicial Watch further noted that “although IRS had knowledge of the missing Lois Lerner emails and of the other IRS officials, it materially omitted any mention of the missing records” in an April 30 status update on its document production. … The tax agency could also face court sanctions or even criminal proceedings if [the judge in the case] is not satisfied with the government’s explanation. [emphasis mine]
The IRS and the officials there should be punished criminally for this behavior, but I doubt it will happen.
And then there’s this: According to the law, the loss of the emails of Lerner and other IRS officials can be inferred as evidence that the emails were incriminating.
Let citizens sue government workers directly for misconduct.
The way to control this epidemic of government law-breaking is to allow citizen victims to sue, and legislate personally liability for bureaucrats guilty of willfully illegal conduct.
I agree. If a government bureaucrat breaks the law and no one in the government does anything about it, allowing them to get off without punishment, then the American citizen who was harmed by that illegal activity should have the right to sue that bureaucrat directly. This is how the law applies in every other venue of society. Why should government workers be exempt from the liability of their actions?
Only moments prior to launch computers aborted the first flight of Angara, Russia’s first new rocket since the Soviet-era.
More information here. According to a Russian web forum, the problem is probably a leaky valve or the loss of pressure in the propulsion system and that it might take a week to be fixed.
The quote below from the first story above is interesting in that it once again illustrates how Putin is trying to exert his authority over the space industry to re-establish the Soviet-era top down way of doing things:
Putin, who had been poised to watch the rocket’s inaugural flight from the northern military Plesetsk cosmodrome via video link from the Kremlin, ordered his generals to report on the cause of the delay within an hour.
After spending $4.4 billion on its computers during the Obama administration, the IRS still had over 2,000 hard drive crashes in 2014.
IRS commissioner John Koskinen used the 2,000 crashes as an argument that the crash of Lois Lerner’s hard drive was not that unusual, and that their aging equipment made backup difficult. To me, it suggests that the people at this agency are either gross incompetents, or even more corrupt than I thought.
Because you see, with that many crashes, the IRS made the one obvious decision anyone with any brains would immediately make in that situation: They canceled the contract with their email backup service.
A close analysis of NOAA climate data from just one randomly picked Texas rural location reveals significant data tampering to make the climate appear to be growing warming.
In other words, the adjustments have added an astonishing 1.35C to the annual temperature for 2013. Note also that I have included the same figures for 1934, which show that the adjustment has reduced temperatures that year by 0.91C. So, the net effect of the adjustments between 1934 and 2013 has been to add 2.26C of warming. ,,,
So what possible justification can USHCN [the climate data center at NOAA] have for making such large adjustments? Their usual answer is TOBS, or Time of Observation Bias, which arises because temperatures are now monitored in the early morning rather than the late afternoon, which tended to be the practice before. But by their own admittance, TOBS adjustments should only account for about 0.2C.
What about station location? Has this changed? Well, not since 1949 according to the official Station Metadata. Luling is a small town of about 5000 people, and the station is situated at the Foundation Farm, 0.7 miles outside town. In other words, a fairly rural site, that should not need adjusting for urban influences.
It is plain that these adjustments made are not justifiable in any way. It is also clear that the number of “Estimated” measurements made are not justified either, as the real data is there, present and correct.
In doing this analysis, the author, Paul Homewood, does something that Steven Goddard of the Real Science website, the man who broke this story, doesn’t do very often: He carefully illustrates the full raw dataset and shows us how he isolates the raw data from the estimated and adjusted numbers. Goddard generally only shows his results, which means we have to trust his analysis. Homewood therefore approaches Goddard’s results skeptically, and thus acts to check his work to see if it is accurate and correct. He finds that it is.
This is science at its best.
I should also note that I found Homewood’s analysis because Steven Goddard posted a link on his own webpage. As a true scientist, Goddard does not fear a close look at his work. He welcomes it.
A look at the seven IRS officials whose computers crashed.
The bottom line is that every single one of them was involved with IRS division that planned and instigated the harassment of the political opponents of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
We’re here to help you! The Veterans administration keeps a database administrated by secret committees that lists vets as “disruptive” and “disgruntled,” which it then uses to restrict their treatment.
Among examples of patients’ behavior referred to the VA’s “Disruptive Behavior Committees” (yes, that’s what they’re called): venting “frustration about VA services and/or wait times, threatening lawsuits or to have people fired, and frequent unwarranted visits to the emergency department or telephone calls to facility staff.”
As Krause explains, the Disruptive Behavior Committees are secret panels “that decide whether or not to flag veterans without providing due process first. The veteran then has his or her right of access to care restricted without prior notice.”
Obviously, the VA demonstrates once again why we must put the entire healthcare industry under government control. If they can do it to vets, why shouldn’t the rest of the government not have the power to do it to us all!
The uncertainty of science: Despite predicting ten years ago that the global temperature would rise significantly, actual temperatures have dropped in the ensuing decade.
But don’t worry, these climate scientists really do know what’s going to happen. Just give them lots of money, silence their critics, and they guarantee they will fake the data to make sure their predictions are right!
Hillary Clinton reveals what it’s like to be poor in America.
Read it. This piece is not only hilarious, it encapsulates the absurdity and childishness of American politics today.
In another victory against government overreach, the Supreme Court today ruled that a buffer zone protecting abortion clincs from protests violates the first amendment.
While the court was unanimous in the outcome, Roberts joined with the four liberal justices to strike down the buffer zone on narrow grounds. In a separate opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia criticized Roberts’ opinion for carrying forward “this court’s practice of giving abortion-rights advocates a pass when it comes to suppressing the free-speech rights of their opponents.”
I am once again gratified that the entire court recognized the unconstitutionality of this buffer zone. However, Scalia is right. That a majority of the court rejected the buffer on narrow grounds is unfortunate.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: In a 9-0 ruling, the Supreme Court has decided that Barack Obama’s fake recess appointments were unconstitutional.
Two and one-half years ago in 2012, Obama tried to slip-in appointments to the National Labor Relations Board without the constitutionally required Senate approval, claiming he had the right to do so because the Senate was in recess. There’s only one problem. The Senate was not in formal recess when Obama made the dictatorial appointments.
Now the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in a unanimous 9-0 decision that Obama doesn’t get to define when the U.S. Senate is in recess, the Senate does.
I am gratified that all the Democratic appointees to the court ruled against Obama, refusing to allow their partisan tendencies to overrule the plain language of the Constitution. More information about the ruling and its history here.
The competition heats up: In several different news stories today China touted its future plans in space.
The landing test described in the first story above will also be the first test flight of China’s new heavy lift rocket, Long March 5.
That China is both politically and culturally serious about this effort can be seen by the nationalistic enthusiasm for this space effort that permeates these stories. They also can’t help comparing their plans to U.S. efforts.
» Read more
For those who wish to listen to the podcast of my two hour appearance on the Space Show yesterday, you can get the podcast here. You can also comment on my discussion with David Livingston and his callers at the Space Show blog, or here.
The two major topics we discussed were first, Russia’s future in space in the context of that government’s effort to retake control of its entire aerospace industry, and second, the evidence that there is fraud and data manipulation going on in the climate research units of both NOAA and NASA. I also discussed some recent space science stories, such as Yutu on the Moon, Curiosity on Mars, and Cassini’s recent imagery of the lakes of Titan.
A cross-check of the voter rolls from 28 states has found almost 7 million duplicate registrations.
Note that the head of the organization that issued this report was one of the conservative individuals harassed by the IRS as well as three other government agencies. I guess the Democrats consider it voter suppression (and maybe racist!) to prevent these 7 million people from voting twice.
