Tag: regulation

Obamacare tax mess

2:02 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The Obama administration is considering issuing more waivers to Obamacare in order to avoid a backlash for enforcing the law.

Timothy S. Jost, an expert on health law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law who supports the Affordable Care Act, said: “It will be very easy to find people who are unhappy with the new tax obligations — people who have to pay a penalty, who have to wait forever to get through to somebody at the I.R.S. or have to pay back a lot of money because of overpayments of premium tax credits.”

That the Obama administration has no legal authority to simply waive portions of the law is a fact that seems to escape the notice of the administration, the experts quoted in the article, and the reporter himself. Who cares if the law is abandoned if they can back up this unlawful President in his effort to save himself and his Democratic Party from the disaster they forced upon us all?

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Small businesses dump health insurance

9:57 am

Finding out what’s in it: A new study has found that small businesses are increasingly not offering health insurance to their employees since Obamacare went into effect.

The survey, conducted by Assistant Professor of Economics Leslie Muller, focused on companies that have fewer than 50 employees. Companies of that size are not mandated by the ACA to offer insurance to employees. “Small firms have faced, traditionally faced, higher costs so they’ve been strapped for a while. That doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the ACA it just has to do with the fact that health care costs have been raising it’s been particularly hard on the small firms,” Muller said.

The Survey found that of small businesses that offered health insurance over the past two years, only 40 percent plan to offer insurance in 2015 and only 28 percent in 2016.

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Obamacare requirements to employers arrive in 2015

8:21 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Beginning in 2015 employers of more than fifty employees will begin to pay penalties if they do not provide healthcare in precisely the amount and quality as required by Obamacare.

I challenge anyone who reads the article above to tell me exactly what those Obamacare requirements are. They are so complicated and obtuse that no one can easily decipher them. In other words, employers are going to be under increasing pressure — pressure they have already been under for the past four years — to reduce their workforce below 50 to avoid Obamacare.

Should do wonders for the economy, eh?

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The benefits of fewer New York police arrests

10:28 pm

Link here. The author nails it, noting that many of the arrests the cops have stopped doing were probably nothing more than the harassment of citizens and did nothing to improve the city’s quality of life. The cops were doing it under orders of the government, which they are now defying.

The sad part is the police are not defying these orders because they object to the policies, but because they object to the mayor.

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Penalties in Obamacare to rise in 2015

9:44 am

Finding out what’s in it: Based on how the law was written, the Obamacare penalties for not having insurance will jump significantly in the next two years, going from trivial to serious.

The fines for the 2014 year were relatively modest — $95 per person or 1 percent of household income (above the threshold for filing taxes), whichever is more. But insurance scofflaws face a sharp increase if they don’t get covered soon. The fine will jump in 2015 to $325 or 2 percent of income, whichever is higher. By 2016, the average fine will be about $1,100, based on government figures.

But don’t worry, that’s not all. The law is also going to impact small businesses badly in 2015.

So, explain to me again why you voted for the Democrats who created this law?

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Shock! A Democrat actually pays attention to cost

11:47 am

Pigs fly: Vermont’s very leftwing Democratic Governor actually canceled his attempt to take over the state’s healthcare system when his experts told him how expensive it was.

Mr. Shumlin ran in 2010 on an explicit single-payer platform in the most liberal state east of California, and the plan was conceived as a model for other states. … Under the Vermont plan, all 625,000 state residents were to be automatically enrolled in the government plan, with the same benefits for all. As with Medicare, employers would be subject to a payroll tax that would reduce wages, and workers would pay a premium based on a sliding income scale.

… The state accountants estimated that his plan required an 11.5% tax on worker payroll, with no exceptions. Individuals, meanwhile, would have paid as much as 9.5% of earnings, which would have applied to everyone making more than four times the poverty level, or $102,220 for a family of four—hardly the 1%. The full $2.59 billion in necessary funding would roughly double current state revenues (about $2.85 billion today).

…His ideological comrades are rarely dissuaded by the prospect of economic damage, as ObamaCare proves. But Mr. Shumlin has succeeded in making Vermont a national model: By admitting that single payer will make health care both more expensive and less efficient, he has shown other states what not to do. [emphasis mine]

As the highlighted text notes, Democrats routinely ignore what experts tell them about the cost of their proposals, being gladly willing to bankrupt everyone else in order to impose their ideological fantasies on us. (I exclude them because the costs of their proposals are never born by them but by others.)

Governor Shumlin’s decision to abandon his plan thus makes him a rare exception that proves the rule. If only more Democrats had this much contact with reality.

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Get ready to have your health records hacked

5:02 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Required by Obamacare to convert all health records into electronic files, those records are now very vulnerable and experts expect hackers to target them in the coming years.

Electronic records have their advantages, no doubt, but the way this conversion was shoved down the throat of both doctors and patients, by Obamacare, has left everyone exposed. Rather than give the professionals in the field the time to make the conversion when practical, convenient, and affordable, Obamacare demanded it be done now, even though many health organizations and doctors were simply not prepared to make the change.

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After a year Obamacare still stinks

9:42 am

Link here. The quote below illustrates nicely the madness of asking the government to run healthcare, or any other complicated aspect of life:

With the state-run exchanges coming down the pike I realized that, at least in the first year, I would be able to purchase health insurance at a reasonable price. So I left my employer in July 2013 and launched my consulting firm. In November 2013, I duly filled out my application to purchase insurance on the D.C. health exchange. After that, nothing happened: The only further communication I received from the exchange was a flurry of letters and emails informing me I had the right to have my communications from the D.C. exchange sent to me in any of 20 different languages, including Irish and Navajo.

After a number of ignored emails and phone calls, I contacted a health insurance “facilitator” to see if she could help me. No dice. She did manage to make the D.C. government verify that the information I had sent them—copies of passports, utility bills, and tax statements—showed that my family did exist and resided in the District, but we still weren’t able to buy insurance going into 2014.

The D.C. exchange assured me that they would straighten things out by mid-January and allow me to buy insurance retroactive to January 1. But it wasn’t until mid-March that we managed to buy insurance. And actually paying for insurance did not end our travails: The exchange mistakenly applied my payments for March and April to January and February instead, which led to our insurance being canceled on April 1, necessitating another flurry of calls and letters. A few months later we received a letter again threatening us with immediate cancellation unless I delivered copies of our passports. Resolving this one was trickier because, upon calling the exchange, the people there denied such a notice was sent until I forwarded a copy to them.

One statistic from my enrollment efforts: In four consecutive months, I spent over 500 minutes on the phone with either the D.C. health exchange or the health insurance company we selected.

Recently, with premium increases for 2015 presumably about to be announced, I thought it might make sense to go on the exchange’s website and see if they had updated prices for competing plans. After 20 minutes of trying to log in without success, I gave up, vowing never to get on the site again.

Even if he could have logged on, he would have had problems finding out the prices for the 2015 plans. Obama did not want those prices revealed prior to the election. While a private business’s only concern would be providing service to its customers so they were willing to buy its product, a government-run operation always has to deal with the political concerns of politicians, which warps its ability to serve its customers.

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Last three years the quietest for tornadoes ever

11:55 am

The uncertainty of science: 2014 caps the quietest three year period for tornadoes on record, and scientists really don’t understand why.

Harold Brooks, a meteorologist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., said there’s no consistent reason for the three-year lull — the calmest stretch since a similar quiet period in the late 1980s — because weather patterns have varied significantly from year to year. While 2012 tornado activity was likely suppressed by the warm, dry conditions in the spring, 2013 was on the cool side for much of the prime storm season before cranking up briefly in late May, especially in Oklahoma, SPC meteorologist Greg Carbin said. Then, activity quickly quieted for the summer of 2013.

Global warming activists had confidently predicted that, because of global warming, we were about to see killer tornadoes of unprecedented frequency. Well, not only has the climate not warmed these past 18 years, we are seeing fewer extreme weather events.

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Jonathan Gruber grilled by Congress over Obamacare

2:34 pm

During his testimony today at a House hearing, Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber essentially admitted that not calling the individual mandate penalties a tax was a trick by the Obama administration and the Democrats in order to get the law passed.

Below the fold I also include a video excerpt of Congressman Trey Gowdy’s questioning of Gruber today. It is high entertainment as Gowdy easily highlights the dishonesty of Gruber and the Obama administration in its writing and passing of Obamacare. However, it is important to stay with the clip to the very end, when Chairman Darrell Issa proves with one simple question how Gruber was not alone in his contempt for the American voter, and that this contempt was held by everyone at every intellectual conference Gruber attended and spoke at.

It is very important for the American public to be aware of this intellectual contempt, for it will tell them to stop listening to this intellectual elite. They are not trustworthy, and are willing to screw the general public in order to impose their will on everyone.
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NOAA admits that California drought is not man-made

2:17 pm

A new study by NOAA scientists has confirmed that the recent severe California drought was not caused by the human-caused increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but was instead the result of natural weather patterns.

The persistent weather pattern over the past several years has featured a warm, dry ridge of high pressure over the eastern north Pacific Ocean and western North America. Such high-pressure ridges prevent clouds from forming and precipitation from falling. The study notes that this ridge — which has resulted in decreased rain and snowfall since 2011 — is almost opposite to what computer models predict would result from human-caused climate change. [emphasis mine]

The climate models, which have all spectacularly failed to predict the lack of warming in the past 18 years, had also predicted that global warming would cause more rain in California, not less.

The article quotes both fake scientist Michael Mann and his buddy in the climategate scandal Kevin Trenberth in their effort to refute the study. They don’t provide much convincing data to explain why the models were all wrong, only loud whines about how they are right and everyone else is wrong.

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The federal government mines confidential private health data

9:44 am

Finding out what’s in it: Under Obamacare, thirty-five government agencies plan to use your private health data for their own purposes.

This week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which details the efforts of some 35 departments and agencies of the federal government and their roles in the plan to “advance the collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research.”

The agencies include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, NASA, the Office of Personal Management, the FCC, and a whole slew of HHS employees.

So, while Congressional legislation forces youto fill out endless forms every time you visit your doctor, and he or she is forbidden from leaving voice messages on your phone out of fear the wrong person might hear it, Obamacare allows these government bureaucrats access to everything.

Aren’t you glad they passed Obamacare?

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Arizona county to ban employees who smoke

2:57 pm

Put ’em in concentration camps! Pima County, which includes Tucson, Arizona, is considering banning the employment of any smokers.

Already employed smokers will be charged 30 percent more for their health insurance. The regulations will apply only to government employees.

I say, why waste time with this nonsense. Anyone who smokes is obviously the scum of the Earth, and should be rounded up and sent to camps, either to be re-educated, or to be killed if they can’t reform themselves. America is now an enlightened place, where freedom and individual responsibility have been replaced with the much deeper wisdom of the state!

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Increasing hostility to religion in America

7:27 pm

A yearly survey of incidents of religious discrimination in the U.S. has found a steady rise in the past three years.

For the last three years the Liberty Institute and the Family Research Council has published Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America. The legal group says they’re seeing cases of discrimination against those of faith rising rapidly. “The first time we did it, we collected about 600 cases,” Jeff Mateer, general counsel of the Texas-based Liberty Institute, told CBN News. “We went from 600 to 1,200. And this year we’re up to about 1,600. So, the threats are continuing to increase at a dramatic pace.”

The article outlines some specific stories that are quite horrifying. The worst was the case of a man fired from his job because of the sermons he gave during his free time. Sadly, that is only a sample.

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The failure of single payer government health plans

8:10 am

Link here. Read it and be warned. Many Democrats, faced with the complete disaster of Obamacare, like to claim that none of those problems would have happened if they had instead imposed a single payer plan (a euphemism for nationalizing healthcare under a government run system).

Well, read the article at the link. It will give you an idea what to expect under nationalized healthcare, and it ain’t good.

An aside: I despise the term “single payer,” as it attempts to hide the fact that the proposal is nothing more than the nationalization of healthcare, which puts the government in control. No journalist should use it, and if they do, they should either make it clear what it means, or they reveal themselves to be leftwing hacks.

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FAA moves to regulate and thus destroy drone use

1:47 am

We’re here to help you: The FAA is considering a new rule to require a pilot’s license in order to operate a private drone, even drones more akin to model airplanes.

The proposed rules would require that a drone owner would have to get certified as a pilot, “certification that can cost $10,000 and demand many hours flying aircraft that control nothing like a little drone.”

“Knowing the proper flap setting on a short runway approach for a Cessna 172 doesn’t do any good for a DJI Phantom [an inexpensive and popular commercial drone],” said Matt Waite, a University of Nebraska professor and founder of the Drone Journalism Lab. “A lot of people out there already running businesses in conflict with FAA policy, who don’t have pilot licenses, are probably looking at this like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.'”

Gee, here we have a new industry that is growing and prosperous, with many people coming up with creative ideas for using drones that none of its inventors ever dreamed of, and the government wants to step in and control it, regulating it to a point where it can’t even exist legally. Isn’t that nice of them?

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Court demands documents linked to IRS scandal

12:26 am

Working for the Democratic Party: After years of stonewalling, the Treasury Department has now been ordered by a federal court to release about 2,500 documents connected to the IRS’s illegal release to the Obama administration of the personal tax information of its opponents.

Some time in the next month these documents will become public knowledge. Considering the effort the Obama administration has made to keep them secret, I expect we shall then discover that the IRS was routinely and illegally feeding the Democrats the private tax records of their Republican opponents. Since the documents will also likely name names, we will also find out who among the Democrats demanded this illegal information, who in the IRS gave it to them, and who took that information and used it illegally.

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Obamacare and amnesty: working together to screw Americans

11:46 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Because of the way Obamacare is written, it provides employees an incentive to hire illegal immigrants — temporarily and illegally given amnesty by Obama — instead of legal Americans.

Under the president’s new amnesty, businesses will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal immigrants over native-born workers because of a quirk of Obamacare. President Obama’s temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare’s health exchanges. Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won’t have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage — making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.

Just remember: Obama and the Democrats care! Though what they care about is maybe something more Americans should ask themselves.

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Obama proclaims he will fail to do what every President has failed to do since Carter and the right goes crazy.

11:17 pm

I was reading Newt Gingrich”s commentary blasting Obama for his immigration amnesty announcement and was struck by this paragraph:

[Under Obama’s directive] there will be one group, estimated at 4 million or so, who are eligible for the new work authorization program. But at the same time, there will be no resources directed at enforcing immigration law against the other 7 million people here illegally as long as they do not fall into a few narrow categories, according to the President’s Office of Legislative Affairs. And indeed, a “senior administration official” told Roll Call that the administration “will order immigration agents to prioritize deportations of criminals and recent arrivals — and let people who are not on that priority list go free.”

I read this and realized that what Obama is doing, or not doing, depending on your point of view, is exactly what every President since Carter has done or failed to do. For the right to blast him for this unconstitutional behavior is fine, but we mustn’t forget that Republican presidents have been just as corrupt and as unconstitutional. Since the 1970s the executive branch of our federal government has simply failed to enforce the immigration laws that exist, in exactly the way Obama outlined it, and the result has been the arrival of millions of illegal immigrants inside the United States.

All Obama has done is admit to this failure, and draped it in the mantle of his approval. Past presidents had instead made believe they were doing their constitutional duty, even as they quietly allowed immigration officials to cease enforcing the law. Why else are so many illegals here?

It is this failure, by Presidents of both parties, that ipitomizes the corruption and failure of the federal government on all issues. From the budget to immigration to healthcare to pushing for wasted funding for SLS, our federal government is a pile of garbage that is choking the life out of American society, on all levels. It is for this reason that I heartily and without fear routinely support the election of untried and sometimes foolish sounding tea party candidates: they can’t possibliy be worse than what we already have and — because of their passion for smaller government — are far more likely to be much better.

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Even if you liked your plan, Obamacare will pick a plan for you

10:09 pm

Finding out what’s in it: In order to prevent Obamacare enrolless from experiencing the rate hikes expected when they automatically renew their 2014 plans for 2015, the Obama administration is proposing that it instead choose cheaper plans for those that automatically renew, even if that new plan will change the available doctors and hospitals in their network.

So, you decide that the plan you had in 2014 was worth keeping in 2015 and thus allow that plan to automatically renew rather than spend another week trying to struggle through the badly designed and hack-prone Obamacare website. When you visit your doctor however you then discover that you actually didn’t renew that plan, the Obama administration picked a different plan for you, and your doctor is no longer a participant in your plan. You have to change doctors!

Isn’t wonderful how much the Obama administration cares?

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IRS finds lost Lerner emails

9:13 pm

Surprise! IRS has found 30,000 Lois Lerner emails they had previously said were lost forever.

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system. “They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

The IRS, in a statement provided to the Examiner, said the agency and IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is fully cooperating with the investigation. “As Commissioner Koskinen has stated, the IRS welcomes TIGTA’s independent review and expert forensic analysis.” The IRS statement said. “Commissioner Koskinen has said for some time he would be pleased if additional Lois Lerner emails from this time frame could be found.”

What happened here is that lower level officials have decided they are not going to take the rap for Lerner or Obama. They realized that if they did not cooperate with Congress they would be legally at risk and could be charged with aiding the cover-up. They decided Obama is certainly not worth it. I also think recent news about Obama lying abut Obamacae and the election results helped them make this decision.

All in all, the public is beginning to realize that the emperor has no clothes. Obama might not realize it, but his power to accomplish anything is fading rapidly.

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Obama’s attempt to impose amnesty: a bluff?

11:14 pm

This article suggests that Obama’ attempt to impose immigration amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants is much less of a threat to the Constitution than implied by his own words and by the passionate response of many partisan conservatives.

[W]hile Barack Obama will no doubt argue about the fierce urgency of now, the plan has a rather large gap between his speech tonight and the actual action Obama promises to take. Section 2 is titled in bold font, You Cannot Apply For Several Months. The start of the program is nebulously given as “early 2015,” which could mean anything from January 2 to, say, June 29th. Why not start now if Obama is so tired of waiting? One has to wonder whether this is a bluff of sorts, intended to scare House Republicans into passing the Senate bill in the waning days of the lame-duck session. If Obama’s willing to wait “several months” to take action, why not just wait and at least attempt negotiation with incoming Republican leadership? [Emphasis in original]

The article, as well as this one, also note the problems faced by any illegals who try to apply under this Obama effort. They will expose themselves using a program of doubtful legality likely to be terminated by the next president or by the Republican Congress coming to power in January.

What Obama is attempting to do is certainly damaging to the rule of law, but I think it will turn out to be far more damaging to him and to the Democrats who try to defend him for doing it. As I noted earlier, Obama is now known by all to be a liar and a fraud. Supporting him in doing lawless acts as well can not be poilitically helpful for Democrats.

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The long working relationship between Obama and Gruber

4:29 pm

Just in case you happen to see a press conference or speech in the next few weeks where you see Barack Obama denying knowing or ever working with Jon Gruber — the man who has been called the architect of Obamacare and of whom numerous videos have now been discovered where he contemptuously describes Americans as “stupid” while explaining how the Obama administration deliberately lied to get the law passed — watch this video below from a 2006 event.

Obama is simply a bald-faced liar in almost everything he does. Don’t be fooled by him anymore. He is dangerous, untrustworthy, and should no longer be supported by anyone, from the left or the right or by Republicans or Democrats.

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Obamacare is forcing the closure of small rural hospitals nationwide

9:42 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The regulations imposed by Obamacare have raised costs so much that dozens of small rural hospitals, generally serving poorer communities, have been forced to close.

Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state’s closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans and will give them another chance at getting health insurance during open enrollment starting this Saturday. But critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society’s most vulnerable. These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law’s penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they’re released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.

The article also describes how the high cost converting all hospital records from paper to electronic, something that Obamacare requires, is also forcing the shut down of these hospitals.

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More than 200 colleges slash work hours to avoid Obamacare

3:06 pm

Finding out what’s in it: More than 200 colleges have capped student and faculty work hours below 30 hours per week to avoid the costs of Obamacare.

Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.

I guarantee that 70% or more of these individuals voted for Obama and the Democrats, as the political beliefs of the academic population is almost all partisan liberal. I wonder if they now have the intellectual honesty to assign blame for their woes to Obama and the Democrats .

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More penalties from Obamacare

9:42 am

Finding out what’s in it: The Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance is about to triple.

Uninsured Americans who decide not to enroll will face a penalty of $325 per person, more than tripling the $95 penalty those who did not enroll had to pay the first time around. Children under the age of 18 will be fined $162.50. The maximum amount an uninsured family will be penalized is $975 under the flat-rate method. “The penalty is meant to incentivize people to get coverage,” Laura Adams, senior analyst of InsuranceQuotes.com, told CBS News. “This year, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock.”

Nor is this the end. According to how the law was written, the penalties will continue to rise in the coming years. Just in time for the next election in fact!

When the law first passed I had said that Obamacare was going to be an election millstone around the necks of Democrats for years, and that is definitely turning out to be true. Expect more Democratic election losses in future elections, unless they change course and join the Republicans in getting this law repealed.

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More crushing Obama regulation to come

9:12 am

Despite the just completed elections, where the voters clearly indicated their disinterest in the additional environmental rules supported by Democrats, Obama is gearing up for an “onslaught” of new regulations.

The Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president’s environmental actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who think last week’s election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House’s “War on Coal.”

Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks, the efforts scheduled for the next two months show that President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive actions to combat global warming. And incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have few options for stopping the onslaught, though Republicans may be able to slow pieces of it.

If anyone has any doubt left that this president, and the left, doesn’t care what the American public wants, this story lays that doubt to rest forever. Barack Obama dislikes the idea of democracy, of following the will of the people. Instead, he wants to rule as a dictator, dictating the rules that he thinks are right. And the left that supports him supports this tyrannical approach.

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