They own all of our Obamacare problems, completely.
CNN reports, Senate Democrats supported rule that led to insurance cancellations:
Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.
In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it.
“The District of Columbia is an island surrounded by reality. Only in the District of Columbia could you get away with telling the people if you like what you have you can keep it, and then pass regulations six months later that do just the opposite and figure that people are going to ignore it. But common sense is eventually going to prevail in this town and common sense is going to have to prevail on this piece of legislation as well,” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said at the time.
“The administration’s own regulations prove this is not the case. Under the grandfathering regulation, according to the White House’s own economic impact analysis, as many as 69 percent of businesses will lose their grandfathered status by 2013 and be forced to buy government-approved plans,” the Iowa Republican said.
On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution, which could come back to haunt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year.
Avik Roy sat down with Megyn Kelly to share his latest piece over at Forbes that found that more than half of employer-based health-care plans will be deemed illegal next year because they will no longer be Obamacare compliant. This signals the latest blow to President Obama’s controversial promise that people could keep their health-care plans, which Roy said experts knew wasn’t true to begin with.
“Everyone in the health-policy community left, right, or center knew this was a lie,” he said on Fox News on Thursday night. Unfortunately, at the time, critics of the law could only offer theoretical arguments, not real-world examples.
“The difference now is that people are getting cancellation notices — journalists can go and interview the people getting the cancellation notices,” he said.
Remember, in 2009, the president emphatically denied to George Stephanopoulos that the Affordable Care Act imposed a tax increase. Yet, after the Supreme Court decision, going into the 2012 election, the White House again seemed to deny that the mandate was a tax, notwithstanding the administration’s argument to the Court.RTWT.
Now, as the price for delaying the implementation of the court-created tax penalty, Republicans should demand truth in labeling. The Democrats in Congress must now admit they have imposed a tax on young and healthy Americans to get them to take the bad deal that is Obamacare. And any suspension of this tax must be scored by the Congressional Budget Office so the public knows the size of the tax increase that will be imposed on the American people when the delay ends and the tax kicks in. No longer will congressional supporters of the ACA be able to evade political responsibility.
On the other hand, if the Democrats insist that the penalty is not a tax, then they will be admitting that it is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s decision. If Congress contradicts what the administration told the Supreme Court, a new challenge can be brought under the precedent of NFIB v. Sebelius. The president, and those who supported this law, should now be forced to bear the political consequences of their legislative and litigation legerdemain. If Obamacare can only legally live by the tax, then its supporters in Congress must politically die by the tax.
Count on coal this Christmas.Nah. It's gonna be fine.
That's what researchers at Morgan Stanley are saying in the first major forecast of a decidedly dour holiday season. Retailers hoping for a respite from a year of so-so shopping can instead expect the worst Thanksgiving-to-Christmas sales since 2008, the financial services firm said Thursday.
Five years ago, the industry was free-falling into recession. This year, a new collection of worrisome economic conditions looms as stores gear up for a period that can sometimes account for 40% of annual revenue.
Shopper confidence is low. The recent federal government stalemate and shutdown was a damper. The window for holiday shopping is six days shorter than it was last year.
At the same time, consumer spending, which makes up more than two-thirds of economic activity, is actually getting a boost. Gasoline prices are lower, and net worth is rising because of higher real estate values and a stock market upswing, Morgan Stanley said in a report.
But instead of shoveling extra money into gifts, many Americans are plowing it into big-ticket items such as cars, appliances and home improvement goods.
The report anticipates that during the fourth quarter, retailers will see a scant 1.7% increase in sales at stores open at least a year. Such same-store sales are an important indicator because they eliminate the effect of opening and closing outlets during the previous 12 months.
Strip out struggling J.C. Penney Co., which researchers predict will roll out deep discounts early in the season, and projected sales growth slips to 1.6%.
That's less than half of last year's 3.5% expansion, according to Morgan Stanley...
In the 1960s, California college campuses were hotbeds of civil rights and free speech activity, where student protests resulted in the nation's first ethnic studies programs at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, among others.Oh the humanities!
Ethnic studies became a sought-after major and a safe setting in which to examine the influence of the state's diverse population of Latinos, African Americans, whites and Asians, among others.
In recent years, however, some of those programs have been cut back, particularly in the California State University system. Today, students — and faculty — are once again protesting: this time to save ethnic studies majors.
At such campuses as San Jose, Stanislaus, Bakersfield, Long Beach and elsewhere, professors aren't being replaced, classes are being reduced and majors could be eliminated or subsumed into other liberal arts programs. The moves have reignited old debates — and wounds —- about Cal State's commitment to social and cultural diversity.
Educators and others say that as campuses look to trim costs, ethnic studies programs are bearing the brunt and could be seen as irrelevant.
Administrators counter that many programs are not attracting enough students to fill classes.
The programs also face stiff competition as students of all ethnicities focus more on obtaining degrees with immediate job prospects.
"A discipline like ethnic studies lays itself wide open to the critiques of what the hell do you do with this, can you run a corporation or fly a plane with this?," said Ron Scapp, president of the National Assn. for Ethnic Studies, which is conducting a national survey on the status of such programs.
But Scapp and others said that debates over immigration, the election of the country's first black president and the aftermath of the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin by a white man show the nation is still grappling with issues of race and cultural diversity. Ethnic studies programs, he said, offer a forum to tackle these topics.
The initial intent of the programs was to increase the numbers of students and professors of color and expand historical perspectives, including those of Native Americans, women, gays and lesbians.
But it was also divisive, with some critics arguing that the disciplines lacked academic rigor. In 2010, Arizona banned school districts from offering ethnic studies programs determined to be radical or fostering racial resentment.
A recent move to reduce the status of the Africana Studies Department at Cal State Long Beach led the state Assembly to adopt a resolution urging that it and other such programs be maintained. Cal State Chancellor Timothy White put the changes on hold until the campus finds a permanent replacement for former President F. King Alexander...
Voters may recall Mr. Romney as the Republican candidate the Obama campaign said was responsible for the death of a Missouri steelworker's wife, among many other White House inventions. But on Wednesday Mr. Obama cited Mr. Romney as a political model who did "the right thing on health care" and built "this template of proven, bipartisan success."RTWT.
Mr. Romney responded more rapidly than his Presidential campaign usually did and issued a statement saying that "a plan crafted to fit the unique circumstances of a single state should not be grafted onto the entire country" and disavowing the "frustrating embarrassment" of ObamaCare.
The Boston trip is classic example of the Obama political method and why his Presidency is floundering only a year into his second term. Amid a crisis of government execution and policy design, Mr. Obama doesn't address the flaws or take responsibility.
Instead he hits the campaign trail to blame Republicans once again for a failure they had nothing to do with—and to spin new political fables to replace the old ones that even he can no longer utter with a straight face. On his current behavior, the only time Mr. Obama is going to act as if he's President is when he no longer is.
It’s almost as if some people believe lying is acceptable – even preferable — if the political outcomes are morally pleasing to them [progressives]. Many Obamacare supporters, in fact, are beginning to sound like they couldn’t care less about process, the law, order, competence, or anything that undermines the goal of putting your health-care choices into more capable hands.Yeah.
Obama's approval plummets with this fellow and millions of others http://t.co/kUMAeXmTl6 #TCOT pic.twitter.com/76AV9sC0Lx
— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) October 31, 2013
The most breathless claim in his speech, I thought, was the lie that only those making $250,000 per year or more are being "asked to pay a little more."RELATED: At LAT, "Obama: GOP critics of Obamacare should follow Romney example."
This is a lie. Anyone making over $48,000 or so will get the doubled or tripled premiums (and often doubled deductibles to boot!) and no subsidies.
Jonah Goldberg wrote earlier of Obama's Big Lie.
I would say I'm shocked, but that would be a lie. I think I am too emotionally deadened to Obama's constant lies to even have a reaction. I'm just numb.
Fool for the City - Foghat 3:29 PMThe Black Crowes were on a bit earlier, at 2:00, when I was heading out for coffee after classes. I'll leave you with that, as is my preference:
White Room - Cream 3:24 PM
Sweet Emotion - Aerosmith 3:20 PM
Love Her Madly - The Doors 3:11 PM
867-5309 / Jenny - Tommy Tutone 3:07 PM
It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - R.E.M. 02:56 PM
Deception: In the face of millions of cancellation notices, Democrats want to downplay the president's "keep your health plan" pledge as standard political hyperbole. It was, in fact, a calculated lie that got ObamaCare enacted.More at the link.
To understand why, let's freshen up on a little health care reform history.
Back in 1994, when Bill Clinton was pushing his own version of "comprehensive health reform," the insurance industry launched its infamous "Harry and Louise" ads to deliver a simple message: The Clinton plan would force families to give up their own health plans.
In one of these, the middle-class couple pours over a pile of documents at the kitchen table, while a narrator intones about how "things are changing, and not all for the better," and how "the government may force us to pick from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats."
"Louise" then complains that "having choices we don't like is no choice at all," and the ad concludes with the couple saying, "They choose, and we lose."
The campaign was devastating. Even though Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, Clinton's bill never made it out of congressional committees.
So when President Obama decided to take another stab at health care, he was determined to avoid that pitfall. He endlessly promised in the most emphatic way possible that under his plan, Harry and Louise would have nothing to worry about.
"Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you," the president said at a July 2009 rally in New Jersey. "First of all, if you've got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you."
Later he said that "When I say 'If you have your plan and you like it,' ... what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform."
He promised this after the law passed, and throughout the 2012 election campaign.
Of course, Obama knew it wasn't true when he said it. He just couldn't admit it if he wanted to convince enough Democrats to vote for the bill.
And now that millions of people are finding out that ObamaCare is, in fact, forcing them to pick from a few plans designed by government bureaucrats, Democrats and the liberal press are desperate to explain Obama's promises away.
