ObamaCare.......Still stuck on stupid...
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579143343379804228
and....
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-20/obamacare%E2%80%99s-unintended-consequences-it%E2%80%99s-not-just-technology-problem
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/20/2013 09:43 -0400
http://www.blacklistednews.com/New_DHS_Sec_Johnson_Signifies_Push_For_a_Civilian_Army/29688/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
President Obama has named Jeh Charles Johnson as the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Obama told the audience at the Rose Garden that Johnson has “been there in the Situation Room, at the table in moments of decision.”
The president said: “Jeh also knows that meeting these threats demands cooperation and coordination across our government. He’s been there in the Situation Room at the table in moments of decision, working with leaders from a host of agencies to make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction. And he’s respected across our government as a team player, somebody who knows how to get folks who don’t always agree to work towards a common goal.”
Because the “task” of counterterrorism is so great, Obama chose Johnson to continue Janet Napolitano’s “important work”.
With Johnson designing the legal framework for the Obama administrations various policies that justify criminal actions, Obama promised more transparency within his “national security team”.
As a graduate from Columbia Law School (CLS), Johnson has focused his legal career at American civil and criminal trials.
Johnson comes from an interesting family. His grandfather was part of a League of Nations (LoN), the pre-cursor to the United Nations, mission to Liberia in the 1930s.
The LoN was tasked with encouraging collective action by the global community with the establishment of an arbitration council and the power to initiate economic and military sanctions that were determined to be aggressive.
The Covenant of the LoN reads: “In order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.”
Johnson has served as the assistant to the US Attorney in the Southern District and general counsel of the Air Force by former president William Clinton.
Johnson was special counsel to the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004.
For the presidential campaign of Obama, Johnson was the foreign policy adviser and member of Obama’s national finance committee.
In 2012, Johnson was the general counsel for the Department of Defense (DoD) after nomination by Obama.
In this role, Johnson was an integral architect of the legal policies of our counterterrorism initiatives.
Part of this scheme, Johnson pressured for the continued support of the Military Commissions Act of 2009 and worked with Army General Carter Ham on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy when its validity was questioned.
Johnson assisted in the propaganda war during the release of classified documents known as the Afghan War Diary .
In 2011, Johnson attempted to distort the memory of civil rights activist, Martin Luther King (MLK) by suggesting in a speech that MLK would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Johnson told the audience that the Afghan and Iraq wars were instances of the US being a global Good Samaritan.
Later that year, Johnson spoke at a conference at the Heritage Foundation (HF), stating the challenges of creating a “civilian law enforcement in this country.”
In 2012, Johnson defended the use of targeted killings while speaking to students at Yale Law School.
Johnson also said: “There is risk in permitting and expecting the U.S. military to extend its powerful reach into areas traditionally reserved for civilian law enforcement in this country. The military should not and cannot be the only answer.”
http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/18/homeland-security-secretary-nominee-jeh-johnson-is-loyal-to-the-constitution-obama/
Homeland Security Secretary nominee Jeh Johnson is loyal to
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579143343379804228
Sebelius on the Run
The HHS Secretary refuses to testify about ObamaCare's rollout.
Oct. 18, 2013 7:04 p.m. ET
The Affordable Care Act's botched rollout has stunned its media cheering section, and it even seems to have surprised the law's architects. The problems run much deeper than even critics expected, and whatever federal officials, White House aides and outside contractors are doing to fix them isn't working. But who knows? Omerta is the word of the day as the Obama Administration withholds information from the public.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn't in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department's incompetence.
The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.
What bunker is Henry Chao hiding in, for instance? He's the HHS official in charge of technology for the Affordable Care Act, and in March he said at an insurance lobby conference that his team had given up trying to create "a world-class user experience." With the clock running, Mr. Chao added that his main goal was merely to "just make sure it's not a third-world experience."
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Capitol Hill in Washington in April. Associated Press
He didn't succeed. Whatever is below third-world standards would flatter the 36 federally run exchanges as they've started up. But perhaps Mr. Chao or someone else, if not Mrs. Sebelius, can answer even the simple question of how many Americans have managed to enroll for coverage. HHS could easily resolve any confusion but it won't even talk to Democratic allies, friendly reporters and what it calls the insurance industry "stakeholders" that it will need to make ObamaCare work.
No doubt a hearing would be a spectacle—with TV cameras on hand—but Mrs. Sebelius can't hide forever. Even pro-entitlement liberals want to know about what went wrong and why, how much if any progress is being made, and whether the ObamaCare website Healthcare.gov will be usable in a matter of months—or years.
More disclosure might also help HHS preserve a scrap of credibility, given that none of its initial explanations has held up. Right now, no one trusts a word that emerges from Fortress ObamaCare.
To take one example, this week the Associated Press obtained an internal HHS memo from September 5, 2013 specifying the Administration's monthly enrollment targets—a half-million sign-ups in October, 3.3 million by December 31, and so on. Asked about this by AP, HHS not only declined to say if it is meeting its projections. The department issued a statement claiming that "The Administration has not set monthly enrollment targets." The spokesman did not cite the classic Marx Brothers line, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
Eventually Mrs. Sebelius will have to make a real accounting of this government failure to someone other than the TV comic Jon Stewart, and perhaps she can also explain why the people who can't build a working website also deserve the power to reorganize one-sixth of the U.S. economy. For now, the Administration that styles itself as the most transparent in history won't reveal the truth—perhaps because it is afraid of what the public will find.
Sebelius: No, we are not starting the ObamaCare site from scratch, and no, I do not have time to testify before Congress
POSTED AT 5:31 PM ON OCTOBER 19, 2013 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN
If you were wondering whether the increasing pile of evidence indicating that HealthCare.Gov’s problems are not merely opening “glitches” but deep-seated design defects — as well as the growing chorus of IT experts suggesting that the Obama administration might want to consider starting over on the badly bungled project — would have any effect whatsoever on their determination to plow forward with their arbitrary and political deadlines… don’t hold your breath. HHS Secretary Sebelius would like you to know that completely rebuilding the website is just not gonna’ happen, via the WSJ:
After two weeks of review, the HHS secretary concluded, “We didn’t have enough testing, specifically for high volumes, for a very complicated project.”The online insurance marketplace needed five years of construction and a year of testing, she said: “We had two years and almost no testing.” …Overall, she said, the website is functional and “we will hit the mark” within the law’s six-month open enrollment period that began Oct. 1. “I’m not throwing out the system and starting over,’” she said. …Mrs. Sebelius convenes meetings, often three times a day, to monitor progress against the technological snafus. “I can’t fix the website myself,” she said. “But I’m working around the clock to find out what we know in extraordinary and honest detail, hold our contractors and our team accountable, and accelerate the timeline to resolve the problems.”
Gee, “not enough testing” — ya’ think? Isn’t “accelerating the timeline” what got us into this mess?
And as for working “working around the clock,” I find it rather interesting that Secretary Sebelius finds “scheduling conflicts” to be a passable excuse for refusing to appear in front of Congress next week to answer what many on the Right and the Left now agree are reasonable questions about why the administration insisted upon moving forward with a product that at least somebody over there knew wasn’t ready, and yet she seems to have the time to attend galas in the meantime. Most curious, really, as CNN pointed out on Friday:
The WSJ editors are not impressed:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is even refusing to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a hearing this coming Thursday. HHS claims she has scheduling conflicts, but we hope she isn’t in the White House catacomb under interrogation by Valerie Jarrett about her department’s incompetence.The department is also refusing to make available lower-level officials who might detail the source or sources of this debacle. Ducking an investigation with spin is one thing. Responding with a wall of silence to the invitation of a duly elected congressional body probing the use of more than half a billion taxpayer dollars is another. This Obama crowd is something else.
and....
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-10-20/obamacare%E2%80%99s-unintended-consequences-it%E2%80%99s-not-just-technology-problem
Obamacare’s Unintended Consequences: It’s Not Just A Technology Problem
Submitted by F.F. Wiley of Cyniconomics
Obamacare’s Unintended Consequences: It’s Not Just A Technology Problem
Ron Suskind’s Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Barack Obama’s first two years in office,Confidence Men, tells the inside story of the wheeling and dealing that culminated in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). According to Suskind:
By the time it passed, almost no one could feel great about it. The process had been so ugly – and the end product so convoluted – that even its fiercest apologists would acknowledge that it was a bill that was only a start.
We’re now getting a good look at exactly what Suskind’s “start” means, most recently with the launch of the insurance exchanges. Based on the latest reports, it appears to mean:
- Crony capitalism – see this report from the Sunlight Foundation (h/t Arnold Kling).
- Government secrecy – see this Wall Street Journal editorial.
- Prioritization of election politics over policies – see this report in the National Review.
- Inefficiencies and incompetence – see thisarticle by Megan McArdle.
- Alternative realities – see Jon Stewart’sinterview with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on The Daily Show (more on this below).
Unfortunately, these aren’t the worst of our problems. The HHS’s amateur hour created quite a stir, but it will eventually pass. Whether in three months or three years, programmers will iron out the new system’s “glitches.” We’ll then be left with more threatening and far-reaching challenges, such as hiring disincentives and fiscal risks.
If you agree with this perspective, you may also agree that two of last week’s most relevant blog posts weren’t related to break-downs in the insurance exchanges. These are:
- Tyler Durden parsed the Fed’s October 16th Beige Book release and found no less than eight references to the ACA’s effects on business activity. Here’s a typical observation reported by the Fed: “Many contacts also commented on reluctance to expand due to uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act; some employers cut hours or employees.”
- Durden also shared a table reported by J.P. Morgan’s Michael Cembalest comparing estimated and actual costs for five Medicare programs, one Medicaid program and the Massachusetts state health reform of 2006. The data shows actual costs exceeding estimates by 107%, 129%, 150%, 644%, 817%, 1600% and 20%, respectively. And yet, we’re expected to believe the administration’s highly politicized projections that the ACA will be deficit neutral.
We recommend checking out both posts. They suggest the most important question we should be asking is not the one that Stewart repeated several times while grilling Sebelius: “Businesses were given a delay of a year, but individuals were not given that option, why is that?”
The bigger question is: “If the administration messed up so badly on the seemingly mundane task of building a website, how much will Obamacare damage the broader economy and the nation’s long-term fiscal health?”
The Stewart-Sebelius interview drew attention to the second question only briefly, when Stewart mentioned that employers were converting full-time workers to part-time due to the ACA. But he failed to challenge Sebelius’ weak response that “economists – not the anecdotal folks – but economists say there’s absolutely no evidence that part-time work is going up.”
This is exactly where an informed and unbiased interviewer would have dug further to expose the truth.
Contrary to the administration narrative that Sebelius was parroting, we showed in “’Anecdote This,’ Dr. Furman” that the evidence of an ACA part-time worker effect is conclusive. Not only are reports from so-called “anecdotal folks” too pervasive to be credibly dismissed, but the claim that part-time work hasn’t “gone up” is just plain wrong. Even though most employers are unlikely to finalize policy changes this far ahead of the ACA’s postponedemployer mandate, government data shows that part-time jobs jumped sharply in the quarter before the postponement, while full-time jobs stagnated.
Getting back to Suskind’s observation that the ACA was only a “start,” it appears to be a rocky start based on the exchanges fiasco. We should be even more concerned about the part-time worker effect, broader effects shown in the Beige Book, and the history of health program costs. These are a few of the many reasons to expect an even rockier road ahead.
Debt Ceiling after action review ......
Debt Ceiling after action review ......
http://www.infowars.com/watchdog-demands-to-know-why-obama-renounced-debt-limit-power/
Watchdog demands to know why Obama renounced debt-limit power
One of Washington’s most prominent watchdog groups is seeking the legal reasons behind President Obama’s long-standing refusal to hike the debt ceiling unilaterally.
As the recent fiscal battle unfolded, the White House said repeatedly that Obama does not have the authority to extend the Treasury’s borrowing powers without congressional action.
But Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is challenging that claim, noting that the Obama administration has, in the words of CREW chief counsel Anne Weismann, adopted “an expansive view of executive power” in everything from the surveillance of U.S. citizens at home and the killing of Americans overseas.
Given that track record, CREW is wondering why Obama feels he can’t hike the debt ceiling on his own to prevent an economic collapse.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/The_Poverty_of_our_Political_Theater_of_the_Absurd/29698/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Source: Charles Hugh Smith
The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater.
All we have left in the U.S. is a deeply impoverishing Political Theater of the Absurd. Policy, theory and governance have all been reduced to competing stage performances in the Theater of the Absurd. The actors are transparently given to farcical overacting in exaggerated dramas drained of meaning; they proceed through the cliched motions as if the audience hadn't seen the same charades overplayed dozens of times before.
"Government shutdown" and "debt ceiling" may have engaged audiences starved for entertainment in a bygone age, but now they exemplify a theater that is so impoverished it can only re-stage tired formulaic dramas with a savage appetite for incompetence and buffoonery.
The poverty of this substitution of theater for actual ideas is best displayed by ObamaCare. The entire complex edifice of ObamaCare is not an expression of policy--it is simply the perfection of state complicity with a private cartel that increases its share of the national income regardless of which set of bad actors are on stage.
As for the alternative "policy," it is nothing but a reversion to the pre-ObamaCare cartel-state arrangement that artlessly combines gross injustice, insensitivity to cost and insane incentives for fraud, skimming, defensive medicine and the pursuit of national chronic ill health as the most profitable state of existence.
That these two variations on state-cartel predation pass for "policy" is a clear indication of the absolute impoverishment of American political/social/economic ideas. We are adrift in a political order that glorifies and rewards overacted farce and punishes policy grounded in actual ideas rather than the theatrical trends of the day.
The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater. The players, bereft of talent and inspiration, chosen for their blind obedience to those benefiting from the eradication of ideas and the replaying of tiresome charades, are blind to the poverty of their performance and political theatrics.
Will the audience ever tire of this cheesy Theater of the Absurd? It seems the appetite of the American public for this sort of play-acting entertainment is essentially bottomless. As a result, so too is our poverty.
and....
The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater.
All we have left in the U.S. is a deeply impoverishing Political Theater of the Absurd. Policy, theory and governance have all been reduced to competing stage performances in the Theater of the Absurd. The actors are transparently given to farcical overacting in exaggerated dramas drained of meaning; they proceed through the cliched motions as if the audience hadn't seen the same charades overplayed dozens of times before.
"Government shutdown" and "debt ceiling" may have engaged audiences starved for entertainment in a bygone age, but now they exemplify a theater that is so impoverished it can only re-stage tired formulaic dramas with a savage appetite for incompetence and buffoonery.
The poverty of this substitution of theater for actual ideas is best displayed by ObamaCare. The entire complex edifice of ObamaCare is not an expression of policy--it is simply the perfection of state complicity with a private cartel that increases its share of the national income regardless of which set of bad actors are on stage.
As for the alternative "policy," it is nothing but a reversion to the pre-ObamaCare cartel-state arrangement that artlessly combines gross injustice, insensitivity to cost and insane incentives for fraud, skimming, defensive medicine and the pursuit of national chronic ill health as the most profitable state of existence.
That these two variations on state-cartel predation pass for "policy" is a clear indication of the absolute impoverishment of American political/social/economic ideas. We are adrift in a political order that glorifies and rewards overacted farce and punishes policy grounded in actual ideas rather than the theatrical trends of the day.
The public sphere has been effectively stripped of everything but corny, irritatingly hammy political theater. The players, bereft of talent and inspiration, chosen for their blind obedience to those benefiting from the eradication of ideas and the replaying of tiresome charades, are blind to the poverty of their performance and political theatrics.
Will the audience ever tire of this cheesy Theater of the Absurd? It seems the appetite of the American public for this sort of play-acting entertainment is essentially bottomless. As a result, so too is our poverty.
and....
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Another_Billion_In_Pork_Exposed_In_Bill_that_Re-Opened_Government/29695/0/38/38/Y/M.html
Another Billion In Pork Exposed In Bill that Re-Opened Government
October 19, 2013
Source: Breitbart
On top of handing President Obama a blank check that will explode the size of our deficit, the blank check itself (the bill that re-opened the government and increased the debt ceiling), contains billions in additional spending. Most people have already heard about the $2.9 billionKentucky kickback and a $174,000 payment to the wealthy widow of Senator Frank Lautenberg. Fox News found another billion-plus:
The bill also put up another $600 million for firefighters in the Forest Service, who have been dealing with a rash of major blazes this year. Another $36 million was appropriated for Interior Department firefighting.
On a related note, the bill authorized $450 million to be spent, via the Federal Highway Administration, on road repairs and other projects in Colorado -- to rebuild after destructive flooding in that state.
All of this spending might be justifiable. But to sneak it into a bill no one was going to vote against, looks terrible. If this spending can win passage in the light of day on the merits, then pass it on the merits.
Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
President Obama has named Jeh Charles Johnson as the new Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Obama told the audience at the Rose Garden that Johnson has “been there in the Situation Room, at the table in moments of decision.”
The president said: “Jeh also knows that meeting these threats demands cooperation and coordination across our government. He’s been there in the Situation Room at the table in moments of decision, working with leaders from a host of agencies to make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction. And he’s respected across our government as a team player, somebody who knows how to get folks who don’t always agree to work towards a common goal.”
Because the “task” of counterterrorism is so great, Obama chose Johnson to continue Janet Napolitano’s “important work”.
With Johnson designing the legal framework for the Obama administrations various policies that justify criminal actions, Obama promised more transparency within his “national security team”.
As a graduate from Columbia Law School (CLS), Johnson has focused his legal career at American civil and criminal trials.
Johnson comes from an interesting family. His grandfather was part of a League of Nations (LoN), the pre-cursor to the United Nations, mission to Liberia in the 1930s.
The LoN was tasked with encouraging collective action by the global community with the establishment of an arbitration council and the power to initiate economic and military sanctions that were determined to be aggressive.
The Covenant of the LoN reads: “In order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.”
Johnson has served as the assistant to the US Attorney in the Southern District and general counsel of the Air Force by former president William Clinton.
Johnson was special counsel to the John Kerry presidential campaign in 2004.
For the presidential campaign of Obama, Johnson was the foreign policy adviser and member of Obama’s national finance committee.
In 2012, Johnson was the general counsel for the Department of Defense (DoD) after nomination by Obama.
In this role, Johnson was an integral architect of the legal policies of our counterterrorism initiatives.
Part of this scheme, Johnson pressured for the continued support of the Military Commissions Act of 2009 and worked with Army General Carter Ham on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy when its validity was questioned.
Johnson assisted in the propaganda war during the release of classified documents known as the Afghan War Diary .
In 2011, Johnson attempted to distort the memory of civil rights activist, Martin Luther King (MLK) by suggesting in a speech that MLK would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Johnson told the audience that the Afghan and Iraq wars were instances of the US being a global Good Samaritan.
Later that year, Johnson spoke at a conference at the Heritage Foundation (HF), stating the challenges of creating a “civilian law enforcement in this country.”
In 2012, Johnson defended the use of targeted killings while speaking to students at Yale Law School.
Johnson also said: “There is risk in permitting and expecting the U.S. military to extend its powerful reach into areas traditionally reserved for civilian law enforcement in this country. The military should not and cannot be the only answer.”
and....
Homeland Security Secretary nominee Jeh Johnson is loyal to the Constitution I mean Obama
Here’s the guy Obama is expected to nominate to replace Janet Napolitano. He’s talking about being in NYC on 9/11:
“When that bright and beautiful day, a day something like this, was shattered by the largest terrorist attack on our homeland in history, I wandered the streets of New York that day and wonderered, and asked, ‘What can I do?’ Since then, I have tried to devote myself to answering that question. I love this country. I care about the safety of our people. I believe in public service. And I remain loyal to you, Mr. President.”
He remains loyal to Barack Obama? What happened to supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and bearing true faith and allegiance to the same? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?
Or did that dusty old piece of parchment get snubbed on purpose? Obama certainly doesn’t have much use for it when it interferes with his whims.
Gather ’round, kids. We’ve made a few changes:
“I pledge allegiance to Barack, not the United States of America, and to the repugnance for which he stands, one narcissist, his own god, insufferable, with little but injustice for all.”
Welcome to Utopia. Ain’t it grand?
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