Congress has reconvened for a “lame-duck” session, in which the walking dead (members who won’t return next year) have a post-mortem chance to leave their mark on the nation’s policy — a budget that never got passed, and an agreement on how to avoid the fiscal cliff and Taxmageddon, and several treaties awaiting ratification by the Senate.
Entitlements
College Professors Lose Hours Because of Obamacare
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of my favorite stories this week is the college professors at Pennsylvania’s Community College of Allegheny who’ve had their hours cut because of the costly requirements of Obamacare.
One of Obamacare’s changes to general business practices is to make people who work 30 hours or more a “full time worker.” For generations that magic number was 40 hours a week. But now that Obamacare is forcing this change to what is considered a full-timer, businesses across the country are forced to change policies and cut the hours of employees to 25 hours per week.
This is what happened at CCAC. Part time professors, teachers, and other staffers will be cut to 25 hours a week so that these part time workers will remain part time workers and will, therefore, be ineligible for healthcare.
Naturally, some folks are mad. They think the evil taskmasters in charge of the school are violating the “spirit” of Obamacare. United Steelworkers representative Jeff Cech, who has been trying to unionize the college staff, is all upset, too.
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College Professors Lose Hours Because of Obamacare”
New York Times: Celebrating the End of ‘Rush Limbaugh’s Country’
-By Warner Todd Huston
For his final Campaign Stops editorial November 18, New York Times columnist Thomas B, Edsall asked the seminal question left arising from the results of the re-election of Barack Obama: Is Rush Limbaugh’s Country Gone?
Beginning his piece with a quote from Limbaugh’s show where the most listened-to talker in the nation expressed his fear that “we’ve lost the country” to Obama and his followers, Edsall noted that Limbaugh’s worries “echoed a Republican theme” that was voiced before Obama’s re-election.
Barack Obama has unleashed a coalition of Americans “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it — that that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them” — as Mitt Romney put it in his notorious commentary on the 47 percent.
Edsall goes on to agree with Limbaugh that our country has drifted decidedly in favor of big government, nanny-state ideals and away from freedom and liberty — though he doesn’t say it that way, to be sure.
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New York Times: Celebrating the End of ‘Rush Limbaugh’s Country’”
Woman Objects to Obama Campaign’s Misuse of Her
-By Warner Todd Huston
Lisa Morrison of Fulton, Iowa is not very happy with the Obama campaign’s “misrepresentation” of her in a campaign statement. “I am outraged that my question is being misrepresented and used as a political tool against the Romney/Ryan campaign by both media and the Obama camp,” Morrison wrote to the Quad-City Times.
Obama attempted to claim that Mrs. Morrison attacked Paul Ryan at an Iowa campaign stop on Friday. But she says that wasn’t the case at all
“I was not calling Ryan out,” she insisted referring to the Obama campaign’s characterization of her question.
On October 5, Paul Ryan appeared at a campaign rally in Clinton, Iowa where Morrison called on him to explain a bit more about his plan for the nation should he and Romney be elected in November.
As soon as the event was over the Obama campaign highlighted Morrison’s question to Ryan and characterized it as an antagonistic confrontation. An Obama campaign statement was issued saying that Ryan, “can’t attend his own campaign rallies without being called out for failing to provide specifics about what Mitt Romney would do if elected.”
Morrison, however, vigorously disputes that portrayal of her question. In fact, she says she is a hearty supporter of Romney/Ryan.
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Woman Objects to Obama Campaign’s Misuse of Her”
After Slamming Palin, NY Times Excited for Up Coming Obama Death Panels
-By Warner Todd Huston
For The New York Times, Steven Ratner had to admit last month that he was pretty darned excited for those Obamacare death panels to get started. “WE need death panels,” he said on September 16. This from the same paper that in 2009 attacked Gov. Sarah Palin for her rhetoric and an Old Media establishment that gave Palin a “lie of the year” award for her claim that Obamacare death panels were coming.
The Times sudden appreciation of death panels isn’t the only bit of hypocrisy revealed in Ratner’s article. His very first paragraph wallows in rank hypocrisy.
Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.
So, not only is Ratner suddenly looking forward to the very death panels his paper mocked Palin for alerting us all to back in 2009, but he’s now openly admitting that the costs of Obamacare will skyrocket unless we start rationing care and telling some people they aren’t allowed to have health saving procedures!
Doesn’t this paragraph prove out what conservatives have been saying about Obamacare since day one? That there will be rationing, that some government agency will be deciding who will live and who will die, that the costs will be ruinous, and that the Democrat’s claims that “everyone will get care” is an outright lie — this is what we’ve been saying from the beginning.
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After Slamming Palin, NY Times Excited for Up Coming Obama Death Panels”
If You Work for Government, You Deserve to be Fired
-By Warner Todd Huston
Yes, that title, If You Work for Government, You Deserve to be Fired, is meant literally. I really don’t care what you do for government I think you deserve to be fired.* In fact, I think that you need to be fired to save this republic. Not only do I want you fired, I want your pension negated. You don’t deserve one.
I’ll let that sink in a bit.
Of course, conservatives have the reputation of wanting to oust everyone in office and for wanting to “vote the scoundrels out.” But, I am not just wallowing in a trope, here. In fact, I’d like to add one more level to the throw-them-out-of-government concept. Let’s fire every government worker from the smallest village receptionist or sewer worker to the staffers of the highest Senator and every menial clerk and recalcitrant paper shuffler in between.
I am, here, indulging a little bombast, of course, but only a little. A very little.
It’s not just pique at the famous laziness of government workers I’m talking about. I’m also not only deploying that stereotype contending that the only reason government workers get their jobs is because they are pals with a politician — or another government worker, for that matter. It’s not just that they are better paid than just about any real American in the private sector — whether they deserve it or not — and it’s not because they are impossible to fire, nor is it because they get a better pension and health care than anyone who really contributes to society… well, OK, it is because of that stuff. All that stuff and more.
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If You Work for Government, You Deserve to be Fired”
Media Blackout: GAO Says Obama’s Welfare Waivers Illegal
-By Warner Todd Huston
On Sept. 4, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) made a startling assertion saying that Obama circumvented the law when he summarily waived the work requirements in the welfare law. Perhaps not as shocking, to date, few news outlets seem interested in the story.
In its Sept. 4 letter, the GAO found that Health and Human Services (HHS) should have formally submitted a letter of its intent to make the changes to Congress and the Comptroller General before any waivers can be legally issued.
The letter also said that the GAO had not determined if HHS had the legal right to even make such waivers available. The GAO is basically saying that the Obama administration is breaking the law with its waivers.
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Media Blackout: GAO Says Obama’s Welfare Waivers Illegal”
Case Closed: If Moderate Voters See This Video, It’s Over for Obama
Obama’s worst lies started out as earnest promises to “help” us…
DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz Demolished by… CNN’s Wolf Blitzer?
-By Warner Todd Huston
The most unkind cut of all is when your paper thin understanding of the facts is shredded by someone you think is on your side. This is what happened to Democrat National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz when she kept trying to tell CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Ryan’s Medicare reform plan took Medicare away from everyone even though, as Blitzer repeatedly pointed out, the truth is that Ryan’s reforms only altered the entitlement for those 55 and younger.
It was painful to watch Schultz being eviscerated by her own CNN mouthpiece.
Of course Blitzer was correct. When Paul Ryan introduced his budget reform plan, the Roadmap For America’s Future, he did suggest that reforms for Medicare would kick in for those 55 and under. But thefact is, and it is a fact that Blitzer kept trying to pound into Wasserman Schultz’ head, that Every American over 55 would not see any changes at all in the entitlements that they always thought they’d get.
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DNC Chair Wasserman Schultz Demolished by… CNN’s Wolf Blitzer?”
Assoc. Press: Stop Whining About Soc. Sec., America. It Isn’t as Expensive as Europe’s!
-By Warner Todd Huston
Social Security is as close to insolvency as you can get and not be completely belly up. Government watchdogs warn that Social Security will see a $7 trillion shortfall by 2086. But the Associated Press says, don’t worry about all that, America. Why, the Social Security system isn’t as bad as Europe’s public pension mess, so everything’s just fine. Move along. Nothing to see here.
In the article, AP sets about comparing Europe’s public pension systems to Social Security. In so doing AP is apparently trying to quell fears that Social Security is in crisis. Why, Europe’s is in worse shape, so Social Security is “downright frugal,” The AP says.
Not only is the AP apparently trying to make Americans forget all about the mess that our entitlements are in, but the venerable wire service goes on to note that Europe’s benefits are far more generous than our miserly Social Security.
AP points out that those lucky Europeans can retire earlier than Americans and also informs readers that this Nirvana was created by high taxes. See, Europe is better.
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Assoc. Press: Stop Whining About Soc. Sec., America. It Isn’t as Expensive as Europe’s!”
It Begins: CNN Rushes to Point Out Romney Once Liked ‘Healthcare Mandates’
-By Warner Todd Huston
Can you say 10th Amendment? CNN doesn’t seem to be able to
It was practically only hours after the Supreme Court issued it’s historic — and odious — decision to give Obamacare its stamp of approval that CNN rushed to tell readers that Romney, too, once approved of a healthcare mandate. This narrative, we know, will be one the Old Media tries to use to beat Romney down and give Obama his second term.
“As it turns out,” CNN trumpets, “the tax penalty in the president’s health care law was modeled after the reform plan passed in Massachusetts under then governor Mitt Romney.”
Of course, this is basically true, so fair point. But CNN falls down on the job by not explaining what Mitt Romney has been saying about his Massachusetts healthcare mandates. Romney has repeatedly said that his plan was a state-based plan but one he does not think would work on a federal level.
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It Begins: CNN Rushes to Point Out Romney Once Liked ‘Healthcare Mandates’”
No, We DON’T Need Socialist Healthcare
Lee Doren suitably eviscerates a YouTube vide that is proposing communist-styled healthcare programs for the US.
Doren gives us, “Why we don’t need economic illiterates trivializing the dangers of socialized medicine and spouting abject nonsense on YouTube.”
This is a rebuttal to the video Why We Need Government-Run Universal Socialized Health Insurance, some YouTube blather posted by some guy working for the left-wing Campaign for America’s Future.
Foolish Naivete: Sen. Coburn ‘Believes’ Obama Will Become Entitlement Reformer in 2nd Term
-By Warner Todd Huston
Republican Senator Tom Coburn has just completed his transformation into a laughing stock. In an interview with the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, Coburn claimed that he fully believes that President Obama will become an “entitlement reformer” in his second term.
At the end of Klein’s first part of the interview he asks Coburn if Republicans will do any better to “compromise” with Obama if Obama wins a second term. Here is Coburn’s absurd reply:
We’ve had conversations where he’s told me he’ll go much further than anyone believes he’ll go to solve the entitlement problem if he can get the compromise. And I believe him. I believe he would.
This is the single dumbest thing I’ve ever seen a Republican say. The naivete and stupidity of this naïf is the most gobsmackingly stupid I’ve ever seen.
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Foolish Naivete: Sen. Coburn ‘Believes’ Obama Will Become Entitlement Reformer in 2nd Term”