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Politics : How Quickly Can Obama Totally Destroy the US? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Taro who wrote (12230)	11/15/2014 2:23:20 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

How One Man Could Obliterate Obamacare ........................................................................................ The National Interest ^ \| November 15, 2014 \| W. James Antle III Why an MIT health economist who was one of the health-care law's architects could cause its utter destruction. For five years, Republicans have been searching for the perfect messenger to speak out against Obamacare. They have finally found him. His name in Jonathan Gruber. Gruber is the MIT health economist who was one of the health-care law's architects. He also helped design the (now mostly defunct) Romneycare system in Massachusetts, which is currently being devoured by its federal progeny. He has also been single-handedly responsible for the biggest Obamacare-related gaffes since Nancy Pelosi said we'd have to pass the bill to see what's in it or the president's discredited promises about being able to keep your doctors and health plans. Gruber has been caught not once, but twice, talking on tape about how the "stupidity of the American voter" made a certain amount of duplicity essential to the passage of Obamacare. The Obamacare architect had already become Exhibit A in the Halbig v. Burwell case, now on its way to the Supreme Court, which could potentially make people who bought health insurance through the federal exchange ineligible for subsidies. Gruber—again, not once, but twice—publicly endorsed the view that Obamacare was designed in this way to encourage states to set up their own exchanges. Since many states did not, a large number of Americans obtained their coverage through the federally run HealthCare.gov. The law could fall apart if these people don't receive taxpayer subsidies. Whatever you think about the intelligence of the average voter or the funding mechanisms for Obamacare, Gruber is clearly right about one thing. "This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes," Gruber admitted in 2013. Does any serious person really contest that this is true? Fortunately for Obamacare partisans, that did not stop the Supreme Court from ruling that the individual mandate was permissible under Congress' taxing power, since any other constitutional justification was a stretch. "In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which explicitly said that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed," Gruber added. "You can't do it politically, you just literally cannot do it." Is the man wrong about this, either? Sure, there was an abstract discussion about the need for the young and healthy to participate. That's rather different than admitting the law would have winners and losers. Obamacare is largely a Medicaid expansion plus churn between old health-insurance plans and new Obamacare-compliant ones, so far achieving modest gains in coverage at the cost of higher premiums and reduced access for many. It's hard to imagine the stupid American voter would be enamored of this, if smart people like Jonathan Gruber had deigned to explain it to them at the time. Liberals quickly disowned Gruber's impolitic observations. Some even insisted it was the most transparent debate ever, as suits the most transparent administration in history. Gruber-gate is a fitting window into how the technocrats view the masses. Now Gruber is saying he misspoke and his allies are adamant that any text of their law that might lead to unfavorable results is simply a typo. Move along, there's nothing to see here. In turns out that even passing Obamacare wouldn't be enough to let us find out what's in it. We're all too stupid to figure it out. That apparently includes the policy wonks who helped design the law and the Democratic supermajorities that passed it all those years ago. If enough Obamacare-related typos and "speak-os" ultimately become public knowledge, the American people might just smarten up.

To: Taro who wrote (12230)	11/15/2014 10:21:54 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Recommended By Shoot1st Respond to of 16547

Obama has fostered a preposterous 7.5 trillion in record debt in a mere 6 years,

To: Taro who wrote (12230)	11/17/2014 11:57:16 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 16547

To: Taro who wrote (12230)	11/20/2014 9:30:27 AM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Recommended By Taro Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16547

The Big Broadcast Fix for Obama's Amnesty Speech Tonight ........................................................................ By Thomas Lifson November 20, 2014 americanthinker.com President Obama’s speech tonight on his immigration amnesty diktat isn’t aimed at you, if English is your primary language. The White House didn’t even ask the Big Three broadcast networks – CBS, NBC, ABC – for time. We’re in the midst of the November sweeps, and in all likelihood they would have turned him down. But that doesn’t matter – he would just as soon that Gringo-Americans not even hear about his decree. Obama and the Democrats base their strategy on fragmenting, not uniting Americans, and the speech tonight is aimed at Spanish-speakers, who will see the speech broadcast live on the other big broadcast network, Univision, which is for Spanish-speakers. And the audience will be huge among Spanish-speakers because the speech is timed to coincide with the Latin Grammys, one of the highest-rated programs of the year on Univision. Viewers tuning in for the music gala will not miss a moment of the spectacle, because it is being delayed, so as to allow the president’s speech to take advantage of the audience tuning in for music. That is the Big Fix. Open collaboration among the music industry, Univision, and the White House. How appropriate that, Obama has the active cooperation of the cultural and broadcast establishment of the rapidly growing Spanish-speaking segment of American society, a segment that is being imported (mostly absent the sanction of law) against the will of the people, and which is being catered to by a dictatorial presidential decree.

To: Taro who wrote (12230)	11/20/2014 9:34:48 AM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Recommended By Taro Respond to of 16547

Gruber 'Stupidity' Scandal Implicates The Press, Too ........................................................................................................................................................... 11/19/2014 Media Bias: What does it take for reporters to pursue a scandal story these days? Apparently, more than video proof of lying and obfuscation by top officials to get a massive entitlement enacted. But don't call them partisan. Few political scandals are as tailor-made for television as the one involving the recently unearthed videos of ObamaCare architect and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Jonathan Gruber. First you have Gruber, a guy paid $400,000 to design ObamaCare, admitting on tape that lawmakers purposely misled the public to get the bill passed, and counted on the "stupidity" of the American people not to notice. Up until Tuesday night, when ABC ended its silence, CBS was the only network to mention Gruber on its nightly news program. As of this writing, NBC's Nightly News still hasn't broken its Gruber embargo, according to the Media Research Center NBC did have time enough Tuesday night for a report on how the share of homes with two-car garages could drop by 2040. And while other mainstream outlets have covered the story, they've been perfunctory, or written in a way that casts Gruber's revelations purely in light of how they've helped the GOP's anti-ObamaCare crusade. Not only have Gruber's comments been treated as if they never happened, the TV networks haven't shown any interest in the next round of Gruber stories — in which the White House and Democrats made bald-faced lies about their connections to Gruber. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for one, claimed she had no idea who Gruber was, although she is on tape from five years before praising his expertise. And President Obama himself, in answer to the one question he's gotten on the matter — from a Fox News reporter — brushed Gruber off as "some adviser." That's despite the fact that Gruber had been to the White House nearly two dozen times during the ObamaCare debate. And he was prominently featured in a 2012 Obama campaign ad — from the Obama-Biden "Truth Team" — saying how he'd helped the president craft ObamaCare. And he is someone from whom Obama once said he stole many ideas. news.investors.com