More media sleights-of-hand on Obamacare

If you thought the mainstream media was finally waking up and smelling the coffee -- after all, they are reporting on the "glitches" (read: epic failure) in the Obamacare rollout and expressing their displeasure -- well, think again. From Ben Shapiro at Breitbart [emphasis added]: 

Even Jay Carney said on Thursday that Obama was “not happy” with the rollout. “The accountability the president seeks today is the accountability that comes from those who are working on implementation,” Carney explained.Then he added the punchline: “Although the glitches are unacceptable, so is the idea of leaving millions of Americans on their own, including families across the country who now have access to health care that they did not have.” 

And this, it turns out, is the unspoken undertone to all the media coverage of the Healthcare.gov glitches: the notion that the biggest problem with Obamacare will be web implementation, not the systematic attempt at bankrupting the entire insurance and healthcare industry. The premise seems to be that if Healthcare.gov is fixed, all will be well. That’s why from October 1 through October 16, the Washington Post ran literally dozens of stories on the glitches, but virtually none on victims of Obamacare – in the view of the left media, there are no such victims. It’s why the networks spent several minutes nearly every night featuring the glitches, all while suggesting that Americans were growing closer every day to the glories of Obamacare’s promises. 

And we can thank Sen. Mitch McConnell and Speaker Boehner for, once again, caving and not voting conservative values.

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Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right

PRESS RELEASE

October 17, 2013

For Immediate Release 
Contact: Bob Connors, Local coordinator - We the People Ohio Valley

(740) 579-1173

Clowns to the Left, 

Jokers to the Right

The Taxpaying Citizen Stuck in the Middle 

Ohio - October 17, 2013 - While the clowns in DC continue their three-ring circus of elitist crony capitalism, shutting down national monuments, and threatening phantom debt defaults, we have our own dog and pony show to deal with right here in Ohio.

Although the majority of Americans want the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) delayed, if not defunded, Governor Kasich continues his obsession with expanding Medicaid, through the use of Obamacare appropriated funds.  

Governor Kasich is attempting to usurp his legislature, and thereby the citizens of Ohio, by requesting that the Ohio Controlling Board appropriate Obamacare funds to expand Medicaid with billions in federal funding.  The Controlling Board has never, in its entire history, come close to spending such a huge amount of money. 

"What's really disgusting is the manner it which the Governor is pursuing this obsession to expand Medicaid," stated Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder of Tea Party Patriots. "Governor Kasich campaigned as a fiscal conservative and was therefore supported by fiscal conservatives. We urge Governor Kasich to listen to the people who elected him and respect the legislative process".  

According to the October 15th Gongwer Report, "sources say Speaker Bill Batchelder (R-Medina) plans to alter his chamber's membership on the panel prior to next Monday's meeting and will seat at least one member that will give the go-ahead to the governor's plan."  It appears the Governor has found the vote he needs in Senator Widener (R-Springfield), making a board shuffle unnecessary.

"It's nearly impossible for a group of people to ever agree 100% on any legislative action, but we do believe that the process should be pure and unmanipulated, "Stated Bob Connors, Local coordinator of We the People Ohio Valley.  " By playing musical chairs with the members of the Controlling Board, Governor Kasich is pulling the same trick that was used when trying to jam SB 5 down everyone's throat."

In using the Controlling Board to expand Medicaid, Governor Kasich is displaying a complete disrespect for the separation of powers and the legislative process.  The people of Ohio elected their Representatives, not the Controlling Board.

The Tea Party Patriots' mission is to restore America's founding principles of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.

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Governor Kasich's strategy for Medicaid Expansion

Oct-15, 6pm -- Ohio Tea Party Patriot co-coordinator, Marianne G. reports that she just received a call stating that State Senator Chris Widener (R) is the "YES" vote on the Controlling Board.

As you are aware, Governor Kasich is using the Controlling Board as a means to further his obsession for Medicaid expansion, and needed to sway just one Republican on the Board to do his bidding.

According to the website of the Office of Budget and Management the Controlling Board " is a mechanism for handling certain limited day-to-day adjustments needed in the state budget" and, according to the O.R.C.  "shall take no action which does not carry out the legislative intent of the general assembly regarding program goals and levels of support of state agencies as expressed in the prevailing appropriation acts of the general assembly."

So, even though the State Legislature has accurately reflected the will of their constituents by repeatedly rejecting Medicaid expansion, it appears the Controlling Board may decide differently.

Time to Melt the Phone Lines

The Legislature is Representing Us, NOT the Controlling Board

The Board should uphold the action of the state legislature, and thereby the taxpaying citizens of Ohio, by rejecting Medicaid expansion.

Call Senator Widener NOW   (614) 466-3780 

Are we sure the rest are with us?  Call the rest of the Board.

• Senator Bill Coley  (R) - (614) 466-8072 
• Representative Ron Amstutz (R) - (614) 466-1474
• Representative Cliff Rosenberger (R) - (614) 466-3506 
• Senator Tom Sawyer (D) - (614) 466-7041 
• Representative Chris Redfern (D) - (614) 644-6011

Mr. President: Tear Down This Wall!

Thousands in DC tear down the walls!

Photos from the linked sources below.

Million Vet March: In DC, thousands of vets and civilians take the barricades blocking the Lincoln Memorial and the WWII memorial -- and take them to the White House!

Photo reports and tweets/twitchy updates at the Blaze, WTOP, Breitbart (includes video link by Iowahawk/David Burge), Gateway Pundit and here, and a report from yesterday at the Vietnam War Memorial at Power Line. 

Faces in the crowd:

UPDATE: More photos at Conservatives4Palin (and be sure to scroll down for the Governor's remarks to the vets).

UPDATE 3pm: More photos as Weasel Zippers.

UPDATE 3:30: Lots more at Twitchy.

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Million Vet March Sunday, Oct. 13 at 9am in DC, Clinton, OH

Million Vet March Sunday, Oct. 13 at 9am in DC

Cleveland Tea Party Patriots supports the Million Vet March this weekend, Sunday, Oct. 13 at 9am in DC at the WWII Memorial (the one that was barricaded when the Honor Flight vets came to visit) and at War Memorials across the country. Here’s the website link via Drudge. The only Ohio rally at the website (listed so far) is in Clinton, Ohio. Details here.

Here's a Google map if you don't know where Clinton is. (It's south of Akron.) Here's the map to the Ohio Veterans' Memorial Park in Clinton. 

Conservatives: learning to negotiate with liberal Progressives

David Horowitz was raised as a Communist but rejected the ideology as an adult. He sees today's DC battles through a different lens. Here are some extracts from his Front Page piece of Oct-10:

I never once heard my parents and their party friends refer to themselves as Communists. They were progressives – and registered Democrats.. . . 

The good news is that the bad five years we have just been through have aroused a sleeping giant among Americans who didn’t see it coming and couldn’t imagine that it would. For the first time since the Cold War, people with a public voice are calling socialists by their right name; conservatives are finally organizing at the grassroots to defend their freedom; and at last we have leaders who are willing to stand up to the thuggery of the left and who have the spine not to back down. 

As a sometime Jonah freed from the whale let me offer some intelligence about the political forces arrayed against us. Do not make the mistake of thinking that progressives and conservatives are people who merely differ about practical agendas. There are four defining features of the left, which distinguish it as a movement of individuals who approach politics quite differently from pragmatically-minded conservatives.The first of these features is their alienation from country. . . 

The second feature of the progressive left that is key to understanding it is its instinctive, practiced, and indispensable dishonesty. . . . The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power. 

An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America — which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election... . . 

A third feature of progressives that defines their politics is that they regard the past, which is real, with contempt, and are focused exclusively on a future, which is imaginary. . . .Progressives focus on an impossible future, a utopia of promises, and this justifies for them their unscrupulous means. Issues for them are merely instruments for accumulating political power. 

Conservatives look to the past as a guide to what is possible and humanly practical, and what is not. Issues for them are problems that need to be fixed, and they take seriously the policies they devise to address them. This puts conservatives at a huge political disadvantage. It causes them to argue policy as though they were debating a party with whom they shared goals and only differed on the means to get there. But that is far from the case. . . . 

progressives see themselves as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous. Because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course. 

The fact that they see themselves as saving the world – or “saving the planet” as they would prefer — results in a fourth key characteristic of their politics, which is that they regard politics as a religious war. This explains why they are so rude and nasty when you disagree with them or resist their panaceas (and of course if they had the power, the punishments would be more severe); that is why the politics of personal destruction is their favorite variety, why they are verbal assassins and go directly for the jugular, and why they think nothing of destroying the reputations of their opponents and burying them permanently. And that is why they can perform their character assassinations without regrets . . .

As Mr. Instapundit says, read the whole thing. Here. 

Obamacare Discriminates Against Poor People

President Obama, Senate President Harry Reid and the rest of the Donkey Brigade are always claiming how Obamacare is needed to help the poor and unfortunate to receive healthcare they cannot afford. 

But as we see below, if you were ever in a bad financial way, have marginal credit or bad credit -- you will be singled out based on your credit score and will be charged higher rates.

Too bad you are just a normal hard working American trying to make ends meet, because if you were special and worked as one of Obama or Reid's Congressional Staff members -- you would be eligible for subsidies and a possible exemption.....

From Click Orlando --

 

Many people signing up for health care in Florida through the Affordable Care Act have been shocked when they have to give proof of their credit score before they finish the process.

Anne Packham, one of many people licensed by the state to help people navigate the government's website, said on Tuesday that the credit check occurs so providers can make an educated decision about who to insure.

"If someone is defaulting on all of their bills they may not want to have them as part of their health plan," said Packham, the lead Navigator in Florida.

Participants with low credit scores could end up paying higher premiums, according to Packham, who said that ultimately the insurance company makes the call.