Sloppy Legislation = Tyranny

Please watch this short video before reading my commentary:


For a moment, let's think about all this in different terms. Because I'm most comfortable discussing this matter in educational terms, allow me to do so for just a moment.

First, note these two examples of dangling participial phrases:

Hiking the trail, the birds chirped loudly.

Wishing I could sing, the high notes seemed to taunt me.

Grammatically correct revisions of the two above examples:

Wishing I could sing, I feel taunted by the high notes.

Hiking the trail, Squiggly and Aardvark heard birds chirping loudly.

You can learn more about dangling participles at Grammar Girl.

Now let's look at an example from the classroom:

A student turns in a composition to me. I find all sorts of errors in logic, dangling participles, and the like. I point out to the student what he has actually said in the essay.

He replies: "That's not what I meant."

I respond: "But that's what you said."

Then we laugh because the errors actually conveyed absurd images: in the first example, the birds were hiking the trail; in the second example, the notes were singing the high notes.

From that point on, the student is more careful to write exactly what he means.  And he proofreads, too.

Words matter — or used to matter.  United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was spot on when he stated in his dissent to the SCOTUS ObamaCare decision of June 25, 2015: "Words [now] have no meaning..."

According to the Roberts Doctrine, which overthrows the United States Constitution, my students no longer have to revise.  They can be a sloppy as they like with their words. HOORAY!  [sarcasm]

Furthermore, the words in all contracts to which you have penned your name mean nothing. Sound farfetched to you? Think again! A few short years ago could you have imagined that America would be in the sorry state which she is in today? And so rapidly?

Congress, packed with lawyers who should know how to write legislation correctly, drafted sloppy legislation and, worse, did not read the final gargantuan piece of ObamaCare legislation.  Of course, President Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, also didn't read the law. In my view, all of them committed political malpractice.

Political malpractice is tyranny!

If Only!

Great idea! And require a $50,000/year deductible per family member. Redistribute the wealth!

House bill would force the Supreme Court to enroll in ObamaCare

And every federal employee and politician, too. Give 'em a taste of their own medicine. NOW!

I don't count on the GOP to do any such thing, of course.

Stick a fork in our republic. She's done.

Additional reading: The Roberts Doctrine and ObamaCare (at my blog Always On Watch).

WAIT, WTF?, Part 2

Now The 4th Circuit Court Of Appeals Upholds IRS ObamaCare Rule That DC Court Struck Down This Morning

Wait? WTF?

Obama Contemplates His Place Among The Pantheon

Court rules Obamacare subsidies illegal...

'Potentially crippling blow'...

'Massive setback'...

Premiums poised to spike for millions...

PAPER: 'Wording glitch'...

OBAMA LAW PROF: 'I wouldn't bet' on law's survival...

A federal appeals court panel in the District struck down a major part of the 2010 health-care law Tuesday, ruling that the tax subsidies that are central to the program may not be provided in at least half of the states. 

The ruling, if upheld, could potentially be more damaging to the law than last month’s Supreme Court decision on contraceptives. 

The three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with plaintiffs who argued that the language of the law barred the government from giving subsidies to people in states that chose not to set up their own insurance marketplaces. 

Twenty-seven states, most with Republican leaders who oppose the law, decided against setting up marketplaces, and another nine states partially opted out. 

The government could request an “en banc” hearing, putting the case before the entire appeals court, and the question ultimately may end up at the Supreme Court. 

But if subsidies for half the states are barred, it represents a potentially crippling blow to the health-care law, which relies on the subsidies to make insurance affordable for millions of low- and middle-income Americans.

Gaslighting America

Good analogy:

Of Course!

Who didn't see THIS coming?

People who have accounts on the enrollment website for President Barack Obama's signature health care law are being told to change their passwords following an administration-wide review of the government's vulnerability to the confounding Heartbleed Internet security flaw.

Buyers' Remorse

Some of us tried to sound the alarm, but we were ignored:

Labor union officials say Obama betrayed them in health-care rollout

Labor leaders who have spent months lobbying unsuccessfully for special protections under the Affordable Care Act warned this week that the White House’s continued refusal to help is dampening union support for Democratic candidates in this year’s midterm elections.

Leaders of two major unions, including the first to endorse Obama in 2008, said they have been betrayed by an administration that wooed their support for the 2009 legislation with promises to later address the peculiar needs of union-negotiated insurance plans that cover millions of workers.

Their complaints reflect a broad sense of disappointment among many labor leaders, who say the Affordable Care Act has subjected union health plans to new taxes and mandates while not allowing them to share in the subsidies that have gone to private insurance companies competing on the newly created exchanges.

After dozens of frustrating meetings with White House officials over the past year, including one with Obama, a number of angry labor officials say their members are far less likely to campaign and turn out for Democratic candidates in the midterm elections....

[...]

Taylor said Unite Here officials have met with White House officials 48 times. At the time the health-care bill was being considered, he said, “we were told that ‘if there were problems, don’t worry, we’ll get them fixed.’ ”

“We thought that if we made the case to the agencies dealing with regulations to correct problems that hurt, really destroy, self-funded nonprofit health plans, it would be resolved,” Taylor said. “That clearly was naive or stupid.”

Read the rest HERE.

The ObamaCare Assets Grab

From Fox News (hat tip to Diary of a Right Wing Pussycat):

ObamaCare death debt? States can seize assets to recoup Medicaid costs

Tom Gialanella, 56, was shocked to find out he qualified for Medicaid under ObamaCare. The Bothell, Wash., resident had been able to retire early years ago, owns his home outright in a pricey Seattle suburb and is living off his investments.

He wanted no part of the government's so-called free health care. "It's supposed to be a safety net program. It's not supposed to be for someone who has assets who can pay the bill," he said.

And after reading the fine print, Gialanella had another reason to flee Medicaid -- the potential death debt.

Though many may not realize it, states are allowed to recover the cost of health care after someone's death by seizing their assets. It applies to Medicaid recipients who are between the ages of 55 and 64. The law has been in place since 1993, when Congress realized states were going broke over rising Medicaid expenses.

But under ObamaCare, Medicaid eligibility has expanded dramatically along with the promise that the federal government will pick up the cost of the higher tab -- at least for the first few years, after which states will be on the hook for a portion of the increase.

Millions more are entering the system, perhaps without knowing that their assets could be at risk.

[...]

Critics see a money grab.

"I think that people are maybe in for a shock when they find out their heirs are going to be paying for their care, because they got into a system under false pretenses," said Dr. Jane Orient of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a group opposed to the Affordable Care Act.

The estate recovery law is so under the radar right now that interest groups like the AARP are still studying how it will play out under ObamaCare for seniors....

Read the rest HERE.

Ethnicity And Race Designations Required?

I admit that I had my doubts about this October 20, 2013 story, "Obamacare seeks to segregate patients, doctors by race" — until I visited my neurologist on December 9. Before that date, I last saw my neurologist on June 17, 2013.

As usual, the girl behind the front desk handed me a sheet with insurance information to verify. I did so by comparing all the numbers on the sheet with the health insurance card that I carry in my wallet, then handed the sheet back to her. She said: "You haven't completed the form. See the top right."

There were two more lines to fill in. One said "ethnicity," the other "race."

Never before has any insurance form in any doctor's office I have visited required such designations!

Having to provide the information on any insurance form makes me uneasy. What's the point?

I noticed two other changes while visiting my neurologist on December 9:

(1) Sheet after sheet to fill out so as to provide a detailed medical history of my immediate and extended family.

(2) Having to be weighed in during my visit.  Never before have I been required to step on the scale at the neurologist's office.  Not that I worry about my weigh-in; I'm well under even the remote possibility of obesity.

All in all, this December 9 visit to my neurologist took up 1.5 hours of my time; of that time, I spent about one hour face-to-face with my neurologist — although I must say that at least 30 minutes of that face-to-face time was consumed by the neurologist having to sit in front of his computer in my presence so as to complete the electronic medical records.  Previous visits to my neurologist have consumed barely 20 minutes of my time.

Starbucks/ObamaCare Comparison

With a hat tip to Z:

Harvard Must Be So Proud

On November 14, 2013, Obama apologized to the nation for the non-functional Healthcare.gov web site.

On November 18, 2013, Obama claimed in a conference call with OFA volunteers that "more than a 100 million Americans" have signed up for ObamaCare health-insurance plans.

 Read the article and listen to the audio HERE.  Worth your time.

Another example of "mizled"?

Mind-Boggling Stupidity

Proof positive from this November 16, 2013 article in the Washington Post:

...[A former Democratic Party Chairperson has stated that] she thinks HealthCare.gov will be functioning well by the Nov. 30 deadline because that’s what the president said....

This statement was apparently made after Obama's announcement last Thursday, November 14, 2013.  The words denial of reality don't begin to cover this absurd statement.

Read the article for more details.

This information was released on November 15, 2013:

The team doing 24/7 repair work on HealthCare.gov has its priorities set.

About 50 of them.

Jeff Zients, the Obama administration’s point man in the repair mission, joined the daily update for reporters Friday and said there is a top priority punch list – with “50 priority fixes as we enter this week.”

And that doesn’t count the lower priority fixes in what Zients called an “iterative process.”...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi babbling yesterday on Meet the Press:


Leadership in America today:

It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing. — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

Ah, The Irony!

Obama's "leadership" style (hat tip to Reliapundit of THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS):

Obama's ObamaCare Fix

An essay by Daniel Greenfield:

Obama’s “Administrative Fix” is All About Control

1. Obama is getting out in front of panicking Democrats to make it seem like he’s leading. He’s not. He’s trying to head off a panicked stampede.

2. The fix is not about protecting consumers. It’s about protecting Democratic senators who voted for ObamaCare. And it took a lot of arm twisting to get that far. Which means you’ve got till 2014 and then Obama no longer has to worry about the impact of any further elections and he’ll get even worse than he is already.

3. Like everything Obama does, this is about retaining his one-man imperial control over everything. Even if he has to scratch the paint on his shiny new law, he would rather do it himself, since it makes it easier for him to control it, and it keeps Congress in an even weaker state.

4. The combination of insurer unreadiness and Blue State sabotage from elected liberals, of the kind we’re already seeing in Washington (the state, not the city) will create new targets for blame. The media will point out that Obama “did everything he could”. Now it’s the fault of the states and the insurers.

5. The insurers have been made into the bad guys. I have no sympathy for them. Collaborators get what they deserve. And it may be a lesson for them about how quickly they go under the bus when they collaborate in Socialist schemes.

6. This won’t protect Obama the way he thinks it will. If he had gotten out in front of it much earlier, before the sense that he had lied took root, things might have been different. But people are still going to be dealing with most of the same problems and while the media will urge them to blame insurers, the use of ObamaCare is going to pass the buck back up to the top.

It’s hard to blame insurers when everyone knows the only reason their policies vanished is because of ObamaCare. And after the Dems, including Obama, spent weeks defending the cancellations as a good thing, while lying that the plans were bad, the fix isn’t going to make that much of a difference. It will help some people, but those people already had to deal with stress, worry and confusion.

None of that will make them more likely to vote Dem in 2014.

I'm not so sure about that last sentence.

A few short hours after his mea culpa speech today, Obama was speechifying at a steel plant in Cleveland, Ohio, and vowing to "see this through" until his last days in office.

The Cult of Obama is still very strong. Disbelieve that at your own peril.

These Orwellian Times

George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm: "Some animals are more equal than others."

We are now living in that Orwellian world.

From Bunkerville:

Sebelius Exempts Health Exchanges from Anti-Fraud Standards

In an October 30 letter, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius revealed that the Obama administration has determined that programs created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are not federal health care plans. This decision, which flies in the face of common sense, exempts the Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) and state-based and federally facilitated Marketplaces from laws banning kickbacks and various forms of semi-legal fraud perpetrated by pharmaceutical companies and other interested parties....

While the writer of the post I am quoting had the intentions to portray the Healthcare industry as - greedy and corrupt, the usual meme, the intention is missed entirely. The intention is to devastate Hospitals and physicians reimbursements. The Cleveland clinic has recently indicated it would not accept Obamacare patients and for good reason. They will lose money. The end game is bankruptcy forced on it by the regime. No Hospital or physician’s group will be able to survive on the miniscule payments that will be negotiated. So it is Katy bar the door as our healthcare system becomes the wild west. Unregulated, lawless, and corrupt. Negotiating contracts and sending patients to those who could care less about the quality of service, just give them a few bucks. Drugs? Same thing. It’s pay to play on steroids the Chicago way. Our lives simply of little value. The end game? A Single Payer system that they so crave. They will implement the very evil they rail against....

The Money Quote In Today's WaPo

The last paragraph of this article about ObamaCare:

“I pay my taxes. I’m assistant chief of the volunteer fire department here in Cedar River and a first responder for Mid-County Rescue,” Prestin said. “You try to be personally accountable and play by the rules, but the more you play by the rules, the more you get beat up on.”

Sunday Comedy

Sorta (hat tip to Political Tea Leaves):

Obama The Liar

“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.” (Actually, it was a little more than 16 words if you include what the president said next: “Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”)

Obama's 16 words prove that he lied:

...Obama’s 16 words were no accident.

Or, put another way, “Obama lied and the individual market died.”...

Is he going to be able to squirm out of this?

Mid-range estimate: 51% of employer-sponsored plans will get canceled

I WILL USE CASS SUNSTEIN 

TO GRIND THE SERFS TO DUST

From Ace:

But Carney’s dismissal of the media’s concerns was wrong, on several fronts. [This refers to Carney's, get this, false characterization of a Federal Register estimate as only concerning individual market policies. -- ace.] Contrary to the reporting of NBC, the administration’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer to the individual market, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance. 

Section 1251 of the Affordable Care Act contains what’s called a “grandfather” provision that, in theory, allows people to keep their existing plans if they like them. But subsequent regulations from the Obama administration interpreted that provision so narrowly as to prevent most plans from gaining this protection. 

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013. 

Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and get canceled.... 

How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.

Administrator of the Office of 

Information and Regulatory Affairs

2009-2012

Cease the Celebrating

We are all patting ourselves on the back saying 'We told you so' about Obamacare. But folks, we're  being rope-a-doped.

Not only are we coming to the awareness that Obamacare was designed to fail from the beginning but the other side admits it.  What have the Progressives have said all along about Universal Healthcare?
It’s a pathway to Single Payer right…?

Obama wrote:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” (applause) “I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”
Obama speaking to the Illinois AFL-CIO, June 30, 2003. 

 And Sen. Reid has said:

We have a rare moment of bipartisan agreement in the United States Senate. Reid now appears to concur with Republican senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who has has been warning for quite some time that Obamacare was "rigged to fail" in order to pave  the way for a total government takeover of the health insurance industry.

So...HOW will they get to single-payer? NOBODY is talking about that. Not even the right and the conservative media. Why?

Can the ACA be converted to a single-payer? Is it in the law? Or can Obama just wave his executive order magic wand and make it so?

Or does an entirely new piece of legislation - and thus a law - be created.  And if so, how can the Democrats get it through a Republican controlled House?

True, they probably belive they can win back the House in 2014 then forces the single-payer down our throats like they did the ACA. But that's chancy.

So again I ask. How will they do it? The attempt is coming. It's going to be rationalized. And we know it.