Category Archives: Politics

REP. PALLONE(Y)’S Health-Care Baloney

Democrats, Healthcare, Media, Morality, Politics

Lying is second nature to politicians, but there can be no doubt that Democrats have notched it up, becoming increasingly brazen about, well, lying. Small mercies, Fox News still provides a transcript here and there for those of us who prefer to speed READ, rather than waste time watching video clips. Read through this interview with Democrat Frank Pallone, a ghastly congressman from New Jersey. Watch him in the act, and your skin will crawl.

MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Joining me now, Democratic New Jersey Congressman, Frank Pallone. He’s a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee. He was one of the lawmakers questioning the Secretary today. Congressman, thank you for being here.

REP. FRANK PALLONE, D-N.J.: Thank you.

KELLY: We’re struggling to understand how Ms. Sebelius can say the president kept that promise. That specific one of if you like your healthcare you can keep it, period, I guarantee it, when we’ve seen 2 million Americans have policies cancelled so far. And the estimates are it will top 10 million.

REP. PALLONE: Well you can keep it as long as the insurance company agrees to continue to sell it. But the problem is a lot of insurance companies now have been caught because they’re selling lousy plans at a high price that are skeletal and don’t provide any benefits. So they are now cancelling those lousy plans. In which case many of them are just a scam and saying, look we’re not going to sell this anymore because nobody’s going to buy it. And therefore we’ll try to get, we’ll give you a better plan that has better benefits at a more affordable price.

So the president never said that he could stop the insurance companies from cancelling plans. This is a private market. This is a competitive market. They’re not going to sell something they can’t sell.

KELLY: Okay. But that’s only partially true. But what you’re saying is only partially true.

REP. PALLONE: What’s only partially true?

KELLY: There are some insurance companies who cancelled policies. And that’s what insurance companies–

REP. PALLONE: They cancelled the policies —

KELLY: Wait a minute, let me just, let me pose —

REP. PALLONE: They don’t have to sell them. It’s a private market.

KELLY: Let me pose the question. Then you respond. Some of the insurance companies said, all right, I’m going to cancel the policies because that happens on the insurance market.

REP. PALLONE: Right.

KELLY: But many, many other policies — in fact, according to the insurance companies the vast majority of these policies that are being cancelled are being cancelled because the regulations imposed on them by ObamaCare left them with no choice. The way the HHS —

REP. PALLONE: That is absolutely not true.

KELLY: The HHS regulations —

REP. PALLONE: They have a right to continue the policies —

KELLY: She admitted it. She admitted it today, sir.

REP. PALLONE: She did not admit that.

KELLY: She did too.

REP. PALLONE: That’s simply not true.

KELLY: She was asked about whether —

REP. PALLONE: The insurance companies can cancel the policies if they want to. They can offer policies at the same price for the same lousy benefits if they want to.

KELLY: If they change the policies in any marginal way then ObamaCare requires that they be cancelled and the people get kicked off.

REP. PALLONE: No, that’s not true.

KELLY: Yes. She was asked about this today by a $5 increase in the premium.

REP. PALLONE: It’s not true. ObamaCare —

KELLY: Let’s run the sound bite. Let’s run the sound bit, $5 change, $5 change and you’re kicked off. Watch.

REP. PALLONE: ObamaCare simply says that —

KELLY: Stand by.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. WILLIAM CASSIDY: If coinsurance went up by any amount, even by a dollar according to your regulations that would not qualify as a grandfathered clause? Just to have that out there for the record. I gather even by a dollar.

HHS SECRETARY KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Dr. Cassidy, I want to start by the amount that you gave is not accurate. I was told $5, not a dollar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY: So she’s not saying, no, you’re wrong. They can’t cancel the people if the policy changes by five dollars. She’s saying, yes you’re right. If they up your premium by $5 it’s cancelled, ObamaCare kicks in, the person gets a cancellation notice and they’re wondering where to get their insurance.

REP. PALLONE: Look the bottom line is, they tell them where they can get the insurance. Look, the bottom line is, if you are selling a lousy policy at a price that’s too high, nobody is going to buy it. And so they’re cancelling these policies because they know people can’t, won’t buy them.

KELLY: OK.

REP. PALLONE: It’s a competitive marketplace.

Mainstream press, meantime, is every bit as allergic to the truth as the pols. WaPo’s Fact Checker is being lauded far and wide for doing what it’s supposed to do: award maximum “Pinocchio’s” to “Obama’s pledge that ‘no one will take away’ your health plan.” Sad. When mainstream media detect and report facts unflattering to O, it is considered a momentous event.

The president’s statements were sweeping and unequivocal — and made both before and after the bill became law. The White House now cites technicalities to avoid admitting that he went too far in his repeated pledge, which, after all, is one of the most famous statements of his presidency.
The president’s promise apparently came with a very large caveat: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan — if we deem it to be adequate.”

MORE.

What If The Media Were Moral?

Government, Healthcare, Media, Morality, Politics, Propaganda

“What If The Media Were Moral?” is the current weekly column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… If the media were moral, they’d have told Americans these truths:

If the media were moral, they’d have told Americans that the perennial debt crises are manufactured crises.

That the U.S. government’s receipts are more than sufficient to cover its debt payments by a factor of approximately ten.

That the 14th Amendment (Section 4) of the U.S. Constitution prohibits a default on the country’s debt.

That if the country were to default on the debt, it would be because President Barack Obama deliberately and maliciously chose to flout the Constitution (it’s the law of the land, unlike ObamaCare), and not service the debt, so as to win a political battle.

If the media were moral, they’d tell America that it’s do or die. That capping the debt ceiling is perhaps the only way to compel a government that owes $17 trillion and carries “$70 trillion in off-balance-sheet liabilities” to make do with the loot it collects.

That the stock-market’s ‘confidence,’ pursuant to lifting the cap on the debt, amounts to faith in confidence men; that soaring stocks in a debt-fueled, stagnant economy is a consequence of the confetti of funny-money raining down from the nation’s pantheon: the Federal Reserve Bank.

That non-stop monetary stimulus is the road to ruin—it results in a rise in prices, stocks included. Homes too. And that an increase in the price of an item is not the same as an appreciation in its value.

That the natural laws of economics dictate that ObamaCare will increase both public and private debt. …”

Read the complete column. “What If The Media Were Moral?” is now on WND.

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Our Parallel Economic Universe

Crime, Economy, Objectivism, Political Economy, Politics, Propaganda, Reason

Financier Peter Schiff’s findings of fact in Florida V. George Zimmerman are much like mine in “The Colosseum of Courtroom Cretins,” where it was noted that “Idiocracy elite lacks the ability to separate the political constructs to which it is wedded (racism) from the facts of a case brought in a court of law.”

Or, as Mr. Schiff puts it in “Print the Legend”: “preconceived emotional commitments to a narrative [consistently trumped] demonstrable facts.”

Schiff goes on to compare the parallel reality constructed in the response to the Zimmerman acquittal and the fiction of our economic indices:

“The vast majority of observers continue to subscribe to the dominant narrative that our economy is improving, the Fed’s Quantitative Easing programs are responsible, and that the debt we are currently accumulating is not a long-term problem.”

“The current administration, the media, Wall Street, and the Fed itself, are particularly committed to this narrative. After all, we have been pursuing these policies for more than five years, and many of these parties have a particular emotional and pecuniary investment in a positive outcome. It would be difficult for them now to admit that their preferred cures have not only been ineffective, but harmful. As a result, they will continue to advocate for the current policies until they get the answers they expect.”

“Not only do their underlying assumptions defy economic law and objective rationality, but they are also at odds with the evidence that continues to arrive. The data makes it clear that while asset prices (stocks, bonds, and real estate), are currently being inflated by an activist monetary policy, the real economy continues to stagnate. What supports do exist are based solely on government intervention. Yet they nevertheless discuss a potential Fed exit strategy as if the economy were in a position to make such a transition without bringing on an even more severe recession than the last. In this light, the failure of QEI to produce a real recovery led directly to QEII, and so on to QE Infinity. We are unwilling to challenge our initial assumptions about what is really wrong with our economy and how to fix it.”

“To get a sense of justice and emotional clarity over the death of Trayvon Martin, many cling to the image of a saintly youth and ignore the more difficult reality of a troubled teen picking a fight with an inept neighborhood watchman. Accepting this reality does not lead to a conclusion that Trayvon deserved to die, but it denies the self-justifying conclusions that keep race relations dysfunctional. It also allows us to ignore more troubling and far more common tragedies like the one that befell 18 year old Jett Higham, another African American youth who lost his life in a nighttime run to a local convenience store. The media decided that this tragedy was a non-story, as his killers were also African Americans teens.” [Emphasis added.]

UPDATED: Zoned Out On The Weiner Worm

Barack Obama, Journalism, Media, Morality, Politics, Republicans

Of course Republicans would fall for the distraction that is Anthony Weiner, coverage of whom is all over Drudge Report and other Republican websites. This is the very thing left-liberals are doing, except that they have reason to track the Weiner Worm (a poster boy for Anti-Semitism, if ever there was one).

The antics of this engorged organism allow our “representatives” in Congress and their loyal representatives in the media to forget about the NSA spying on all of us, that the IRS rapine could be traced to the White House, if the will existed, to say nothing of the nap the Beloved took during an attack on a US embassy, in a country Obama and his liberal posse invaded, to the detriment of its people and our own.

The media love knocking down one straw man (Weiner) for the sake of another (Obama).

UPDATE: “Jay Carney: Obama trying to focus on economy, not ‘phony scandals’; Update: Obama also refers to ‘phony scandals.’”

The laser, I presume, was BHO’s elementary—eighth-grade elementary—address, given today.