Post Scripts

Posted by Tina

Without further comment…

The Washington Examiner:

Internal cost estimates from 17 of the nation’s largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent, crushing the administration’s goal of affordability.

New regulations, policies, taxes, fees and mandates are the reason for the unexpected “rate shock,” according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released a report Monday based on internal documents provided by the insurance companies. The 17 companies include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Foundation. …

…It concluded: “Despite promises that the law will lower costs, [Obamacare] will in fact cause the premiums of many Americans to spike substantially. The broken promises are numerous, and the empirical data reveal that many Americans, from recent college graduates to older adults, will not be able to afford the law’s higher costs.”

Posted by Tina

Looks like the IRS scandal didn’t originate with low level workers in Cincinnati but was directed from the office in Washington DC. Via Powerline, a quote from The Washington Post:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Oh and the recent announcement by Max Baucus that he’s retiring just got interesting. Despite the fact that he’s leaving Congress he has just announced he will look into the IRS matter…but, turns out he wrote a letter to the IRS in 2010 asking the IRS to target conservative groups:

Baucus wrote a letter to then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman dated September 28, 2010 urging the IRS to investigative nonprofit conservative groups during the Tea Party-dominated 2010 midterm elections.

“With hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in election contests by tax-exempt entities, it is time to take a fresh look at current practices and how they comport with the Internal Revenue Code’s rules for nonprofits,” Baucus wrote in the letter.

“I request that you and your agency survey major 501(c)(4), (c)(5) and (c)(6) organizations involved in political campaign activity to examine whether they are operated for the organization’s intended tax exempt purpose and to ensure that political campaign activity is not the organization’s primary activity,” Baucus wrote in the letter.

“The tax exemption given to non-profit organizations comes with a responsibility to serve the public interest and Congress has an obligation to exercise the vigorous oversight necessary to ensure they do,” Baucus said in a 2010 statement accompanying his letter.

Though Baucus identified 501 (c) (5) groups — or labor unions — as worthy of investigation, the only organizations cited in his request were conservative, pro-Republican groups.

Still unfolding.

Posted by Tina

Who needs affordable healthcare the most? People who are facing big health scares and long term health conditions…sick people…right?

Well, too bad for them! Anytime a new element is introduced into a market adjustments naturally occur. Obamacare is a huge new element and the consequences for it’s introduction into the healthcare market just keep falling out. Now it’s being reported that Obamacare means bad news for patients who need affordable prescription drugs most, those suffering from: cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic diseases:

To try to keep premiums low, some states are allowing insurers to charge patients a hefty share of the cost for expensive medications used to treat cancer, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and other life-altering chronic diseases.

Such “specialty drugs” can cost thousands of dollars a month, and in California, patients would pay up to 30 percent of the cost. For one widely used cancer drug, Gleevec, the patient could pay more than $2,000 for a month’s supply, says the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

New York is taking a different approach, setting flat dollar copayments for medications. The highest is $70, and it would apply to specialty drugs as well.

Critics fear most states will follow California’s lead, and that could defeat the purpose of Obama’s overhaul, because some of the sickest patients may be unable to afford their prescriptions.

It’s called The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. But it was an illusion from the beginning that the law we call Obamacare would “protect patients” or make health care “affordable” as the law’s actual name implies.

Obamacare represents another leftist grab for power over private sector industry and a means to control how healthcare dollars are spent.

The way to bring cost for healthcare down is to get the federal government out of the healthcare industry completely and create regulation that allows for greater competition and flexibility. With premiums set to skyrocket next year we can only hope that the people will finally see the folly in this damaging, deceptive law.

by Jack

Posted by Tina

We reported Saturday that Tea Party groups and groups with “patriot” in their names were targeted during the 2012 election cycle for extra scrutiny. In comments I also pointed to a Jewish organization that was targeted for disagreeing with the administrations policies. Today The Washington Free Beacon informs the Obama administration has been accused six times of using the IRS to punish political opponents. Follow the link for details…a list follows:

1. The IRS Targeted Conservative Political Organizations for Investigation

2. ProPublica Published Confidential IRS Filings on Six Conservative Organizations

3. Austan Goolsbee, Then Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, Divulged on a Conference Call Confidential IRS Information on How Koch Industries Was Organized

4. Donors to Nonprofit Advocacy Groups Were Told that Past Donations Could Be Taxed as Gifts

5. After Being Singled Out by an Obama Campaign Website, a Romney Supporter Was Investigated by The IRS and the Department of Labor

6. The IRS Claims It Can Read Your Emails without a Warrant

Two stories in the Daily Caller this morning, here and here, seem to expand the IRS abuse story. One elaborates on the Romney’ donor that was targeted for audit by the IRS (# five above). The other further reveals that private information about the tax return of the National Organization for Marriage (#2 above) had been leaked:

“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brow, in a prepared statement. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”

The President has made a statement calling this “outrageous,” indicating he “had no tolerance” for this sort of thing…yada, yada, yada.

If that statement were consistent with the President’s and the President’s support organizations’ overall campaign style I might think he was being honest.

Posted by Tina

Victoria Toensing writes an informative article this morning that describes the shoddy methods used by the Accountability Review Board to investigate and create the Benghazi report.

The White House has characterized the ARB report as, “led by two men of unimpeachable expertise and credibility that oversaw a process that was rigorous and unsparing.”

Ms. Toensing begs to differ:

The two men in charge of the ARB, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Thomas Mullen, a diplomat and military man respectively, have no meaningful investigative experience. Instead of letting the facts lead the direction of the investigation, the report appears designed to protect the interests of Hillary Clinton, the State Department higher ups, and the president.

A most obvious question is: why was Secretary Clinton never interviewed for the investigation? She is mentioned only once in the report, as the person who convened the Board. If, as Clinton herself has said, she took full responsibility for what happened in Benghazi, her decisions and decision-making process are materially relevant for investigating what happened before and during the night of September 11, 2012, and preventing what went wrong from ever happening again.

Other relevant questions the report does not answer are: How often did Clinton and President Obama speak during the attack? What decisions did the president make, and what orders did he give? What was the hour by hour participation of the president during the attack?

Hillary Clinton apparently doesn’t think any questions about what happened in Benghazi matter. The President appears to be acting as if he’s simply an innocent bystander to the event. But, according to Toensing, the whistleblowers, people involved on that terrible long night, have disturbing testimony to give:

Mark Thompson, my husband’s client, testified that he asked twice to be interviewed by the ARB and was not. Mr. Thompson was the deputy assistant secretary in charge of coordinating the deployment of a multi-agency team for hostage taking and terrorism attacks. Yet, he was excluded from all decisions, communications, and meetings on September 11 and 12, 2012. Why? Others asked to be interviewed and were not. Until they see how my client, Gregory Hicks, former chargé and deputy chief of mission (DCM) in Libya, and Mr. Thompson fare after their testimony, they will not step forward.

In other news today Jonathan Karl of ABC reported that David Petraeus, then head of the CIA, called the revised talking points “useless”. He further reports:

We already knew that Petraeus was stunned by the revisions; now we know he rejected them personally. “I would just as soon not use them, but it’s their [the White House] call.”

John McCain is asking for a select committee to investigate the cover-up. House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers told Fox News Sunday that more whistleblowers are asking to step forward

by Jack

There was a great business management article that came out recently written by a retired Lieutenant General, Russel L. Honore’.  It was called, “Stuck on Stupid” and Honore’ focus was on our business paradigm wherein we have this powerful chief executive officer (CEO) with a virtual God complex and the authority to match.  He see’s himself (herself) as a born leader who can’t wait to make those critical decisions that may arise.   In his world he has the final word and wields unparalleled power. And that says Honore’ is passe…enter the new collaborative leadership concept.

You might think Facebook’s young Mark Zuckerberg would be all about cutting edge leadership that matches up with his cutting edge Facebook concept, but he stunned and surprised investors and his board of directors when he spent a billion dollars to buy another company.   He just saw an opportunity and took it.  He blew through a billion dollars and nobody knew it until it was a done deal.   Honore’ would call him stuck on stupid, investors called him a lot of other things. Zuckerberg fell victim to his own sense of magnificense, a view shared by few outside his inner-circle.

During the Hurricane Katrina crisis a overdue evacuation order finally came and this had New Orleanians backed up at the airport trying to get out of Katrina’s way.   The overcrowding was compounded because nobody at TSA told their security people to stand down.  Nobody at the top had the intelligence to deviate from policy and say, don’t do tedious time wasting searches, just move people out as fast as they could.   Honore’ was one of the crisis managers and he had to issue TSA a direct order to get those long lines moving because their TSA bosses we stuck on following the protocol even when it could cost lives because they were stuck on stupid.  This was a gross failure to communicate and collaborate with crisis management officials for the best possible outcome.

The new way of doing business is called “collaborative leadership.” 

Collaboration is probably the last thing a CEO who thinks he was born to command wants to hear. But, collaboration has been proven to be more effective over dictators every time. For example the US Army wanted to improve the effectiveness of  JIIM (Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental and Multinational) teams in Europe.  They developed a framework for rapidly building and employing cross-boundary teams called Teams of Leaders, or ToL, which management consultants say has proved helpful at fighting team dysfunction in non-military organizations. “The key [to developing effective cross-boundary teams] is using facilitators,” says Mike Prevou, a ToL coach who co-founded the U.S. Army’s Battle Command Knowledge System Program. “Without trained facilitators, egos and mistrust get in the way.” Full article.  This should be mandatory reading for the FBI that still fails to share terrorist intelligence with other agencies. 

Obama is one of these stuck on stupid characters.   He’s anything but progressive and is using the oldest managerial methods ever known.  He  has single-handedly done more to disrupt checks and balances, not to mention team building, than any president in the history of the United States.   His casual use of presidential orders exceeds all but Frankin D. Roosevelt’s who presided over the depression years.  Virtually every time Obama has acted unilaterally he has made a mess of things.   Obamacare is a prime example.  It’s fraught with horrendous cost overruns, exclusions and or exemptions woven into 2700 pages of red tape with no discernible benefit to improving medical care and this was all on him.  

The President of the United States was intended to be the point man for his party’s policies, not the sole dictator of policy whereby his party exists only to implement his will. So, for my money B.O. is the #1 poster child for executives that are Stuck on Stupid.  Lucky us.

Obama’s blunders and power grabbing makes me think we should consider changing the Constitution to prevent one person from ever being the dictator-in-chief again.   We would be far better off with a three person panel sharing and collaborating than a megalomaniac.

JACK AND TINA WISH YOU ALL A WONDERFUL DAY!

by Peggy…

Did you know two MSM and CNN have top CEOs with relatives working in the White House? Both CBS president David Rhodes and ABC president Ben Sherwood have siblings who work at the White House for the NSC that works on foreign policy. Also, CNN’s Virginia Mosley is married to Clinton’s deputy Tom Nides.

CNN forgot to mention bureau chief is married to Obama bigwig … Oops:
http://now.msn.com/virginia-moseley-new-cnn-bureau-chief-is-married-to-tom-nides-of-obama-administration

Lapdog media fail to report new CNN deputy bureau chief is married to a deputy secretary of state:
http://twitchy.com/2012/11/17/lapdog-media-fail-to-report-new-cnn-deputy-bureau-chief-is-married-to-a-deputy-secretary-of-state/

Top Obama official’s brother is president of CBS News, may drop reporter over Benghazi coverage:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/11/top-obama-officials-brother-is-president-of-cbs-news-may-drop-reporter-over-benghazi-coverage/#ixzz2T0rSvnmV

Sleeping With The Enemy: Media, Politicos, Once Adversaries, Now One Big Incestuous Circle:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/sleeping-with-the-enemy-media-politicos-once-adversaries-now-one-big-incestuous-circle/

Couldn’t find anything about Ben Sherwood’s family connection.

Did you know two MSM and CNN have top CEOs with relatives working in the White House? Both CBS president David Rhodes and ABC president Ben Sherwood have siblings who work at the White House for the NSC that works on foreign policy. Also, CNN’s Virginia Mosley is married to Clinton’s deputy Tom Nides.

CNN forgot to mention bureau chief is married to Obama bigwig … Oops:
http://now.msn.com/virginia-moseley-new-cnn-bureau-chief-is-married-to-tom-nides-of-obama-administration

Lapdog media fail to report new CNN deputy bureau chief is married to a deputy secretary of state:
http://twitchy.com/2012/11/17/lapdog-media-fail-to-report-new-cnn-deputy-bureau-chief-is-married-to-a-deputy-secretary-of-state/

Top Obama official’s brother is president of CBS News, may drop reporter over Benghazi coverage:
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/11/top-obama-officials-brother-is-president-of-cbs-news-may-drop-reporter-over-benghazi-coverage/#ixzz2T0rSvnmV

Sleeping With The Enemy: Media, Politicos, Once Adversaries, Now One Big Incestuous Circle:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/sleeping-with-the-enemy-media-politicos-once-adversaries-now-one-big-incestuous-circle/

Couldn’t find anything about Ben Sherwood’s family connection.

Posted by Tina

Today Lois Lerner of the IRS admitted that the tax agency had inappropriately targeted non-profit organizations for special scrutiny if they had the words Patriot or Tea Party in their names. Commentary reports that targeting came from Cincinnati Ohio office “low-level” officials.

According to Breitbart Eric Cantor announced that the matter will be investigated in the House:

“The IRS cannot target or intimidate any individual or organization based on their political beliefs,” Cantor said on Friday. “The House will investigate this matter.”

I imagine there are several laws that have been broken or grossly trampled upon in this case. PJ Media Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, University of Tennessee law professor has a legal take:

My take: The employees involved should be fired and prosecuted. The affected groups should be compensated for the additional costs they incurred in responding to this illegal harassment, and Congress should take the money out of the IRS’s travel-and-entertainment budget.

I like the way this guy thinks!

The American Thinker has the official statement put out by the IRS that it calls “somewhat inconsistent” with the apology made by Lois Lerner:

Between 2010 and 2012, the IRS saw the number of applications for section 501(c)(4) status double. As a result, local career employees in Cincinnati sought to centralize work and assign cases to designated employees in an effort to promote consistency and quality. This approach has worked in other areas. However, the IRS recognizes we should have done a better job of handling the influx of advocacy applications. While centralizing cases for consistency made sense, the way we initially centralized them did not. Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale. We fixed the situation last year and have made significant progress in moving the centralized cases through our system. To date, more than half of the cases have been approved or withdrawn. It is important to recognize that all centralized applications received the same, even-handed treatment, and the majority of cases centralized were not based on a specific name. In addition, new procedures also were implemented last year to ensure that these mistakes won’t be made in the future. The IRS also stresses that our employees – all career civil servants – will continue to be guided by tax law and not partisan issues.