IRS’ Affordable Care Act Office: Take a Wild Guess on the Official in Charge? Hint: Mad Hatter Tea Party.

"The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.


Her successor, Joseph Grant, is taking the fall for misdeeds at the scandal-plagued unit between 2010 and 2012. During at least part of that time, Grant served as deputy commissioner of the tax-exempt unit.

Grant announced today that he would retire June 3, despite being appointed as commissioner of the tax-exempt office May 8, a week ago.” - IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office, John Parkinson, ABC News, 05/16/2013


Link to the entire ABC article appears below:


http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-official-in-charge-during-tea-party-targeting-now-runs-health-care-office/

Associated Press Phone Records Seized

Phone Records of Journalists Seized by U.S. - NYT Digest, 05/14/2013

“Federal investigators secretly seized two months of phone records for reporters and editors of The Associated Press in what the news organization said Monday was a “serious interference with A.P.’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cell phones. It said the records were seized without advance notice sometime earlier this year.

The organization was not told the reason for the seizure. But the timing and the targets of the seizure strongly suggested they are related to an ongoing government investigation into the leaking of information in May 2012 about the Central Intelligence Agency’s disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner. The disclosures began with an A.P. article on May 7, 2012, breaking the news of the foiled plot; the organization had held off publishing it for several days at the White House’s request because the intelligence operations were still unfolding.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday, Gary Pruitt, the president and chief executive of The A.P., called the seizure a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its news gathering activities.” - New York Times Digest, 05/14/2013, Charlie Savage and Leslie Kaufman 

 

What does 10,962,532 represent? The number of current social security disability recipients as of 04/2013

 

April was the 195^th straight month that the number of American workers collecting federal disability payments increased. The last time the number of Americans collecting disability decreased was in January 1997. That month the number of workers taking disability dropped by 249 people—from 4,385,623 in December 1996 to 4,385,374 in January 1997. - 10,962,532: U.S. Disability Beneficiaries Exceed Population of Greece, cnsnews.com, 05/07/2013


Link to the CNS news article appears below:

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/10962532-us-disability-beneficiaries-exceed-population-greece

Chauffeured to school in Lincoln towncars at taxpayer expense? No way. Way!

How Nations Succeed: What's the Secret to Ending Poverty?

HT: Kids Prefer Cheese

Obama on Obamacare: when a train wreck is not a train wreck yet it’s a train wreck

“Health Care: At his press conference this week, President Obama tried to reassure Americans about ObamaCare. Instead, he displayed either an incredible lack of understanding about his own law, or something far worse.

Asked about increasing Democratic concern over what Sen. Max Baucus called a looming ObamaCare "train wreck," Obama claimed that it's all much ado about very little.

But almost nothing he said in defense of ObamaCare was accurate. Among his statements: "A huge chunk of it's already been implemented."

In fact, all that's been implemented so far are a few PR-friendly changes like a mandate to cover children up to age 26 and a more generous Medicare drug benefit.

Democrats put off the bulk of the law — the massive market regulations, the government-run exchanges, mandates to buy coverage, and various taxes and fees—until 2014, both to hide its true costs and to avoid any unpleasantness before the 2012 elections.

"For the 85% to 90% of Americans who already have health insurance ... they don't have to worry about anything else."

Really? The Congressional Budget Office expects 7 million workers — and possibly as many as 20 million — will lose their employer coverage because of ObamaCare. That's plenty to worry about.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said millions of seniors will get dumped from their private Medicare Advantage plans by 2017 thanks to sharp payment cuts required by the law.

And small businesses now providing coverage face huge rate hikes thanks to ObamaCare's many market regulations and benefit mandates. Maryland's biggest insurer, nonprofit CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, said ObamaCare will force rates up by 15% next year.

"The other stuff's been implemented and it's working fine."

That's only true if you ignore the fact that ObamaCare's high-risk pools have been a disaster, attracting a third as many people as predicted while costing far more than the administration budgeted.

Or the fact that Obama had to issue more than 1,200 waivers to companies who said the law's initial insurance market rules would have forced them to cancel coverage for millions of workers.

The overly complicated small-business tax credit has also been a bust, with only about 5% of eligible firms taking advantage of it. And so on.” - Just How Ignorant Is Obama About ObamaCare? 05/01/2013, Investors Business Daily

The entire IBD article appears in the link below:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/050113-654365-obama-gets-his-facts-wrong-about-obamacare.htm


　

Update: Reid: More funding needed to prevent ObamaCare from becoming 'train wreck' - thehill.com, 05/01/2013

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/297333-reid-says-more-funding-is-needed-to-prevent-healthcare-law-from-becoming-a-train-wreck

Thomas Sowell on The Art of the Impossible

"Someone called politics "the art of the possible." But, in the era of the modern welfare state, politics is largely the art of the impossible.

Those people morbid enough to keep track of politicians' promises may remember how Barack Obama said that ObamaCare would lower medical costs -- and lots of people bought it.

But if you stop and think, however old-fashioned that may seem these days, do you seriously believe that millions more people can be given medical care and vast new bureaucracies created to administer payment for it, with no additional costs?

Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free red tape. Bureaucrats have to eat, just like everyone else, and they need a place to live and some other amenities. How do you suppose the price of medical care can go down when the costs of new government bureaucracies are added to the costs of the medical treatment itself?

By the way, where are the extra doctors going to come from, to treat the millions of additional patients? Training more people to become doctors is not free. Politicians may ignore costs but ignoring those costs will not make them go away.

With bureaucratically controlled medical care, you are going to need more doctors, just to treat a given number of patients, because time that is spent filling out government forms is time that is not spent treating patients. And doctors have the same 24 hours in the day as everybody else.

When you add more patients to more paperwork per patient, you are talking about still more costs. How can that lower medical costs? But although that may be impossible, politics is the art of the impossible. All it takes is rhetoric and a public that does not think beyond the rhetoric they hear.

You can just call "medical care for all" a "right" and you are home free with a major part of the public. Those who are more skeptical can be dismissed as people who just are not as compassionate. That puts you on the side of the angels against the forces of evil -- and that is a proven winning strategy in politics.” - Thomas Sowell

-Or-

“So it’s no surprise that governments with vast powers routinely behave stupidly: they are attempting to do the impossible while being overseen by the ill-informed.” - Don Boudreaux

Link to the entire article by Thomas Sowell appears below:

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2013/04/30/the-art-of-the-impossible-n1581909