Right Angle | Right Hook | Right Opinion
Patriot Headlines | Grassroots Commentary
FOUNDER'S QUOTE DAILY "The value of liberty was thus enhanced in our estimation by the difficulty of its attainment, and the worth of characters appreciated by the trial of adversity." --George Washington, letter to the people of South Carolina, 1790 New Record: 47 Million Obamanomics in a nutshell: According to Breitbart's Wynton Hall, "Food stamp enrollments have remained over 47 million for an unprecedented 13 consecutive months." This figure represents "nearly one out of every seven people in America." Meanwhile, SNAP enrollment stood at 31.9 million in January 2009, meaning that in under 5 years, nearly 16 million additional Americans have joined the program. Who was it that was chastised for mentioning the 47% who largely make up the Left's constituency? The Real Healthcare.gov? Fraudulent ObamaCare websites (other than Healthcare.gov, of course) are popping up everywhere, and the The Wall Street Journal has a helpful tip for those trying to enroll through the exchange: "[S]cam-artist pages ... are now pretending to be Healthcare.gov and are tricking people into divulging sensitive information or buying fake products. Important consumer warning: If an insurance shopping website is usable, it's not the federal government's." $26.7 Million Per Enrollee The ObamaCare statistics keep getting uglier and uglier. Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) reveal that a grand total of five Washington, D.C. residents have successfully enrolled through Healthcare.gov. But based on numbers from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the District received $133,573,928 in grants. As Breitbart's Warner points out, "This means that the cost to the American taxpayers per enrollee in D.C. has been $26,714,785.60 each." Veterans FYI As a footnote to Veterans Day, Fox News provided the latest census data: "America is home to 21.2 million veterans. As of 2012, more than 1.5 million living veterans served in more than one war, according to the Census Bureau. While the overwhelming majority of veterans, 9.6 million, are age 65 or older, nearly 1.8 million veterans are under the age of 35. Alaska is home to the most veterans, with 13.6 percent of its adult population having served in the military." IRS Sends Billions to Thieves Apparently, illegal aliens aren't the only ones erroneously receiving billions of dollars from the IRS. The AP says that "The Internal Revenue Service issued $4 billion in fraudulent tax refunds last year to people using stolen identities, with some of the money going to addresses in Bulgaria, Lithuania and Ireland, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday. ... The IRS, which takes pride in issuing quick refunds, often sends them out before employers are required to file forms documenting wages, the report said." Unless, of course, you're a conservative organization... Exchange Built in 3 Weeks After three years and hundreds of millions of dollars, HHS still hasn't managed to build a functional exchange. Yet three San Francisco programmers managed to create a workable website similar to Healthcare.gov in just weeks. CBS reports, "With a few late nights, Ning Liang, George Kalogeropoulos and Michael Wasser built 'thehealthsherpa.com,' a two-week-old website that solves one of the biggest problems with the government's site. ... Using information buried in the government's own website built by high-priced government contractors, they found a simpler way to present it to users." As we've said repeatedly, the failure of the rollout is but a metaphor for the reality that no government bureaucracy is ever going to successfully manage 18% of the U.S. economy, much less a basic commerce website for insurance comparisons. O'Care Fraud Among the provisions deep inside O'Care? An open invitation to fraud. According to Reason's Tori Richards: "Tucked inside nearly 11,000 pages of the Affordable Care Act is a little-known provision that doles out three months of free health care to individuals who choose to default on their premiums. People who receive the federal subsidy to be part of Obamacare will be allowed to incur a three-month 'grace period' if they can't pay their premiums and then simply cancel their policies, stiffing the doctors and hospitals. Their only repercussion is that they have to wait until the following year's open enrollment if they want coverage on the exchange. ... Under Section 156.270 of the Affordable Care Act, the insured needs to pay a premium for just one month before qualifying for the three-month grace period. The insurance company must pay the claims during the first month of the grace period; during the second and third month doctors and hospitals are left to collect unpaid bills." Playing the Faux Race Card Something interesting happened on Election Day in the race for a seat on the Houston Community College System Board of Trustees. Dave Wilson, a white Republican, ran against 24-year incumbent Democrat Bruce Austin in a majority-black district, so he needed a boost. That boost was convincing voters that he was black. "I'd always said it was a long shot," Wilson says. "No, I didn't expect to win." According to KHOU News, he "printed direct mail pieces strongly implying that he's black. His fliers were decorated with photographs of smiling African-American faces -- which he readily admits he just lifted off websites -- and captioned with the words 'Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.'" There were other tricks as well, and the scheme worked. He won by just 26 votes and Austin wants a recount, and, undoubtedly, voters are not happy, but if people are going to vote based on skin color, shouldn't they at least verify it? Record Number NOT in Work Force Last Friday's jobs report featured good news and bad news. One major piece of the latter is that a record 91,541,000 Americans 16 and older are not in the work force. CNS News explains, "The BLS counts a person as participating in the labor force if they are 16 years or older and either have a job or have actively sought a job in the last four weeks. A person is not participating in the labor force if they are 16 or older and have not sought a job in the last four weeks." The October number climbed nearly 1 million from September. Welcome to Obama's America. Raising the Minimum Wage With an economy still struggling to create jobs and with a record 91 million Americans not working, the Democrats have a plan to boost economic growth: raise the minimum wage. That's right -- making labor more expensive is going to make job creators want to hire more people. Congressional Democrats are hammering out a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour -- a boost of nearly $3 an hour, or about 40%. The minimum wage has always been a jobs killer, and this kind of raise will only make the pain worse. But doing so will force more Americans into the federal benefits line -- and the waiting arms of the Democrat poverty plantation owners. Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform -- Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen -- standing in harm's way in defense of Liberty, and for their families. |
Comments
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment, just make sure they are not vulgar or they will be removed.