ObamaCare debacle update... Because there's no such thing as too much
schadenfreude!
It's really not done yet! From an article in
The Wall Street Journal:
One particular challenge that remains is building a payment system to transfer those subsidies to insurance companies. Mr. Chao said those "financial management" parts of the system aren't needed right away, but officials acknowledged that they must be running by January, when insurers will be expecting the subsidies to start flowing in.
That's a rather fundamental piece he's describing, and it will clearly be a very complex piece of technology – in particular, chock full of security concerns because of the vast amount of money that will be flowing through it. We're just over a month from when it absolutely
has to be working – and they haven't even finished
building it yet, much less testing and debugging it. As an ancient and venerable software guy, I can tell you that's clearly bad, very bad – and Mr. Chao knows it, unless he's a complete idiot. That means they're spinning and lying to us. No real surprise there, but you can consider this confirmation...
A yeoman's job,
Mr. Taranto is doing. Writing at
The Wall Street Journal, he's clearly been feeling the
schadenfreude as he skewers That One's ObamaCare rollout every day. I loved this line:
"At this point, Lieberman seems primarily motivated by torturing liberals," Klein wrote (as if that were not an intrinsically worthy goal!).
Ha!
They're going to take our money! Funny how little support socialism gets when people have to actually, like,
pay for it. The tricky part turns out to be making people
notice that they're paying for it...
How the GOP should fix ObamaCare. Most of this piece is singing my song...
Too much schadenfreude? There may come a day when we're enjoying the
schadenfreude too much – but today is not that day!
Why youth is revolting against Obama. ObamaCare is only part of it...
Obama's slow learning curve. We're paying the price for That One's profound disconnection with the American reality...
Hacker bait. IT security pros point out an abundance of gaping security holes in healthcare.gov's implementation and design. The potentially huge financial rewards is already attracting the
cockroaches hacker crooks from every dark corner of the globe...
When you've lost Time... Just look at the current cover! Oh, my, how far That One has fallen from his lamestream media pedestal...
Poll: 84% of Democrats want ObamaCare changed or repealed. That's the kind of thing that strikes terror into the hearts of incumbent Democrats up for re-election in 2014. Is that the sound of rats scurrying I hear? Why yes, yes it is...
50 to 100 million more cancellations to come. Just in time for the 2014 elections. The movement to repeal or significantly change ObamaCare is starting to get the kind of political muscle behind it that it nees. This will help, immensely...
ObamaCare promotion organizations are also politically involved. You're not really surprised by this, are you?
Project Veritas is shining sunlight on a shady and bad-smelling place...
Will we ever get our $2B back? Looks like the answer is probably “no”. Taxpayers have lent ObamaCare promotional groups nearly two billion dollars. There's no evidence to date that these organizations have been effective, or that they will be – and even less evidence that taxpayers will be paid back. Now Sebelius and the HHS are stonewalling investigating Congressmen. Sound familiar?
When even California won't go along with your socialist program... There's a message here for That One's administration, though I doubt anyone there is paying attention...
The Bush Team fights back. John Yoo was a member of G.W. Bush's Justice Department. His piece on
Fox News today is a scathing indictment of That One's responses to the ObamaCare rollout debacle, and specifically directs scorn at the comparisons some on the left are making with Katrina. An excerpt:
Bush’s second term ran aground because he failed to use the president’s
powers effectively in the very setting for which they were created. He
eventually recovered with the surge in Iraq, a brave decision that
showed the presidency at its best.
Obama is hitting the shoals
for the exact opposite reason. ObamaCare’s collapse does not result
from an act of nature or the attacks of a foreign enemy. Instead, it is
a perversely self-inflicted, man-made disaster that replaced the
efficiency of the private markets with the tangle, confusion, and
ideological bias of government bureaucracy.
By suspending the
insurance mandate for a year, Mr. Obama does not use the powers of the
presidency to protect the nation from unforeseen events. He instead
uses the executive to protect the American people from himself and his
signature policy.
Every time he waives yet another ACA
regulation, Mr. Obama blocks himself from acting and allows the return
of the private market that existed before his election.
The
Framers never vested the presidency with great powers for such purposes.
To avoid responsibility for his policies, Mr. Obama must violate his
constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”
According to long practice, a president may selectively
choose the cases to prosecute because the federal government does not
have the limitless resources needed to chase down every violation of the
laws.
But the executive power over prosecution does not
allow a president to refuse to simply enforce all cases under a law.
That amounts to a suspension power that the Framers consciously rejected
by including the Take Care Clause in Article II of the Constitution.
