Free Captain Elliott's Party Boats: the CA-8 edition

Kathleen Sebelius doesn't have to bother issuing or making public any criteria for who receives ObamaCare waivers nor does she have to bother testifying in front of a House sub-committee as to the hows and whys of the exemption process because the latest round of waiver grants make it pretty clear how this all shakes out. After all, what would one expect of a law that introduced the American public to terms like "Cornhusker Kickback", "Gator Aid", and "Louisiana Purchase"?

Of the 204 new Obamacare waivers President Barack Obama’s administration approved in April, 38 are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s Northern California district.

That’s in addition to the 27 new waivers for health care or drug companies and the 31 new union waivers Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services approved.

Pelosi’s district secured almost 20 percent of the latest issuance of waivers nationwide, and the companies that won them didn’t have much in common with companies throughout the rest of the country that have received Obamacare waivers.

Other common waiver recipients were labor union chapters, large corporations, financial firms and local governments. But Pelosi’s district’s waivers are the first major examples of luxurious, gourmet restaurants and hotels getting a year-long pass from Obamacare.

Most of the high-end restaurants in San Francisco that received waivers declined to comment when reached by phone but one did.

Before hanging up on TheDC, Tru Spa’s owner said new government health care regulations, both the federal-level Obamacare and new local laws in Northern California, have “devastated” the business. “It’s been bad for us,” he said, without divulging his name, referring to the new health care restrictions.

But, the spa owner wouldn’t talk about it or the reason his company sought a waiver. He hung up after saying, “I’ve got clients on the other line, good-bye.”

(italics, ours)

Translation: "My phone's about to die"

Instead of Hopenchange, everything regarding the formation of ObamaCare was typical business-as-usual DC sleaze but rather that on human growth hormones and now we are reaping the harvest of what was sewn.

The political favors that started in the backrooms in 2009 and which became one of the hallmarks of Obamacare in order to wrangle the votes to pass this monstrosity continue today unabated and will do so as long as ObamaCare is the law of the land as health care-providing and politics together took a quantum inextricable limb-entangling leap forward with its passage.

The causes of freedom and liberty demand we stone this thing to death.


H/T: Hot Air