The Friday evening dump: the free Captain Elliott's Party Boats edition

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One in a series that takes a look at some unsavory news being jettisoned from Washington D.C. right in front of the weekend.

A confluence circumstances that have us surprised it hasn't happened before this: a Friday evening news dump and the ObamaCare waiver process...

Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.

Documents released in a classic Friday afternoon news dump show that labor unions representing 543,812 workers received waivers from President Barack Obama‘s signature legislation since June 17, 2011.

By contrast, private employers with a total of 69,813 employees, many of whom work for small businesses, were granted waivers.

The Department of Health and Human Services revised the rules governing applications for health reform waivers June 17, 2011, amid a steady stream of controversial news reports, including The Daily Caller’s story that nearly 20 percent of last May’s waivers went to businesses in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s district in California.

The labor unions receiving waivers include those that are monitored under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, and those that are not. The waivers granted since June 17 are valid until 2013, but recipients must make sure their employees understand the “limits of their coverage,” according to HHS documents.

A complete list of waiver recipients can be found here. (Oops. Looks like they killed that link. That particular link now takes you to Medicare's Consumer Information main page. If anyone knows where that waiver list now resides, please provide us the link. We'd like to know how many total people are on the list. Considering the fact that by the beginning of 2011 when the ObamaCare waiver applications were supposed to be cut off, the Department of Health and Human Services has not even bothered to update the waiver list, so it's no small wonder that they have seemed fit to rub out the waiver list entirely.)

Going back to our archives, as of April of 2011 there were 2.2 million Americans receiving ObamaCare waivers. So add the combined union and non-union numbers provided by the article, we now have at least 2.8 million American exempted from the coverage limits of ObamaCare.


And originally, the waiver applications were to be submitted on a year-to-year basis. Perhaps the paperwork was backing up a bit at HHS because these particular waivers granted after June 17, 2011 have a shelf life of 2-1/2 years. A waiver of 2-1/2 years does not sound like "giving time for the markets to adjust" as that was the reasoning we heard to excuse the 1 year waiver.


For something that we supposedly could not live without, it's curious to see its biggest supporters in the unions being exempted denied the benefits of this wondrous law for 2-1/2 more years now. You'd think they'd be pitching a fit or something.

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update: the Friday evening dump edition

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It doesn't get much dumpier than this.

Remember how the Justice Department was adamant that they did not sanction the sale of weapons to straw purchasers to Mexican drug cartels and how they claimed to have made every effort to intercept those weapons before they got to those same cartels? Allow them to revise those stances just a tad and to set up a fall guy while they're at it.

The Justice Department on Friday provided Congress with documents detailing how department officials gave inaccurate information to a U.S. senator in the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the flawed law enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling major arms trafficking networks on the Southwest border.

In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser and that the agency makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally. In Operation Fast and Furious, both statements turned out to be incorrect.

The Justice Department letter was responding to Grassley's statements that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations the ATF had sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers. Grassley also said there were allegations that two of the assault weapons had been used in a shootout that killed customs agent Brian Terry.

In an email four days later to Justice Department colleagues, then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix said that "Grassley's assertions regarding the Arizona investigation and the weapons recovered" at the "murder scene are based on categorical falsehoods. I worry that ATF will take 8 months to answer this when they should be refuting its underlying accusations right now." That email marked the start of an internal debate in the Justice Department over what and how much to say in response to Grassley's allegations. The fact that there was an ongoing criminal investigation into Terry's murder prompted some at the Justice Department to argue for less disclosure.

Some of what turned out to be incorrect information was emailed to Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division. Breuer sent an email saying "let's help as much as we can" in responding to Grassley.

The emails sent to Capitol Hill on Friday showed that Burke supplied additional incorrect information to the Justice Department's criminal division that ended up being forwarded to Breuer. For example, Burke said that the guns found at the Terry murder scene were purchased at a Phoenix gun shop before Operation Fast and Furious began. In fact, the operation was under way at the time and the guns found at the Terry murder scene were part of the probe. Breuer was one of the recipients of that information. In written comments this week to Grassley, Breuer said that he was on a three-day official trip to Mexico at the time of the Justice Department response and that he was aware of, but not involved in, drafting the Justice Department statements to Grassley. Breuer says he cannot say for sure whether he saw a draft of the letter before it was sent to Grassley.

(emphasis, ours)




The rest of the article can be found at the link and which details the internal debate at Justice regarding just how much information to give to Grassley and Issa.

Burke, who has since been re-assigned, certainly looks like he is being set up to the take the fall for this for providing, ahem, "inaccurate" information. Even with this, we are not any closer to identifying how high up the food chain the decision was made to a) let the guns walk and b) not bother to track them back across the border once the purchase was made.

Though this seems big and it is, Grassley and Issa's committees should not let this distract them from finding out who actually signed off on a politically cynical plot to advance a gun-control narrative that wound up putting 2,000 guns in the hands of violent Mexican drug cartels and which resulted in one dead Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry and countless additional Mexican officers and innocent civilians.

The Friday evening dump

(one in a weekly series intended to shine some light on unsavory news being jettisoned from the White House and Capitol Hill right before the weekend)


Quickies-style because there was quite a bit of dumpage.


Whoa… time out a minute. They’re not getting out of it this easily. What Joe Wilson’s outburst may have lacked in comportment appears, none the less, to have moved the needle with respect to ensuring illegals are not covered under Obamacare. We imagine illegal immigrant activists in their fight for justice and the fair treatment of illegals are relieved by this turn of events. Stay tuned.

Cave. Abandoning six party talks to go one-on-one with the Norks. So this is what we agreed to in order to free the two journalists from North Korea?

Our Chi-comm creditors will be very pleased to know that we are squeezing them on tires.

The outfit that advocates for the poor and uh, workers, is out of the census game so says the census bureau.



Enjoy the rest of your college football Saturday.

The Friday Evening Dump

(one in a weekly series intended to shine some light on unsavory news being jettisoned from the White House and Capitol Hill right before the weekend)

Hey, do you remember when we were told that if we voted for McCain it would be business as usual with respect to K Street and lobbyists? Well, looks like they were right.

In a significant change, the Obama administration will now allow lobbyists to meet and have telephonic discussions with government officials regarding economic recovery projects.

The lifting of the ban comes after K Street has cried foul for months and has challenged the White House on its restrictions.

In March, President Obama announced that government officials would not be allowed to consider the views of lobbyists regarding specific stimulus projects unless the requests are put in writing. The materials also had to be posted on an agency’s website within three business days of receipt. Lobbyists have said that the policy was one more example of the administration's disdain for their industry.

Now, the just-revised rules will allow government personnel to accept meetings and calls from federally registered lobbyists on the implementation of stimulus projects. The head of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, issued a new guidance late Friday regarding the administration's communications with registered lobbyists about economic recovery.

(italics, ours)

No hard feelings, we're sure.

The Friday evening dump

(one in a weekly series intended to shine some light on unsavory news being jettisoned from the White House and Capitol Hill right before the weekend)

“Hey, China… we got this one."

To address the serious threat of global warming, Americans should be required to "pay" for the carbon content of goods they consume from countries around the world, a top U.S. official said on Friday.

"It's important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America -- and it's our own consumption activity that's causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that," Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.

So, China doesn't want to play ball with respect to carbon emissions? Not a problem - we've got it covered.

This is just outstanding. It’s not enough that we will further hobble the economy with cap and trade, the prospect of picking up the tab for what other countries are producing is now favored by cabinet level personnel.

The article makes it clear that the administration does not yet have an official position on this but consider for a moment that this administration is never lacking for at least cozying up to horrible ideas or letting Congress do the dirty work for them.

The Friday Evening Dump

(one in a weekly series intended to shine some light on unsavory news being jettisoned from the White House and Capitol Hill right before the weekend)

Hey, do you remember when they told us that if we voted for McCain, it would mean that our health care benefits would be taxed? Well, it looks like they may be right.

The campaign ad was ominous: "John McCain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits. Taxing health benefits for the first time ever."

So warned candidate Barack Obama less than a year ago. In ads and speeches, Obama went on to predict the horrific fallout of McCain's proposal: financial hardship and millions dumped from employer-provided health plans.

Today(ed.: Friday, June 10), spokesmen for President Obama are saying a tax on employer-provided health benefits wouldn't be such a bad thing after all.

Roughly 163 million Americans receive health insurance through their employer. While actually a form of compensation, the value of the employer's contribution to that insurance is not taxed under the federal income or payroll taxes.

So, in addition to being a hypocrite, Obama is only being as nefarious as McCain in implementing this effective tax hike, which if executed on a wholesale basis would result in a tax increase of $2.3 trillion over 10 years for all Americans who receive employer-based health care, right?

Uhhh… not quite. The McCain taxing of health care benefits was to shift the overall health care obligation from the employers to more of a free-market approach whereby individuals and families would be given vouchers funded by the tax to shop around for health care.

The Congressional plan that is doing the heavy lifting for the President is in a mad scramble to raise the $1 to $2 trillion of jack that will be needed to fund his “public option”. Just a little different, wouldn’t you say?

But since a tax on everyone’s health insurance plan is most likely a political non-starter, Congress will probably focus their tax sights on just the most generous of benefit plans. We’re looking at you, middle class.

Unfortunately, this elimination of tax exemption for just the above-average value health plans won’t nearly raise the amount of money to fund the public option. Investor Business Daily surmises only $165 bil will be raised in this manner so Congress will be required to root around and about for additional, ahem, revenue streams. Anyone up for a payroll tax, a value-added tax… an income tax surcharge?

Such wonderful news in the midst of the worst economy since the Great Depression, we’re sure you would agree.

Oh, and dig this, courtesy Innocent Bystanders

The Friday Evening Dump

(one in a weekly series intended to shine some light on unsavory news being jettisoned from the White House and Capitol Hill right before the weekend)

Just remember: it’s not a tax.

WASHINGTON — Americans who refuse to buy affordable medical coverage could be hit with fines of more than $1,000 under a health care overhaul bill unveiled yesterday by leading Senate Democrats looking to fulfill President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

(italics, ours)

Further on in this article there is some juicy info that betrays the “public option” lie being touted by Obama-care proponents.

In 2008, employer-provided coverage averaged $12,680 a year for a family plan, and $4,704 for individual coverage, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey. Senate aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, said the cost of the federal plan would be lower but declined to provide specifics. The legislation would exempt certain hardship cases from fines. The fines would be collected through the income tax system.

Bounce that against this:

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions bill also calls for a government-run insurance option to compete with private plans as well as a $750-per-worker annual fee on larger companies that don't offer coverage to employees.

So, if you are one of these larger companies, what incentive do you have to provide health care for your workers? You don’t. If you are paying out an average of $4,700 per person and over 12 grand per family in medical coverage, you are going to drop that in a heartbeat to merely shell-out that $750 annual “fee” to the Feds.

The next time you here any non-sense regarding how Obama-care just wants to compete against private insurance and not displace it, remember the facts as laid-out above. With the government calling the shots of how this “public option” will be implemented, they can skew the playing field as they see fit, rendering the public option as anything but.