Don't go away mad, just go away

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We have yet to blog about the whole Bob Filner filth fiasco but as residents of America’s finest city, we feel it’s about time we chime in on the mess and in particular the recall effort that is currently underway here in San Diego.


Allow us to go on the record as saying we voted for Filner’s opponent, Carl DeMaio, last November and that we are also opposed to the recall effort.*


Before we go on, please read B-Daddy’s breakdown of why he supports the recall effort, here and here, where he makes an outstanding case for dumping Filner.


Our reasoning in opposing the recall effort stated below is lifted largely from the comment we left at one of B-Daddy’s blog post on the subject:


We’re one of those (R)s B-Daddy has kept in confidentiality, though, in sitting this one out, it is not out of a desire to drag down the statist-Democratic policies championed by the mayor (an admirable collateral benefit, to be sure) but rather in disgust that this man was voted to the office of mayor of San Diego in the first place.


We’ve been calling it our salute to the low information voter. To wit, has anyone who has been paying attention to this guy over the years really not thought he was a massively flaming douchebag of the highest order and thus not fit to serve as the mayor of our fine city? At age 70, he did not suddenly turn into this acerbic, arrogant, bullying perv… he’s been this way for years and aside from the specific allegations of unwanted sexual advances, this has been common knowledge as to the man’s character and behavior.


That's why the just-recent opposition to him by the likes of former allies Donna Frye rang so hollow. Like, she didn't know? Child, please. It just seems to be a little bit too much opportunism for our tastes.


The recall effort is going to be lengthy and costly and to our knowledge, the city charter is vague on the specifics leaving the un-codified recalling mechanism up to the City Council to figure out. To our thinking, this is a recipe for a bureaucratic and legal disaster.


B-Daddy makes absolutely valid points but... Nope. Sorry. Call it tough love or taking the medicine or us just having a little temper tantrum over here in the corner but we want this one to sting.


You voted for this creepy jerk, San Diego, now we all have to take a bite out this massive s**t sandwich. Enjoy.


* Non-support of the recall effort is not intended in any way as an endorsement of the man or as the title of this blog post suggests, blocking the exit to the doorway should Filner decide to leave of his own accord.

Phony?

A couple of weeks back, the President admonished us little people not to get distracted by what he termed “phony scandals.” We were wondering just which phony scandal he was wishing we should just drop from our collective radar screens.


Since the IRS admitted that they were targeting and bureaucratically harassing conservative and tea party groups and the decision-making point to do this keeps moving higher and higher up the food chain, we kind of think this still qualifies as scandalous in nature.


How about the NSA data-vacuuming operation? Over the past few weeks, Americans have learned the FISA court that is responsible for approving wire-tapping and snooping in general of overseas phonecalls to suspected bad actors is nothing more than a rubber stamp for monitoring in-country communication between U.S. citizens suspected of zero wrongdoing. And the person who blew the lid on this whole thing, Edward Snowden, has sought and has been granted temporary asylum in Russia. No, that certainly is no mere distraction.


Then you have the Department of Justice snooping on 20 Associated Press reporters and snooping on and naming Fox News reporter, James Rosen, as an unindicted co-conspirator in two separate government leak investigations. The miserable hack that runs the Justice Department who most likely perjured himself in earlier Congressional testimony by saying Justice did not participate in such activities, recently claimed he felt really, really bad about all this. Bullshit. He feels really, really bad that his agency got caught doing it. It’s kind of tough to see how this qualifies as phony.


Which of course brings us to Benghazi and the absolute clusterfark the actions on the ground were on 9/11/2012 and the resulting clusterfark to cover up just what happened and why it happened including the laughable assertion that the coordinated assault was actually a random demonstration fueled by a crappy Youtube video trailer, the maker of which is rotting away in jail right now.


On Thursday, CNN dropped the bombshell that the CIA was intimidating their own people who happened to be in Benghazi on the night of the attack into silence.

"You don't jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well."

And just what were upwards of 35 CIA operatives doing on the ground in Benghazi? Community organizing? We find it rather hard to believe people are shocked that the CIA may have been providing weapons to the Libyan rebels when the New York Times was reporting out on such activities as far back as December of last year.



And check out this 4+ minute video below where we learn that not only has the CIA been thugging their own people into silence they have turned into a witness protection and relocation agency as well.








So, in closing, we implore the President to help us out and be specific with respect to just which one of these scandals is the phony one so our betters there in D.C. can get back to, you know, doing the business of the people.

Things keep getting better and better for a law set to drop in 2 months

A couple items of note with respect to the unfolding trainwreck that is the rollout of the new federal healthcare law:



During the legislation of the law, proponents of ObamaCare insisted that the law simply must pass and pass sooner than later because 40,000 a year were dying because they did not have health insurance.


Since one good fear-mongering turn deserves another, we ask what are ObamaCare fanboys and fangirls to make of the President making a unilateral decision to delay for one year the employer mandate whereby businesses of over 50 employees must provide federally-approved healthcare plans to their employees?


We won't be holding our breath for any blowback from the increasingly hypocritical progressive camps but the non-partisan CBO (Congressional Budget Office) chimed in with a report detailing just what the monetary and human cost would be for a one-year delay of the employer mandate.



From Reuters:

President Barack Obama's decision to delay implementation of part of his healthcare reform law will cost $12 billion and leave a million fewer Americans with employer-sponsored health insurance in 2014, congressional researchers said Tuesday.

The report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is the first authoritative estimate of the human and fiscal cost from the administration's unexpected one-year delay announced July 2 of the employer mandate - a requirement for larger businesses to provide health coverage for their workers or pay a penalty.

The analysts said the delay will add to the cost of "Obamacare's" insurance-coverage provisions over the next 10 years. Penalties paid by employers would be lower and more individuals who otherwise might have had employer coverage will need federal insurance subsidies.

This is a double-whammy because not only will people not be insured by their employers, the subsidy funding that would help defray the cost of healthcare insurance in the individual markets for these folks goes wanting because companies won't be paying the monetary penalty for not insuring their employers for one more year.


We are still in self-debate as to whether the hopelessly-flawed manner in which this law was constructed is due to monumental ineptness or due rather to brilliant cleverness as the unworkability of ObamaCare in its current state will just move us all towards a single-payer system, the progressive goal all along.






Title for this next subsection could be: Lawmakers freaked out they will have to live with a law they wrote and passed.


Not too long ago, we noted that members of Congress only just recently got around to the realization that… holy crap, they would be losing their current government employee healthcare plan and would be forced to shop for insurance plans in the state exchanges without, possibly, being reimbursed for the price of the plan.


The New York Times helpfully calls this a “wrinkle”:

Under a wrinkle that dates back to enactment of the law, members of Congress and thousands of their aides are required to get their coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.

But the law does not provide any obvious way for the federal government to continue paying its share of the premiums for the comprehensive coverage.

If the government cannot do so, it could mean an additional expense of $5,000 a year for individuals and $11,000 for families under some of the most popular plans.

Not surprisingly, that idea is unpopular on Capitol Hill.

The provision to dump members of Congress and their staffs into the public exchanges was in the original Senate Bill and remained there as the House never took up the question of reimbursement.


Amazing.


Think about this for a moment: How jacked up is this law and how bad is it going to be for the rest of us if the people who legislated the damn thing did not even take time to figure out how to shield themselves and particularly their staffs from the added expense they will now be facing shopping for plans through the exchanges?



Back to the article:

At a Congressional hearing in April, House members pressed the administration to say what would happen to their health insurance if they went into exchanges.

Jonathan Foley, a senior official at the United States Office of Personnel Management, deflected the questions. “That is right now a subject of regulation,” Mr. Foley said. “It would be inappropriate for me to comment.”

Edmund D. Byrnes, a spokesman for the personnel office, echoed that statement on Monday. “Nothing has changed,” Mr. Byrnes said. “We are still working on a regulation.”

In its work plan for the next six months, the personnel agency said it was developing a proposed rule “regarding coverage for members of Congress and Congressional staff.” The agency said it hoped to issue the proposal in October.

That is rather late, since the exchanges are supposed to open on Oct. 1.

Nancy Pelosi was right, sort of. Yeah, the rest of us are, sadly, finding out what’s in this law, however, the Democrats that wrote it, 3-1/2 years later, still don’t know what is happening to their own health insurance plans. Priceless.

BwD's Nanny of the Month

Normally, we leave Nanny of the Month honors to Reason.com for scouring the country to find the most intrusive, ridiculous and unneeded intrusions into personal and/or business affairs be it at the federal, state or local level.


This month, however, we are taking the reins in recognizing the city of Monterey Park as Beers with Demo’s recipient as Nanny of the Month.

Years ago, we wrote a letter to the L.A. Times which was re-printed in their Op-Ed section later that week in which we derided the Times Opinion page for coming down in favor an area city’s efforts to require banks to provide bi-lingual signage.

Different decade, same issue:



From NBC4 Southern California:

The City Council in Monterey Park has unanimously voted to require businesses to put up bilingual signs, sparking controversy in a community that has a large Chinese-American population.

Under the rule, business owners must put at least one sign up that uses the “modern Latin alphabet,” since forcing stores to put up specifically English signs isn’t allowed, according to the council agenda.

Some residents don’t believe stores should be forced to put up signs.

“I think this should be (an) option,” said John Chen, a longtime resident of Monterey Park, citing freedom of speech.

Though the preliminary vote was unanimous, one council member is already reconsidering his vote.

“After speaking to the community and getting into it a little bit more, I’ve come to the realization that we really don’t any urgency (for this),” said Monterey Park City Councilman Hans Liang.

Monterey Park is 48 percent Chinese, according to the 2010 United States Census. Most of the businesses already have signs in both languages, according to Liang.

Reasons for enacting the rule include promoting economic development, public safety and facilitating public discussion, according to the agenda.

“Clear and simple signs are significant to the response times of both the police and fire departments,” the agenda read. “A distinguishable sign allows officers and firefighters to locate a business from a distance.”

Both the chief of police and the fire chief approved the city’s new regulation in the agenda.
The agenda also cited driver safety is another reason for the new law.

“Signs that are not distinguishable create unsafe road situations,” the agenda read. “Signs that clearly and quickly identify the type of business allow drivers to ignore secondary extraneous information.”

Before we dive into this, check out the faces and names of the council members of Monterey Park, here, who have decreed businesses carry Spanish language signage. Weird, huh?


First off, public safety angle does not make a lick of sense. How is forcing businesses to put up more signage going to be any less confusing to first responders. And can it be reasonably expected that the first responders be more proficient in English than Spanish or any other Asian language represented by the citizenry of Monterey Park? Sorry… the “public safety” angle is fast approaching the “it’s for the children” in terms of setting off our b.s. sensors.


The bottom line here is that we simply do not understand the logic of elected officials knowing what’s better for an individual small businesses’ health better than the owner of that small business. If the business owner implicitly or explicitly chooses to exclude a segment of that area’s populace in the choosing of the language of his signage, then we suspect he will be willing to face up to the economic impact of his choosing. He’ll figure it out… or he won’t – that should be his call for better or for worse. It's called the free market, gang - thou shalt be punished for crappy business decisions.


Down here in San Diego, the neighborhood of Clairemont Mesa is home to a large amount of Asian businesses many of which carry only Asian language signage. Yeah, it’s kind of a pain in the rear but we deal with it… or we don’t. Damned if some language barriers, however, are going to keep us away from some of that Korean Bar-B-Q they have up there.


As to the whole assimilation issue and a stronger community and more engaged citizenry through a common language concept, we’ll leave for another time.


Congratulations, Monterey Park, for winning Beers with Demo’s Nanny of the Month.

Video clip of the day

We will freely admit we did not follow the legal proceedings of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman trial all that much. What we did follow was the vile circus that surrounded the whole affair.


Never in our life have we seen so many powerful institutions in society coalesce around and become so vested in the demise of a private citizen. The race-baiting spite and hatred stirred up by the likes of Al Sharpton towards George Zimmerman that was manifested on social media and cable television was as nauseating as it was frightening.


John Nolte of Breitbart.com does a great job in rounding up the sick antics of the government-media cabal lynch mob here, where CNN is duly noted as elevating their game above the rest in providing the most disgraceful coverage of the trial.


Bill Whittle on Afterburner does an excellent job of breaking down what we did not know about this trial and that of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman in this video below.




(video approx. 10 minutes)








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What we and others have been Tweeting

You heard the news: Detroit filed for bankruptcy.

Death by 50-60 years of the same bankrupt governing ideology proves only that Detroit was tougher and more resilient than most people thought.

http://t.co/lXWXe4lXqB #Detroit: borne of innovation and capitalism. Ruined by corrupt and incompetent statism.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 24, 2013

Of course, that assessment doesn't set well with some people.

Merely pointing out the 2x4-upside-the-head obvious is now regarded as scoring political points. #Detroit

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

http://t.co/rfAjoaOUOa Shorter Krugman on #Detroit: "s**t happens."

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 22, 2013

And do you know what yesterday was?

http://t.co/IL5xQhbGQ4 A new Weiner scandal, Monica Lewinski's birthday & national hot dog day. Can't make up this stuff. #Merica

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

The show will go on but without military aircraft.

No Blue Angels @ Miramar air show this year yet we'll be more than happy to arm Islamists in Syria. #SanDiego #sequester

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

"But not all the rebels are Islamists". True but don't be naive, that's with whom the weapons will end up. #Syria

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

For those of you whining about gridlock in D.C., you'd be pleased to know this effort to weaponize people who want to slaughter us has been a bipartisan affair. Happy?

--> RT @Reuters Exclusive: U.S. congressional hurdles lifted on arming Syrian rebels http://t.co/GEwsSmnS4L

— Robert Caruso (@robertcaruso) July 22, 2013

Having failed to get any of the four major sports leagues to shill for ObamaCare, Team O is turning to Hollywood. Of course, they are.

http://t.co/Yp8RxtJzgg Hollywood to the young'ns: Why, yes, it totally makes sense for u to pay thousands more/year for hc u will never use

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

http://t.co/Yp8RxtJzgg Young people begged to sign up for health care getting first big real world experience with top-down statism.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

Of course, we can play the whole class envy/class warfare game too.

http://t.co/Yp8RxtJzgg Young people, if you decide to pay the tax instead of signing up for healthcare, you just aren't paying yr fair share

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

To summarize, this whole miserable house of cards depends upon young people paying for healthcare they'll never use.... for years

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

On the ripple effect of the media-government hanging party's treatment of George Zimmerman.

http://t.co/yb67dETuLE "... they knew it wasn't GZ's number but they were still going to harass me." The logic of race obssessed lefties.

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

http://t.co/D1oehCCC5C This must be some more of that new civility I've been hearing about. #Zimmerman

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

Department of Justice behaving pretty much as you would expect under the miserable hack that is Eric Holder.

http://t.co/izFtlWc4S1 #DOJ not prosecuting a "willful" violation of the law. #natch

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

http://t.co/izFtlWc4S1 Aside from inciting racial tensions and gun-running, precisely wtf does #DOJ do? #EricHolder #Hack

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

I'd love a job at #DOJ sittin' around collecting a check. Would have 2 avoid inciting racial tensions & gun-running divisions, tho. #Busy

— Dean R. Riehm (@deanriehm) July 23, 2013

Best Tweet on the new Royal bambino:

The #RoyalBaby enters its fourth trimester. #ItsABoy

— Razor (@hale_razor) July 22, 2013

Second best...

That we know of... RT @OKnox: Dear American Political Class: Really? Not ONE of you is seizing this amazing news dump opportunity? Hmmm...

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) July 22, 2013

Third best...

@instapundit Has @sullydish weighed in yet on whether it's really Sarah Palin's?

— Joel Engel (@joelengel) July 22, 2013

And then there is this:

This Country would be totally ruined if not for the gridlock. It's not their job to solve all our problems. @RichardGrenell @Simas44

— Cold Dead Hands (@davetv28) July 21, 2013

Truer words have never been spoken. We (heart).... absolutely (heart) gridlock. You're welcome.




OK, gang, that's it for now.

The sum of all fears

We's apologize for the multitude of ObamaCare posts recently if not for the fact that grave concerns regarding personal liberty, personal privacy, government overreach and government un-accountability all residing in various forms and degrees in the IRS, Treasury Department and NSA scandals are all rolled up in the entity of the new federal healthcare law. So, no, we don't apologize.




The Affordable Care Act allows for states that do not wish to take on the bureaucratic nightmare of standing up and maintaining the exchanges through which people may shop for and purchase federally-approved health care plans to be left to the federal government. Currently, 34 states have possessed the wisdom to leave the running of this ongoing trainwreck to the feds.


California is one such state, however, that has decided to take on this task via the state exchange Covered California and California being the largest state in the union is being watched very carefully with respect to how this is rolled out with an October 1st deadline looming.


One problem being experienced already and which we blogged about last week is that there is no internal mechanism for the vetting of the thousands of employees ("navigators") that will be staffing the exchange in order to assist people in signing up for healthcare insurance. No background checks for people who will have unprecedented access to your tax, DMV and health records. No background checks for people who may have served time for identity theft and whom will have access to which you had assumed was your secure information. What could possibly go wrong?


And at the federal level, things are also working out about how you would expect.


Over the weekend, a USA Today story spelled out the massive information data hub that the feds are currently setting up and will be maintaining for the ostensible purpose of being able to execute ObamaCare. The article calls this data hub the most massive gathering of personal information in the history of the republic, something that would make the NSA blush from inadequacy. Information about you and your family will be brought in from the Treasury Department, IRS, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Justice as well as your Social Security number and this will all be coordinated by the Department of Health and Human Services.


And just like in California, the federal government has no means nor do they have, currently, any intentions of vetting the employees who will have access to this information.


From the National Review Online:

This spring, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee lawyers were also told by HHS that, despite the fact that navigators will have access to sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and tax returns, there will be no criminal background checks required for them. Indeed, they won't even have to have high-school diplomas. Both U.S. Census Bureau and IRS employees must meet those minimum standards, if only because no one wants someone who has been convicted of identity theft getting near Americans' personal records. But HHS is unconcerned. It points out that navigators will have to take a 20-30 hour online course about how the 1,200-page law works, which, given its demonstrated complexity, is like giving someone a first-aid course and then making him a med-school professor. "I want to assure you and all Americans that, when they fill out their [health-insurance] marketplace applications, they can trust the information they're providing is protected," said Marilyn T avenner, head of HHS's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at a congressional hearing last week. In the age of Wikileaks and IRS abuses, somehow that isn't very comforting.

As if you needed to be reminded, the trust us folks at HHS are part of the same sprawling federal apparatus that targeted and harassed groups seeking non-profit status and who shared sensitive financial information with liberal advocacy groups. And these were the folks who had background checks performed on them before working for the IRS.


To say that the potential for abuse and criminal misconduct as practiced by the IRS is very possible, would be an understatement of the highest order.


The blueprint has been set for the California state exchange and the state exchanges set up by the federal government to be un-accountable rogue agencies where there is zero recourse of action if you feel your private information has been compromised or if you feel you are being wrongly treated.


This is precisely what happens when legislation of a massive and sprawling federal entitlement program consists not of thoughtful debate and exchange of ideas as to both the broad outline of that legislation but also some of the finer details that would ensure we would not have bad actors with access to the information that they will. Rather, what we wound up with was legislation via backroom vote-buying deals, bribes and kickbacks just so that we could pass something in order to find out later what's in it and boy are we ever.



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Radio KBwD is on the air

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It's been a while, no? To get back into the swing of things let's delve into the bluegrass genre that has been dominating our Pandora selections for the past 6 months or so.




An amazing band with an amazing backstory, ladies and gentlemen, its Cherryholmes of the Cherryholmes family performing "I Can Only Love You (So Much)".

A sure-fire winning message

When the President's signature piece of legislation's rollout is quickly turning into a trainwreck, one can always count on this administration to resort to shameless pandering and race-baiting to sell it otherwise.

Head of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius (pictured) was at the annual NAACP convention in Orlando and made the following remarks on Tuesday.



From CNSNews:

"The Affordable Care Act is the most powerful law for reducing health disparities since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was also enacted," Sebelius said. "That significance hits especially close to home. My father was a congressman from Cincinnati who voted for each of those critical civil rights laws, and who represented a district near where the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth lived and preached.

"The same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation that opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. 'This won't work,' 'Slow down,' 'Let's wait,' they say.

"But history shows that upholding our founding principles demands continuous work toward a more perfect union...And it requires the kind of work that the NAACP has done for more than a century to move us forward.

"You showed it in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation. You showed it by ensuring inalienable rights are secured in the courtroom and at the ballot box. And you showed it by supporting a health law 100 years in the making.

"With each step forward, you said to forces of the status quo, 'This will work,' 'We can't slow down' 'We can't wait,' 'We won't turn back.'

Sebelius then hailed the "voices of progress" that "we hear and honor this year," as people start signing up for mandatory health insurance on Oct. 1:

"They echo from church bells rung at midnight 150 years ago to educate our nation of a people's emancipation. They echo from a speech on our nation's mall 50 years ago next month about the promise of our nation's dream. And they still echo and guide us today in a second term of a historic presidency.

"So let us seize this moment. We can't slow down. We can't wait. We won't turn back. We move forward."

Good grief. Where to even start with this nonsense?

Well, how about here: when fighting fear and misinformation, it's always good to compare your political opposites to Jim Crow-loving segregationists. That's the politics of unity and a pitch-perfect example of that new civility we've been hearing so much about.

And We can't wait explains why the administration has decided to delay for a year 3 different key provisions of the law in direct violation of constitutional provisions to uphold the laws that are on the books. For a law that absolutely had to pass because, as claimed by the champions of the law, upwards of 40,000 people/year were dying because they didn't have health insurance, this would seem to be a particularly cruel and heartless way of implementing it.

Let's just call it the ObamaCare tease where tens of thousands of Americans anticipating the saving graces of the law, will meet their ultimate demise because of incompetence at the executive, legislative and bureaucratic levels. Hey, don't look at us that way - they have hoisted themselves atop their own fear-mongering petard.

And as a reminder to you young voters out there, especially those young healthy ones that do not necessarily need health insurance but will be forced to buy it any way: the man you probably voted for in 2012 and possibly as well in 2008, made it clear a couple of days ago that while he was cool with letting big business off the hook for the employer mandate, he would veto any legislation coming out of Congress that would suspend/delay implementation of individual mandate. Don't worry, he still (hearts) you for buying that bumper sticker and, of course, for your vote.


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Subservient enough to be a journalist?

We don't normally do this but Glenn Reynolds aka instapundit recently penned a column so spot on for USA Today we decided to reproduce it in its entirety below.

We've touched on it 2 or 3 times in the recent past but Reynolds has been going after this issue with hammer and tongs relentlessly. The issue we are referring to is our betters in Washington D.C. attempting to define journalism as a profession rather than an activity. This is being done in a shamefully cynical manner as protecting journalist whistleblowers when they expose government secrets.

Of course, you see what's going on here: whistleblower shield laws will protect only those journalist or journalist organizations vetted by the federal government. Pesky independent journalists and especially blogs like Reynolds' , Legal Insurrection, HotAir and yours truly that are not behaving properly need not apply.

The statist political class is not very fond of freedom of the press as if the Department of Justice snooping of 20 Associated Press employees and the naming of Fox News Jame Rosen as an unindicted criminal co-conspirator did not alert you to that fact already:



Mr. Reynolds, take it away:

Last week, stung by reactions to phone-snooping on reporters* (and, in at least one case, a reporter's parents), the Justice Department issued new guidelines for dealing with the media when investigating leaks. Many people are cheering these guidelines, but I'm not sure they're good enough.


I have two problems: First, in the incidents mentioned above, according to Associated Press President Gary Pruitt, the Justice Department violated its old guidelines. If the Justice Department didn't follow its own rules before, why is it more likely to follow the new rules? Ultimately, it's hard to trust an administration that seems to see every legal requirement as, like ObamaCare, waivable when inconvenient.


My second problem is more general. Does this policy protect anyone doing journalism, or just members of the establishment? The Justice Department talks about protection for "news media" (the guidelines don't use the word "press") but doesn't provide any guidance on just who that is. Presumably, if you're drawing a paycheck from the New York Times or Gannett (the parent company of USA TODAY), you're covered. (But note that, not too long ago, the Obama administration was claiming that Fox News, home of James Rosen, one of the key targets of recent Justice Department snooping, was not a "legitimate news organization.") If the Justice Department can pick and choose in this fashion, the guidelines don't mean much.

But even if the guidelines extend to everyone who draws a paycheck as a reporter or pundit -- hey, I guess that would include me -- that's still not enough. In this era of blogging, social media and independent journalism, there are an awful lot of people doing serious journalism who aren't drawing a paycheck from a media organization. They deserve protection, too. Journalism is an activity, not a profession.

James O'Keefe -- who has a new book out, Breakthrough: Our Guerrilla War To Expose Fraud And Save Democracy -- has conducted a number of daring undercover exposes of voter fraud and financial abuse, one of which led Congress to defund the corrupt ACORN social-activist group. Independent journalists such as Michael Totten, Michael Yon, J.D. Johannes, and Bill Roggio covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in ways that traditional media seldom did -- for the most part, supported by donations directly from their readers. No media paycheck there.

And the most stunning on-the-scene reporting today -- from Egypt, for example, or the scene of the Asiana air crash last week -- comes via Twitter, blogs and Facebook. Those people aren't drawing a media paycheck either, but they're doing real reporting. Why should they get short shrift?

Government licensing of the press is one of the biggest First Amendment no-nos. But if the government is in the business of deciding who counts as a "legitimate news organization" -- and, more importantly, who doesn't -- then the result looks suspiciously like a licensing scheme of some sort.

It also looks kind of clubby. Washington is already rife with crony capitalism, but if these protections are limited to Big Media journalists it starts to look a lot like crony journalism. The administration gives journalism's old-boy-network a pass, in exchange for not rocking the boat too much, while leaving itself free to go after the very outsiders who are most likely to do hard-hitting investigations.

Not coincidentally, NBC talking head David Gregory -- highly sympathetic to the Obama White House -- recently asked blogger Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Edward Snowden/NSA story, if he was a "real journalist," with the strong implication that he was not. He's certainly broken more stories critical of the White House than Gregory has.

Journalism, especially in the 21st century, isn't the paid profession of a favored few. It's an activity in which all Americans can take part. If the Department of Justice isn't prepared to acknowledge that, then it hasn't really addressed its problems at all.

To riff off our boy KT, we don't think George and the boys picked a fight with the British empire just so that an elite few could choose who it was that could report on them without fear of reprisal.


The government's official seal of approval with respect to journalists and journalism is certainly no hallmark of a free republic regardless of the stated good intentions.




* Reynolds, unfortunately soft-pedals this one. Department of Justice HMFIC Eric Holder was "stung" only after we all found out about the snooping.

Glitches galore

In the past week and a half we have seen the President unilaterally delay by one year the employer mandate whereby businesses of over 50 people would be required to provide federally-approved health care plans to their employees. In this same time span, the President suspended the penalties for smoking that are contained within the law as there are directly contradicting provisions regarding the amount of the penalties and then also decided that verifying income to see who qualified for federal subsidies was, like, too hard so out the door went those income verification checks inviting fraud and abuse of the healthcare system.


The folks at the LA Times helpfully explain that these “glitches” were inevitable and a delay in the roll-out of these provisions was the prudent thing to do… 3-1/2 years after ObamaCare was signed into law. We’d like to remind the L.A. Times that part of the justification for ramming this thing through the Senate and House was that people’s lives were at stake and we simply could not wait any longer to pass and then implement ObamaCare. Given the current rationale for delay, the old rationales for passing it adopt an air of convenience.


We’d also like to point out a contention regarding the law and it is the fact that we are rapidly approaching that point in time when the “number of glitches” line intersects with “this law is totally unworkable line” if we are indeed at that point already.


Now, here in California, the vested and the experts have been keeping a close eye on the state’s aggressive efforts to set up the healthcare exchanges through which California residents can purchase individual healthcare plans. Of course, their aggressive efforts in getting the state exchange set up and running by October 1st experienced a glitch of it’s own in that the health care bubbas do not have any vetting mechanism in place to perform hiring checks on the thousands of employees need to assist the public.



From The Deseret News:

As California prepares to launch its health care exchange, consumer groups are worried the uninsured could fall victim to fraud, identity theft or other crimes at the hands of some of the very people who are supposed to help them enroll.

The exchange, known as Covered California, recently adopted rules for a network of more than 21,000 enrollment counselors who will provide consumers with in-person assistance as part of the federal Affordable Care Act. In some cases, they will have access to personal and financial information, from ID cards to medical histories.

But the state insurance commissioner and anti-fraud groups say the exchange is falling short in ensuring that the people hired as counselors are adequately screened and monitored.

Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones also said the exchange does not have a plan for investigating any complaints that might arise once the counselors start work. That means consumers who might fall prey to bogus health care products, identity theft and other abuses will have a hard time seeking justice if unscrupulous counselors get ahold of their Social Security number, bank accounts, health records or other private information, he said.

"We can have a real disaster on our hands," Jones, a Democrat, said in an interview.

That Jones is a Democrat is less of an issue in this as it is he is a state employee, a class of people that will vigorously defend their turf and that of the state’s. The California high-speed choo-choo folks are perhaps the masters of happy talk in the face all contradicting evidence. Mr. Jones is apparently having none of it and is warning against a tsunami of fraud and identity theft, a trainwreck, if you will. But for you cynics out there, this is the type of ass-covering we wholeheartedly approve of.


Again, at what point have you seen enough and come to the conclusion that what needs to be done is to pull the plug on this miserable law and start over? We've been there for a while because all that we foretold is coming to pass.