Trump To Now End Ocare Cost-Sharing Subsidies, As Were Never Authorized By Congress

By William Teach October 13, 2017 – 6:51 am

As you can imagine, this has sent Obamacare supporters (who mostly do not use Ocare themselves) into a tizzy. Moonbat Level 10. Given them the vapors

(Politico) President Donald Trump plans to cut off subsidy payments to insurers selling Obamacare coverage in his most aggressive move yet to undermine the health care law, according to two sources close to the discussions.

The subsidies, which are worth an estimated $7 billion this year and are paid out in monthly installments, may stop almost immediately since Congress hasn’t appropriated funding for the program.

The decision, which leaked out only hours after Trump signed an executive order calling for new regulations to encourage cheap, loosely regulated health plans – delivered a double whammy to Obamacare after months of failed GOP efforts to repeal the law. With open enrollment for the 2018 plan year set to launch in two weeks, the moves seem aimed at dismantling the law through executive actions.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the decision in a statement emailed to reporters at 10:47 p.m. Thursday.

“Based on guidance from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is no appropriation for cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies under Obamacare,” she said. “In light of this analysis, the Government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments. …The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system.”

Congress has never appropriated the money for the cost-sharing subsidies (under Section 1402), otherwise known as insurance company bailouts due to the implementation of a law that doesn’t Understand How Insurance Works, hence, any payments are illegal. Furthermore, a judge agreed that the payments were unConstitutional.

Scrapping the subsidy payments is likely to jolt already fragile Obamacare markets — although the impact may be less severe than it would have been a few months back.

If the Ocare markets are so fragile, that should tell us that this was a terrible law, one which set up a bad system, should it not?

There’s even a suggestion that insurers will sue Trump over this. That’ll be tossed quickly, because there is no statutory funding authorized by Congressional budgets to pay these out.

As Dr. Marc Siegel just said on TV as I write this, insurers stay in Ocare when it benefits them, and leave when they don’t. But consumers are trapped by this system.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Bummer: Trump’s Environment Plan Fails To Mention ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach October 12, 2017 – 4:28 pm

The Warmists at the UK Independent seem rather surprised by this development. Were they paying attention since Trump started running?

Trump’s environmental plan doesn’t mention climate change

The Environmental Protection Agency’s strategic plan does not contain the phrase “climate change.”

The federal agency’s draft four-year plan is detailed in a 38-page report that was released late last week.

Neither “carbon dioxide” or “greenhouse gas emissions” are mentioned in the document either published by the EPA, CNN reported.

EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman told the news outlet that “providing more Americans with access to clean air, land, and water” was the focus of the agency.

However, it is a marked difference from the Obama administration’s EPA plan.

That 80-page document, written in 2014 under then-EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, included 40 mentions of the phrase “climate change” and one of the key sections was titled ““Addressing Climate Change and Improving Air Quality.”

Reading through the new draft, it is focused more on true environmental issues, divorcing them from the idiocy of ‘climate change’, where in previous years they were all subsumed and secondary to the beliefs of the Cult of Climastrology.

The screed from the Warmist Independent even includes this bit of mule fritters

It’s simply steam. Warmists think it’s pure carbon pollution “spewing.” It’s a cult.

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 12, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is a stadium sucking down massive amounts of carbon polluting energy, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on Chicago getting ready to repeal the soda tax.

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Accused Killer Is An Obama Dreamer

By William Teach October 12, 2017 – 11:03 am

How many times will we have to read about the criminality of all these Dreamers?

(Breitbart) An illegal alien accused of murdering a teenage girl in Greenville County, South Carolina, was shielded from deportation as he was a beneficiary of the Obama-created DACA amnesty program.

Daniel De Jesus Rangel Sherrer, 19, was one of the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens shielded from deportation and given a work permit under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) confirmed to Breitbart Texas.

Sherrer, as Breitbart News reported, was charged in connection with the murder of 18-year-old Diana Martinez-Gonzalez after she was found shot to death in a wooded area in the town of Easley, South Carolina.

During a press conference, Master Deputy Ryan Flood said the DACA recipient confessed to a deputy about his alleged murder of Martinez-Gonzalez, a high school student.

This is who Obama and the Democrats support.

Meanwhile in Charlotte

Norma Contreras dutifully reported Sept. 21 to Charlotte’s office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which ICE required the undocumented immigrant to do as she fought to stay in the U.S.

Contreras’ minister husband and her three children, a Charlotte family for 17 years, haven’t seen her since. Contreras is being held in Georgia awaiting deportation to her native Honduras.

That a woman with a work permit, clean criminal record and community support could be uprooted without warning is among the starkest examples of changes to federal immigration policy under President Donald Trump.

Clean criminal record. Except for being illegally present in the United States. ICE notes that she has fought the good fight in court, and the courts have consistently found against her, because, she’s illegally present. We’ll get back to that in a minute. First, look how supporters portray her

Contreras’ supporters have said she’s been a model citizen, even if she didn’t have the papers making her one. Her husband and children said her deportation would shatter their family.

She doesn’t have the papers because she’s not a citizen, and would actually be considered a felon

Contreras first came to the U.S. in 1999 to escape gang violence in Honduras but was turned back at the Mexican border. In 2001 she returned, this time with two children. She was deported in 2009 but came back the same year. In 2010, ICE released her under a renewable order of supervision.

Coming back after being deported is a felony as an alien absconder. She was told she could be deported at any time. There are penalties for unlawful activity.

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2017 Will Go Down As The End Of The Fossil Fueled Engine Or Something

By William Teach October 12, 2017 – 8:59 am

The Washington Post, which uses vast amounts of fossil fuels to distribute their dead tree edition of their newspaper, is giddy at the prospect, and makes a prognostication (using “explanatory journalism”) that will surely look humorous 50 years from now when fossil fueled vehicles are still around

Why 2017 will go down as the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine

Electric vehicles no longer seem like a futuristic fever dream, but they remain a rarity on most Ame

rican city streets, accounting for less than 1 per

cent of the nation’s auto sales, according to the automotive website Edmunds.com.

Yet, when future auto historians look back, they may pinpoint 2017 as the year electric vehicles went from a promising progressive fad to an industry-wide inevitability.

Hey, everyone wants a vehicle that is able to go 35 to 75 miles per charge, right? And have to be careful using things like heat, A/C, the radio, headlights, etc, to make sure they aren’t stuck on the side of the road.

The tipping point, experts say, follows three developments, each rippling outward with economic and cultural consequences.

    1. China’s flexing: In addition to setting aggressive production quotas for EVs, China plans to scrap internal combustion engines entirely as soon as 2030. By taking a lead role in the shift to plug-ins, the world’s largest auto market is forcing the rest of the international community to follow in its footsteps.
    2. The debut of Tesla’s Model 3: The company’s first mass-market vehicle has ushered in an era of excitement about EVs because of the car’s slick design and starting price of around $35,000.
    3. Major automakers announce plans for an “all-electric future.” General Motors finished 2016 as the world’s third-largest automaker, meaning its decision to create 20 new electric vehicles by 2023 is bound to have an impact on the global marketplace. Volvo, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Audi, BMW and Ford have also announced EV plans in recent months.

And we all believe China, right? Because they never lie, right?

It’s great that Tesla has these plans, but, starting at $35,000 isn’t something that is readily available for the average middle or lower class citizen. Adding in sales tax for NC, which is rather low at 3%, plus the typical doc fee and tags/registration, with an average APR for good credit, that gets you to around $668 a month on a 60 month loan. Super affordable, eh? Remember, the Chevy Volt wasn’t really able to survive without government and big business purchases. Single consumer purchases were low. They started at over $40,000. You can buy a fully loaded Civic Touring for $27,000, which gets 41MPG highway, and over 300 miles per fillup.

The automakers forget that it is the consumer which drives chance. How well did the Nissan Leaf do? And other all electrics? There will certainly be some sales. Some people will want these vehicles. Great. Most don’t. And they will refuse to pay the price, both for the purchase and the ownership portion, and go buy something elsewhere.

The article goes on and on about things like the future of big oil, gas stations changing or disappearing, what will mechanics do since oil changes won’t be necessary, and “carbon pollution.” It’s a nice little fantasy that is not even close to coming to fruition, and, realistically, won’t until the battery packs stop taking up so much space and are able to get people several hundred miles per charge, along with a price drop to compete.

It’s nice that the News has become science fiction writers.

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Trump To Enable More People To Get Health Insurance With His Pen

By William Teach October 12, 2017 – 8:30 am

This has made Obamacare supporters who have been saying that the whole point of Obamacare is to enable more people to obtain affordable healthcare very upset. These same people also had zero problem with Obama legislating with his pen

Fed up with Congress, Trump whacks Obamacare with his pen
An executive order is expected to encourage creation of skimpy, cheaper plans that would take healthier enrollees from Obamacare.

President Donald Trump is trying to do with the stroke of a pen what Republicans in Congress could not — bring about the end of the Obamacare markets.

Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday directing an overhaul of major federal regulations that would encourage the rise of a raft of cheap, loosely regulated health insurance plans that don’t have to comply with certain Obamacare consumer protections and benefit rules. They’d attract younger and healthier people — leaving older and sicker ones in the Obamacare markets facing higher and higher costs.

They’re already facing higher and higher costs, because Obamacare was essentially set up to fail in the first place. Even before Trump, insurers were dropping out, leaving many with just one choice of carriers, and, in some areas no choices. Costs were rising, doctors were not taking it. Anyway, in Liberal World, consumer choice is apparently a bad thing.

Remember, though, unlike Obama, Trump tried the proper way, going through Congress. Many times. Obama simply made an announcement that He Wanted Things Done, then didn’t bother trying to engage the duly elected lawmakers, declared Congress a failure, and signed an executive order soon after.

The focus of the directive is association health plans, which allow small-business owners, trade groups and others to band together to purchase health insurance. Such plans would be exempt from certain Obamacare’s rules, including requirements that it cover standard benefits, such as prescription drug coverage. To make those changes, the administration is already working to reinterpret ERISA, a massive federal law that governs many workplace benefits, people familiar with the order said — opening the door to more expansive changes that could affect Obamacare plans more directly.

The administration is also preparing to roll back Obama-era restrictions on short-term health insurance plans, allowing insurers to once again sell stopgap policies which don’t cover pre-existing conditions, mental health services and many other costly benefits. Coverage could extend for as long as a year, up from a current three-month limit.

So, things that could help people out? Goodness, government isn’t supposed to do that, government is supposed to make citizens Reliant on Government. Huh. As far as the young and healthies goes, well, they weren’t signing up in the first place, hence the complaint by insurance companies from the start that they were getting too many sicks in the pool.

Regardless, this has made so many Ocare supporters very upset. The NY Times is apoplectic. They’re also apoplectic over allowing religious liberty on contraception. The same at the Washington Post. And Vox. Mother Jones. And so many others. Democrats passed a bad law, set the program up poorly, and had no problem with Obama’s executive orders, on Ocare and others. They can’t complain now.

Crossed at Right Wing News.

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Finding Nemo Could Be Harder Due To Hotcoldwetdry Or Something

By William Teach October 11, 2017 – 5:23 pm

There is no scientific proof using actual science that Mankind is mostly/solely responsible for the current warm period. In fact, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas which trends up after temperatures go up. Regardless, Warmists will continue to attempt to scaremonger, even without evidence of what happened during previous warm periods, because this is what they do

Finding Nemo could be harder due to global warming

The clownfish, made world-famous by lovable Nemo, could be harder to find because of global warming, according to a new study published Tuesday.

While coral bleaching is a well-known result of unusually warm ocean water, it turns out that sea anemones can also be bleached, which in turn affects the clownfish that live in and around the anemones.

In fact, the fish show much higher stress levels and a dramatic decrease in offspring — as much as 73% less — when their home sea anemones are bleached in warmer waters, the study found.

“While no effects on adult anemone survival were observed, the effects of bleaching on reproduction and population demography were likely even greater than demonstrated here,” study lead author Suzanne Mills of the French university Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes told the Daily Mail.

She added that the finding is alarming, since man-made stressors and the rate of change in environmental conditions are expected to multiply in the coming decades, “with bleaching and habitat degradation becoming more frequent.”

Read that again. They are extrapolating, ah, hell, making prognostications of future doom with little evidence, along with assigning Blame, with little data and admitting there are no real effects. This is a political document, not a scientific one.

Using the natural El Niño warming phenomenon as a stand-in for what future man-made warming might bring, researchers visited 13 pairs of clownfish and their host anemones in the coral reefs near Moorea Island in French Polynesia from October 2015 to December 2016.

First, how do we know this did not happen throughout previous Holocene warm periods? Second, they are using what is a naturally occurring event to Blamestorm their Belief in what Mankind is doing. The bleaching of coral in Australia for a few years is mentioned. How’d that turn out? Nature is, let’s call it, un-bleaching the coral. This is all just typical Cult of Climastrology fearmongering, now using a kids’ favorite.

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If All You See…

By William Teach October 11, 2017 – 1:00 pm

…is stadium which requires people to take lots of fossil fueled trips to attend, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is The Crawdad Hole, with a post on the Democratic Party talking points on Harvey Weinstein.

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Raleigh Church Decides To Get In On The Whole Sheltering Illegal Aliens Racket

By William Teach October 11, 2017 – 10:30 am

Many churches across the country are actively sheltering illegal aliens as of late, and now one in Raleigh is joining in on this criminal behavior

(Raleigh N&O) A Raleigh church is sheltering an undocumented immigrant fighting deportation to Mexico, adding to the small but growing sanctuary movement in North Carolina.

Umstead Park United Church of Christ will serve as Eliseo Jimenez’s home while lawyers try again to reverse a deportation order that told Jimenez to leave the country by July 31.

“I can’t give up. I have to fight. My family needs me,” Jimenez said during a press conference at the church on Tuesday. “I believe that any loving, responsible father would do what I’m doing.”

Jimenez, 39, is married and has a son, 4, and daughter, 5. The family has been living in Greensboro, and Jimenez’s wife and children stay there during the week and visit Jimenez in Raleigh on weekends.

Here’s the problem (besides him simply being an illegal alien): he came to the U.S. illegally when he was 17. He was caught by the Alamance Sheriff’s Office in 2007, and ordered deported. He was subsequently deported in 2007.

One month later he recrossed the border illegally, so, per federal law, that’s a felony. Then

In 2013, he was stopped and charged with driving without a license, and says he was served with an order of removal, requiring him to leave the country. He later was granted a stay on the order, which he applied for again each year and was granted until this year, he said.

In July, the stay was denied and Jimenez was told he would have to leave the country by July 31.

Re-entering the U.S. after being deported is a federal felony. The church, by sheltering him, is in violation of the multiple state and federal laws regarding sheltering wanted criminals.

Furthermore, the church is also in violation of 8 US Code 1324 (a)(1)(a)(iii), sheltering an illegal alien, which can carry heavy fines and jail up 5 years for whomever is sheltering.

I’m all for respecting churches, when they deserve it. If an individual church wants to break the law, then there should be penalties for it. They know that ICE has put churches on the “don’t arrest here” list, but, as more attempt to shelter known illegal aliens, there will have to be consequences. These individual churches are attempting to put law enforcement in a bad position, when the churches themselves are violating the law. Start with taking away the tax exempt status of any church that shelters an illegal.

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Report: Iran Using Secret Military Sites To Develop Nuclear Weapons

By William Teach October 11, 2017 – 8:03 am

It would be great if the deal with Iran actually stopped Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But, the inspection methods are entirely too weak, and it will allow Iran to seek nuclear weapons in less than 10 years per the details of the deal. But, they were supposed to stop doing research and development now. How’s that working out?

(Fox News) President Donald Trump is expected this week to “decertify” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known simply as the Iran deal, declaring that the agreement reached in 2015 by the U.S. and five other international powers is not in America’s national interest. The matter will then be tossed back to Congress, which will have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose hefty pre-2015 sanctions.

While the President’s likely move has generated wide condemnation from foreign policy leaders — who reiterate that the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has maintained Iran is in compliance — a new 52-page investigative report by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), entitled: “Iran’s Nuclear Core: Uninspected Military Sites,” obtained exclusively by Fox News and slated for release Wednesday, asserts that the country’s nuclear weapons program has far from halted.

“It has been known for years that Iran has two nuclear programs — one is civilian and the other, the military, has the goal of giving Iran its first nuclear bomb,” Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the NCRI, also referred to as the Iranian Resistance, and considered the primary opposition coalition to the clerical administration of Iran, told Fox News. “The civilian sector of the nuclear program has systematically provided a plausible logistical cover for the military sector, and acts as a conduit for it. The military aspect of the program has been and remains at the heart of Iran’s nuclear activities.”

In a nutshell, the report and long article highlight that military sites have continued to do R&D into developing nuclear weapons.

“The more we investigated, the more we realized that the weaponization program is fully operational,” Jafarzadeh said. “The military sector has gone through changes in name, location and reorganizations over the years. However, it has never halted its work and key figures in the sector have remained unchanged.”

One of the key issues of the verification process, the report states, has been access to Iran’s military sites. The regime’s highest officials — from Ali-Akbar Velayti, a foreign policy advisor to Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran, to Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi, brigadier general of Iran’s elite IRGC, have stated publicly over the past month that they will continue to refuse to allow IAEA inspections of their military sites.

How do we know they’re in compliance if they won’t allow inspections? Obama and the other nations that signed on basically gave up long term security for appearing to have Done Something. It was a lop-sided deal, one which Iran won.

What will President Trump do? We’ll find out within a few days.

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