Tag: politics

A capitalist betrays class unconsciousness in writing to Zerohedge on behalf of his employees about the way Obamacare is transforming the working class into the subservient class:

My company, based in California, employs 600. We used to insure about 250 of our employees. The rest opted out. The company paid 50% of their premiums for about $750,000/yr. Under obamacare, none can opt out without penalty, and the rates are double or triple, depending upon the plan. Our 750k for 250 employees is going to $2 million per year for 600 employees.

By mandate, we have to pay 91.5% of the premium or more up from the 50% we used to pay. Our employees share of the premium goes from $7/week for the cheapest plan to $30/week. 95% of my employees were on that plan.  Remember, we used to pay 50% now we pay 91.5% and the premiums still go up that much!!

The  cheapest plan now has a deductible of $6350! Before it was $150. Employees making $9 to $10/hr, have to pay $30/wk and have a $6350 deductible!!! What!!!! They can’t afford that to be sure. Obamacare will kill their propensity to seek medical care. More money for less care? How does that help them?

Here is the craziest part. Employees who qualify for mediCAL (the California version of Medicare), which is most of my employees, will automatically be enrolled in the Federal SNAP program. They cannot opt out. They cannot decline. They will be automatically enrolled in the Federal food stamp program based upon their level of Obamacare qualification. Remember, these people work full time, living in a small town in California. They are not seeking assistance.

People constantly seem to be surprised to learn that politicians lie. I’m a little surprised to have to so often remind grown men and women that sometimes people say things that are not true. And they say things that are not true on a regular basis.

The American people were told that they had to bail out the banks to prevent the economy from collapsing. That wasn’t true. They were told that the various measures to stabilize the housing market were to help mortgaged homeowners. That wasn’t true. They were told that the Affordable Care Act was to help the uninsured and make insurance more affordable. That wasn’t true.

Are you starting to notice a pattern here? The reason provided by politicians to justify their actions are seldom related to the real motivations. This is particularly true when the reason given is “helping people”. While it is true certain people are being helped, it is almost never the people who are identified as the official reason.

Walter Russell Mead piles on:

All this has plunged the White House into the deepest hole of the Obama presidency to date, but the biggest shock isn’t about the cruddy rollout, the kludgy law or the disingenuous sales job by which it was passed. The biggest shock and the most damning revelation came in the President’s hasty and awkward press conference when President Obama responded to a reporter’s question about his knowledge of the website’s problems:

 “OK. On the website, I was not informed directly that the website would not be working as — the way it was supposed to. Ha[d] I been informed, I wouldn’t be going out saying, boy, this is going to be great. You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.”

This was eyepopping. Obamacare is the single most important initiative of his presidency. The website rollout was, as the President himself has repeatedly stated, the most important element of the law’s debut. Domestically speaking there was no higher priority for the President and his staff than getting this right. And the President is telling the world that a week before the disaster he had no idea how that website was doing.

However, Instapundit cruelly, but necessarily, points out that Mead voted for the guy:

“And much as I love Walter Russell Mead, I note that he voted for this guy, and blandly assumed that an Ivy League pedigree was some sort of assurance of competence. Not so much. And it’s not as if the signs weren’t there, for those able to see them.”

I can only assume Mead hasn’t had much contact with Ivy League graduates. For the most part, their uselessness is only surpassed by how impressed they are with their own academic credentials. And the more Affirmative Action the Ivy League graduate, the more hopelessly inept they tend to be. Think about what knobs your class president and valedictorian were. Then recall that with the exception of Brown and Dartmouth, the Ivy League universities are absolutely full of class presidents and valedictorians who are firmly convinced that, as Chiefs, they don’t have to know anything about how all that Indian stuff works.

It’s fascinating to see how the sacred and inviolate law proves to be so mutable in practice:

Bowing to pressure, President Barack Obama intends to permit continued
sale of individual insurance plans that have been canceled because they
failed to meet coverage standards under the health care law, officials
said Thursday.


The decision was designed to ease the impact on millions of consumers
who have received cancellation notices in recent weeks, and also to try
to redeem a presidential promise that anyone who wanted to keep his
coverage under the law would be allowed to do so.


An announcement was expected in late morning.


Officials said the president would announce that insurers could continue
to sell existing individual policies to current customers for 2014,
even in cases of plans that had been ruled inadequate.

In other words, he’s buying the techs a year to fix the system. Then everyone will lose their coverage again. Truly, this is conclusive evidence of Obama’s political mastery. No one, NO ONE, saw this fiendishly clever move coming.

This is more evidence that it is absolutely necessary to strictly police your organizations for hostile ideologies. It’s very hard for normal people to comprehend this, but leftist parasites will readily devote years, even decades, to quietly worming their way in before showing their true colors.

The editor of Guns & Ammo magazine apologized to readers and resigned shortly after the writer of a column advocating gun control was fired this week.

Dick Metcalf, a well-known television host and gun writer, was canned after penning a column in favour of gun control in the magazine’s December issue. The outrage then prompted editor Jim Bequette to issue an apology and resign.

In the apology, Mr Bequette said he hoped the column ‘would generate a healthy exchange of ideas on gun rights,’ but then said he was wrong and asked for forgiveness.

Mr Metcalfe, widely visible in the gun community, has written about guns and hosted gun-oriented television shows for decades, but that did not save him from reader backlash.

Whether it is a smug-faced atheist schoolboy infiltrating a nominally Christian school or a gun-grabber seeking to become the voice of the gun media, the techniques and the tactics are always the same. And they are active in your church, in your synagogue, in your school, and in your place of work.

If you don’t actively look for them and root them out, sooner or later, they will take over. Always pay particular attention to those who are unusually eager to help and happy to lend a hand. Being driven by ideology, they often have the motivation to take on all the dirty little jobs that no one else wants to do and secure their positions by making themselves indispensable. They usually present as being non-ideological, but put some pressure on to determine their real views and they’ll usually reveal themselves.

Notice how Bequette tries to present a non-ideological justification: a healthy exchange of ideas. They always hide behind a facade of being reasonable.