Read it.

Oh, ya think?

Read it.

And why not? Whom do you think Mafia wiseguys vote for? Betcha a paycheck it ain’t Republicans.

Read it.

Just like GM, the U.S. government has decided to give millions to another part of the auto industry — only this time it’s in Afghanistan.

In fact, a U.S.-led international group spent $230 million on spare vehicle parts for the Afghan National Army and other security agencies — then lost them.

Not knowing where the parts were, the group ordered up an additional $138 million in parts a watchdog said likely aren’t needed and some of which are now sitting in warehouses with boxes stacked to the ceiling.

Read it.

Should government employees have privileges and legal immunities that the rest of us do not have?

Foolish mortal — what makes you think your opinion matters in the slightest?

The government shutdown battle is, in part, a dispute about the extra subsidies members of Congress and their staffs are slated to get from Obamacare.

And guess who won.

Read it.

About 900 actors, musicians, authors, architects, and other creative professionals who had been buying their health insurance through The Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust will no longer be able to do so because of a provision in ObamaCare.

“They are upset,” said David Rubin, the vice president and corporate secretary of TEIGIT, a Clifton Park, N.Y., health insurance broker that has existed since 1965 but whose business Mr. Rubin said will “fade away” under the new law.

Mr. Rubin noted that in making the case for ObamaCare, the president had repeatedly said that if people like their current employer-provided insurance, they would be able to keep it. “They were told that insurance was going to be unaffected,” he said.

But the Affordable Care Act disallows the single-employee sole-proprietor or husband-and-wife businesses from purchasing policies as employers. “One of the troubling things about this is a lot of mom and pop businesses are no longer considered to be a business,” Mr. Rubin said. “They are being thrown onto the individual exchanges.”

‘If you like your plan, you can keep it.’ Or maybe not.

How’s that Hope & Change workin’ out for ya?

John Hinderaker at Powerline has some fun with the arrested-adolescent Left.

This is very funny. A Daily Kos regular gets his Obamacare premium notice and is shocked to learn that as young, healthy people, he and his wife will pay twice as much!

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

The whole POINT of Obamacare was abolition of private catastrophic-only health insurance for the healthy, forcing them to underwrite a double subsidy: a means tested, open-ended premium subsidy for the less affluent covering comprehensive insurance, and a health status subsidy forcing them to subsidize premiums for the sick–irrespective of either of their means!

What did they expect? Weren’t they paying attention? Or maybe it’s like Animal House–but with Obama saying “you f***** up…you trusted us.” LOL!

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of people.

Sadly, the comments on Daily Kos suggest that most young leftists have still not seen the light. The consensus is that the poster needs to get his mind right. In the old days, it was said that a neoconservative was a liberal who had been mugged by reality. Today’s liberals are apparently so obtuse that they can be mugged by reality–or by Barack Obama–and not notice.

Read it.

That’s because you’re all white males and so are the Designated Punching Bag. If you were black (Hey, Eric Holder!) or female (Hey, Kathleen Sibelius!) or, better yet, black and female (Hey, Valerie Jarrett!), you’d have all the support you could desire.

Better get to work on that.

Read it.

You know they don’t have the balls to use them for executions. So it’s probably for testing vegetables or something.

Read it.

There was a major break in the Shutdown Crisis earlier today. President Obama agreed to meet with House Republicans after the Republican leadership announced that it had joined Al Qaeda.

White House Spokesman Jay Carney announced: “Now we have someone we can talk with.”

Read it.

Democrats may push the line that it’s Republicans holding the government hostage in the current partial shutdown, but Democrats caught in the crossfire don’t feel that way. Yesterday, DC’s mayor Vincent Gray, a Democrat, confronted Harry Reid over Democrats’ refusal to agree to a Republican measure that would fund Washington’s municipal government during the shutdown. Reid responded by telling Gray he was on his side and not to “screw it up.”

DC’s House delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, meanwhile, reportedly confronted President Obama at a meeting he had with House Democrats at the White House yesterday.

When Obama starts humpin’, ain’t nobody safe.

Read it.

In the early days of the Obama administration, Michael Barone wrote in connection with the fleecing of bondholders courtesy of the Obama administration in the Chrysler bankruptcy: “We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government. It is likely to be a continuing series.” In the current production of Shutdown Theater we have an episode of Gangster Government for the little people.

Read it.

Very little, I suspect, of real substance. A lot of handwaving, a lot of bloviating, a lot of finger-pointing, all paid for by taxpayers.

Read it.

Matthew Yglesias observes that, because of the government shutdown, farmers don’t know how much pigs are worth. The USDA normally keeps track of and publishes pork prices. Yglesias concludes that the government shutdown is threatening our farm economy.

The correctly conclusion, however, is that we should let the unreliable government do things that can be done by private parties. If USDA weren’t publishing pork prices, someone else would, and they would not have to rely on a continued flow of tax dollars to keep them going.

And that’s the truest thing you’ll read today.

Read it.

Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures.

Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country.

Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.

The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.

America is rapidly turning into a banana republic — without the bananas.

Read it.

When you start out as a criminal, the rest is a piece of cake.

Over the past several years, the Obama administration has narrowed the scope of immigration enforcement, promising to focus on what President Obama considers “the worst of the worst” violent offenders. But just because an illegal alien isn’t a violent threat to society, it does not follow that his or her presence is not a threat to the rule of law, taxpayers, and society generally. Despite the opinion of amnesty advocates — namely, that the United States can give a pass to violations of law without suffering any repercussions — our nation’s immigration laws do serve a variety of purposes and are ultimately meant to protect those who are in the United States lawfully.

Read it.

Indiana University is firing 50 maintenance and custodial workers and shifting them to a temp agency to avoid incurring Obamacare costs.

How’s that Hope & Change workin’ out for ya?

Read it.

Just before the weekend, the National Park Service informed charter boat captains in Florida that the Florida Bay was “closed” due to the shutdown. Until government funding is restored, the fishing boats are prohibited from taking anglers into 1,100 square-miles of open ocean. Fishing is also prohibited at Biscayne National Park during the shutdown.

…

Apparently, according to an anonymous Park Service ranger, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

If Obama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

Read it.

(You’ll have to hack your way through the spin.)

 Confusion persisted Wednesday around the long-awaited opportunity for Americans to sign up for coverage through new health-insurance marketplaces, with the federal Web site for more than half the states remaining balky and health plans uncertain whether they had any new customers.

Welcome to dealing with the government. This ought not to have come as a surprise to anybody. Nobody ever puts ‘efficiency’ or ‘effectiveness’ or ‘user-friendly’ and government in the same sentence except as a contrast.

The federal site, Healthcare.gov, was sluggish and flashed error messages much of the day. The Obama administration said the delays were simply the result of an initial rush of people flocking to the site — 4.7 million unique visitors in the first 24 hours — while some in the health-care industry suggested that the problem was more serious.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Officials at the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services insisted that some people were able to get far enough into the site to peruse their insurance options, find out whether they qualify for financial help and ultimately enroll in a health plan. But administration officials, for a second day, declined to disclose how many people actually had enrolled and where in the country they live.

Or how old they are. Remember that much of the purported benefit of Obamacare is predicated on spreading the cost of insurance coverage for old people over the premiums paid by young people who are less likely to submit claims, and critics have said from the start that young people are stupid but not that stupid; they may not be able to read but they can count.

“Very, very few people that we’re aware of have enrolled in the federal exchange,” said one insurance industry official, who like many in the industry, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for possibly offending the Obama administration. “We are talking single digits.”

Emphasis added to highlight the fact that insurance officials aren’t stupid either; they know that the tiger is going to be eating people, and they want to be near the end of the list rather than at the start.

A spokesman for one major Blue Cross Blue Shield plan in a southern state said that, as of Wednesday afternoon, it had not received word from federal health officials of any customers who had completed enrollment in the plan — even though a local news outlet had reported about a man who thought he had signed up. So, plan officials didn’t know whether the man’s enrollment was incomplete or whether the federal reporting of enrollment was running behind.

One guy. Wow. There’s a market worth pursuing.

“It’s a little confusing,” said Beigel, who earns $8,000 a year running a small cleaning service and likely will qualify for free care under expanded Medicaid. “It’s not so great.”

Yeah, there’s the bottom line. People won’t take a bad product even if it’s free.

Read it.

The President has brought in workers from off furlough to barricade the national monuments in the Mall. Last time I visited that place I was able to walk through the Korean War memorial and up to the Lincoln Memorial, and all along the Mall, at midnight, and I never saw anyone; there were no barricades or barriers and none were needed. Of course there is a need for maintenance, but the money spent putting up the barricades would have paid for weeks of routine maintenance of the mall and reflecting pool, and if that weren’t true then a short appeal for public help in keeping America beautiful would have turned out an embarrassing number of volunteers complete with retired officers to organize them: there is no danger that the national war memorials will be neglected whether the government shuts down or not. The President knows this, but the barricades went up anyway.

This is small and petty, as is the refusal to negotiate anything.

Newt Gingrich visited Mount Vernon – a privately operated national monument and well worth a visit – and has noted that the bus turnaround (a paved turnaround off the national highway) has been closed by the Federal Government. Taking those barriers out there and setting them up cost money: normally it’s just a place for busses to pull off the highway and turn around, there are no facilities and it has no operating personnel, so the barriers are an added cost. No word on whether bus operators have simply throws the barricades off, as the WWII vets sort of did at the WWII monument on the mall.

This is the new presidential leadership. It is probably effective. The Republicans closed down the government. Any inconvenient consequences of that clearly are the fault of the stubborn Republicans who want to keep the poor from getting their free health care.

Read it.

“The National Treasury Employees Union will be leading the fight to make that happen,” said the union’s president, Colleen Kelley. The NTEU represents IRS workers. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, an ally of President Obama, stated, “As of today, it is clear that the Republican Party and the Tea Party have become one and the same when it comes to federal fiscal policy.” Matt Biggs, legislative director for the International Federation of Professional Technical Engineers, added, “We are trying to maintain pressure on this White House that in the event of a government shutdown, that any negotiated settlement includes an agreement that all federal employees — essential and non-essential alike — get paid when the government reopens.”

Of course. Being a government employee is all about getting paid for not working.

Read it.

 Yesterday the administration looked awful when it “closed” and barricaded the World War II memorial on the Mall. The memorial is, by its nature, open. There is nothing to close. And the administration knows that every day, tour groups consisting of WWII vets, now mostly in their late 80s or early 90s, come to Washington to visit the memorial. So the administration couldn’t resist closing the WWII memorial by putting up barricades, as part of their effort to dramatize how terrible the government “shutdown” is.

Yesterday, as we noted here, the administration suffered a public relations disaster when a group of elderly vets from Mississippi, aided by one or more Republican Congressmen, pushed the barriers aside and visited the memorial. But the administration was still undeterred: a park service employee threatened to arrest any vets who may try to visit the WWII memorial in the future, while the shutdown is in effect.

It’s all about the Narrative.

After about an hour, about 20 SEIU protesters arrived on the scene chanting “Boehner, get us back to work” and claiming they were federal employees furloughed because of the shutdown.

In the video below these protesters were marching towards the press gaggle and I was asking them to show their federal IDs to prove they were in fact federal workers. No one wore their federal ID and none would provide it to prove their claim.

Then, remarkably, a guy carrying a sign passed by wearing a McDonald’s employee shirt, which I noted. I then began asking them how much they had been paid to protest, at which point the guy wearing the McDonald’s shirt came back and admitted he had been paid $15 to attend the protest.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Still weirder is the status of the Federal Trade Commission’s site. Browse to any of their pages and you’ll see, for a split second, the full content of the page you want—only to be redirected to a shutdown notice page also hosted at FTC.gov. But that means… their servers are still up and running and actually serving all the same content. In fact they’re servingmore content: first the real page, then the shutdown notice page. If you’re using Firefox or Chrome and don’t mind browsing in HTML-cluttered text, you can even use this link to navigate to the FTC site map and navigate from page to page in source-code view without triggering the redirect. Again, it’s entirely possible I’m missing something, but if the full site is actually still running, it’s hard to see how a redirect after the real page is served could be avoiding any expenditures.

Read it.

The pattern of federal agencies spending recklessly at the end of the fiscal year so they use up their whole budgets was the topic of a post here earlier. Now the Washington Post has a wonderful article with even more examples….

Read it.

You might wonder how it’s any business of the Federal government how faculty at the University of Montana think.

I wonder that, too.

The University of Montana’s (UM’s) new sexual harassment policy threatens the First Amendment rights of students and faculty. Drafted in consultation with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), the policy was approved by the agencies last week. Faculty members are also alarmed that a list of faculty who refuse to attend the university’s trainings on the new policy will be reported to the federal government.

“Not only has the federal government approved an unconstitutional speech code, it has demanded a list of the names of faculty members who don’t attend a training session about it,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. “Worse still, students and faculty may face discipline even if they are cleared of harassment and discrimination charges. Couple these flaws with broad, vague definitions, and the result is that UM has vast discretion to silence students and faculty members, to the detriment of fairness, clarity, and free speech.”

Read it.

The government giveth, and the government taketh away. And that’s what you get when you depend on government to provide your stuff.

 Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District on Friday began repossessing iPads from students at at least two area schools following last week’s revelation that some students had bypassed security restrictions on Apple’s tablets, accordin gto the Los Angeles Times.

Can’t have students being uppity and getting off the reservation. People would talk.

Wonder how many of them have been sold on the street already?

Monomakhos tells the tale.

Folks, we’re hosed. As you may know, I’m a healthcare professional who happens to work for a major corporation. The other day I got an interesting postcard from my employer telling me that as of Oct 1, my family will be dropped from their health plan. In other words, I won’t “have the healthcare plan I wanted, or the doctor I already have” as Glorious Leader promised us. But don’t worry! The postcard said that I’ll have “more choices at more affordable rates”!

You’ll pardon me while I withhold judgment until open enrollment is over. After all, my wife and I are in our mid-fifties, I’m a Type II diabetic with a history of cholesterol problems and a slightly elevated blood pressure. Case in point: my wife recently had a complaint and had to negotiate with our doctor on how to deal with it. Not see him mind you, negotiate with him. As in, if I see you for this complaint, I’ll have to code it in a certain way and you’ll have to wait next year for your “annual.” As in, I can see you now but you can’t ask any more questions about other complaints because I’m duty bound to code them in and I won’t get reimbursed for treating you for any additional complaints because I already coded you in for the complaint you made an appointment for. You’ll need another appointment for that Ma’am. (And how exactly is this going to decrease costs?) So she negotiated to have her annual a little bit ahead of time since during a general physical additional medical concerns can be addressed –at least for now. It was an interesting ballet, negotiate about what was going to be discussed at an appointment.

OK, at this point, Socialist-Liberal Do-Gooder will interject: “What are you complaining about, she got treated, no?” Well yes, after several days of going back-and-forth between us and our doctor and finding a way to get the treatment she needed. That’s because I’m in healthcare and I was able to advise her what to do. And even then I had to think about it. (Sorry, I won’t open a sidebar on Monomakhos advising people about how to navigate this thicket. Not for free anyway.) I’m sorry, but do you not see how laborious this process is? Do you think our family physician has the time and energy to negotiate this kind of diagnostic strategy with each and every one of his patients? Quick answer: no, never in a million years.

That’s why medical care will go to hell. There is simply no way that “X” number of doctors can see the “Y” amount of patients in “Z” amount of time while embracing the additional (Z+n) burdens necessary to make sure that the bills are paid. Nor should we forget the amount of bills that never get paid, which go down the ever-expanding black hole of uncollectables. Eventually Z+n is going to result in fewer doctors which will result in fewer patients getting treated. After a decade of this, costs might actually decrease but that would be thanks to the rise in morbidity and mortality.

Read it.

The Little Sisters’ ministry of caring for the elderly poor does not fall within the Obama administration’s narrow exemption for “religious employers.” On January 1, 2014, the Sisters will face IRS fines unless they violate their faith by hiring an insurer to provide their employees with contraceptives and abortifacients.

“These women just want to take care of the elderly poor without being forced to violate the faith that animates their work,” said Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “The money they collect should be used to care for the poor like it always has – and not to pay the IRS.”

Sounds reasonable to me. But of course when is the government ever reasonable?

Read it.

And why not? They’ve already redefined ‘reduced increase in spending’ to mean ‘cut’, ‘racism’ to mean ‘anything a black person, especially a black Congressperson, doesn’t like’, and ‘obeying the Constitution’ as ‘extremism’.

The federal government wants to reduce the number of Americans diagnosed each year with cancer. But not by better preventive care or healthier living. Instead, the government wants to redefinethe term “cancer” so that fewer conditions qualify as a true cancer.

This is just a practice round. As my Division CPO used to say, ‘And if you believe that one, I’ll tell you another one.’

Read it.

While Vanderbilt’s health care operations have produced positive operating results in each of the last five fiscal years, the report says, “future changes in the health care market and regulations could adversely affect future financial results of operations.”

Read it.

For a government shutdown if it happens.

The U.S. Senate is dysfunctional because of Harry Reid.

No budget.

No votes on most House legislation.

No nothing except his way or the highway.

We’re seeing it again in the Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling battles.  Because Reid has shut down and shut out Republican voices, the only way to raise budget issues is using Continuing Resolution and Debt Ceiling deadlines — a necessity in Harry Reid’s Senate not the choice Republicans wanted.

The poisoning of our politics by Reid did not start with the latest battles, it has been his methodology for years.

Read it.

It’s a nice theory, but crippling IT glitches, political roadblocks, and sneaky insurance options may throw a wrench in the President’s plans.

Assuming that the President actually has a plan, which appears questionable.

Prepare yourself to be shocked: a massive government IT project is experiencing glitches. Technical problems will prevent both small businesses and the fine citizens of Washington D.C. from signup on the Tuesday launch.

Government workers aren’t in the business of providing services to the public. They’re in the business of hiring and paying government workers.

Part of the problem is that the insurance exchanges are being run by the States themselves, unlike the airline industry which releases prices to the public, so that comparison websites can develop their own systems. I reached out to the HHS last week to understand why the government decided to handle this completely on their own and have yet to receive a response.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Perhaps more strange, the White House is turned into a mini version of Tiger Beat magazine to attract young invincibles. “Thanks for spreading the word. #ROAR,” Prezi O-B tweeted his BFF, Katy Perry, thanking her for spreading the word about the new healthcare exchange.

Nothing strange about it. The President has treated his administration as if it were a high-school football game from day one. It’s all he knows. I keep expecting him to dust off all of those old Jerry Ford ‘WIN: Whip Inflation Now’ buttons any minute now.

While Obamacare mandates coverage, it doesn’t mean that youngins will sign up in a timely manner or choose not to pay the fine ($95 or 1% of their income, whichever is bigger). Currently, 26.5% of 18-34-year-olds are uninsured. In order to bring down costs overall, Obamacare is betting on healthy young citizens to subsidize the costs of their elders.

Yeah, good luck with that. Young people make a lot of politically correct noise, but when it comes to spending their actual money, they’re just as selfish as grown-ups.

There’s also politics. Several Repubican-run states have flat-out refused to cooperate with Obamacare implementation and help inform consumers, all while the House of Representatives has voted (unsuccessfully) 40 times to repeal or defund the measure.

Yeah, isn’t that whole democracy thing incredibly tedious? It keeps getting in the way of our Cool Progressive Programs, the ones that cost a mint and deliver shit.

…ultimately it all depends on your faith in a government-regulated free market and the ability of semi-educated consumers to make the smart choice.

And if that doesn’t scare you, you haven’t been paying attention. (Hint: If it’s ‘government-regulated’, it’s not a free market. Funny how many supposedly smart people can’t see that fundamental fact.)

Read it.

A police officer from Somers Police Department in New York has been caught kicking and then taking a pro-Second Amendment sign from the yard of Jon Gibson of Lake Lincolndale, New York.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

It had been stolen three times previously, so Gibson installed a camera on his rural property to catch the culprit. He said he was shocked that his camera captured photos of an officer in uniform kicking and then taking the sign.

‘When policemen break the law, there is no law — just a fight for survival.’ — Billy Jack

Read it.

To take Harkin seriously, though, if he thinks things are so dangerous, perhaps he should call on the White House to stop calling Republicans “terrorists.” Such language is not conducive to the “new tone” Democrats keep trying to shove down their opponents’ throats. Such language does nothing but create more rage.

He might also call on the Team Obama, which just sat down with the Holocaust-denying, terrorist-supporting Iranian regime, to negotiate with Republicans over domestic policy. Or are Republicans now worse than actual, nuclear-weapon-desiring apocalyptic mullahs jonesing for the end of days?

Harkin won’t do that. His comments are a scam, supporting a scam government pushing scam politics to a new level in American history.

Much like the ‘progressives’ from which they spring, Democrat politicians (like their base, the unions and environmentalists and feminists and wackos of all descriptions) are constantly railing about how people exercising their rights and participating in the political process are taking us to the brink of the Abyss; all of which is premised on their opponents unwillingness to surrender.

Obama is much the same way. He keeps fulminating about how Republicans are taking us to the brink of destruction when the cure for that is in his own hand–just sign the damned bill that the FUCKING HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE OF AMERICA sent to him, presumably reflecting what the American people want done. (Notice that Democrats are always quick to hail the House of Representatives as the Voice of the People when Democrats are in control; when Republicans are a majority, not so much.)

Read it.

Not really news, but a useful reminder.

Read it.

On the Obamacare health insurance exchanges, being married can cost you a lot. Get divorced (or avoid getting married, if you live together), and you save $7,230 per year if you are a fairly typical 40-year-old couple with kids (example: the husband working full-time, and the wife working part time, with the husband making $70,000, and the wife making $23,000). If you are a 60-year-old couple with equal incomes and no kids, and you make $62,041 a year, you save $11,028 a year by getting divorced or remaining unmarried. These are the amounts of money you will lose if you get married, since you will lose this amount of taxpayer subsidies due to Obamacare’s discriminatory treatment of married versus unmarried couples. That’s the reality confirmed by an Obamacare “calculator” provided by the pro-Obamacare Kaiser Family Foundation showing how Obamacare’s “tax credits” work.

More radioactive fallout from the ‘progressive’ assumption that ‘different’ means ‘better’.

How that Hope & Change working out for you?

Read it.

While at the Sheriff’s Department Music-Peed asked that the cops sent to investigate the vehicle not shoot her dogs when they arrived at her property. The 10-month-old puppy Ammo was described by Music-Peed as being jumpy but friendly.

However, according to Music-Peed’s roommate Kyle Sewall, when Sergeant D. Little (who shot another dog last year) arrived at the property he shot Ammo point blank in the head.

Read it.

How dare she work for herself! Doesn’t he know she’s supposed to depend on the government? The very idea….

Read it.

TSALike an abused spouse increasingly appalled by a long-time partner’s behavior, Americans are falling out of love with the federal workers who enforce an endless litany of mandates, taxes and intrusions into their lives. New data from George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration finds that, in addition to losing faith in the federal government itself, as other polls have revealed, a record number of Americans are losing faith in its loyal minions.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

When David Schaffner III, 16, discovered he’d accidentally brought a pocketknife with him to a high school football game, he immediately sought out a security guard and turned it over. His principal didn’t appreciate Schaffner’s honesty. The principal not only kicked the boy out of the game, he suspended Schaffner for 10 days from Pennsylvania’s Fox Chapel High School.

Send your kid to a government school,
And he will turn out a fool —
That’s the way
Things work today;
Your tax bucks at work and play!

Read it.

The Mangiones’s insurance company, Humana, declined to comment. Humana did, however, include the following explanation in the rate spike announcement letter:

    If your policy premium increased, you should know this isn’t unique to Humana—premium increases generally will occur industry-wide. Increases aren’t based on your individual claims or changes in health status. Many other factors go in to your premium including: ACA [Affordable Care Act—also known as Obamacare] compliance, including the addition of new essential health benefits.

How’s that Hope & Change working out for you?

Read it.

Following the Navy Yard shooting, University of Kansas journalism professor David Guth tweeted he hoped that children of NRA members are targeted in a future attack. He has since been put on administrative leave but is still being paid by the university.

Of course. Want a steady paycheck even after you’re caught? Get a government job!

Love the picture — reminds us that there’s an obesity epidemic in America. Let that be a lesson to all of us.

Read it.

Congress defined “affordable” as 9.5% or less of an employee’s wages, mostly to make sure people did not leave their workplace plans for subsidized coverage through the exchanges. But the “error” was that it only applies to the employee — and not his or her family. So, if an employer offers a woman affordable insurance, but doesn’t provide it for her family, they cannot get subsidized help through the state health exchanges.

How’s that Hope & Change working out for ya?

Read it.

When you’re well paid, your paid vacations masquerading as suspensions can be very lucrative.

And few are so well-paid as government workers.

Read it.

Hint: Some animals are more equal than others.

As part of its war on standards, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing employers around the country for using the results of background checks to screen applicants for employment. The EEOC’s theory is that such screening excludes a disproportionate amount of Black applicants and, at least in the cases where EEOC sues, is not justified by business necessity.

But the federal government screens applicants for employment. And given the size of its workforce and the disproportionate representation of Blacks among those with prior criminal convictions, the government’s screening for criminal convictions surely excludes Blacks from employment disproportionately.

Accordingly, when employers are sued by the government over background checking, they seek to discover how the government used background checks. The government, for its part, fights like hell to prevent such discovery.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

Last night, he detailed how the Intelligence Committee cleverly made documents briefly available right before Congress’ summer recess, but did it in such a way that nobody was likely to be made aware of it in order to make that “we held hearings but nobody came” claim. In short, they didn’t actually inform the House members’ offices at all, but did the congressional equivalent of posting a hand-written note on the bulletin board of the laundry room.

Makes you wonder what they’re trying to hide. (Perhaps any suggestion of a connection to intelligence. That’s just a guess, you understand.)

Read it.

‘Austerity’ is government-speak for ‘forced to use silver utensils rather than gold’.

To help understand what American austerity really looks like in 2013, we’ve helpfully listed the 17,000+ entries from the Federal Register (“The Daily Journal of the United States Government”) since sequestration took effect on March 1, 2013.

Not everything on the list is wasteful, of course. But is this a snapshot of a government cut to the bone?

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

This is one of those stories that doesn’t need to be characterized, let alone embellished. You can draw your own conclusions. Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing on Benghazi at which Patricia Smith and Charles Woods, the mother and father respectively of two of the men who were killed by terrorists, testified. The Democrats on the committee didn’t even have the decency to listen to what these victims of the Obama administration’s gross negligence had to say.

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In recent years, unions have successfully lobbied Democrat governors in states like Illinois and Connecticut to unionize home health care workers by executive action. The higher pay workers win is offset by the dues now owed to the union. The Labor Department’s action this week takes a step toward nationalizing this phenomenon.

A little known fact about union collective-bargaining agreements is that they can override federal rules and regulations. Federal regulations may require that employees who work more than 40 hours a week be paid time and a half, but a union contract can supercede that. “We know you are supposed to pay overtime,” a union boss could tell an employer. “But, recognize our union and negotiate a contract and we can waive that mandate.”

By adding more regulations to the home health-care industry, the feds are facilitating the union organizing efforts. They are providing more rules that can be waived in a collective bargaining agreement.

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Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but since the 2008 meltdown, the government’s housing specialist, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has not been active in the debate over housing policy. That might seem odd, but given the department’s role in the mortgage meltdown, it’s no wonder the agency would prefer to stay out of the limelight.

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But then Lehman folded, and suddenly the government went silent on HUD’s great work. Instead, in 2010, the new HUD secretary, Shawn Donovan, told the House Financial Services Committee: “Seeing their market share decline [between 2004 and 2006] as a result of a change of demand, the GSEs made the decision to widen their focus from safer prime loans and begin chasing the non-prime market, loosening longstanding underwriting and risk management standards along the way.” In other words, as Fannie and Freddie plunged headlong into the subprime abyss, HUD was just a bystander.

There is no doubt what really happened. Between 1997 and 2007, HUD’s affordable-housing policies under two administrations built an enormous mortgage bubble—nine times as large as any bubble in modern history—and when this bubble collapsed, it caused a 30%-40% decline in housing prices. This left homeowners who had limited financial resources and no equity in their houses unable to refinance or sell, causing an unprecedented number of mortgage defaults. Shocked by these numbers, investors fled mortgage-backed securities, making them useless for short-term financing by financial institutions like Lehman. The result was a panic and a financial crisis.

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After extending health care coverage to many of its part-time employees for years, Trader Joe’s has told workers who log fewer than 30 hours a week that they will need to find insurance on the Obamacare exchanges next year, according to a confidential memo from the grocer’s chief executive.

In the memo to staff dated Aug. 30, Trader Joe’s CEO Dan Bane said the company will cut part-timers a check for $500 in January and help guide them toward finding a new plan under the Affordable Care Act. The company will continue to offer health coverage to workers who carry 30 hours or more on average. …