Thanks to
Obamacare, residents in California will be paying between 22 percent and
88 percent more for their health care premiums, the state insurance
commissioner reported.
The rate increases vary, based on age and
where the plan participant lives, Newsmax reported. And now, Democratic
Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones is using those predictions to press
for more regulatory control on the industry, saying Proposition 45 — a
measure he’s trying to get on the ballot for November — would let his
office clamp down on insurance price hikes.
“Unless Proposition 45
is passed or some other law is enacted to provide health insurance rate
regulation and the requirement that health insurers and HMOs justify
their rates, we are going to continue to see dramatic year-over-year
increases,” he said in a media briefing by telephone, reported by
Bloomberg News.
Covered California, the state’s insurance exchange, said the rates will take effect in 2015.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama criticized House Republicans on
Friday for planning to pass "the most extreme and unworkable versions of
a bill that they already know is going nowhere" amid an ongoing border
crisis.
"They're not even trying to actually solve the problem,"
Obama said of the House GOP at a press conference from the White House.
"This is a message bill that they couldn't pull off yesterday, so they
made it a little more extreme so maybe they can pass it today. Just so
they can check a box before they're leaving town for a month."
Obama has requested $3.7 billion in funding
so agencies can effectively care for the unaccompanied minors at the
border, quickly get through their removal cases and try to deter more
from coming. More than 57,500 unaccompanied minors, most from
violence-wracked countries in Central America, have been apprehended at
the border since October.
But Obama is unlikely to get that funding any time soon.
The Senate left Washington on Thursday
without passing its plan to address the border crisis. And while the
House is likely to pass its own funding measure on Friday, it's one that
would never get through the Senate and will be coupled with a bill to
end one of Obama's key immigration policies that keeps undocumented
young people who have been in the U.S. for seven years or more from
being deported.
The House is planning to vote later Friday on a package that would provide $694 million
in funding to deal with the situation along the border. Unlike the
Senate bill, the House measure calls for a number of policy changes,
including sending National Guard troops to the border and changing a 2008 law
so that unaccompanied minors from countries other than Mexico and
Canada can be deported more easily. That bill was reworked after being
removed from the vote schedule on Thursday, when it became clear it
didn't have enough Republican votes to pass. The previous bill had
already received a veto threat from the White House, and the new
legislation was made even more conservative to get additional GOP
members on board.
The Obama administration on Friday condemned violations of the
internationally-brokered Gaza cease-fire by Palestinian militants and
said the apparent abduction of an Israeli soldier would be a “barbaric”
action.
Secretary of State John Kerry denounced as
“outrageous” a militant attack that killed two Israeli soldiers and led
to the alleged abduction. Saying it was an affront to assurances to
respect the cease-fire given to the United States and United Nations,
which brokered the truce. He demanded that the militant Hamas movement
that controls Gaza move to “immediately and unconditionally release” the
missing Israeli soldier.
“The United States condemns in the strongest possible
terms today’s attack,” Kerry said in a statement released by the State
Department as he was flying back to the U.S. from an official trip to
India.
Kerry said he had spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu about the developments, which led Israel to declare the
cease-fire over. Kerry said it would be a “tragedy if this outrageous
attack leads to more suffering and loss of life on both sides of this
conflict.”
“The international community must now redouble its efforts to end the
tunnel and rocket attacks by Hamas terrorists on Israel and the
suffering and loss of civilian life,” he said.
According to Netanyahu’s office, the prime minister told Kerry that
“Hamas has unilaterally and grossly violated the humanitarian
cease-fire” and “will bear the consequences of their actions.”
As the Ebola outbreak continues to cause concern, President Barack Obama has signed an amendment to an executive order that would allow him to order the apprehension and detention of Americans who merely show signs of “respiratory illness.”
The amendment signed by Obama replaces subsection (b) of
the original Bush executive
order which referred only to SARS. Obama’s
amendment allows for the detention of Americans who display, “Severe
acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms
of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being
transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have
the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.”
Although Ebola
was listed on the original executive order signed by Bush, Obama’s
amendment ensures that Americans who merely show signs of respiratory
illness, with the exception of influenza, can be forcibly detained by
medical authorities.
Although the quarantining of people suspected of being infected with the Ebola virus
seems like a perfectly logical move, the actual preconditions for this
to happen aren’t restricted to just those suffering from the disease.
As we highlighted earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has measures in place for dealing with an outbreak of a communicable disease which allow for the quarantine of “well persons” who “do not show symptoms” of the disease.
The art of measuring the size of the economy just got a new box of crayons.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced last week it would be
changing the guidelines with which it calculates Gross Domestic Product,
more familiarly known as the GDP, the standard by which the size and
growth of the economy is measured.
The change comes after more than five years of economic stagnation
that, despite frequent claims of a strengthening recovery, have seen
high unemployment and extremely slight growth in the size of the
economy.
GDP is calculated by adding up the total amount of private consumption, investment, government spending, and net
exports. The new changes, which will include definitional changes to
expand what is counted in GDP, are expected to add 3 percent to the GDP
report, while not changing the actual output of the economy.
The agency claims
the changes in calculation “more accurately portray the evolving U.S.
economy and to provide for consistent comparisons with data for the
economies of other nations.”
Outspoken investment broker and financial commentator Peter Schiff describes the change as “propaganda” in his radio show.
“That’s what the government does. Whenever they don’t like the
results, they change the methodology for calculating those
results,” Schiff says in a new SchiffRadio report.
“Now it doesn’t mean that the economy is actually any bigger, but it means they can pretend it’s bigger,” he added.
Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, asserts
that the underlying reason behind making the GDP looking bigger is so
that the debt looks smaller. Economists agree that if public debt
continues to exceed GDP past sustainable levels, economic
growth will suffer because more and more of the economy is dedicated to
paying interest on loans rather than spending on investment or
consumption or things that create growth within an economy.
“[I]f you have a BS GDP, that’s artificially inflated based on
creative accounting, than it means the economy isn’t generating enough
income to service all of that debt,” Schiff says.
In a recent proclamation, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that
he intends to give city jobs and internships to so-called "DREAMers,"
youngsters in the country illegally.
In the announcement, Emanuel proudly stated
that "for the first time" Chicago is "opening up nearly 23,000
City-funded internship, volunteer, and job opportunities for
undocumented students, or 'DREAMers.'"
"DREAMers and DACA recipients are assets that we need to nurture and
develop like precious natural resources for the benefit of the entire
community," Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez (D-IL) says in the
announcement. "They are an integral part of Chicago’s workforce of
tomorrow. Once again, the City of Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel are
leading the way on the inclusion of our immigrant communities."
The announcement goes on to lament the "barriers" that illegal alien teens find to gaining city jobs:
In December 2012, the Chicago New Americans Plan highlighted barriers
that DREAMer students faced, including language barriers and
information gaps about the opportunities available to them. These
impediments have in the past served as an obstacle for these students
and their families, in some cases preventing them from accessing
critical enrichment programs.
It seems that one "barrier" was not taken notice of – that these
students are not citizens and not legally eligible for such
opportunities.
In the announcement, Emanuel also promised to "eliminate
administrative barriers to employment and internship" for DREAMers and
said that he is ordering city staffers to help these students file for
"deferred action documentation."
Mayor Emanuel also announced that he is also going to "train" city
authorities in how to aid illegal alien applicants with paperwork and in
how to get them government assistance.
The Mayor said, "The City will begin training its staff to ensure
they are well equipped to help immigrant students receive accurate and
helpful information about opportunities available to them."
"We are conducting tailored training for City staff to provide
Chicago's DREAMers with opportunities to excel outside the classroom and
obtain valuable professional experience in City government," Department
of Human Resources (DHR) Commissioner Soo Choi said in the
announcement. "With this training, we can ensure that DHR and all City
staff are well equipped to provide DREAMers with the information they
need so they can continue contributing to this city."
Although the American people have taken to the streets in support of Israel, even calling for a day of prayer on August 3, diplomatic relations between the two allies have been strained.
That, of course, is due to the usual anti-Israel rhetoric from President Obama, Secretary John Kerry, and their friends on the left. Although they are under daily rocket attack from radical Islamic terrorist groups in Gaza like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Obama administration only seems to call on Israel to exercise restraint.
As a result, Israeli officials have made numerous comments, both public and private, questioning their ally’s commitment to the Jewish state.
Now additional action being taken by the State Department is likely to add to the tension between the two countries as reports say that the United States is cancelling tourist visa applications from Israeli citizens.
The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv blames “staffing and security” for the cancelled visas,
saying that, while open, the facility “is operating at reduced staffing
until further notice,” and is therefore only processing emergency
requests.
What’s worse, this seems to be the culmination of not just months,
but years of shoddy treatment of Israeli citizens by embassy staffers,
according to the report. It cites an investigation announced by John
Kerry in April that discovered that “the rejection rate of visa
applications for young Israelis ages 21-26 had doubled, from 16% in 2009
to 32% in 2014.”
The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, later said that the
United States was close to resolving the problem, but even Israeli
defense officials say the problem has been growing worse for years.
That the visa rejection rate for Israelis doubled from Obama’s first
year in office to his fifth should not come as much of a surprise. This
is a president who releases al-Qaeda terrorists from Guantanamo Bay,
supports the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists in Egypt, and tries to “hit
the reset button” with Russia.
It’s just one more symptom of this president’s inability to recognize the difference between America’s friends and her enemies.
Please share this article on Facebook and Twitter if you agree that
America should treat its allies better than the Obama administration has
been treating Israel.
Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents a district in Houston, has said some real doozies in the past. She’s called for martial law. She’s claimed the Constitution is only 400 years old. She even referred to herself as a freed slave. But with her recent whopper said on the House floor, she was caught in an outright lie.
The self-described ‘freed slave,’ in keeping with the Democrat narrative
of convincing their base Republicans in the House are moving to impeach
Obama, got on her soapbox to claim that such a move to impeach was never tried
under Bush. In fact, she said they did not try to impeach Bush because,
as president, he had to authority to do whatever he wanted. However,
she never said such a thing.
But, Bush didn’t have the
authority to bypass Congress at his whim, just as Obama does not. Beyond
that, not only did Democrats attempt to move for impeachment of Bush,
Sheila Jackson Lee co-sponsored a bill in an attempt to do just that! In
addition, she gave a speech on the House floor with reasons why she
believed he should be impeached.
As if that lie was not bad
enough, Sheila Jackson Lee’s office recently didn’t just berate an
American citizen who called to ask questions about her contradictory
statements, i.e. lies, they threatened the gentlemen in question.
Dwayne Homer is a conservative blogger with PJ Media. He detailed
his experience with not one, but two members of Sheila Jackson Lee’s
staff who used tactics of thuggery, degradation, and rudeness.
The first staffer not only used homosexual slurs to describe Homer, but he threatened him with the IRS.
The mainstream media’s portrayal of the “humanitarian” crisis at the
border has some truth to it, in that there are some unaccompanied minors
entering the country illegally who are deserving of humane care and
treatment. Those children, however, represent only a very small
percentage–less than a fifth–of all illegal immigrants, estimates say.
The remainder are adults, many of whom pose a significant threat to American safety. Some are criminals with violent pasts, gang members, and drug smugglers.
Now a report obtained by from Fox News illustrates how these criminals are endangering American law enforcement officials at the border.
Among the incidents detailed in the report are a standoff with a gang
member wanted for murder that resulted in multiple police officers
being wounded and numerous incidents of authorities taking fire from
automatic weapons on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
In addition, civilians have been exposed to risk from “gang members
brazenly approaching people in their homes,” the report says. Ranchers
have also seen men “crossing into the U.S. wearing camouflage and
carrying long arms and automatic weapons.”
Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Union,
Rio Grande Valley Sector, says that violent incidents against law
enforcement officers have been on the rise in recent weeks. “It is
evident that we need more agents in the field to address the various
threats,” he says.
Perhaps most disturbingly, the report details the nationalities of
over 6,000 people taken into custody during just one week. Not
surprisingly, a third of the illegals were from Mexico, and most of the
rest from Central America. However, “there also were people from Russia,
Morocco, China, Cuba and India, among other nations,” according to the
report.
These are the people who were caught. There are, obviously,
no details available about the nationalities of those who evaded law
enforcement, but it isn’t difficult to create a worst case scenario list
that would include terrorists from one of several groups with no love
for the United States.
It is bad when men and women of law enforcement face risks, and
patriotic Americans are grateful for their courage and sacrifice. It is
another thing completely, however, to put civilian lives at risk by
opening America’s borders to any and all who have the means and the
determination to make the journey.
Joseph Miller is the pen name for a ranking Department of
Defense official with a background in U.S. special operations and combat
experience in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has worked in strategic
planning.
The report is in, and the review of the president’s foreign policy is
clear: If there is not an immediate course-reversal, the United States
is in serious danger.
In 2013, the United States Institute for Peace, “a
congressionally-created, independent, nonpartisan institution whose
mission is to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflicts around
the world,” was asked to assist the National Defense Panel with
reviewing the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). The National Defense
Panel is a congressional-mandated bipartisan commission that’s co-chairs
were appointed by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
On July 31, the National Defense Panel released its long-awaited
report on the effects of the QDR and delivered its findings to Congress.
The panel pulled no punches — its findings were a scathing indictment
of Obama’s foreign policy, national security policy, and defense policy.
The panel found that president Barack Obama’s QDR, military force
reductions, and trillion-dollar defense budget cuts are dangerous — and
will leave the country in a position where it is unable to respond to
threats to our nation’s security. This, the panel concluded, must be
reversed as soon as possible.
In particular, the report addresses the need for the administration
to return to the flexible response doctrine — a policy where the
military was tasked with being capable of fighting two wars at the same
time. Given the current state of affairs and the threats posed to our
nation, the panel felt that the two-war doctrine was still required to
meet our nation’s national security challenges. The man-power reductions
and budget cuts are both reflections of this change in policy, so it
must be altered before that is possible.
So what is the flexible response doctrine, and why is it so important?
In 1961, the Kennedy administration sought to remake U.S. defense
doctrine after concluding that former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s
“New Look” doctrine, which focused on mutually-assured destruction, was
inappropriate for the Cold War. Kennedy decided that the United States
would adopt a “Flexible Response Doctrine,” in which we would hold
adversaries at bay through strategic deterrence and the ability to fight
two wars — plus a smaller conflict — at the same time. That doctrine
carried the United States through the Cold War and all of the other
so-called shooting wars that followed, despite numerous challenges from
nation states and non-state actors alike.
In 2012, the Obama administration decided to change the
two-and-a-half war policy of the Flexible Response doctrine, in part due
to the nation’s war fatigue, after having been at war for over a
decade, and also in response to budgetary constraints exacerbated by a
sluggish economy. The administration announced its intentions to
significantly reduce the defense budget and re-examine the acquisition
of major defense systems and hardware, shaping the future size and scope
of the U.S. military. Given that Obama was first elected on an antiwar
platform, this decision seems reasonable.
Here’s the problem: At the time the Obama administration announced
the change in our defense doctrine, the president was also in front of
the cameras threatening to use military force in Iran and Syria,
announcing a “strategic pivot” toward Asia to counter a rising China,
and swearing to uphold our defense treaties with Israel, Taiwan, South
Korea, NATO, etc, all while we were still at war in Afghanistan. How can
you threaten to take military action that could start a war when you
are already fighting one in Afghanistan if you have changed your
military doctrine to only fight one war at a time?
Some detractors may argue that this is a good thing, because it will
prevent the president from starting another war. It’s worth pointing out
that not all wars are of our choosing. The U.S. went to war twice in
the last 50 years because our homeland was attacked by enemy forces. And
unlike World War II, the enemy has not been defeated — even though the
president plans to withdraw our forces from Afghanistan and has chosen
to not take decisive action against these enemies in Iraq, Syria,
Africa, etc. — an enemy that still seeks to do us harm. The next war may
not be of our choosing. And the enemy has pledged to do just that.
-
order which referred only to SARS. Obama’s
amendment allows for the detention of Americans who display, “Severe
acute respiratory syndromes, which are diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms
of pneumonia or other respiratory illness, are capable of being
transmitted from person to person, and that either are causing, or have
the potential to cause, a pandemic, or, upon infection, are highly likely to cause mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
THE VOCR
Comments and opinions are always welcome.Email VOCR2012@Gmail.com with your input - Opinion - or news link - Intel
We look forward to the Interaction.