Northwest Indiana Discussion

Rewind to 2009. The fight over ObamaCare is raging, and a few news outlets report that something looks ethically rotten in the White House. An outside group funded by industry is paying the former firm of senior presidential adviser David Axelrod to run ads in favor of the bill. That firm, AKPD Message and Media, still owes Mr. Axelrod money and employs his son.

The story quickly died, but emails recently released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee ought to resurrect it. The emails suggest the White House was intimately involved both in creating this lobby and hiring Mr. Axelrod’s firm — which is as big an ethical no-no as it gets.

Mr. Axelrod — who left the White House last year — started AKPD in 1985. The firm earned millions helping run Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Mr. Axelrod moved to the White House in 2009 and agreed to have AKPD buy him out for $2 million. But AKPD chose to pay Mr. Axelrod in annual installments — even as he worked in the West Wing. This agreement somehow passed muster with the Office of Government Ethics, though the situation at the very least should have walled off AKPD from working on White-House priorities.

It didn’t. The White House and industry were working hand-in-glove to pass ObamaCare in 2009, and among the vehicles supplying ad support was an outfit named Healthy Economy Now (HEN). News stories at the time described this as a “coalition” that included the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the American Medical Association, and labor groups—suggesting these entities had started and controlled it.

House emails show HEN was in fact born at an April 15, 2009 meeting arranged by then-White House aide Jim Messina and a chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. The two politicos met at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and invited representatives of business and labor.

I do recall hearing a collective shriek from the usual bunch of teachers and municipal employees when Mitch Daniels said he would be sending checks to Indiana's taxpayers instead of funding exotic fact-finding trips and unearned raises for government workers.

Yes, Iraq Definitely Had WMD, Vast Majority Of Polled Republicans Insist

06/21/2012

WASHINGTON -- How misinformed are Republicans about world affairs? If presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's assertion that Russia is "without question our number one geopolitical foe" is any indication, then the answer would appear to be very.

A new poll supports that theory.

The poll, constructed by Dartmouth government professor Benjamin Valentino and conducted by YouGov from April 26 to May 2, found that fully 63 percent of Republican respondents still believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded in 2003. By contrast, 27 percent of independents and 15 percent of Democrats shared that view.

Jim Lobe, chief of the Inter Press Service's Washington bureau, reported the finding in his blog on Wednesday.

The Bush administration's insistence that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and might give them to terrorists was a key selling point in its campaign to take the country to war. It turned out to be untrue.

Debate continues over whether former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and other top officials knew there were no WMD, but intentionally deceived the American people and Congress because they were intent on attacking Iraq for less palatable reasons -- or whether they managed to convince themselves that it was true using cherry-picked intelligence.

There is no reality-based argument that Iraq actually had WMD, after extensive searches found none, but this is hardly the first time many Americans have been certain of something that simply wasn't true.

A Washington Post poll in September 2003 found that nearly 70 percent of all Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- even though he was not.

Bush, Cheney and others consistently linked al Qaeda to Hussein in speeches they gave in the run-up to war, and the media rarely pushed back. But neither Bush nor Cheney continued to claim that there were actual WMDs in Iraq once the searches came up empty -- although they both continued to insist that Saddam had the "capability" to produce them.

Rather than a failure of the media, therefore, this latest poll result seems to indicate a refusal -- unique to the modern Republican Party -- to acknowledge facts.

According to this poll, an even larger proportion of Republican respondents who said Iraq had WMD -- 64 percent -- said they have either always believed (or have come to believe) that Barack Obama was born in another country, which he was not.

Overall, the poll found Republicans to be considerably more militaristic in their worldview than Democrats and independents.

In a finding that would indicate plenty of GOP support for yet another war in the Middle East, nearly two-thirds of Republicans said it's very likely that if Iran produces a nuclear weapon, it would use it against Israel.

Getting rid of teachers and the continuing of dumbing down of the American electorate works right into the hands of the GOP. See the southern red states, creationism, global warming, etc.
Tell the sheep over and over and over we need more tax cuts and more deregulation, Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya who will take your guns away and the stupid people believe it.
It's why we have conservative morons who vote against their own best interest.
Goebbels would be proud. Karl Rove is is very proud

Democrats are using the Supreme Court’s expected ruling Thursday on President Obama’s healthcare law to raise campaign funds.

The House Democrats’ campaign arm on Wednesday said if the court strikes down Obama’s law, “Democrats will need to redouble our efforts, fighting to ensure universal healthcare that’s affordable and accessible to every American is a reality.”

I just know that the rethuglicons just hate this notion:

Millions will receive refund checks from health insurance companies[/color]

Emails: White House worked with health industry to send business to Axelrod’s firm
Daily Caller, by Alex Pappas

The charge that the Obama administration coordinated with the health-care industry in 2009 during the Obamacare fight to send a good chunk of business to the consulting firm founded by presidential adviser David Axelrod has resurfaced in the news media.

At issue is whether the White House worked with officials inside the industry to form the outside group, “Healthy Economy Now,” which ran pro-Obamacare ads with the help of Axelrod’s former political consulting firm, AKPD Message and Media.

In 2009, the firm not only still employed Axelrod’s son, but it still owed the presidential adviser money as part of his buy-out deal with the firm ahead of leaving to work in the White House.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/27/charg ... z1z5hs27OW

Health insurance refunds on the way for Arizonans

PHOENIX (AP) -
Arizona consumers and businesses reportedly can expect to collect more than $36 million in refunds this summer from health-insurance companies.

That's under new provisions of the nation's health-care law called the Affordable Care Act.

A report from Washington, D.C.-based Consumers Union says people who have purchased individual health-insurance plans will get about $24 million in refund checks or credits to future premiums.

The report also says insurers will refund more than $9 million to employers with small-group plans of fewer than 50 people. Companies with larger plans of more than 50 people will get an additional refund of nearly $3 million.

The first round of rebates must be sent to customers by Aug. 1.

$19.6M in health insurance refunds due to S.C. consumers


By Chuck Crumbo
ccrumbo@scbiznews.com
Published June 21, 2012

About $19.6 million worth of refunds on health insurance premiums will be paid to S.C. individual policyholders and companies that provide the benefit, the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced today.

The refunds are being issued to meet the spending threshold established by the health care law, the agency said. Called the medical loss ratio, the threshold requires health insurers to spend at least 80% of premium dollars collected from individual policyholders and small businesses of two to 50 employees on health care, rather than business expenses. Carriers who write policies for large employers — those with 51 or more workers — must spend 85% of premiums on health care. In all cases, the insurance companies will be required to refund consumers.

In South Carolina, refunds will total $19,630,152 and will benefit 251,632 consumers, according to the agency. The average refund will be $131.

The House Democrats’ campaign arm on Wednesday said if the court strikes down Obama’s law, “Democrats will need to redouble our efforts, fighting to ensure universal healthcare that’s affordable and accessible to every American is a reality.”

Got good news and bad news for you, Mr. President. The good news is that Chief Justice John Roberts just saved your legacy and, perhaps, your presidency by writing for the Supreme Court majority to rule health care reform constitutional.

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Roberts wrote in an opinion that said the Constitution’s commerce clause could not be used to save the bill.

But you can count on them to use Roberts’ bill-saving justification to label Obama a tax-and-spend liberal.

“I’m sure they’ll nail us on taxes and I’m sure it will work,” said a senior White House official speaking on condition of anonymity. “But, given the alternative, that’s a bitter pill I’m ready to swallow.”

Did the Supreme Court just make the Affordable Care Act much less affordable?

The calculations are complex, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said it will need some time to review the situation. But an early back-of-the-envelope analysis by a former CBO director suggests that Thursday’s ruling could sharply raise the cost of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin now serves as president of the conservative American Action Forum, which filed several amicus briefs in support of overturning the health-care law. Holtz-Eakin, who advised 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain before he lost to Obama, is no friend of the administration.

Still, he asks a relevant question: Given the terms of the ruling, what’s the worst-case scenario for the federal budget? His answer: around $50 billion a year.

“There’s real money at stake here,” Holtz-Eakin said.

How does it work? The Affordable Care Act seeks to cover the uninsured in two ways: It requires states to expand Medicaid to cover those earning less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, with the federal government initially picking up the full tab (though federal funding would later fall to cover just 90 percent of the cost of expansion). It also creates new subsidies to help people at slightly higher income levels afford private insurance on new insurance exchanges.