<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; cancel</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/tag/cancel/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 16:20:06 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>Berkeley&#8217;s Jihad Against Bill Maher</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/berkeleys-jihad-against-bill-maher/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=berkeleys-jihad-against-bill-maher</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/berkeleys-jihad-against-bill-maher/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 29 Oct 2014 04:58:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robert Spencer]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[bigot]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Maher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[commencement]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=244000</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest neo-fascist effort to destroy free speech and stifle debate about Islamic supremacism.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Maher-726.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-244001" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Maher-726-450x335.jpg" alt="Maher 726" width="361" height="269" /></a>This whole Bill Maher controversy is as illuminating as it is entertaining. Bill Maher was a darling of the Left when he was criticizing Christianity, but now that he has turned his gimlet eye to Islamic supremacism, the foes of free speech have turned against him with venom. Maher is scheduled to give the fall commencement address at the University of California-Berkeley, but Muslim students there have begun a petition drive to get him canceled.</p>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2014/10/26/students-spring-opposition-bill-maher-announced-keynote-speaker/">The Daily Californian</a></span> reported Sunday that</p>
<blockquote><p>the Change.org petition was authored by ASUC Senator Marium Navid, who is backed by the Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian Coalition, or MEMSA, and Khwaja Ahmed, an active MEMSA member. The petition, which urges students to boycott the decision and asks the campus to stop him from speaking, has already gathered more than 1,400 signatures as of Sunday.</p></blockquote>
<p>Anticipating that this petition would be outed as the fascist endeavor it is, Navid explained:</p>
<blockquote><p>“It’s not an issue of freedom of speech, it’s a matter of campus climate. The First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but it doesn’t give him the right to speak at such an elevated platform as the commencement. That’s a privilege his racist and bigoted remarks don’t give him.”</p></blockquote>
<p>The campaign against Maher is called “Free Speech, Not Hate Speech.”</p>
<p>“Free Speech, Not Hate Speech”: this is the mechanism that today’s Leftist and Islamic supremacist authoritarians are using to shut down any free and open discussion of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and oppression. This slogan was thrown at me last May when I spoke at Cal Poly; I responded (as you can see toward the end of <a href="http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/05/cal-poly-free-speech-under-attack-in-academia"><span style="color: #0433ff;">this video</span></a>) by pointing out that “hate speech” is in the eye of the beholder, and the one who is granted the power to determine what is or isn’t “hate speech” has been given extraordinary control over the public discourse, such that any opinions disliked by the ruling elite can be stigmatized and ruled out of bounds by means of this label.</p>
<p>Anyway, this was predictable: now that Bill Maher, despite his impeccable Leftist credentials, has dared to criticize Islam, he is “racist and bigoted,” and must be denied a platform. The reality is that anyone and everyone, no matter who they are and what they have done, is targeted in exactly the same way by Islamic supremacists and Leftists. They are determined that there be no genuine public debate about Islam and violence (and Islamic violence). They are determined to tar those who deviate from the “Islam is a religion of peace” line with smear labels that will make the broadly uninformed majority shun them and be intimidated into thinking that it is wrong to question the mainstream line.</p>
<p>There is no free speech, no free debate, no honest discussion about these issues in American academia today, or in the mainstream media. Maher is so prominent that he has shaken the Left’s stranglehold preventing public discussion of these issues, but they are circling the wagons now, and either Maher will be driven out of the circles of the enlightened elites, or will stop talking about this altogether. My money is on the latter.</p>
<p>There is, however, just a small chance that this targeting of Maher will bring mainstream attention to this neo-fascist effort to destroy the freedom of speech altogether and stifle public debate about jihad and Islamic supremacism.</p>
<p>Certainly the controversy itself has drawn mainstream attention: <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/28/cair-spokesman-compares-bill-maher-to-grand-dragon-of-the-kkk-video/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">MSNBC</span></a> had Ibrahim Hooper of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations on to discuss whether Berkeley should cancel Maher, and Hooper promptly likened Maher to “the grand dragon of the KKK.”</p>
<p>The way that Leftists and Islamic supremacists operate in order to demonize and destroy anyone who dares speak the truth about Islam and jihad is on full display during Hooper’s MSNBC appearance: first, they claim that someone who points out that Islam has doctrines encouraging violence and supremacism is “calling all Muslims terrorists” and charge him or her with racism and bigotry. Then they proceed as if those charges are already established as true, and demand that the truth-teller be denied a platform, canceled from speaking engagements, etc., because of this racism and bigotry.</p>
<p>The next step, if the Islamic supremacist campaign to get Maher disinvited from Berkeley succeeds, will be to use their victory as evidence of the correctness of their claims, when in fact it is only evidence that many event organizers and public officials don’t like controversy and will make whatever concessions they need to make so as to avoid it. If the campaign succeeds, then a few months from now, when Hamas-linked CAIR is trying to get Maher canceled from some other event, “Honest Ibe” Hooper will say, “The University of California at Berkeley was so disgusted with Maher’s bigotry that they canceled his planned appearance as their fall commencement speaker…”</p>
<p>Then a few more cancellations, and it will look as if all decent folk are shunning Maher out of disgust with his “hatred,” when all that is really going on is the victory of Hamas-linked CAIR’s intimidation and smear tactics.</p>
<p>Now what is needed is a public discussion of how Hamas-linked CAIR and other Islamic supremacists are trying to stifle free discussion of the jihad threat, and smear and destroy everyone who dares discuss that threat honestly. How about it, MSNBC?</p>
<p>*</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t miss <strong>Robert Spencer</strong> on <strong>The Glazov Gang</strong> discussing<span id="productTitle" class="a-size-large"><strong> The Fog of Jihad-Denial</strong>:</span></em></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/S8kxWhX0S50" width="460" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/berkeleys-jihad-against-bill-maher/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>81</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Conservatives Kill Amnesty Bill &#8212;- For Now</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/conservatives-kill-amnesty-bill/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=conservatives-kill-amnesty-bill</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/conservatives-kill-amnesty-bill/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:49:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Matthew Vadum]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amnesty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boehner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[border]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[house]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=237636</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A resurrection on the horizon? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Border_crossing_sign_Connell.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-237637" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Border_crossing_sign_Connell-450x337.jpg" alt="Border_crossing_sign_Connell" width="302" height="226" /></a>A conservative-led uprising among House Republicans scuttled Speaker John Boehner&#8217;s worse-than-useless border crisis and immigration legislation yesterday but party leaders vowed to try again today to pass the emergency funding bill.</p>
<p>&#8220;The bill as it was had more loopholes than a knitted afghan,&#8221; Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said in a statement released exclusively to FrontPage late yesterday.</p>
<blockquote><p>Tonight, many members were able to come together and hammer out many of those problems so that we could live with the result. Whether the final product gets the needed 218 votes will depend on how the final product looks once it is typed and printed.</p></blockquote>
<p>Conservatives are apparently doing the people&#8217;s will. A new poll <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/31/Exclusive-Polling-Data-Shows-GOP-Voters-Think-Republicans-Standing-Tough-On-Immigration-Most-Important-Issue"><span style="color: #0433ff;">suggests</span></a> Republican voters side with conservative lawmakers over House GOP leadership. Breitbart News reports:</p>
<blockquote><p>Polling data compiled by Tea Party Patriots and provided exclusively to Breitbart News shows that a majority of Republican voters think Republicans standing strong on immigration is more important than repealing Obamacare, getting to the bottom of the Benghazi or IRS scandals—or anything else for that matter.</p>
<p>When asked by TPP’s pollster which issue they think is the [most] important for Republicans in Congress to deal with, 34.6 percent of GOP voters said stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across our southern border. Stopping Obama’s &#8216;illegal overreach&#8217; with executive power came in a distant second with 24 percent of GOP voters saying that’s the most important, while 23 percent saying repealing Obamacare is the most important and just 7.2 percent say the IRS scandal is the most important issue and 2.8 percent say the Benghazi scandal is most important. A total of 8.4 percent of GOP voters said they don’t know or refused to answer.</p>
<p>The poll was conduc[t]ed with 1,000 likely GOP voters on Thursday, July 24 via a combination of cell phones and landlines nationwide, with a margin of error of 3.2 percent.</p></blockquote>
<p>The showdown between rank-and-file Republicans and their leaders in the House comes as Americans grow increasingly angry over the border crisis that has been <a href="http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/062514-706233-texas-border-immigration-wave-orchestrated-by-administration.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">staged and carefully choreographed</span></a> by the far-left levelers of the Obama administration.</p>
<p>President Obama threatens to plunge the nation into a grave constitutional crisis after Labor Day by using executive orders to grant a huge amnesty to millions of illegal aliens now in the United States. Of course, in the American system of government, Congress, not the president, is supposed to make laws. Congress has repeatedly refused to grant the amnesties that Obama seeks, but the president refuses to take no for an answer, pressing on regardless of how much damage he does to the country.</p>
<p>Lawmakers in the nation&#8217;s capital had been racing to wrap up legislative business and leave Washington for a five-week summer recess yesterday but Boehner put their vacation plans on hold after a revolt forced him to temporarily shelve his border bill that conservatives say is really amnesty legislation.</p>
<p>Some House members were already at the airport preparing to fly back to their congressional districts but &#8220;a sudden and fierce backlash forced Boehner to rescind the decision&#8221; to put the bill on the back burner, Breitbart News <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/31/Leaders-Try-To-Resusciatate-Dying-Border-Bill/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a>.</p>
<p>Lawmakers held a two-hour emergency meeting in mid-afternoon and agreed to stay in town and try to get some kind of legislation aimed at the border crisis to a vote.</p>
<p>Tea Party-backed Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a prominent anti-GOP establishment figure, said he was optimistic that a legislative package would pass.</p>
<p>“We are a good working team in there, it didn’t start with acrimony and didn’t end with acrimony, and now we’ve got a little work to do and I think we’ve got a shot to get’r done,” he said.</p>
<p>House Republicans are scheduled to meet at 9 o&#8217;clock this morning for a strategy session.</p>
<p>Conservatives scratch their heads, <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/31/conservatives-battle-gop-leaders-on-immigration/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">complaining</span></a> that excessively risk-averse GOP leaders refuse to take aim at the Democrats&#8217; unpopular immigration policies &#8212; even when the American people overwhelmingly side with Republicans.</p>
<p>The Boehner measure is so Obama-friendly that it constitutes the political equivalent of “catching your opponent’s Hail Mary pass and running it into your own end zone for them,” said Daniel Horowitz, policy director for the Madison Project.</p>
<p>Conservatives don&#8217;t like the bill because it would boost and speed up the migration of low-skilled workers from Latin American, give Democrats and lobbyists a chance to resurrect the Senate-approved amnesty measure from last year, but do zilch to prevent President Obama from unilaterally, unconstitutionally handing out millions of work authorizations to illegal aliens.</p>
<p>Instead of pounding away at Obama, whose poll ratings are deteriorating dramatically because of his irresponsible immigration polices, GOP leadership is content to let Obama walk all over them, conservatives say.</p>
<p>Republicans cannot exploit Obama&#8217;s political weaknesses because the party&#8217;s leaders “suck at politics,” Horowitz said, a viewed also held by Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has been trying to convince House members to reject any bill that fails to curb Obama&#8217;s amnesty-granting powers.</p>
<p>The immigration measured backed by leadership “is a plan for expedited asylum, not expedited removal” of the more than 100,000 illegal aliens from Central America, Sessions said.</p>
<p>Reps. Mo Brooks (R-Alabama) and John Fleming (R-La.) say few lawmakers, even those with Rs after their names, are serious conservatives.</p>
<p>“In my judgment, a majority of the senators and the House members of both parties are more than happy to betray America and the principles who made us who we are, first and foremost of which is the rule of law,” Brooks said. “Those of us who are fight for hard-working families, unfortunately, we’re in a minority.”</p>
<p>Fleming said that the “GOP leadership has two audiences, two bases.”</p>
<p>“One is the established Chamber of Commerce group that is looking for less expensive labor and they’re the ones who contribute a lot of money and so the [leaders] want to keep them happy,” the Louisiana lawmaker said.</p>
<p>“On the other hand, the Republican voting public out there wants the problems fixed, they want illegals treated humanely and they want border security and they want the newest wave sent back,” he said.</p>
<p>But if President Obama gets his way, no one will be deported.</p>
<p>The huddled masses yearning to get free stuff who insert themselves into the U.S. through the Rio Grande Valley are <a href="http://www.krgv.com/news/immigrants-to-be-housed-in-suites-near-san-antonio/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">going to be held</span></a> in relative luxury in a newly renovated 532-bed immigration detention complex for women and children near San Antonio, Texas.</p>
<p>Word of American taxpayers&#8217; decadent generosity will no doubt spread at lightning speed to prospective uninvited immigrants in Matamoros, San Salvador, Tegucigalpa, and points beyond.</p>
<p>&#8220;I will refer to everyone in this facility as a resident,&#8221; said Enrique Lucero, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) San Antonio field office director. &#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;ICE generally refers to people in custody as detainees,&#8221; he added sanctimoniously.</p>
<p>While the nation&#8217;s veterans suffer and die after being stuck on the falsified waiting lists produced by Obama administration bureaucrats, federal officials plan to roll out the red carpet for the alien invaders whose housing and amenities will cost the government an average of $140 per day per detainee.</p>
<p>Newly arrived lawbreakers will be housed in what federal officials call &#8220;suites,&#8221; that will feature bunk beds, flat-screen TVs, and landline telephones. The facility also has a soccer field, ping pong tables, a weight room, and basketball courts. A playground will be added soon. Children will attend a nearby charter school and receive medical screenings, dental care, and new clothes.</p>
<p>It is unclear if youthful aliens will be taken to Disneyworld or to branches of the more modestly priced Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain for birthday celebrations.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, CNSNews <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/1000-children-fleeing-violent-honduras-heading-violent-chicago"><span style="color: #0433ff;">reports</span></a> that &#8220;a thousand children said to be fleeing the violence in Central America will be welcomed to Chicago, where local children are routinely in the cross-fire of gang-related grudges.&#8221;</p>
<p>“The influx of unaccompanied child migrants is a growing humanitarian crisis that we can no longer ignore,” said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, an Alinskyite charlatan who no doubt helped to engineer the ongoing invasion when he served as President Obama&#8217;s White House chief of staff.</p>
<p>“While we have our own challenges at home, we cannot turn our backs on children who are fleeing dangerous conditions,&#8221; Emanuel said of young people who are probably just fleeing the ordinary perils and inconveniences of everyday life in Latin American banana republics. &#8220;We will do our part to ensure that these children are given access to services and treated fairly and humanely.”</p>
<p>Socialist kook Luis Gutierrez, a Democratic congressman from Illinois who wants to import even more illegals into the U.S. in order to help President Obama destabilize the country, said the fact that Chicago is &#8220;welcoming migrant children and working with them as their cases are resolved&#8221; made him proud of the Windy City.</p>
<p>Those young people aren&#8217;t exactly healthy, reports <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2014/07/31/dhs-report-tuberculosis-and-scabies-spreading-in-migrant-holding-facilities/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">suggest</span></a>. A Department of Homeland Security study indicates that the “unaccompanied alien children,” or UACs, from Central America are spreading tuberculosis (TB), chicken pox, and scabies, a contagious skin disease spread by mites. Several DHS workers at the various facilities where these aliens are being warehoused have been infected.</p>
<p>Many of the facilities are filthy because the new arrivals don&#8217;t know how to use bathroom facilities and have been relieving themselves at will, exposing DHS employees to human waste.</p>
<p>And over on the Left Coast, California&#8217;s far-out governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, offered the startlingly idiotic suggestion that climate change will somehow exacerbate the invasion of the U.S. by Central Americans, the <i>Wall Street Journal</i> reports.</p>
<p>&#8220;We can see how some are fearful of children walking across the border,&#8221; said the man who is presiding over California&#8217;s ongoing fiscal collapse. &#8220;What will they think when millions of people are driven north from the parched landscapes of a world degraded by intensifying climate change?&#8221;</p>
<p>Perhaps Gov. Brown needs to lay off the medical marijuana.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/matthew-vadum/conservatives-kill-amnesty-bill/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>23</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>UC Irvine Hillel Forces Cancellation of Pro-Israel Speaker</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nichole-hungerford/uc-irvine-hillel-forces-cancellation-of-pro-israel-speaker/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=uc-irvine-hillel-forces-cancellation-of-pro-israel-speaker</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nichole-hungerford/uc-irvine-hillel-forces-cancellation-of-pro-israel-speaker/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2014 04:56:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Nichole Hungerford]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hillel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jewish Federation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nonie Darwish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Orange County]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Speaker]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uc irvine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224843</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No place for conservative Jewish students -- or their speakers. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/index8.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-224844" alt="index8" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/index8-450x317.jpg" width="315" height="222" /></a>On the heels of Brandeis University’s controversial decision to rescind an honorary degree to women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, organizers of a week-long pro-Israel event called iFest, which is currently underway at the University of California, Irvine, say they have been forced to cancel a scheduled speech by Nonie Darwish, a prominent pro-Israel speaker. Lead iFest organizer Daniel Narvy, president of the campus group Anteaters for Israel (AFI), who will be joining the Israeli Defense Forces this summer, says Orange County Hillel was primarily responsible for the cancellation and that the incident is another example of Hillel’s marginalization of Narvy due to his conservative and traditional views. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Nonie Darwish is the founder and president of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://formermuslimsunited.org">FormerMuslimsUnited</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, an advocacy group for Islamic apostates, and </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://arabsforisrael.blogspot.com">Arabs for Israel</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, an organization that promotes a positive outlook among Arabs toward the Jewish State and advocates for peace in the region. Darwish was born and raised in Egypt during the most tumultuous period of the Arab-Israeli conflict and is the daughter of Col. Mustafa Hafez, former head of Egyptian intelligence in the Sinai and Gaza, who led multiple operations against Israel during the 1950s. Due to his activities, Darwish’s father was killed by the Israeli military in 1956 by a mail bomb when she was 8 years old, which greatly impacted her negative views toward the Jewish State. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Darwish, understanding firsthand the extreme anti-Semitism fueling the Arab world’s decades-long war of annihilation against Israel — the remnants of which are still seen in much of the Middle East’s disposition toward Israel today — was slated to speak about her journey from anti-Zionist to ardent Zionist and what propelled her to become such a vocal advocate for Israel despite both her father’s death and her anti-Jewish upbringing in Egypt. Darwish believes that being pro-Israel does not mean being anti-Arab and vice versa, and that Israelis and Arabs should strive for mutual respect and inclusiveness. </span></p>
<p>IFest is a week-long celebration of Israel portraying the country in a positive light following the UCI Muslim Student Union’s “<a href="http://www.ucimsu.com/2014/04/26/msu-uci-presents-anti-zionism-week-2014/">Anti-Zionism Week</a>,” which concluded May 1st. Anti-Zionism Week promoted themes reminiscent of Iran’s 2005 “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/weekinreview/30iran.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=1&amp;">A World Without Zionism&#8221; conference</a> and the United Nations’ 1975 resolution declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism,” which was part of the Arab-Soviet strategy to delegitimize and expel Israel from the United Nations. In the same vein, the MSU event discussed such topics as “borders and racism” and featured a standing wall displaying panels reading “<a href="http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2014/04/comments-on-apartheid-wall-at-uc-irvine.html">Zionism=Racism</a>” and declaring the whole of Israel to be “<a href="http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2014/04/comments-on-apartheid-wall-at-uc-irvine.html">occupied territory</a>.”</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A number of university groups and off-campus organizations agreed to co-sponsor or participate in iFest, including CAMERA, Hasbara Fellowships, Stand With Us, ZOA, and the Jewish Federation of Orange County. On-campus participants included chapters of AEPi, AEPhi, Chabad and Hillel. Darwish’s speech was scheduled to take place Tuesday, May 6, as part of a Yom Ha’atzmaut festival, which commemorates Israel Independence Day. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">However, according to Narvy, a meeting was convened last week, which he was not invited to, between representatives from Hillel, representatives from the Jewish Federation and campus police. Police were seeking to resolve security management issues due to a simultaneous campus visit from new University of California President and former Homeland Security Secretary </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://news.uci.edu/media_advisories/uc-president-janet-napolitano-to-speak-at-uc-irvine/">Janet Napolitano</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. Officers believed that both Napolitano and Darwish would attract protesters and careful planning would be required to accommodate both events.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">After the meeting, AFI was told that Hillel and the Jewish Federation did not want to sponsor iFest and that funds for a Shabbat dinner would be withdrawn if Darwish’s speech would be a part of iFest activities. Narvy also alleges that Hillel cast Darwish as a divisive speaker, an Islamophobe and an extremist and urged Hillel board members and on-campus organizations in the Jewish community to oppose the talk and withdraw affiliation. “The clubs who were told about Nonie as a speaker told us they would join Hillel’s boycott and withdraw from any participation in a week-long celebration of Israel if Nonie was invited to speak on campus,” Narvy said. In the process, Narvy says, AFI was smeared for promoting extremist programming. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a response to a request for comment, Hillel leadership stated:</span></p>
<blockquote><p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">The decision by several Jewish campus organizations and their community partners not to endorse Ms. Darwish&#8217;s talk resulted from concerns over the time, place and manner of her proposed presentation in light of another event scheduled to take place on campus that day.  Those concerns were shared with AFI, along with the suggestion that Ms. Darwish speak either that same day in a different venue, or on another day.  I received an e-mail from Daniel Narvy that stated, “The AFI board decided that Nonie Darwish will NOT be speaking during iFest because we do not want to have any events that cause a division in our community.”</i></p>
<p><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Jewish campus organizations and their community partners, in partnership with the UCI administration, have worked hard to improve the campus climate for Israel and Jewish students.  We will continue to take actions that serve the long-term best interests of the campus community. </i></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Narvy, however, says he was told by campus police that they would help accommodate security at both Napolitano’s and Darwish’s speeches. Hillel did not respond to follow-up questions on what the specific concerns were regarding the time, place and manner of Darwish’s presentation or whether Hillel encouraged opposition to Darwish over her alleged Islamophobia and extremism. Neither did Hillel explain to AFI, when pressed, exactly why it did not want Darwish to speak, Narvy reports.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The UCI Hillel chapter and the Orange County Jewish Federation have their own history of controversy with extremists, particularly virulently anti-Israel individuals. In </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/nichole-hungerford/a-chapter-that-should-be-expelled-from-hillel-3/">2010</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the UCI Hillel student president was criticized for promoting a campus talk by a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a group that has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/ismstandforfacts25.html">endorsed </a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">violence and “armed resistance” against Israel and whose activists have been photographed with </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=2601">assault weapons</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> in the company of Palestinian operatives. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The OC Jewish Federation has provided </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ha-emet.com/oti_funding.html">funding</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for a campus group called the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ha-emet.com">Olive Tree Initiative</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> (OTI), which organized a secret </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/nichole-hungerford-and-richard-baehr/uc-irvine-students-secret-meeting-with-hamas-official/">meeting</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> between students and Hamas leader Aziz Duwaik in 2009. The OTI offers trips to Israel for students to meet with pro-Israel speakers as well as major leaders in the anti-Israel movement, such as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://archive.adl.org/israel/qumsiyeh/#.U2fyBV60bwI">Mazin Qumsiyeh</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, a BDS movement co-founder who likens Israel to Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa, and </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ha-emet.com/oti.html">George Rishmawi</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, a co-founder of the ISM and tour guide for the OTI.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Although disappointed, Narvy is not surprised by the turn of events. He says that throughout his time at UC Irvine, Hillel administrators have blocked his attempts to obtain leadership positions. When Narvy wanted to run for president of AFI, which was taken over by Hillel from 2011-13, Narvy says Hillel deviated from the club’s protocol and that Hillel staff and select students decided on leadership without formally holding elections in which he could run.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Narvy said Hillel expressed concerns about the direction he would lead clubs as a politically conservative and traditional Jewish student. “Hillel has [its own] political and religious agenda and, as we have seen, Hillel will censor and in this case sanction people who deviate from Hillel’s narrow-minded political agenda.” </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">While Narvy says the tactics and financial strong-arming used to quash the Darwish talk are reprehensible, he is less frustrated by Orange County Hillel than he is with Hillel International and “their liberal political agenda and their deviations from Torah-based Judaism.”  These problems are becoming widespread. At the University of Calgary in Canada, Hillel also blocked Darwish from coming to campus. As Calgary student Samantha Hamilton stated, “Hillel no longer represents the Zionist students on campus. It intimidates the students who do not agree with not saying anything or doing anything in the face of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Despite his problems with Hillel, Narvy thinks it is important to note that UC Irvine’s Jewish and pro-Israel community have drastically improved since he has been on campus. He also appreciates the UCI Hillel program director’s work with students and does not believe the director played a role in the decision to block Darwish’s talk. Higher levels of Hillel, however, are another matter. “It is extremely unfortunate that, rather than enabling and empowering the Jewish students on campus who want to make a difference, Hillel’s stance is to fight against them and attempt to control their decisions,” Narvy said. “Hillel claims to be the Jewish student union on campus; with these type of actions, clearly it is not.”</span></p>
<p><em>Nichole Hungerford is associate editor of FrontPage Magazine. </em></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/nichole-hungerford/uc-irvine-hillel-forces-cancellation-of-pro-israel-speaker/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>34</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Screw You, Mickey Kaus</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/screw-you-mickey-kaus/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=screw-you-mickey-kaus</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/screw-you-mickey-kaus/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2014 04:15:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ann Coulter]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hospital]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mickey Kaus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[provider]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221991</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[My impossible ordeal with ObamaCare. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare_signup_rtr_328.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221992" alt="USA-HEALTHCARE/TECHNOLOGY" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/obamacare_signup_rtr_328.jpg" width="268" height="195" /></a>I&#8217;ve been thrown off my health insurance &#8212; THANKS, OBAMACARE! &#8212; and have spent hours and hours over the past month trying to figure out my options now that the Democrats have made my old plan, which I liked, &#8220;illegal.&#8221; (I prefer to think of my plan as &#8220;undocumented.&#8221;)</p>
<p>Whom do I bill for the hours of work Obamacare forced me to perform? How about you, Mickey? You&#8217;re the smartest living liberal (faint praise), and you assured us that Obamacare was going to be fantastic.</p>
<p>By now, Obama has issued &#8220;waivers&#8221; from Obamacare to about 99 percent of the country. (Perhaps you&#8217;ve heard, there&#8217;s a big midterm election this year.) As one of the few Americans not granted a waiver, I&#8217;m here to tell you: You have no idea what&#8217;s coming, America.</p>
<p>I thought I had figured out the best plan for me a month ago after having doctors and hospital administrators look at the packets of material I was sent by my old insurance company &#8212; the same mailing that informed me my old plan was &#8220;illegal&#8221; under Obamacare.</p>
<p>But when I checked online recently, I discovered the premier plan &#8212; the &#8220;platinum,&#8221; low-deductible, astronomically expensive plan that might be accepted by an English-speaking doctor who didn&#8217;t attend medical school in a Hawaiian shirt and board shorts &#8212; does not include treatment at any decent hospitals.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s sort of unfortunate because THAT&#8217;S THE ONLY REASON I WANT INSURANCE! That&#8217;s the only reason any sane homo sapien wants health insurance: to cover health care costs in the event of some catastrophic illness or accident &#8212; not to pay for Mickey Kaus&#8217; allergy appointments. But my only options under the blue-chip plan were hospitals that also do shoe repair.</p>
<p>I called Blue Cross directly to ask if its most expensive insurance plan covered the only hospital I&#8217;d ever go to in an emergency. Since that&#8217;s all I wanted to know, that&#8217;s what I asked. (I like to get to the point that way.)</p>
<p>But &#8212; as happens whenever you try to ascertain the most basic information about insurance under Obamacare &#8212; the Blue Cross representative began hammering me with a battery of questions about myself.</p>
<p>First my name. (Does that make a difference to what hospitals its plans cover?) Then my phone number. By the time he got to my address, I said, CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME IF ANY OF YOUR PLANS COVER XYZ HOSPITAL? I DON&#8217;T EVEN KNOW IF I WANT TO SIGN UP WITH YOU!</p>
<p>Finally, he admitted that Blue Cross&#8217; most expensive individual insurance plan does not cover treatment at the hospitals I named. Their doctors are &#8220;out of network&#8221; (and the person who designed this plan is &#8220;out of his mind&#8221;).</p>
<p>This was the rest of the conversation, verbatim:</p>
<p>ME: None of your plans cover out-of-network doctors?</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: No.</p>
<p>ME: Why is it called &#8220;Premier Guided Access WITH OUT-OF-NETWORK PLAN&#8221;?</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: Where did you see that?</p>
<p>ME: On Blue Cross&#8217; own material describing its plans.</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: Oh. I don&#8217;t know why it&#8217;s called that.</p>
<p>ME: None of your plans cover (the good hospital)?</p>
<p>BLUE CROSS: No.</p>
<p>ME: I don&#8217;t know who you are, but I have a very specific set of skills that will help me find you. And when I find you, I am going to kill you. (Click.)</p>
<p>True conversation. Except the last sentence. That was my fantasy.</p>
<p>I decided to approach it from the opposite direction and called one of the nation&#8217;s leading hospitals to ask which plans it accepted. The woman listed a series of plans, but she couldn&#8217;t tell me if I was eligible for any of them. For that, she said, I&#8217;d have to go to the Obamacare website.</p>
<p>Does Obamacare cover suicide?</p>
<p>I went to &#8220;healthcare.gov&#8221; and &#8212; I guess I had heard this, but had blocked it from my memory like a rape victim unable to remember her attack &#8212; you can&#8217;t even peek at the available plans until you&#8217;ve given the government reams of personal information about yourself.</p>
<p>How about they let me look at the merchandise first?</p>
<p>Inasmuch as the cost of health insurance under Obamacare is so high that it will generally make more sense just to pay for your own catastrophic health emergencies, I was not interested in telling Kathleen Sebelius everything about me in order to have the privilege of glancing at the government&#8217;s crappy plans.</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s the only choice. As the Obamacare website directs:</p>
<p>(1) Create an account. (Name, password.)</p>
<p>(2) Tell us about yourself and your family. (Every single thing.)</p>
<p>(3) Choose a health insurance plan. (That&#8217;s where you finally get to see the plans.)</p>
<p>I wonder if other consumer-oriented businesses will start demanding names, addresses, passwords and phone numbers before the customer is allowed to browse the merchandise. Maybe Williams-Sonoma could pick up a few sales tricks from Ezekiel Emanuel! Oh, you&#8217;d like to see the bronze muffin tin? Sure, but first I&#8217;ll need your Social Security number, date of birth and mother&#8217;s maiden name. Sign here, here and here.</p>
<p>The main point of the Obamacare website is to encourage people other than me to get a government subsidy. There&#8217;s also a section helping you register to vote. You just can&#8217;t see the insurance plans. (Guess which one you need a government ID for?)</p>
<p>With zero help from the Obamacare website, I eventually figured out that there was one lone insurance plan that would cover treatment at a reputable hospital. The downside is, no doctors take it.</p>
<p>So my only two health insurance options &#8212; and yours, too, as soon as the waivers expire, America! &#8212; are: (1) a plan that no doctors take; or (2) a plan that no hospitals take. You either pay for all your doctor visits and tests yourself, or you pay for your cancer treatment yourself. And you pay through the nose in either case.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not insurance! It&#8217;s a huge transfer of wealth from people who work for a living to those who don&#8217;t, accomplished by forcing the workers to buy insurance that&#8217;s not insurance. Obamacare has made actual health insurance &#8220;illegal.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not &#8220;insurance&#8221; when what I want to insure against isn&#8217;t covered, but paying for other people&#8217;s health care needs &#8212; defined broadly &#8212; is mandatory.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s as if you wanted to buy a car, so you paid for a Toyota &#8212; but then all you got was a 10-speed bike, with the rest of your purchase price going to buy cars, bikes and helmets for other people.</p>
<p>Or, more precisely, it would be like having the option of car insurance that covers either collisions or liability, but not both. Your car insurance premium would be gargantuan, because most of it would go to buy insurance, gas and air fresheners for other people in the plan.</p>
<p>If you have employer-provided health care, you may not have to make the 400 phone calls I had to, but the result will be the same: You&#8217;re not getting what is commonly known as &#8220;insurance.&#8221; You&#8217;re getting a massive bill to pay for other people&#8217;s chiropractors, marriage counselors, birth control pills, smoking cessation programs, &#8220;preventive care&#8221; appointments and pre-existing conditions.</p>
<p>Health insurance has been outlawed, replaced with a welfare program that has been renamed &#8220;insurance.&#8221;</p>
<p>When Matt Drudge decided he&#8217;d rather pay for his own health care, liberals hysterically denounced him for not buying an Obamacare transfer-the-wealth, fake &#8220;insurance&#8221; plan. It used to be shameful to be a public charge. Now it&#8217;s shameful to pay for yourself.</p>
<p>And it&#8217;s shameful to work for yourself. The self-employed are currently the only Americans subjected to Obamacare. (In a way, it&#8217;s lucky for the Democrats that there aren&#8217;t enough of us to hurt them in this year&#8217;s midterm elections!)</p>
<p>But we&#8217;re the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. You may have an employer-provided plan now, but the waivers can&#8217;t go on forever. If you live in America, your health insurance is going to disappear, too.</p>
<p>The government simply cannot force all insurance companies to give subsidized health care to a third of the country, to ignore the pre-existing health conditions of its customers, to pay for every little thing tangentially related to health &#8212; like smoking cessation programs, marital counseling and pediatric dental care &#8212; and also expect them to cover your cancer treatment.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter if you&#8217;ve been paying for insurance your whole adult life. That policy is now &#8220;illegal.&#8221; Put your hands in the air, nice and easy, and step away from the policy &#8230;</p>
<p>You 99-percenters still unaffected by Obamacare will blithely go to the polls this November and vote on some teeny-tiny issue, completely unaware of the total destruction of health insurance in America. The waivers have worked.</p>
<p>Now we&#8217;ll have to wait 40 years for a future Mickey Kaus to come along and expose the disastrous consequences of this horrendous government program, just like the real Mickey Kaus did with welfare. But for now, I say: Screw you, Mickey Kaus.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
<p><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://horowitzfreedomcenter.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=caa6f67f1482e6214d83be62d&amp;id=c761755bdf" target="_blank"><b>Subscribe</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to Frontpage&#8217;s TV show, <i>The Glazov Gang</i>, and </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>LIKE</b></a><strong style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it on </strong><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="https://www.facebook.com/glazovgang" target="_blank"><b>Facebook.</b></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ann-coulter/screw-you-mickey-kaus/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>48</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Obamacare&#8217;s Stunning Redistribution of Wealth</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:20:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[John Perazzo]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inequality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=214644</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A closer look at precisely how much Obamacare takes from you, to give to others.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obama-health-care.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-214646" alt="obama-health-care" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/obama-health-care.jpg" width="280" height="158" /></a>For all the attention Obamacare has drawn in recent weeks, few observers have noted that the law is having the unexpected, yet most welcome, effect of transforming scores of millions of Americans, virtually overnight, into generous benefactors of the less fortunate. A real-world example—representative of countless millions of similar situations—will make this crystal clear:</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s say that you are a healthy, hardworking 54-year-old single adult in San Francisco earning $45,960 per year—the income level at which federal Obamacare subsidies from your fellow taxpayers are no longer available to help you pay your monthly health-insurance premiums. As a San Francisco resident, you are permitted to choose from among 16 separate Obamacare-compliant insurance plans. Four of these are so-called “Bronze” plans, low-level policies whose average premium will cost you $453 per month, or $5,436 per year. In exchange for those premium payments, a Bronze plan will cover 60% of your medical expenses—that is, <i>after</i> you meet the $5,000 out-of-pocket annual deductible. For this priceless peace of mind, you can thank Obamacare—the Democratic Party&#8217;s gift to a grateful America.</p>
<p>Let us contrast your case with that of Joe, another 54-year-old single individual in San Francisco, who happens to be an <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/25/obamacare-policies-slam-smokers-could-backfire/">obese alcoholic and longtime drug abuser</a> with little ambition and no history of ever having held a full-time job for very long. Joe currently earns $15,860 per year, which is just above the income level that would have made him eligible for Medicaid. Because Joe doesn&#8217;t qualify for Medicaid, Obamacare stipulates that he must now purchase his own health insurance—thereby proving that, contrary to the shrill rhetoric of conservative naysayers, no one gets an undeserved free ride under Obamacare.</p>
<p>Like you, Joe can choose from among 16 separate plans that are available to San Francisco residents. But unlike you, he is eligible to receive federal government subsidies—money that other, wealthier Americans, such as you, magnanimously “contribute” toward the healthcare expenses of financially “disadvantaged” individuals. If he selects one of the four Bronze plans (whose average monthly premium is $453), Joe qualifies for $452 in average monthly subsidies—meaning that, regardless of which Bronze plan he chooses, he will pay a monthly premium of exactly $1. You read that correctly. The very same healthcare plan that would cost you $453 per month, is available to Joe for $1 per month—i.e., the cost of three oatmeal-raisin cookies at your local Subway sandwich shop. Over the course of a year, you will pay a total of $5,436 in policy premiums, while Joe, who sadly failed to qualify for <i>free</i> healthcare through Medicaid, will pay his own fair share of $12. This is all in the interest of social justice, you understand. And please, <i>don&#8217;t even think</i> about whispering that Obamacare might be some sort of “wealth redistribution” scheme, lest you expose yourself as a petulant reactionary who doesn&#8217;t give a damn about sick people.</p>
<p>Oh, imagine what a wonderful world it would be if we could somehow transfer this same brand of Obamacare-style fairness to realms other than health insurance. In such a utopia, for example, the $25,000 new automobile that you purchase would cost a deserving soul like Joe just $55. Your $100 nightly fee at a motel would be 45 cents for Joe. And the $25 hardcover book you purchase at Barnes &amp; Noble would set Joe back about a nickel. What&#8217;s that, you say? These items aren&#8217;t life-and-death necessities, like medical care, and thus don&#8217;t serve as useful analogies? Good point! Let&#8217;s stick with real necessities, such as food and housing: The same load of groceries that costs you $250 would cost Joe 55 cents. Your $1,200-per-month rent or mortgage payment would be available to Joe for about $2.65 a month. And the $250,000 home you seek to buy could be Joe&#8217;s for about $552. Yes, we&#8217;re talking about a veritable paradise of fairness!</p>
<p>But let&#8217;s return, for a moment, to the subject of healthcare in the here-and-now. Suppose you decide to opt for something substantially better than the aforementioned Bronze plan. As a resident of San Francisco, you can also choose from among four separate Silver plans, which each pay 70% of your medical costs (after a $2,000 annual deductible) and have an average monthly premium of $614. For Joe, these same four plans are available for an average of $38 per month—thanks to the marvelous, magical subsidies that are built into Obamacare. In fact, <i>one</i> of the Silver plans in particular would cost Joe just twenty nickels per month—a darned fair deal for someone needing healthcare, wouldn&#8217;t you say? And again, try not to view the disparity between <i>your</i> fee and <i>Joe&#8217;s</i> fee as some form of “wealth redistribution,” but rather as an opportunity for you to cultivate the fiscal virtue that our president terms “<a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-s-tax-plan-based-neighborliness">neighborliness</a>,” whereby those who are “<a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/obama-s-tax-plan-based-neighborliness">sitting pretty</a>”—like you—extend a helping hand to the “<a href="http://seattlemedium.com/president-obama-help-our-less-fortunate-at-christmas/">less fortunate</a>”—like Joe. Yes indeed, think about how deliriously happy you&#8217;re making good-ol&#8217; Joe!</p>
<p>Now, if you&#8217;re feeling somewhat bold and are inclined to seek out even better coverage, you might opt to enroll in one of San Francisco&#8217;s four Gold insurance plans, which pay 80% of your medical costs (with no deductibles) and have an average monthly premium of $752. For Joe, the average cost of such a policy is $166 per month.</p>
<p>And then there are the top-of-the-line policies—the four Platinum plans—which will pay 90% of your medical expenses and will cost you, on average, $843 in monthly premiums. For Joe, by contrast, the cost of these plans will run about $258 a month.</p>
<p>So, let&#8217;s review: Joe can have <i>the very best</i> coverage available—the type of Platinum plan that our revered overlords in Washington have carefully secured for themselves—for roughly half the cost that <i>you</i> must pay for the most meager, bare-bones, low-end Bronze coverage in existence. Or, alternatively, he can have:</p>
<ul>
<li>a Gold plan for about one-third of what you pay for the Bronze;</li>
<li>a Silver plan for one-twelfth of what you pay for the Bronze; or</li>
<li>his own Bronze plan for <i>less than four-tenths of 1 percent</i> of what you pay for the same plan.</li>
</ul>
<p>And why is Joe able to do all this? Because you, my generous comrade, are largely buying his plan for him. Hooray for you! Hooray for advancing the vision that our president so eloquently laid bare just one month ago, when he identified the eradication of “inequality” as the motive that “drives everything I do in this office.” Ain&#8217;t it wonderful to be part of such a grand crusade?</p>
<p>And in case you seek additional cause for celebration, rest assured that Obamacare imposes the same type of fairness and equity on family plans as it does on individual plans. For instance, a 54-year-old San Francisco couple with two grown children (ages 19 and 20) living at home—and with a $94,200 household income (the income level at which subsidies are no longer available)—can enroll in a bare-bones Bronze family plan (with an annual deductible of $10,000) for an average monthly premium of $1,175. Meanwhile, an identically structured San Francisco family whose household income is $32,500—just above the level that would have qualified them for Medicaid—can obtain a Bronze plan for precisely $4 per month. Yes, the same plan that costs $14,100 per year for the first family, costs <i>$48 per year</i> for the second family.</p>
<p>The four Silver family plans, meanwhile, have an average monthly premium of $1,593 for the first family, and $81 per month for the second family. Annual outlays would be $19,116 for the first family, vs. $972 for the second family.</p>
<p>This, in a nutshell, is the exquisite beauty of Obamacare: It is redistribution … er, um, er … It is neighborliness on a scale never before seen in this country. And many millions of Americans are poised to reap its glorious benefits! As a form of shorthand, you can simply refer to these fortunate millions as “Democrats,” in honor of the party of benefactors that is, at this very moment, purchasing their eternal political allegiance with your dollars. Take pride in the fact that this wonderful arrangement is but one aspect of the “fundamental transformation” of America that our president is so faithfully pursuing, true to his word. At its essence, it is an arrangement designed to take from certain individuals according to their ability to pay, while giving to other individuals according to their need—a profoundly neat and elegant formula if ever there was one. It almost makes you wonder if anyone else has ever thought of anything like it before.[1]</p>
<p><b>NOTE:</b></p>
<p>[1] A central principle of Marxism, popularized by Karl Marx himself, is this: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/obamacares-stunning-redistribution-of-wealth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>166</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Brown&#8217;s Abuse of Ray Kelly: A Metaphor of the Academy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/browns-abuse-of-ray-kelly-a-metaphor-of-the-academy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=browns-abuse-of-ray-kelly-a-metaphor-of-the-academy</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/browns-abuse-of-ray-kelly-a-metaphor-of-the-academy/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Nov 2013 04:27:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jack Kerwick]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[boo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Brown]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Free Speech]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heckle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[liberal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ray Kelly]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[speech]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=210317</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The totalitarianism permeating higher education.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ray-kelly1.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-210426" alt="ray-kelly" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ray-kelly1-422x350.jpg" width="295" height="245" /></a>Two weeks ago, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly arrived at the prestigious Brown University to deliver a speech.</p>
<p>It never happened. Student protesters, determined to silence Kelly, shouted him down.</p>
<p>In an attempt to abate the hostility of his audience, Kelly is said to have remarked:  “I thought this was the Academy…where we’re supposed to have free speech.”  A Brown administrator on the scene also expressed incredulity regarding the “inability” of these Brown students’—self-avowed “social justice activists” —“to have a dialogue[.]”</p>
<p>Jenny Li, the (Brown) student who organized the anti-Kelly demonstration, explained that in advance of Kelly’s appearance, she and other students petitioned the university to cancel the event. However, when administrators refused to accommodate them, Li and her fellow activists “decided to cancel it for them.”  Their victory in doing so, Li adds, is “a powerful demonstration of free speech.”</p>
<p>Christina Paxson, President of Brown, expressed her “deepest regret” to Commissioner Kelly and assured everyone that the protesters’ conduct is at once “indefensible” and “an affront both to civil democratic society and to the university’s core values and the free exchange of views.”</p>
<p>To date the disrupters have not faced any disciplinary action.</p>
<p>The significance of this episode has little to do with its specifics and everything to do with the fact that it supplies us with a microcosmic perspective on <i>the contemporary university. </i></p>
<p>First of all, <i>no one</i>, much less an eminently sensible man like Ray Kelly and seasoned academics like the aforementioned Brown administrators, can possibly believe that the contemporary Academy is an oasis of “free speech” and open-ended dialogue.</p>
<p>In fact, as anyone who’s spent any amount of time there knows all-too well, the university is much more like a <i>puddle </i>of free speech and dialogue than an oasis.</p>
<p>While the incident in question admittedly involves <i>students,</i> the latter are simply marching to the beat of the drums of the faculty and administration, not just of Brown, but of colleges and universities throughout the country.  They at once reflect and reinforce an academic <i>culture</i> that has been at least a half-of-a-century in the making.  <i> </i></p>
<p>It is at once tragic and scandalous—and let there be no mistakes about it, this <i>is </i>one of the great scandals of our age—that there is far <i>less </i>individuality and “free speech” in our country’s liberal arts and humanities departments than can be found among any random collection of construction workers or plumbers.</p>
<p>While there <i>are</i> exceptions (yours truly is a case in point), the overwhelming majority of academics in the liberal arts are left-wing ideologues.  This is no criticism—just a brute fact.  There is indeed a prevailing ideology, an <i>orthodoxy, </i>really, that draws the lines of acceptable inquiry, of discourse.  For lack of a better name, we can call this orthodoxy “Political Correctness,” for it is the same orthodoxy that has long drawn the lines of acceptable discourse in the popular culture.</p>
<p>The only difference is that non-academics, like construction workers and plumbers, say, have the daring and imaginativeness to transgress the orthodoxy’s boundaries.  Academics, in contrast, seek to <i>strengthen </i>these strictures on speech.</p>
<p>In other words, the relationship between the academic and his society has been radically subverted.  Worse, the lion’s share of the blame for this subversion rests upon his (or her) shoulders.</p>
<p>There is another point that can’t be lost upon us.</p>
<p>Traditionally, a liberal arts education was intended to render students preeminently <i>civil </i>by making them into articulate, knowledgeable conversationalists capable of both drawing upon the inheritance of their civilization—Western civilization—as well as enriching it.  It was an education that required great humility from those who would undertake it, for the present generation, it was understood, was just one voice in this millennia-old conversation linking the past with the present and future.</p>
<p>The attitude on display at Brown and exemplified by Jennifer Li is not only entirely incompatible with a traditional liberal arts education; the former and the latter are mutually antithetical.  There are two reasons for this.</p>
<p>For one, today’s students, like their teachers, are generally contemptuous toward the past.  The past is viewed as a “dark age” ridden with “white racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “speciesism,” “xenophobia,” etc.  The present bequeathed to us by our past, as Barack Obama memorably remarked, is something the needs to be “fundamentally transformed”—i.e. <i>destroyed.</i>  As for future generations, while lip service is routinely paid to them, it is not difficult to show that if the interests of unborn human beings threaten to impede present designs, then they too must be marginalized.</p>
<p>Secondly, academics and the student activists who they are busy away creating are <i>angry. </i> And they spare no occasion to express that anger.  Since at least the time of the 1960s the expression of anger has been treated as tantamount with the expression of <i>authenticity.  </i>However, since no one cares to try to reason with an angry person—regardless of how authentic he may fancy himself to be—about any topic, much less controversial topics, conversation is impossible with the perpetually angry.</p>
<p>And so too is a genuine liberal arts education impossible as long as pride and anger are the emotions that the academy insists upon fostering.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/jack-kerwick/browns-abuse-of-ray-kelly-a-metaphor-of-the-academy/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>29</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Kathleen Sebelius&#8217;s Mea Culpa Tour</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/kathleen-sebeliuss-mea-culpa-tour/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=kathleen-sebeliuss-mea-culpa-tour</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/kathleen-sebeliuss-mea-culpa-tour/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2013 04:30:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cancel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hearing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Insurance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kathleen Sebelius]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obamacare]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=209830</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why the public isn't buying it. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/kathleen_sebelius_js_605.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-209882" alt="kathleen_sebelius_js_605" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/kathleen_sebelius_js_605.jpg" width="224" height="189" /></a>The real-life version of &#8220;Groundhog Day&#8221; moved from the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week to the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, as Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/11/06/Sebelius-faces-lawmakers-anew-on-health-care-law">brought</a> her mea culpa tour to Congress&#8217;s upper chamber. Despite the miserable rollout of President Obama&#8217;s &#8220;signature achievement,&#8221; Sebelius insisted that the <a href="http://healthcare.gov/">healthcare.gov</a> website had improved dramatically, even as she was forced to concede that &#8220;we&#8217;re not there yet&#8221; with regard to full functionality.</p>
<p>Senators from both parties held Sebelius&#8217;s feet to the fire. Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) insisted the HHS Secretary must be &#8220;candidly, fully, totally&#8221; honest with Congress about the repairs, &#8220;so that we don&#8217;t wake up at the end of November and find out we&#8217;re not there yet.&#8221; He <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/11/06/us-usa-healthcare-delay-idUKBRE9A50PT20131106?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=healthNews&amp;rpc=451">expressed</a> his disappointment that administration officials never foresaw problems with the website. &#8220;When we asked for updates on the marketplaces, the responses we got were totally unsatisfactory,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We heard multiple times that everything was on track. We now know that was not the case.&#8221;</p>
<p>Baucus knew that was the case long before yesterday. The chief architect of the healthcare bill openly <a href="http://nationalreview.com/corner/363249/baucus-train-wreck-comment-being-twisted-malign-obamacare-andrew-johnson">expressed</a> his reservations to Sebelius at a hearing last April, when he told her he &#8220;saw a huge train wreck coming down.&#8221; That &#8220;train wreck&#8221; line was widely reported. Not so widely reported was Baucus&#8217;s reservations about the contractor hired by Sebelius. &#8220;I&#8217;m just worried that&#8217;s going to be money down the drain,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Baucus was prescient about one of the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/21/technology/obamacare-website-contracts/">six largest</a> contractors involved insetting up the website. HHS <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/25/michelle-obamas-princeton-classmate-is-executive-at-company-that-built-obamacare-website/">awarded</a> a no-bid contract to CGI Federal, the U.S. subsidiary of a Canadian company. A top executive at CGI, Toni Townes-Whitley, was First Lady Michelle Obama&#8217;s Princeton classmate. Moreover, HHS hired them despite a track record of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362255/obamacares-magical-thinkers-mark-steyn">failure</a> with regard setting up far smaller operational websites in Canada. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) <a href="http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/bill-nelson-tells-sebelius-to-hold-obamacare-contractors-responsible---/2151172">deflected</a> blame away from Sebelius and onto the contractors for the website’s shortcomings. &#8220;I want you to burn their fingers and make `em pay for not being responsible and producing a product that all of us could be proud,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>Nelson is aiming at the wrong target. On October 30, Bob Laszewski, who heads a consulting firm for big insurance companies, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/30/politics/obamacare-white-house-pressure/">contended</a> that the Obama administration is &#8220;exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet&#8221; about the problems associated with the rollout. Despite denials by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, health-care consultant Larry Thompson <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/363161/insurance-executives-speak-out-against-aca-anonymously-eliana-johnson?utm_source=twitterfeed&amp;utm_medium=twitter">seconded</a> that assessment, telling National Review that insurance company executives &#8220;are afraid to say anything because they don’t want HHS all over them.”</p>
<p>Last week, House Oversight Committee chairman Darryl Issa (R-CA) was forced to <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57610277/issa-subpoenas-sebelius-for-healthcare.gov-documents/">subpoena</a> Sebelius for documentation regarding the rollout, because she refused to provide it without being forced to do so. And yesterday, Issa unveiled documents obtained from ObamaCare contractors revealing the October rollout was <a href="http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/06/documents-show-first-days-of-obamacare-rollout-worse-than-initially-realized/?hpt=hp_t2">far more</a> chaotic than previously reported.</p>
<p>In other words, the &#8220;most transparent administration in history&#8221; is back in stonewalling mode, and Nelson is attempting to obscure where the real blame for this failure should be placed.</p>
<p>Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) blasted Sebelius for the administration&#8217;s &#8220;cavalier attitude,&#8221; and its &#8220;broken promises&#8221; with regard to the millions of Americans who are seeing their insurance plans changed or cancelled. &#8220;More and more promises made at the time this law was passed are now crumbling under the weight of reality on a daily basis,&#8221; he said. “While I am glad that you are accepting responsibility for this disastrous rollout, I would have preferred that you and the rest of the administration were honest with us to begin with.&#8221; Hatch wants Sebelius to update Congress once a month regarding all progress being made. “No more excuses,” he warned her. “No more spin, just give us the truth.”</p>
<p>Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) was equally <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-sebelius-obamacare-delay-20131106,0,1021952.story#axzz2jtHgxYpD">blunt.</a> “The website’s not working, fine. But the law is not working,” he contended. He noted that many Americans will face far higher prices for insurance premiums when the law is fully in effect next year. Sebelius countered that premium prices are 16 percent lower than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated they would be. Yet when Crapo asked the Secretary if that meant prices for insurance would be lower next year compared to this year, Sebelius admitted it did not.</p>
<p>Whether or not the law is working, Sebelius dismissed any possibility it would be delayed. &#8220;Delay is not an option,&#8221; she insisted. &#8220;We are still at the beginning of a six-month open enrollment that ends at the end of March, and there&#8217;s plenty of time to sign up for the new plans.&#8221;</p>
<p>That sentiment runs contrary to the one <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/24/dems-join-call-to-delay-obamacare-mandate-amid-website-failures/">expressed</a> by members of both parties, particularly Democrats up for re-election in 2014. It would appear they are beginning to understand the lethal political liability of a law that may cause as many as <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/10/31/obama-officials-in-2010-93-million-americans-will-be-unable-to-keep-their-health-plans-under-obamacare/">93 million</a> Americans to lose their current insurance policies.</p>
<p>Democrats may have gotten even more nervous when Republicans expressed concerns about the security and testing of the website. Staying true to form, Sebelius <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/kathleen-sebelius-obamacare-senate-hearing-99449.html">insisted</a> that administration officials and security consultants saw no reason for delays. “No one suggested the risks outweighed the importance of moving forward,&#8221; she declared. She also <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57611063/sebelius-obamacare-delay-is-not-an-option/">noted</a> that experts have run &#8220;a series of diagnostics, looked at the entire system and determined that <a href="http://HealthCare.gov/">HealthCare.gov</a> is fixable and it isn&#8217;t fatally flawed.&#8221; That would be the same website that <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57611202/departing-obamacare-security-official-didnt-sign-off-on-site-launch/">never</a> received a single end-to-end security test prior to its launch.</p>
<p>Yet the website remains only part of the problem. During questioning by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sebelius was forced to <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/11/06/sebelius-back-in-hot-seat-on-capitol-hill-over-rocky-rollout-obamacare/">admit</a> there is nothing in the federal regulations that would prevent a <i>convicted felon</i> from becoming an ObamaCare navigator. “Isn’t it true there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check, even though they will receive personal information from the individuals they help to sign-up up for the Affordable Care Act?” Cornyn asked. “That is true,” Sebelius replied. “States could have an additional background check and other features, but it is not part of the federal requirement.” Cornyn continued. “So a convicted felon could be a navigator and could acquire sensitive personal information from an individual unbeknownst to them?” Sebelius answered, “This is possible.”</p>
<p>Moving from the possible to the highly probable, yesterday the FBI <a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2013/11/05/fbi-gears-up-as-nearly-17m-poised-to-get-obamacare-tax-credits/">revealed</a> that they believe the “potential for crime in health care reform is huge,” including estimates of tax credit fraud projected to surpass $20 billion&#8211;because ObamaCare insurance subsidies will be doled out on the honor system.</p>
<p>The next shoe to drop was Sebelius&#8217;s <a href="http://www.kmbz.com/Sebelius-Obamacare-Sign-Ups-Will-Be-Quite-Low-/17705697">admission</a> that when the administration does release the enrollment figures for ObamaCare, they will be dismal. “The enrollment numbers which we will release next week, which will be the first month of enrollment, are likely to be quite low given that struggles people have had getting access to the site and getting information,” Sebelius conceded. “I’m hoping that with the site improvement we’ll see more robust numbers, but until the site is fully improved and we really kind of open up the doors wide to a lot of people, we’re going to have I think a struggle getting significant numbers to sign up,” she added.</p>
<p>Without significant numbers of enrollments&#8211;<a href="http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/11/05/what-happens-if-young-people-dont-sign-up-for-obamacare/">including</a> at least 2.7 million younger, healthier Americans out of the seven million people the system needs to sign up in year one&#8211;insurance premiums are likely to increase significantly in order to cover the pool of policyholders who are older and unhealthier. Rising premiums will discourage even more younger, healthier people from signing up, especially since the alternative fines are far cheaper. As the process repeats itself, a &#8220;death spiral&#8221; ensues.</p>
<p><a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303661404579178231174626314">According</a> to the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, current enrollees are &#8220;older than expected so far.&#8221; Furthermore, the fallback excuse&#8211;that younger healthier Americans will shy away from the glitchy, federally-run website, while older sicker Americans persevere&#8211;isn&#8217;t holding true. Smoother-running state exchanges are also seeing an ominous signup pattern. In Connecticut and Kentucky, both of which have enrolled more than 4,000 people, those older than 55 comprise the largest segment of ObamaCare enrollees, &#8220;much older than industry actuaries say they had anticipated.&#8221; And while the law contains a provision allowing the government (read: taxpayers) to reimburse insurers for some losses, unless the pool of enrollees meets the right age-related criteria, those reimbursements may not prevent insurers from losing money.</p>
<p>New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have already experienced a death spiral. Like ObamaCare, older, sicker people could not be charged more for coverage than younger, healthier people. As a result, premiums in those states rose to double and triple the national average.</p>
<p>Finally, there was the subject Sebelius was undoubtedly eager to avoid. Several Republicans hammered away at the HHS Secretary regarding the president&#8217;s promise that if you liked your healthcare plan, you could keep your healthcare plan. Like a good soldier, Sebelius <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/11/kathleen-sebelius-obamacare-hearing-takeaway-more-bad-news-99479_Page2.html">embraced</a> the administration&#8217;s despicable effort to re-write history. “The president’s promise was written into the law from day one, and that was the grandfather clause,” she insisted.</p>
<p>Republican committee members weren&#8217;t buying it. “There weren’t any caveats on that at the time. It’s not like there were any asterisks or footnotes,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD). “We know that lying to Congress is a crime, but unfortunately, lying to the American people is not,” <a href="http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/11/06/21336093-sebelius-gets-grilled-by-both-democratic-and-gop-senators">said</a> Cornyn. Even Democrat Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) voiced the frustration of  “a couple million people, sadly, who are not going to be able to keep the policies that they want and are facing large increases in premiums.”</p>
<p>Yet is was Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KA) who encapsulated the fears, frustrations and anger felt by the millions of Americans regarding both ObamaCare and the unfettered arrogance of an administration determined to impose their will on the public, irrespective of the disastrous consequences that have ensued:</p>
<blockquote><p>Madame Secretary, you yourself know that this law has serious problems. You delayed over half of the mandate deadlines. You did it for employers, for unions, and for small business, but not for the exchanges&#8230;nor for millions of Americans that are losing their health care..Your main goal should have been to protect Americans, to lessen their risk, and to ensure their safety, but in your zeal to implement this law, not warnings, not advice, not counsel would deter you from implementing the exchanges. You have said America should hold you accountable, which is why today, Madame Secretary, I repeat my request for you to resign.</p></blockquote>
<p>With any luck, the American public will turn that request into a demand.</p>
<p><strong>Don’t miss this week’s <em>Glazov Gang</em>, which exposes <em><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/to-lie-for-obamacare-on-the-glazov-gang/">ObamaCare’s Dirty Little Secret</a></em>.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/kathleen-sebeliuss-mea-culpa-tour/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 699/742 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 11:43:33 by W3 Total Cache -->