Michelle Malkin thoroughly exposes Obama's continuing "Culture of Corruption" in the White House....Brilliant reporting....

What happened to all of Obama’s technology czars?

By Michelle Malkin  •  October 25, 2013

Why does the White House need a private-sector “tech surge” to repair its wretched Obamacare website failures? Weren’t all of the president’s myriad IT czars and their underlings supposed to ensure that taxpayers got the most effective, innovative, cutting-edge and secure technology for their money?

Now is the perfect time for an update on Obama’s top government titans of information technology. As usual, “screw up, move up” is standard bureaucratic operating procedure.

Let’s start with the “federal chief information officer.” In 2009, Obama named then 34-year-old “whiz kid” Vivek Kundra to the post overseeing $80 billion in government IT spending. At 21, Kundra was convicted of misdemeanor theft. He stole a handful of men’s shirts from a J.C. Penney’s department store and ran from police in a failed attempt to evade arrest. Whitewashing the petty thief’s crimes, Obama instead effused about his technology czar’s “depth of experience in the technology arena.”

Just as he was preparing to take the federal job, an FBI search warrant was issued at Kundra’s workplace. He was serving as the chief technology officer of the District of Columbia. Two of Kundra’s underlings, Yusuf Acar and Sushil Bansal, were charged in an alleged scheme of bribery, kickbacks, ghost employees and forged timesheets. Kundra went on leave for five days and was then reinstated after the feds informed him that he was neither a subject nor a target of the investigation.

As I noted in my 2009 book, “Culture of Corruption,” city and federal watchdogs had identified a systemic lack of controls in Kundra’s office. Veteran D.C. newspaper columnist Jonetta Rose Barras reported that Acar “was consistently promoted by his boss, Vivek Kundra, receiving with each move increasing authority over sensitive information and operating with little supervision.” Yet, Team Obama emphasized that Kundra had no idea what was going on in his workplace, which employed about 300 workers.

A mere 29 months after taking the White House job, Kundra left for a cushy fellowship at Harvard University. In January 2012, he snagged an executive position at Salesforce.com, which touted his “demonstrated track record of driving innovation.”

In 2011, Obama appointed former Microsoft executive and FCC managing director Steven VanRoekel to succeed Kundra. At the time, he promised “to make sure that the pace of innovation in the private sector can be applied to the model that is government.” Mission not accomplished.

Next up: Obama’s “U.S. chief technology officer.” In May 2009, the president appointed Aneesh Chopra “to promote technological innovation to help the country meet its goals such as job creation, reducing health care costs and protecting the homeland. Together with Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, their jobs are to make the government more effective, efficient and transparent.”

Chopra’s biggest accomplishment? A humiliating cameo in December 2009 on “The Daily Show” with liberal comedian Jon Stewart, who mocked the administration’s pie-in-the-sky Open Government Initiative. Chopra resigned three years later, ran unsuccessfully for Virginia lieutenant governor and now works as a “senior fellow” at the far-left Center for American Progress, which is run by former Clinton administration hit man turned Obama helpmate John Podesta.

Obama replaced Chopra with Todd Park, the former “chief technology officer of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.” The White House described him as a “change agent and ‘entrepreneur-in-residence,’ helping HHS harness the power of data, technology and innovation to improve the health of the nation.” Park oversees the “Presidential Innovation Fellows” program and is also a “senior fellow” in health IT and health reform policy at Podesta’s Center for American Progress. CAP has tirelessly defended Obamacare and its global joke of an IT infrastructure.

In 2010, when President Obama first rolled out a dog-and-pony demonstration of Healthcare.gov, Park basked in the glow of positive media coverage. He bragged to TechCrunch.com about working “24/7 … in a very, very nimble hyper consumer focused way … all fused in this kind of maelstrom of pizza, Mountain Dew and all-nighters, and you know, idealism.”

It was, as you all now know, all hype and glory. So who has Obama called in to oversee the HealthCare.gov rescue mission? None other than the administration’s “change agent and entrepreneur-in-residence,” CTO Todd Park, who helped build the broken system in the first place!

Obamacare also created the “Bureau of Health Information” and a new “assistant secretary of health information,” who coordinates with a separate “national coordinator for health information technology” overseeing the equally disastrous electronic medical records mandate. Harvard University’s David Blumenthal held the post from 2009 to 2011 before returning to his Ivy League home.

Then came Farzad Mostashari, who was “at the forefront of the administration’s health IT efforts and is a resource to the entire health system to support the adoption of health information technology and the promotion of nationwide health information exchange to improve health care.” In August 2013, Mostashari announced his resignation, and earlier this month, he became a “visiting fellow” at the Brookings Institution’s Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform.

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, waste our money screwing things up and then run back to academia to train the next generation of incompetent technocrats.

Once again Ann Coulter is spot on...

HANG ONE, TO ENCOURAGE THE OTHERS

October 23, 2013

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One of the most effective ways of discouraging people is to make them think there's absolutely nothing they can do about something, anyway. Thus, liberals have tried to insinuate that Obamacare is impossible to remove, hoping conservatives will despair.

But with only one-half of one branch of government, Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and the House Republicans have made it absolutely clear that Republicans are not giving up on repealing Obamacare. Inasmuch as "bubonic plague" is polling higher than "Obamacare," I'd say this is a brilliant marketing strategy for the GOP.

Unlike every other idiotic government program ever foisted on us by the Democrats, this time Republicans are not rolling over on this illegitimately passed, disastrous legislation. Give Republicans a veto-proof majority in the Senate, America, and they will rid us of this plague. (Without even charging a co-pay!)

Not only that, but Republicans have exposed Democrats as hypocrites who are forcing the rest of the country to live under Obamacare, while shutting down the government rather than live under it themselves.

With any luck, the Obama-Reid government shutdown -- as Sean Hannity calls it -- has also impressed upon Republicans the importance of winning elections.

Whatever cavils and objections liberals have to the Republicans' majority in the House, the Democrats' Senate majority certainly does not reflect the popular will. At least nine sitting Democratic senators have asterisks by their names, indicating seats given away by Republicans through unforced errors.

The only thing the Democrats' majority demonstrates is the stunning incompetence, stupidity and malfeasance of the Republican Party.

Here are a few Senate seats recently sacrificed by Republicans.

In 2008, career prosecutors in George W. Bush's Department of Justice convicted Republican senator Ted Stevens of Alaska for various corruption offenses just weeks before the election. The prosecution was so sleazy that not only was the conviction thrown out, but the indictment was tossed -- by Obama's Justice Department, no less.

Too late! Stevens had already lost his re-election. The winning Democrat will now hold that seat in perpetuity.

If that were ever done to a Democrat, the prosecutors' names would be known by every American, objects of obloquy worse than "Halliburton." But there's no cost to throwing a Republican senator's election.

That's one Senate seat.

Also in 2008, Democrats openly stole a Senate election for Al Franken in Minnesota right under the nose of Republican governor Tim "Blood and Guts" Pawlenty. You don't have to be like the Democrats and steal elections, Republicans, but can you at least stop letting them be stolen?

That's two Senate seats.

Then there are the races where Republicans were screwed by campaign consultants more interested in being able to buy another vacation home than winning elections -- as described in my new book, Never Trust a Liberal Over Three-Especially a Republican.


Republican campaign consultants ran Linda McMahon for the Senate from Connecticut in 2010, and then -- to pay off the mortgage -- again in 2012.

McMahon is an American patriot who spent a lot of her own money to beat a Democrat. Unfortunately, she never had a chance to win a statewide election in Connecticut, as anyone with half a brain knew. (See my multiple columns screaming this fact from the rooftops before she won the nominations with the help of her high-priced consultants.)

Former congressman Rob Simmons could have won either of those Senate races in Connecticut. He had been elected to the House from a swing district in 2000, beating an incumbent Democrat, then held his seat for six years, losing in 2006 by about three votes. He's a Haverford College graduate, was an Army colonel who served in Vietnam, worked at the CIA and taught at Yale. That's a candidate Connecticut soccer moms would love.

But if Simmons had won the nomination, how would Republican campaign consultants be able to retire early? They wanted a money-bags candidate, not a winner.

Running McMahon in Connecticut was not a mistake -- it was a betrayal of the Republican Party by political consultants who wanted to line their bank accounts instead of backing a winner.

Republican political consultants did the exact same thing with another great patriot, John Raese, in West Virginia. West Virginians heard Raese had homes in Palm Beach and Telluride and didn't believe he was one of them. Political consultants heard he had homes in Palm Beach and Telluride and started shopping for Jaguars.

Poor Raese has spent a lot of his own money to lose four statewide elections in conservative West Virginia, including the 2010 and 2012 U.S. Senate elections.

Those races alone amount to at least three and maybe four more Senate seats Republicans should have picked up from Connecticut and West Virginia, but lost for no good reason.

That's five Senate seats.

I haven't even gotten to the tea party candidates, and we would already have a U.S. Senate that's 51-47 Republican, absent Republican traitors, morons and hacks.

No one gets rich by hurting the Democratic Party. But a lot of people get rich off losing races for the Republican Party.

The Republicans' recent brave fight against Obamacare should make conservatives proud. But you know what would have made it even better? If Republicans had had a majority in the Senate.

In 2014, how about Republicans concentrate on flipping Democratic seats to the GOP in conservative Arkansas, Louisiana, West Virginia, Montana and Alaska, instead of wasting money and energy purging impure Republicans in safe seats? Can't we wait until we have a nice big majority to start purging our own incumbents?

Other than Sen. Lindsey Graham -- you can purge him. As a character in Voltaire's "Candide" said, "It is good to hang an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others."

COPYRIGHT 2013 ANN COULTER
DISTRIBUTED BY UNIVERSAL UCLICK

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-10-23.html#read_more

Words fail me...and still the Liberals embrace Hope & Change...

Hope and Change: Obama Smeared Bush for 10.6% Black Unemployment Rate; Five Years Later it’s 12.9%

At times, a leader’s ineptitude can best be revealed when he parades his failures as victories. While America still remains in the clutches of a dismal economy, the Obama Administration has become their own cheerleaders, announcing victory when there is no reason to celebrate.

President Obama and his cagey mouthpiece, Jay Carney, have become more and more committed to spinning every failure as victories with only minor hiccups. With the nation’s economy still in poor shape five years after he assumed office, with Obamacare making the Edsel look like a smashing success and with the country heading to yet another showdown as lawmakers continue to ignore the $17 trillion elephant in the room, the question remains:

At what point does this president stop trying to con us and admit that these obvious failures need addressing?

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their report that showed that black unemployment dropped this last month from 13% to 12.9%.

So… Break out the champagne, I guess….

The report indicates that 148,000 jobs were created in September, which dropped the official unemployment rate to 7.2%. Curiously enough, however, the labor-force participation rate fell to 35-year lows- a true testament to the creative accounting for which this administration is known. As more and more people are discounted from the figures for having been out of work for too long, the rate continues to drop as people officially leave the job market.

Still, the Obama Administration continually pretends that these failures are successes. However, when compared to the Bush Administration, the failures become more pronounced.

In 2008, as Senator Barack Obama campaigned against Senator John McCain, a popular method of attack was to attack the unpopular Bush Administration and then link McCain’s proposed presidency to that of the Bush presidency.

Exactly five years ago today, October 22nd, 2008, the Obama Campaign shredded the Bush Administration for their black unemployment rate.

Exactly five years ago today, the black unemployment rate was 10.6%. Now it is 12.9%.

“I wish we could say that reaching 10.6 percent is the highest unemployment we’ve had under this administration,” said Alexis Herman, a member of the Obama Campaign. “But we’ve actually seen rates as high as 11.5 percent.”
“The fact is that when you look at the unemployment numbers” under Bush, she said, “we have lost good jobs in our community, particularly in construction and manufacturing, where we are disproportionately employed. Any attempts to continue to open the doors of the middle class and to move us up the economic ladder really have been stopped dead in its tracks by this administration.”

Of course, Herman’s critiques were immediately followed by an explanation of how President Obama would turn things around by supporting increases in federal minimum wage.

It is both sad and ironic that the first biracial president has so supremely failed the black community. While the Obama Campaign of yesteryear was content with smearing the Bush Administration for their 10.6% black unemployment rate, this administration continues to overlook the hypocrisy of finding 10.6% unacceptable but failing to remedy an economy that has produced such dismal effects for Americans.

Won't see this story in the Lame Stream Press that's for sure....Obamacare's Deathblow? This will make Chief Justice Roberts look like a real tool.

Reprinted from The Daily Mail.

Bombshell: Federal judge suddenly green-lights lawsuit that could stop Obamacare in its tracks

By David Martosko, U.s. Political Editor  Daily Mail

PUBLISHED: 14:27 EST, 22 October 2013 | UPDATED: 15:05 EST, 22 October 2013 

• Small-business plaintiffs say the government is treating all 50 states the same even though Congress allowed them to opt out – and 36 did
• The IRS is granting insurance subsidies to taxpayers in the 'refusenik' states, even though the text of the Obamacare law doesn't allow it
• A federal judge denied the government's motion to dismiss the case on Tuesday
• He also refused, however, to issue an injunction barring the Obama administration from implementing the law while the case moves forward

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss a case that could fatally cripple the Obamacare health insurance law.

The Affordable Care Act forbids the federal government from enforcing the law in any state that opted out of setting up its own health care exchange, according to a group of small businesses whose lawsuit got a key hearing Monday in federal court.

The Obama administration, according to their lawsuit, has ignored that language in the law, enforcing all of its provisions even in states where the federal government is operating the insurance marketplaces on the error-plagued Healthcare.gov website.

Thirty-six states chose not to set up their exchanges, a move that effectively froze Washington, D.C. out of the authority to pay subsidies and other pot-sweeteners to convince citizens in those states to buy medical insurance.

But the IRS overstepped its authority by paying subsidies in those states anyway, say the businesses and their lawyers.

Tea party conservatives have long pushed for an end to Obamacare, and the lawsuit might give them the victory they're after.

The IRS has been offering tax incentives to citizens in all 50 states to get them to enroll in Obamacare, the plaintiffs say, although the Affordable Care act forbids it in the 36 states that have opted out. Without the subsidies, the employer mandate doesn't go into effect.

The subsidies serve as a trigger that determines who has to comply with the now-famous individual and employer mandates. So, the lawsuit claims, the Obama administration illegally enforced the Affordable Care Act – suddenly making millions of taxpayers and small employers subject to paying fines if they don't play ball.

The Affordable Care Act authorizes subsidies only for policies purchased 'through an Exchange established by the State.'

A different section of the law empowers the federal government to set up its own exchanges for each state that chose not establish one.

More...

• Thanks for catching me, Mr President! Diabetic expectant mother tweets her gratitude after she fainted behind Obama during healthcare speech
• Website programmers KNEW there were problems with the Obamacare site but government testers gave it the green light
• Obama asks people to call in to sign up to Obamacare after 'unacceptable' problems with $394 million website... but now the PHONES aren't working
• Just THREE of the 13 Americans standing behind Obama in Monday's Rose Garden Obamacare photo-op have actually signed up
• How the government spent $394 MILLION on the Obamacare website - more than it cost to build Facebook and Twitter - and it STILL doesn't work

But government lawyers have argued that 'Congress made clear that an exchange established by the federal government stands in the shoes of the exchange that a state chooses not to establish.'

The Treasury Department, they contend, 'has reasonably interpreted the Act to provide for eligibility for the premium tax credits for individuals in every state, regardless of which entity operates the exchange.'

But that amounts to the federal government ignoring the letter of the law, lawyer Sam Kazman says.

And 'without those subsidies, the employer mandate isn't triggered,' he told MailOnline.

And that could make the entire Obamacaresystem unsustainable.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is the named defendant in the legal action, which claims her agency is ignoring 36 states' desire to opt out of enforcing the Affordable Care Act

Oops: President Obama appeared with 13 Obamacare supports Monday in the White House rose garden, but only three of them have actually enrolled in the health insurance exchanges Kazman is general counsel for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that is coordinating the case.

Attorney Sam Kazman says the federal government is illegally subsidizing health insurance in all the states that chose not to set up their own health care marketplaces. And without the subsidies, the entire Obamacare system could fail

'The IRS cannot rewrite the law that Congress passed,' said Tom Miller, resident fellow at another think, the tank American Enterprise Institute.

'Its regulation expressly flouts the statutory text of the Affordable Care Act, the intent of Congress and the reasoned choices of [36] states.'

'The fiscal impact' of denying the Obamacare system millions of dollars in lost fines, 'while sizable, wouldn't be large enough to bring down the house,' Kazman added. The poltical one, however, is.'

'You'd have 34 "refusenik" states exempting their employers and many of their citizens from the employer mandate and portions of the individual mandate,' he explained.

'You'd have companies in participating states considering whether to move their operations' to states where they don't have to obey the Affordable Care Act. 'And you might even have some of those states seeking to undo their choice to participate.'

Headaches: The Obamacare website has suffered glitch after glitch since its October 1 launch, creating PR problems for the White House and practical problems for the HHS and IRS

The Competitive Enterprise Institute said in a statement that the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services have pushed regulations that Congress didn't authorize, forcing some employers 'to cut back employees' hours' in order to dodge Obamacare's more economically challenging requirements, 'even though they are located in states that have refused to set up their own insurance exchanges.'

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman refused to dismiss the case, as the government requested, but also denied the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction that would prohibit the IRS and HHS from granting subsidies in what lawyer Kazman calls 'refusenik' states.

This Michigan company says complying with the Obamacare law is forcing it to let some employees go and trim others back to part-time hours to offset the cost of the employer mandate -- a provision that wouldn't kick in without the IRS subsidies

Judge Friedman said Tuesday that he will rule on the merits of the case by February 15.

By then the Obamacare law will be in full swing, nearing the end of its open enrollment period and providing health care services to Americans who sign up for coverage by December 15.

Kazman said his organization would 'take an immediate appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals' in order to get a re-hearing on the motion for an injunction to stop the clock on Obamacare while the larger legal issues are worked out.

At the lawsuit's heart is a set of distinctions that Congress drew between the 14 states – 15 including the District of Columbia – that chose to establish health insurance exchanges and the 36 that opted out.

The plaintiffs, who all hail from 'refusenik' states, say the federal government has invalidated their state governments' choices.

Kazman said that the Obamacare statute does not empower the IRS or HHS to 'give subsidy funding to people in states not authorized by Congress to receive it. That move, he agreed, had he effect of 'gutting a choice – to participate in the exchange program or not – that states were given by Congress.'

The government is 'asking you to interpret "north" to mean "south,"' plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Carvin told Judge Friedman on Monday.

The White House referred questions about the lawsuit to the Health and Human Services Department, which declined requests for comment and passed the buck to the Justice Department. The DOJ didn't respond to emails seeking a position on the lawsuit, which its lawyers are defending.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2471978/Bombshell-Federal-judge-suddenly-green-lights-lawsuit-stop-Obamacare-tracks.html#ixzz2iZyPy9u1
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