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Monday, May 26, 2014

WH rules employers can’t dump workers into health exchanges

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Howard Portnoy

It figures the Obama administration would wait for a three-day weekend to announce its latest executive rule change to Obamacare (aka the “law of the land”).

This one is a doozy. The implications are so far-reaching that the official White House newspaper, the New York Times, buried the story by Robert Pear on page A12 of the New York edition. Here’s the gist of it:

Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day — or $36,500 a year — for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.
The ruling this month, by the Internal Revenue Service, blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.
[…]
Many employers — some that now offer coverage and some that do not — had concluded that it would be cheaper to provide each employee with a lump sum of money to buy insurance on an exchange, instead of providing coverage directly.

Pear quotes Obama as recently saying, “I don’t think that an employer-based system is going to be, or should be, replaced anytime soon,” which is a total reversal of the official position articulated in February. Back then, the administration and its contingent in Congress were bragging that Obamacare allowed workers to “escape their jobs.” Suddenly, the dreaded condition known as “job lock” is back on the table, hamstringing the hordes of Americans who were planning the pursue their lifelong dreams.

According to the Galen Institute, which has been keeping score, this latest directive from the IRS becomes the 42nd unilateral “administrative action” undertaken by the White House.

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Incompetent VA slashes D-Day vet’s benefits to $6 a month!

May 26, 2014 by Joe Saunders 5 Comments

A Navy veteran who braved German fire to land troops on the French coast on D-Day 70 years ago is taking a different kind of fire from his own Department of Veterans Affairs.
Joseph Teson of Watervliet, N.Y., has had his VA benefits slashed to $6 a month after bureaucracy bean-counters discovered an overpayment in the $300 a month benefits he’d been receiving, according to an NBC affiliate in Albany.
WNYT-TV reported Teson was notified of the overpayment last year when he received a VA letter stating a change in his “entitlement to compensation and pension benefits” had resulted in an overpayment to him of $3,090. And the federal government — that leviathan in our lives that’s bragging about only running a $500 billion deficit for 2014 — wants that three grand back.
“Since you are currently receiving VA benefits, we plan to withhold those benefits until the amount you were overpaid is recouped,” the letter stated.
So, thanks to the federal government’s own incompetence — it’s not like Teson went to the office and robbed the till himself – his VA benefits are down to $6 a month.
Teson doesn’t sound like he’s starving. He still has Social Security and his pension – his grown children are around if things get too tough for him and his wife of 67 years. Truth be told, he doesn’t sound like he cares much one way or the other; he’s 89 kyears old and he knows the score.
But $6 a month?
This is 2014. Five years ago, at the dawn of the Age of Obama, power-drunk Democrats decided to waste $800 billion – that’s BILLION — on a 2009 stimulus that stimulated nothing. The next year progressives in the White HouseWhite House put up a half-billion taxpayer dollars in loan guarantees for a soon-to-be-bankrupt solar-powered con game called Solyndra (now all but forgotten in the Obama litany of corruption).
And God only knows how many uncountable hundreds of millions have been spent on the disaster of Obamacare and all its works.
But this same government has no problem cutting an elderly man’s benefits to $6 a month to get back $3,000 it gave him in the first place.
It’s not just an insult to Teson, it’s a disgrace to the rest of us – as this administration has been since one minute after noon on Jan. 20, 2009.
Back in June 1944, a young sailor named Joe Teson could never have imagined his government would be paying him $6 a month in benefits for putting his life on the line for a country at war.
In 2014, it’s just as hard to believe.
Check out the NYT report here.

White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan

By Greg Miller, Published: May 25 E-mail the writer

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.
The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

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The disclosure marked a rare instance in which a CIA officer working overseas had his cover — the secrecy meant to protect his actual identity — pierced by his own government. The only other recent case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as officials of the George W. Bush administration sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq.
The Post is withholding the name of the CIA officer at the request of Obama administration officials who warned that the officer and his family could be at risk if the name were published. The CIA and the White House declined to comment.
The CIA officer was one of 15 senior U.S. officials identified as taking part in a military briefing for Obama at Bagram air base, a sprawling military compound north of Kabul. Others included U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan James B. Cunningham and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in the country.
Their names were included on a list of participants in the briefing provided by U.S. military officials to the White House press office.
The list was circulated by e-mail to reporters who traveled to Afghanistan with Obama, and disseminated further when it was included in a “pool report,” or summary of the event meant to be shared with other news organizations, including foreign media, not taking part in the trip.
In this case, the pool report was filed by Washington Post White House bureau chief Scott Wilson. Wilson said he had copied the list from the e-mail provided by White House press officials. He sent his pool report to the press officials, who then distributed it to a list of more than 6,000 recipients.
Wilson said that after the report was distributed, he noticed the unusual reference to the station chief and asked White House press officials in Afghanistan whether they had intended to include that name.
Initially, the press office raised no objection, apparently because military officials had provided the list to distribute to news organizations. But senior White House officials realized the mistake and scrambled to issue an updated list without the CIA officer’s name. The mistake, however, already was being noted on Twitter, although without the station chief’s name.
It is unclear whether the disclosure will force the CIA to pull the officer out of Afghanistan. As the top officer in one of the agency’s largest overseas posts, with hundreds of officers, analysts and other subordinates, the station chief in Kabul probably has been identified to senior Afghan government officials and would not ordinarily take part in clandestine missions beyond the U.S. Embassy compound.
The identities of at least three CIA station chiefs in Pakistan have been exposed in recent years. In one case, a CIA officer became a target of death threats after his cover was blown, forcing the agency to rush him out of the country.

White House Accidentally Reveals The Identity Of The CIA's Afghanistan Chief

Brett LoGiurato

May 26, 2014, 8:46 AM
21,664
49

The White House mistakenly identified the Central Intelligence Agency's top official in Afghanistan on Sunday, during President Barack Obama's short, surprise visit to troops at Bagram Air Base. The official's name was included on a list of names participating in a military briefing with Obama, which was provided to the press traveling with the president. The individual was identified as the "Chief Station Officer."
The list was then more widely distributed in a "pool report" — one reporter's summary of the event that is passed on to all press on the White House media list, including those not on the trip.
The Washington Post's Scott Wilson was the pool reporter at Bagram Air Base on Sunday, and he noted the apparent mistake to the White House. Wilson asked White House officials whether they had meant to include the name, at which point they backtracked.
The individual's name has not been released on a broad scope, and the individual does not appear to have been identified on Twitter or other social media sites. The Washington Post withheld the name of the officer in its report on the mistake, after the White House warned it could put the individual and the individual's family at risk. Business Insider is also not identifying the officer.
The Post noted the last time a CIA official had his or her identity exposed by the U.S. government came under the administration of President George W. Bush, albeit under significantly different circumstances.
Former CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity was revealed in 2003, something for which the Bush administration would find itself engulfed in scandal. Plame's husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, was an intense critic of the Bush administration's war in Iraq.

Schoolboys disciplined for 'refusing to pray to Allah' time we the people start fire in our teachers

Schoolboys disciplined for 'refusing to pray to Allah'

Two schoolboys were allegedly disciplined after refusing to kneel down and "pray to Allah" during a religious education lesson.

A child watches as muslims kneel to pray

A spokesman for Cheshire County Council said 'Educating children in the beliefs of different faiths is part of Cheshire's diversity curriculum' Photo: HEATHCLIFF O'MALLEY

By Nick Britten

5:18PM BST 04 Jul 2008

It was claimed that the boys, from a year seven class of 11 and 12-year-olds, were given detention after refusing to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

Yesterday parents accused the school of breaching their human rights by forcing them to take part in the exercise.

One, Sharon Luinen, said: "This isn't right, it's taking things too far. I understand that they have to learn about other religions. I can live with that but it is taking it a step too far to be punished because they wouldn't join in Muslim prayer.

"Making them pray to Allah, who isn't who they worship, is wrong and what got me is that they were told they were being disrespectful."

Another parent Karen Williams, 38, whose 12-year-old daughter is a classmate of the boys, said: "I am absolutely furious my daughter was made to take part in it and I don't find it acceptable.

"The teacher had gone into the class and made them watch a short film and then said 'we are now going out to pray to Allah'.
"Then two boys got detention and all the other children missed their refreshments' break."
She added: "Not only was it forced upon them, my daughter was told off for not doing it right.
"They'd never done it before and they were supposed to do it in another language."
She said the pupils were asked if they had water on them, and when one girl produced a bottle, the teacher began washing her feet with it.
Her husband Keith, 44, a painter and decorator, said: "The school is wonderful but this one teacher has made a major mistake. It seems to be happening throughout society. People think they can ride roughshod over our beliefs and the way we live."
The alleged incident, at the Alsager school, one of Cheshire's top performing schools, happened on Tuesday afternoon. The teacher, Alison Phillips, the school's subject leader in RE, is understood to be staying away from the school until the furore dies down, although she has not been suspended.
She is said to have got prayer mats out of the cupboard and also asked children to wear Islamic headdresses.
Deputy headmaster Keith Plant said: "I have spoken to the teacher and she has articulately given me her version of events."
Sources at the school said the incident could have been down to Miss Phillips instigating a role play and not properly briefing the pupils, all aged around 12, what she was doing.
A spokesman for Cheshire County Council said they were investigating. He added: "The headteacher contacted the authority immediately complaints were received. Enquiries are being made into the circumstances as a matter of urgency and all parents will be informed accordingly.
"Educating children in the beliefs of different faiths is part of Cheshire's diversity curriculum on the basis that knowledge is, of course, is essential to understanding.
"We accept that such teaching has to be conducted with commonsense and sensitivity."