Obamacare: The Never-Ending Gift that Repeatedly Teaches Us that Big Government Doesn’t Work

Daniel J. Mitchell / Townhall Columnist

Sigh. Another day, another grim Obamacare update.

Actually, we have two updates on the never-ending disaster of government-run healthcare.
Our first story comes from the Washington Times, which reports that the company hired to fix the failed Obamacare website is way behind schedule and way over budget.

Fixing the Obamacare website to get it ready to handle a second round of enrollments will cost the federal government $121 million… The deal, which Accenture announced on its website Tuesday, costs more than the $93.7 million it took to build HealthCare.gov in the first place. It’s also $30 million more than the government projected for fixes just a few months ago… “There doesn’t seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel for Obamacare website expenses,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa, California Republican.

I’m mystified, by the way, why taxpayers always have to cough up more money on these contracts.

If some company promises to do X in exchange for Y amount of money, shouldn’t that contract be binding?

Instead, this is just the latest chapter in the endless book of government cost overruns.
Our second story comes from the Washington Examiner, which reports that there are some big problems with Obama’s supposed success of bribing and coercing people into Obamacare.

…officials from President Obama down have touted 8 million Americans signing up for coverage through the program’s exchanges. But, among other things, they haven’t revealed how many of those individuals formally completed their enrollment by paying their premiums. …>what the committee heard back was that just 67 percent of individuals signing up for health insurance through the federal health exchange as of April 15 paid their first month’s premiums and actually completed enrollment.

Gee, if that’s a success, I’d hate to see a failure.

And the story also notes that the White House has been unable to trick sufficient numbers of young people into overpaying for healthcare. That’s very bad news for the insurance companies that put their trust in government.

In addition, just 25 percent of enrollees were between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the report. The administration had been aiming for roughly 40 percent of enrollees to come from this younger demographic to help offset the cost of providing coverage to older and sicker participants.

I guess this means stupid birth control ads weren’t enough to get young folks to flush away their dollars.

BREAKING: John Kerry Subpoenaed Over Benghazi Stonewalling

Katie Pavlich  / Townhall Columnist

 

Secretary of State John Kerry has been subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee after new revelations this week about the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi. The State Department has been accused of "illegally withholding subpoenaed material" from Congress, action that could "constitute a criminal offense." Kerry is expected under the subpoena to testify at a May 21 hearing on Capitol Hill and the

“The State Department’s response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack has shown a disturbing disregard for the Department’s legal obligations to Congress,” Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa wrotes in a letter to Secretary Kerry. “Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game. Because your Department is failing to meet its legal obligations, I am issuing a new subpoena to compel you to appear before the Committee to answer questions about your agency’s response to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attack.”

The subpoena comes on the heels of new emails obtained and released by Judicial Watch showing Senior White House National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes altered Benghazi talking points. The emails were obtained through a Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuit and have been withheld from Congress despite multiple document requests, a potentially criminal offense.

“The fact that these documents were withheld from Congress for more than 19 months is alarming,” Issa wrote. “The Department is not entitled to delay responsive materials because it is embarrassing or implicates the roles and actions of senior officials.”

In the letter Issa reminded Kerry of his commitment to getting the truth about the Benghazi when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left office.

"Just weeks before taking over for outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while serving as Chairman of the Senate Foreign relations Committee, you expressed a commitment to obtaining the full record of facts related to the deadly September 11-12, 2012, attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya. You said, "From the very beginning of the Benghazi events, every member of this Committee has shared with the President and Secretary Clinton our determination to get all of the facts about what happened and why in Benghazi." You aligned yourself with a similar, previous commitment from the President," Issa wrote.

House Speaker John Boehner says special committee needed to investigate Benghazi

By Stephen Dinan / The Washington Times

The House will establish a select committee to investigate the terrorist attack in Benghazi, House Speaker John A. Boehner announced Friday, escalating the issue once again and setting up an official inquiry that will keep the politically nettlesome issue in the news for months to come.

Mr. Boehner’s move came just hours after House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa issued a subpoena to Secretary of State John F. Kerry demanding he come testify about why his department didn’t turn over an email that seemed to show the administration erroneously planning to blame a protest for the 2012 attack, rather than the terrorist group that intelligence and military officials suspected of the assault.

Mr. Boehner, in a statement, said the withholding of that email convinced him it was time to appoint a full special committee to investigate.

“It forces us to ask the question, what else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?” the speaker said.

The email in question was from a top national security aide to President Obama, who appeared to be coaching others on how to respond to questions in the wake of the Benghazi attacks.

The aide urged that the focus be placed on an anti-Islam video — though both defense and intelligence community sources at the time had already disregarded the video as the reason for the attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.

The State Department turned over the email to Judicial Watch, a public interest law firm, last month, and only after the group went to court. Mr. Issa had issued a subpoena he says should have included that document nearly a year ago, and yet it was never turned over to Congress.

White House officials first said that the document didn’t cover Benghazi and so shouldn’t have been turned over. But by Thursday they had changed tactics and acknowledged it did refer briefly to Benghazi, and said questions about its release would have to be answered by the State Department.

That led to Mr. Issa’s subpoena.

“Compliance with a subpoena for documents is not a game,” Mr. Issa said in issuing a subpoena, which gives Mr. Kerry no choice but to appear. He could have issued an invitation, which would have given the secretary more leeway, but the subpoena raises the issue to a higher level.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee, said Mr. Issa was making the congressional investigation more combative than it needed to be by subpoenaing Mr. Kerry to testify.

He said that in 2007, when Democrats subpoenaed then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify, it came only after he had repeatedly requested her to appear and after the committee debated and voted on the move. Mr. Cummings pointed out that Mr. Issa voted against issuing that subpoena, saying it was inappropriate.

Mr. Boehner’s move means the House will now vote on whether to create a special committee. That vote could be difficult for some red-state House Democrats up for re-election.

The outlines of what the committee would look like weren’t disclosed, but Mr. Boehner said he wants to see it “work quickly to get answers for the American people and the families of the victims.”

Four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed in the assault on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

The special investigative committee will supersede the work done by Mr. Issa and several other committee chairmen who had been looking into Benghazi.

Mr. Boehner’s announcement comes just a day after two of those chairmen — Mr. Issa and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon — clashed over one of Mr. Issa’s witnesses.

A retired Air Force brigadier general testified to Mr. Issa’s committee on Thursday that the military should have been better prepared to respond to the attack, and that they were waiting for guidance for the State Department, which is one reason they didn’t deploy a response force faster.

Mr. McKeon issued a statement challenging that version, saying that the general wasn’t in a position to know, and saying that his committee’s investigation had shown that wasn’t the case.

That clash of findings underscored the trouble of having multiple committees investigation the same complex issue.

Select Committee to be appointed

By: Diane Sori

BREAKING...a Special Select Committee will be appointed with Trey Goudy as head to look into Benghazi. 

However, in my opinion this needed to be a private investigation as per the wishes of the families of those murdered. But hopefully Goudy can keep the liberals hands out of this and prevent them from circling the wagons around Obama.

“The War Against the Jews”

Shari Goodman penned an excellent piece — exclusive to Atlas — on the current state of Jew-hatred across the world:

THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS, Shari Goodman

Nearly seventy years after the end of the Holocaust and its recent commemoration, Jews frequently recite the pledge of “Never Again”; yet, the war against the Jews continues and with the exception of a few lone voices, no one within government, Jewish leadership, the media, or authority is responding.

The war against the Jews did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany.  While there may have been a respite for a few decades, it has raised its ugly head once again, and presently threatens European Jewry, Israel, and increasingly North American Jewry. 

From Western European capitols to Ukranian cities in the east, anti-Semitism is on the rise, while we in North America are witnessing an ever increasing climate of anti-Semitic hate on college campuses and the Internet.

The Nazi uniform of yesterday has been replaced by young Muslim men hiding under their keffiyehs (terrorist scarves) chanting ”death to the Jews” and “death to Israel”. 

Under the guise of freedom of speech, they terrorize Jewish youth on the streets of Paris, American campuses or as in NYU, their dormitories.  The Muslim Student Association, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, with over 1000 chapters across our college campuses is permitted to incite and wreck havoc upon young Jews that would never be permitted against Muslims or Blacks.  During Israeli Apartheid Week, young Jews are called Nazis, racists and baby killers.  Where are the cries of the righteous among us? Where are the voices of the Chancellors, the Presidents, Board of Directors, and the faculties in the halls of academia?  Their eery silence speaks volumes and their tolerance of evil is a moral failure that will haunt their universities for time to come.

Israel, the only Jewish state, with half of the Jewish population has been earmarked for destruction by those who wish for a Judenrein Middle East.  While Muslims have a majority in 49 countries with an Arab land mass of over 5 million square miles, Jews with a sliver of land to call their own are begrudged the right to self-determination, a right allotted to all other nations.  Condemnation for the Jewish ancestral homeland is a favorite pastime at the United Nations, the European Union, and this American administration.  On April 25th of this year, John Kerry, warned Israel at a meeting with world leaders that “Israel will become an apartheid State if it doesn’t make peace soon.” 

Note that this warning was not directed at the “Palestinians” who refuse to even recognize a Jewish state, but at a Jewish democratic ally who has traded land for peace, only to receive acts of terror in return.

ANTI-SEMITISM

In a recent study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, in cooperation with the European Jewish Congress, results from the 2013 survey show that anti-Semitic attacks are growing in their intensity and cruelty. The number and type of violent attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions is worsening. 

There were 554 registered violent anti-Semitic acts, perpetrated with weapons or without, by arson, vandalism and direct threats, against persons, synagogues, community centers and schools, cemeteries, monuments and private property in 2013. 

The highest number of recorded incidents comes from France: 116, a rise in violent cases has also been noted in the UK, with 95 cases compared to 84 in 2012, and in Canada, 83 compared to 74; in Germany: 36 compared to 23; 23 in the Ukraine, compared to 15; 15 cases in Russia (11 in 2012), and 14 in Hungary (12 in 2012).  (IsraelNationalNews.com, 4/27;  ”Europe:  Jewish Life “Unsustaibable” Due to Rising Anti-Semitism”)

In Canada, Bnai Brith Director,Frank Diamant recently stated “The current level of anti-Semitism in Canada as compared with data from a decade ago shows a leap of 49%,”.  “Jews of all ages are subjected to hate acts at work, in school and even in the playgrounds,” he added. Despite Canada’s efforts – both domesticaly and internationally – to deal with anti-Semitism, the prejudices still exist in the country.”

Op-ed: 
The Benghazi cover-up leads straight to the Oval Office

By: Diane Sori

"The point is we should have tried."..."As another saying goes - always move to the sound of the guns."

- Retired Brig. Gen. Robert Lovell speaking yesterday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about awaiting orders to go into Libya...orders that NEVER came.

As the next round of Darryl Issa's hearings on Benghazi began and seven months after Senator Ted Cruz called for an independent joint select committee to investigate the attacks at Benghazi...the very select committee that House Speaker John Boehner keeps saying NO to...the in the pocket of Obama media must be besides itself as they now have to cook up even more nonsense for us to focus on as they try to divert and deflect attention off the corrupt and traitorous Obama Administration yet again. And a diversion is needed now more than ever especially after documents were released last Friday to Judicial Watch...a Conservative watchdog group...released as result of a June 2013, Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the State Department. This release allowed access to more than 100 pages of documents and what was discovered must have Obama very nervous...very nervous indeed.

And these now publicly released e-mails show a direct White House link to covering-up the truth about Benghazi via their revealing that after the attacks the top priority of the Obama administration was to concoct a story...build a LIE...to cover the truth about Obama's involvement in Benghazi...to cover the fact that his aide, Ben Rhodes, helped in that cover-up by communicated directly with then U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and helping her prepare for her appearances on the Sunday talk show circuit. In fact, the e-mails show Rice was, “to convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad; [and] to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, not a broader failure of policy.”

In other words, our embassy is attacked and four Americans are murdered but to Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his minions our national security be damned... conducting a NO holds barred investigation into the attack be damned...and the deaths of four Americans be damned...as none of these were part of the equation for reaching the all-important goal...a goal that trumped all else...a goal to make Barack HUSSEIN Obama “look good” against Mitt Romney in the upcoming foreign policy debate leading up to the 2012 Presidential Election.  And this manipulation of the truth was needed because if you remember Obama kept repeating ad-nauseum in the months leading up to the election that "Osama bin-Laden is dead, GM is alive, al-Qaeda is on the run."

Running a campaign leaning heavily on foreign policy issues because the economy, in a word, stunk, Obama needed foreign policy successes to win against a man who had NO foreign policy experience to speak of but who was strong on economic issues, so his calling card became that he killed Osama bin-Laden and that al-Qaeda was on the run. Well Benghazi proved it was NOT and so damage control was needed...and enter center stage a group of traitors unlike any America has seen since the likes of Benedict Arnold...Barack HUSSEIN Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ben Rhodes, Susan Rice, Jay Carney (who knowingly perpetrated the lie), and so many others connected to this administration...so many others complicit in the LIES about Benghazi.

And now with these incriminating e-mails surfacing...e-mails that were originally redacted when the documents were first asked for and only gotten by a court order...the made-up fable of Benghazi has been blown straight to hell. In fact, an e-mail from Ben Rhodes, one of Obama's assistants and National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, shows that since the night the attacks occurred one of the Obama administration’s primary communications goals was NOT to get to the truth about what happened that fateful night but was “To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.” 

And in order to pull that rhetoric off a cover-up was constructed that included taking a poorly-made but somewhat widely viewed YouTube video called 'The Innocence of Muslims' and bring it front and center as the cause of the violence...after all its well-known that anything that upsets a muslim's sensibilities brings them to violent responses.  And once that foundation was laid the stage was set for the final part of the plan, and that was to get the American public to buy their story...to buy their LIE. And how did Obama and crew do that...by listed goals for Susan Rice to use in explaining the Benghazi attack and getting her to voluntarily agree to repeatedly LIE to both the families of Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty, and to the American people as well during her rounds on the talk show circuit. 

Following the pre-planned script...a script changed many times...where she was told what to say and how to say it, Rice spewed over and over the LIE that “Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo." And by doing what she did, Susan Rice has now become as guilty as the rest of them for she knowingly colluded with those perpetrating  a LIE to cover for what we (I believe) know to be Obama's gun and weapons running operation to the al-Qaeda (our enemy) backed Syrian rebels.

  

And this e-mail was NOT just sent to Susan Rice but was also sent to a dozen other members of Obama's top advisors and assistants and was titled: “RE: PREP Call with Susan: Saturday at 4:00 pm ET”.  In fact, Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before Susan Rice made her infamous round of the Sunday talk shows to discuss...to LIE...about the attacks at Benghazi.

And another e-mail to Payton Knopf, the former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the U(seless) N(ations) also showed that senior officials had already said the Benghazi attack was “complex” and planned in advance, yet Rice stayed on script repeating over and over the concocted LIE that the attack at Benghazi was “spontaneous.”

So with these e-mails it's now been proven what we long have suspected...the man aiding and abetting the enemy...the man sitting in the White House... deliberately blamed an innocuous YouTube video for terrorist attacks on our people at our Benghazi consulate. This man...Barack HUSSEIN Obama... directly provided a fabricated cover story to deflect blame off the jihadi bast*rds who murdered our people...to deflect blame off his muslim brethren. In other words, these e-mails prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that NOT only did Barack HUSSEIN Obama know that NO YouTube video was involved in the Benghazi attacks but that he also knew of or actually helped to orchestrate the ruse to try and cover his own involvement in Benghazi.

So what should happen now...any and all witnesses with any knowledge of the attack including administration officials...including the traitor-in-chief himself... must be called to testify before the Boehner so NOT wanted independent joint select committee so we can once and for all know the truth about what happened that fateful night. And Boehner, I believe, is indeed involved in the cover-up...see my RIGHT SIDE PATRIOT radio partner Craig Andresen's and my Benghazi expose in either my blog, The Patriot Factor, http://thepatriotfactor.blogspot.com/or in Craig's blog, The National Patriot, http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/

I have said since day one that Benghazi will be proven to be Obama's Achilles heel and these e-mails do just that as the cover-up they expose leads right to the desk of the Oval Office. And NO matter how the White House and the media tries to spin these developments...NO matter how they try to make excuses for what went down both on that fateful night and in its aftermath...the only rightful thing to do now is call for the immediate arrest of Barack HUSSEIN Obama on the grounds of treason for aiding and abetting the enemy and for his complicity in the murders of Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. 

GITMO beckons while Barack HUSSEIN Obama awaits the final decree for those found guilty of treason...just saying.