At Hot Air. I'd quote more, but they're blocking me.

Barack Obama won the presidency by exploiting a political environment that devoured George W. Bush in a second term plagued by sinking credibility, failed legislative battles, fractured world relations and revolts inside his own party.

Mr. Obama is now threatened by a similar toxic mix. The disastrous rollout of his health care law not only threatens the rest of his agenda but has also raised questions about his competence in the same way that the Bush administrationÂ’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina undermined any semblance of Republican efficiency.

And, Open Thread.

I apologize for bailing early three nights in a row, but for some crazy reason, I actually have social commitments this week (which I'm not at all happy about).

Tonight's meeting is about actual political business, so it's not just slackin'.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (472)
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Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Dakota has a grim bit of non-advice:

So simply put, I donÂ’t know what to advise anyone seeking health insurance as of this minute.

This reminds me of a book called Hit and Run, about the once-successful producing team of Jon Peters and Peter Guber.

Peter Guber, if I remember right, was something of a square, a business-oriented sort, who I think went to business school and such.

Jon Peters was the more mercurial of the pair. He was Barbara Streisand's former hairdresser, and, IIRC, lover, who then became a movie producer. (That's Hollywood for ya!)

But the book discussed Jon Peters' method. Peters, some of his colleagues believed, thrived on chaos. He made nonsensical changes last-minute, throwing off scripts, shooting schedules, and budgets. He would suddenly be committed to an oddball idea that no one had even heard before, nevermind agreed to include in the movie.

They speculated that Peters wasn't able to perform in a "normal" environment, where he would tend to feel marginalized by the more professional sorts of people.

He preferred chaos. And what some of his colleagues believed was this: When he created chaos, he was the Center of the Storm, and the only person who understood what the hell was going on, because he, after all, was causing all the problems. So creating chaos tended to put him in the central position of power on a set, because everyone would have to come to him to find out how to fix the problems.. that he himself had caused.

And by doing so, he created power for himself. On a "normal" sort of shoot, power flowed to the more centered, more predictable partner Guber, or the other more professionally-minded movie people; but on a chaotic set, power flowed to Peters, who worked well in a chaotic environment.

Or at least he wasn't as bothered by chaos as most people, and thus would appear to be calm and cool by comparison -- a rock in the storm. Again, the storm he created, but he would appear to be a fairly steady rock in that storm.*

I'm starting to wonder if No-Drama Obama shares this preference for chaos and upheaval with Jon Peters.

* Jon Peters wasn't entirely without some sparks of creativity. It was his idea to make the poster for the 1988 Batman contain no text or title, just the Batman logo and (I think) a release date. Which was credited at the time as being pretty innovative and grabby, and I think they were right to credit it as such.

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (287)
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Obama's bullshit, and transparently illegal, "administrative fix" was plainly an attempt to keep Congress from acting to change Obamacare. So long as he maintains the power to change the law on his whim, for political expediency here, to ensure the program continues there, he has a degree of control over Obamacare's fate.

But not if Congress -- and especially Congressional Democrats -- start gutting it.

Landrieu's bill (and Upton's bill) would gut Obamacare, and he wants them not to put that into law. He does not want to have to veto a law demanding that he keep his promises.

Today's Cornucopia of Double-Talk is likely him setting up a pretext for vetoing such a bill -- he will claim that it's not necessary, because look, he did this unconstitutional, inadequate "administrative fix."

But, on that, George Will speculated these bills could pass over his veto -- that there could be enough Democrats on board to override his video. I'm not sure he's anywhere close to right on that, but it is interesting.

Anyway, Democrats say they're still planning to go ahead with the legislative option that Obama is so desperate to avoid.

“The president’s announcement this morning was a great first step,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, one of several Democrats who have openly broken with the White House in recent days. But “we will probably need legislation to make it stick,” Landrieu warned, adding that she has no intention of putting the breaks on her push to bring her bill to the floor.

“My legislation is intended to keep the promise. Period. Big stop,” Landrieu said when asked if she would change the timeframe of her bill. “As soon as we can do that the better.”

But more progressive, safe, and/or not-up-for-reelection this year Senators like Boxer and Murphy disagree, and say that whatever bullshit Obama just said should "do the trick."

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (313)
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Update: Arkansas, too.

It started as disaster. Now comes the chaos.

Kreidler says Thursday he has "serious concerns" about how Obama's proposal would be implemented and its potential impact on the overall stability of the state's health insurance market.

"I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington," Kreidler said in a statement announcing his decision. "In the interest of keeping the consumer protections, we have enacted and ensuring that we keep health insurance costs down for all consumers, we are staying the course. We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies. I believe this is in the best interest of the health insurance market in Washington."

Limbaugh spoke about the fundamental lawlessness of all this: Using DrewM's language, he noted that Obama was once again "waving his magic wand" to make parts of the law disappear or reappear or transmutate at will.

I would like to propose a lawsuit to repeal Obamacare on this basis. The Constitution does not permit executive law-making, and apparently executive law-making is central to Obamacare. The law violates our Constitution on separation of powers grounds.

This is, as Charles C.W. Cooke put it, pure Chavez-level banana republic tyranny, and the nation will not stand if this is permitted.

If the Supreme Court stands for anything, it stands for guaranteeing the United States have a small-r republican form of government with enumerated powers, separation of powers, and checks and balances; Obamacare, in actual practice, ignores all that, and constitutes an indefensible change of our government from a republican one to an executive lordship.

File the suit. Roll the dice. Get this abomination off the books before there is simply no law left to enforce.

Reviewing the Republican Form of Government Clause... It seems my memory failed me and it's not applicable.

But I was just using that as a sexier-sounding shorthand for "Separation of Powers," anyway. So, ignore my Republican Form of Government specification and let's get a suit brought on Separation of Powers grounds, and non-delegability of legislative functions grounds (i.e., Congress cannot delegate the law-making power away to the executive, even if it is so craven as to wish to do so).

Posted by: Open Blogger at 11:28 AM | Comments (390)
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Gee, loud progressives with lots of friends in the media sure seem to get a lot of Free Passes on supposedly-indefensible hate speech, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (161)
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A liberal Democratic Senator, Chris Murphy, attempted to claim on MSNBC that all the problems with Obamacare were fake problems, stoked up by a media out to get them.

Here's what the archliberal hostess said in return:

How ridiculous is the spectacle of the left claiming The Media is too hard on Democrats, progressivism, and Obama?

This is a real meme on the left -- Ed Schultz comically attempted it last night.

What else do they have, really? They own this disaster, every inch of it. There is no way out. So they'll just scream "It's the Media!" and "It's the Republicans!" and "It's the Insurance Companies!"

I forget who noted this, but note the Democrats are less and less attempting to claim Obamacare is a good law -- instead, they're implicitly confessing it is a disaster by claiming other people are responsible for it.

No one tries to shift responsibility with regard to a success.

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (213)
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Just an idea that's struck me.

The purpose of the law is to make sure the American public is given an honest, candid report on the actual costs of a bill. American democracy cannot function unless the public offers actual consent to the laws passed in citizens' names, and they cannot render that actual consent without knowing what costs would-be laws would actually impose on them.

Alternate name for the bill: We Shouldn't Have To Pass It To Find Out What's In It Bill.

The new law would state the following:

1. No law can be voted on before the CBO or some other analytical office examines a bill for hidden taxes, cost-shifting, disguised subsidies, disguised taxes, mandates on businesses likely to be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices, etc.

2. The report noting the hidden taxes, et al. must be presented to the public at least seven days before the bill can be scheduled for a vote.

3. On an emergency basis, Congress can temporarily waive these requirements and pass a bill without the report; however, such bills are automatically sunsetted within 90 days. Thus, absent a report on hidden taxes before passage of the bill, within 90 days, the report must be conducted and the bill must be voted on again, or else it passes out of law, automatically.

4. The law is specifically made retroactive to January 1, 2010. All bills passed since 2010 (including Obamacare) are required to be re-voted after the submission of a report explaining the hidden taxes, etc. contained within the bill.

As there are a bunch of bills to work through, I suppose some schedule must be worked out, with earlier bills having priority, and also ranked in priority according to economic impact. (I.e., Obamacare is the first bill to be re-examined for hidden taxes, cost-shifting, etc.)

Would this work? Did I go to far in Point 4? I have no idea.

But it does seem to me that this nation was founded on the idea that taxation, without actual informed consent of the governed, is fundamentally illegitimate.

And it's time to return to that idea, after a century of it being out-of-vogue.

Beautiful! We can use AAA's great suggestion as a replacement for my Point 4:

On point 4, you might also consider an alternative to the effect of "retroactive to any laws already passed but not fully in effect / implemented yet", which would include Obamacare. If it's not fully rolled out and in effect it should be subject to review, and people might find that more attractive than an arbitrary calendar date.

Posted by: Ace at 09:56 AM | Comments (222)
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Earlier I wrote:

* Are insurers even interested in offering these policies given the other strictures of Obamacare? Bear in mind, they cannot charge the healthy any less than the desperately sick. So they, like Obama, need healthier people in these high-risk pools. (Obamacare essentially puts the entire country into a high-risk pool.)

So the insurance companies can offer these policies again... and the effect, I'm pretty sure, will be to drastically increase their own downside risk when they insure the uninsurable, and have fewer healthier people to tax to pay for the uninsurable.

So Obama may be certainly is attempting to engineer a situation in which he offers an odious, destructive deal to insurance companies, so that when they balk, he can say, "See? This is why we need Obamacare, and none of this is my fault."

Chris Wallace read this statement from the trade association of American insurance companies:

Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law, Obamacare, could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers. Premiums have already been set for next year, based on assumptions of when consumers will be transitioning to the marketplaces.

If now fewer younger and healthier people choose to purchase health coverage in the exchanges, premiums will increase, and there will be fewer choices for consumers.

They're talking about the Death Spiral.

The female anchor asked Wallace if Obama had consulted with the insurance agency. Chris Wallace scoffed, laughed at the question, asking her in return: At this late date, why would he start consulting?

"This Is A New Insanity:" So says a spokesman for New Jersey Health Insurance Underwriters.

Fuller statement from American Health Insurance Providers below.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (321)
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Sorry, I was tweeting this buscrash of a presser when I should have been blogging it.

I'll sum up my take-away later.

For now, maybe give this Jonah Goldberg piece a spin: Obamacare Shadenfruedarama. Despite the funny title, it's about something more important.

The hubris of our ocean-commanding commander-in-chief surely isn’t news to readers of this website. He’s said that he’s smarter and better than everyone who works for him. His wife informed us that he has “brought us out of the dark and into the light” and that he would fix our broken souls. The man defined sin itself as “being out of alignment with my values.” We may be the ones we’ve been waiting for, but at the same time, everyone has been waiting for him. Or as he put it in 2007, “Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama’s been there.”

In every tale of hubris, the transgressor is eventually slapped across the face with the semi-frozen flounder of reality. The Greeks had a god, Nemesis, whose scythe performed the same function. It was Nemesis who lured Narcissus to the pool where he fell in love with his own reflection....

Every day, the supposedly conspiratorial right-wing smear that Obama cared more about economic redistribution than he did about the middle class or economic growth looks more reasonable. Surely we’re allowed to say, “We told you so”?

[A]s a political and ideological matter, this is beyond fantastic. For years we’ve been told that Democrats were more “reality-based,” that “facts have a liberal bias,” in the words of Paul Krugman, and that if they could just have their way, they could fix all of our problems. No one represented this arrogant promise more than Barack Obama himself. But, with an irony so rich it would be made of Corinthian leather if it was a car seat, the only way he could get his signature legislation passed was to baldly and brazenly lie about it, over and over and over again. He created a rhetorical cloud castle where no one would lose his insurance, every family would save thousands of dollars, and millions of the uninsured would suddenly get coverage. Anyone who doubted this was called a fool or a liar, or even a racist...

And all of this — every bit of it — is their own fault.

.

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (242)
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Several questions:

* If this policy of Maximum Cancellations is bad policy now, and represents, as the New York Times so delicately called an "incorrect promise," why is it any more palatable after the mid-term elections?

* Are insurers even interested in offering these policies given the other strictures of Obamacare? Bear in mind, they cannot charge the healthy any less than the desperately sick. So they, like Obama, need healthier people in these high-risk pools. (Obamacare essentially puts the entire country into a high-risk pool.)

So the insurance companies can offer these policies again... and the effect, I'm pretty sure, will be to drastically increase their own downside risk when they insure the uninsurable, and have fewer healthier people to tax to pay for the uninsurable.

So Obama may be certainly is attempting to engineer a situation in which he offers an odious, destructive deal to insurance companies, so that when they balk, he can say, "See? This is why we need Obamacare, and none of this is my fault."

* People ask, "What about policies that are no longer offered because the insurer left the market due to Obamacare?" This could be fixed by permitting another company to offer substantially the same policy as the policyowner once owned. But as Obama doesn't really want to "fix" this problem at all, he won't do that. He'll pretend it didn't occur to him.

He still wants the Maximum number of Cancellations possible. His goal hasn't changed, just his temporary tactics.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Nancy Pelosi, Super-Genius and Policy Wonk, will be offering her own "fix" to compete with the Upton bill.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that, despite President Obama's impending announcement of a fix to Obamacare's canceled insurance plans, House Democrats will also pursue a legislative fix themselves.

Pelosi said to think of it as a "belt and suspenders."

"I want to do both," Pelosi said[.]

This is obviously intended to provide Democrats with cover, so they vote against Upton and still claim "We voted for Pelosi's fix. You know, the fix from Pelosi, the one who was against any fix at all. But seriously, it's a real fix. Why, "Fix" is even part of the bill's title: the Fixing the Affordable Care Act and Making Everything Come Up Daisies bill.

Thanks to @johnedkdahl.

Posted by: Ace at 07:29 AM | Comments (973)
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