Hillary Supporters Hope She'll LOWER the STANDARD of LIVING if Elected President!!

     

Mark Dice

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Published on Dec 7, 2015

When Hillary Clinton supporters were asked if they hope she'll lower the standard of living if she's elected President of the United States, many of them thought it was a great idea. Their blind support for Hillary's bid for the White House is demonstrated by person after person who is so clueless, they'd probably support Hillary 2016 no matter what! Produced by Mark Dice.

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Hillary Clinton’s plan to fight ISIS plenty of rhetoric and not much in the way of substance

New York Post

Hillary Clinton’s plan to fight ISIS is like Obama’s — only more so

By Post Editorial Board

November 19, 2015 | 8:49pm

Hillary Clinton Photo: Getty Images

If you like President Obama’s “plan” to fight ISIS, you’ll just love Hillary Clinton’s.
Clinton wants to defeat the jihadis by relying pretty much on the same lame steps Obama has — only more so.
The Democratic presidential front-runner laid out her ideas Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations in what was billed as a major policy speech. Alas, it offered far more rhetoric than substance.
Even Hillary herself admitted, in a question-and-answer session afterward, that her proposal is but “an intensification, an acceleration” of the failed Obama strategy.
Yes, she called for more airstrikes, a no-fly zone over Syria and boots on the ground. But it’s plain she’d have non-US forces do the heavy lifting in many of these areas.


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  Sputnik

Clinton Plan to Fight ISIL ‘All Rhetoric, No Strategy’ - Ex-US Ambassador

© AFP 2015/ Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

US

06:27 25.11.2015

US Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s plan to destroy the Islamic State, announced last Thursday, is a reheat of neo-conservative rhetoric and lacking any strategy whatsoever, former US Ambassador Chas Freeman told Sputnik.

 

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On the same day Clinton offered her proposed strategy to fight the Islamic State, her chief challenger for the nomination, US Senator Bernie Sanders, offered a different plan advocating close cooperation between the United States, Russia and major Muslim nations.

"‘Hillary's plan’ is all rhetoric and no strategy. As such, it is hard to distinguish it from the bellicose pronouncements of our nation's neo-conservative pundits," Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a past president of the Middle East Policy Council, said.

Clinton wanted to repeat over Syria the policies she adopted as secretary of state to topple Libya’s long-time leader Muammar Gadhafi, not realizing that conditions were very different, Freeman argued.

"Ms. Clinton essentially proposes a replay of Libya, an example of the use of force that few, if any other than she, find inspiring. As she did in Libya, she proposes airstrikes and a ‘no-fly zone’ — a purely military approach aimed at regime change with a proven record of producing disasters," he said.

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Obamacare enrollees are reeling from high deductibles

Obamacare (c) Desert Rose Creations / Family Survival Protocol 2013

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msn

First, the administration revealed that enrollments for Obamacare next year will barely hit 10 million, far below previous projections.

Then last week, the consulting firm of McKinsey & Company estimated that premiums for policies under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, were going up substantially in 2016. For instance, the median rate increase for the lowest priced, highly popular “Silver” plan will rise by 11 percent – compared to just a seven percent increase in 2015.

Related: Millions Face Premium and Deductible Sticker Shock under Obamacare

Now there are troubling reports  that consumers will be facing soaring out-of-pocket costs for deductibles next year – increases that in many cases will neutralize the benefits of their health care plans or discourage some from purchasing coverage.

“That these deductibles are so high is clearly one of the reasons people aren’t buying a plan—they simply don’t see themselves getting anything for the money,” Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy & Strategy Associates, a business and policy consultant, said in a newsletter on Monday.

Department of Health and Human Services officials insist that there are still plenty of plans available with low premiums for those willing to aggressively shop on the federal and state operated insurance exchanges. Americans have until the end of the year to enroll for the third season of Obamacare. But even in cases where consumers find good deals on premiums, they are likely to be stung on the back end by requirements to pay sizeable out of pocket costs before their Obamacare coverage actually kicks in.

The average annual out-of-pocket costs per worker increased nearly 230 percent between 2006 and 2015, according to an annual survey of employer health benefits coverage by the Kaiser Family Foundation.



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Americans Give Health Insurers a Big Thumbs Down

 

By Millie Dent

 

 

November 17, 2015

 

 

Americans haven’t been this fed up with health insurance companies in a decade, and their frustration likely won’t fade soon.

Consumer satisfaction with health insurance providers fell to the lowest level since 2005, largely due to the slow processing of claims and the rising costs of premiums, deductibles and copays, according to a new survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index that dates to 2001.


Related: How Workers Are Getting Slammed With Higher Health Care Costs
 

Americans are extremely cost sensitive, especially in the health sector, and take notice of how fast their costs go up, says ACSI managing director David VanAmburg.

Obamacare also plays an indirect role. Providers are unable to keep up with customer service as more people purchase insurance, he says. And many insurers haven’t beefed up their staffing to deal with the increase in demand. As insurers become responsible for more consumers, they may need to recalibrate, VanAmburg says.

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Fed Reserve's John Williams : low neutral interest rates are a warning sign of possible changes in the U.S. economy that the central bank does not fully understand.

Fri Oct 30, 2015 1:51pm EDT

Fed's Williams says low neutral interest rates a 'warning sign'

WASHINGTON

 

John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, speaks in San Francisco, California March 27, 2015.

 

Reuters/Robert Galbraith - RTR4V7IP

 

 

San Francisco Federal Reserve President John Williams said on Friday that low neutral interest rates are a warning sign of possible changes in the U.S. economy that the central bank does not fully understand.

"I see this as more of a warning, a red flag that there's something going on here that isn't in the models, that we maybe don't understand as well as we think, and we should dig down deep deeper and try to figure this out better," he said during a panel discussion at the Brookings Institute in Washington.

Williams, who is a voting member of the Fed's policy-setting panel through the end of the year, has said the central bank should begin to raise interest rates soon but thereafter go at a gradual pace.

Related Coverage

 

• › Fed's Lacker says U.S. labor market has tightened 'considerably'

He added that the low neutral interest rate had "pretty significant" implications for monetary policy, and put more focus on fiscal policy as a response.

"If we could come up with better fiscal policy, find a way to have the economy grow faster or have a stronger natural rate of interest, then that takes the pressure off of us to try to come up with other ways to do it, like through a large balance sheet or having a higher inflation target," Williams said. "It also means we don't have to turn to quantitative easing and other policies as much."



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Adolf, Amin and Bibi

By Uri Avnery

October 31, 2015 "Information Clearing House"

IT IS not very pleasant when serious people around the world – historians, psychiatrists, diplomats – ask themselves if my prime minister is completely sane.

But this is happening now. And not only abroad. More and more people in Israel are asking themselves the same question.
                                 
All this is the result of one event. But people are now looking at many other events - past and present – in a new light.

Until now, many strange actions and utterances by Binyamin Netanyahu have been seen as the manipulations of a clever politician, a talented demagogue who knows the soul of his constituents and supplies them with ample lies.

Not anymore. A troubling suspicion is getting around: that our prime minister has serious mental problems. Is he losing his marbles?

IT ALL started two weeks ago, when Netanyahu made a speech to a world-wide Zionist assembly. What he said was shocking.

Adolf Hitler, he pontificated, did not really want to exterminate the Jews. He just wanted to expel them. But then he met the Mufti of Jerusalem, who convinced him to "burn" the Jews. Thus the Holocaust was born.

The conclusion? Hitler was not so bad after all. The Germans are not really to blame. It was the Palestinians who were the instigators of the murder of six million Jews.

If the subject had been different, this speech could be considered as one of the usual lies and falsifications typical of Netanyahu. Hitler was really not so bad, the Palestinians are to blame, the Mufti was the forerunner of Mahmoud Abbas. Just a routine piece of political propaganda.




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Obama Set To Announce US Boots On The Ground In Syria, Russia Threatens Deployment "Unacceptable"

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Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/30/2015 14:51 -0400

When the US media began airing helmet cam footage of Delta Force executing a prison break at an ISIS compound last week we suggested that Washington was making an effort to prepare the American public for more boots on the ground in Iraq and the possibility of ground troops in Syria.
The catalyst: Russia and Iran. Put simply, the US has been embarrassed by Moscow and Tehran’s coordinated effort to rout the Sunni extremists backed by Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara operating in Iraq and Syria and now, as Baghdad and Kabul threaten to turn to The Kremlin for help in the face of American ineptitude, the Pentagon is desperate to show that the US can still be effective at fighting terrorism.
So while John Kerry wanders around (hopefully not on a bike) in Vienna in a futile effort to get Saudi Arabia and Turkey to sit at the same table and talk rationally with Russia and Iran, the US military is contemplating how to insert itself into the battle without sparking a world war.
For its part, Baghdad has informed the Western media that it neither wants nor needs US help fighting ISIS (that’s what all the Iran-backed militias are for) and so instead, The White House may be on the verge of sending spec ops to Syria. 

• OBAMA ADMIN. MAY ANNOUNCE SPECIAL OPS FORCES IN SYRIA:CNBC/RTRS

Here's Reuters:

The United States will send 20 to 30 special operations forces to Syria to serve as military advisers in the fight against Islamic State, a U.S. official said.

The additional U.S. troops will operate in a limited "advise and assist" capacity, without changing President Barack Obama's overall mission to combat the militant group, a separate U.S. official said.

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Obama: No boots on the ground in Syria

CNN

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Published on Aug 30, 2013

The president comments on the ongoing situation in Syria, saying any operation would be a "limited, narrow attack."

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Judge Napolitano: Syria Resolution Intentionally Vague So Obama Can Put Boots On The Ground

Jessy Tomy

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Published on Sep 5, 2013

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: It's a tremendous amount of wiggle room for a couple of reasons. As a practical matter, as your previous guest Aaron just said, when you send missiles into a country, you need boots on the ground to guide the missiles where they're going to land. So Secretary Kerry may very well shrewdly have been mincing words. The government considers military troops out of uniform, out of uniform, or CIA in their nonuniform garb not to be 'boots on the ground.'

So I would have asked Secretary Kerry, will the American military or will American intelligence agents be on the ground, whether you consider them boots or not? It's inconceivable that we can send the type of missiles over there that the president and his Republican allies in Congress now contemplate, Sen. McCain leading the charge, without some American human beings, whether they're wearing boots or not, to be on the ground. So, Secretary Kerry, in my view, was misleading the Congress.

Now here's the Constitutional issue. The Constitution says only the Congress can declare war but the president wages it. The president can't declare war and Congress can't wage it. What does that mean? That means that once the Congress gives authorization for the president to bring down either the chemical weaponry of the Assad regime, or as Senator McCain wants, the Assad regime itself, the Congress can't pull the president back. The Congress can't tell the president how to wage war.

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NAPOLITANO: Our conversation now is largely hypothetical. No judge is going to say, 'oh, the president violated this resolution; I'm going to sign a piece of paper enjoining the president.' No American judge will do that. But the president, once unleashed by Congress will be free to put all the boots on the ground he wants no matter what the resolution says. John McCain knows that, John Kerry knows that, and the president knows. The American people need to know it.

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Broken Promises: Obama Will Now Put Boots To The Ground In Syria Against ISIS

Western Journalism

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Published on Oct 30, 2015

A little more than two years ago, President Obama promised to never put American boots on the ground in Syria.

I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. There would be no American boots on the ground. Any action we take would be limited.

But on Friday, that's exactly what he did. Around 50 special forces commandos will be deployed in Syria.

That mission is to build the capacity of local forces so they can be even more effective than they've already been in taking the fight to ISIL on the ground inside of Syria.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to acknowledge any broken promises Obama made two years ago, claiming the "no boots on the ground" quote was out of context.

You've read one quote from, that's, that to be fair is out of context. When the president has talked about combat situations, the president has been quite clear that he does not contemplate a large-scale, long-term ground combat operation.

So does that mean the less than 50 commandos are not real "boots on the ground"?

That element of our strategy - to build their capacity - has yielded progress. So the president wants to intensify that assistance we're providing and one way you can intensify that assistance is to pair them up with experts - with some of the smartest, bravest, most effective fighters in the United States military. And that's exactly what we're doing.

In other words, American military forces are to wear sneakers so the Obama administration can accurately claim no boots are on the ground.

Death toll in Saudi haj disaster at least 2,070 - Reuters tally

World | Thu Oct 29, 2015 8:11pm GMT

Reuters

 

Rescue workers carry the body of a Muslim pilgrim after a stampede at Mina, outside the holy Muslim city of Mecca, in this September 24, 2015 file photo.

Reuters/Stringer/Files

 

 

The deadly crush that occurred at the haj near Mecca last month killed at least 2,070 people, nearly triple the number accounted for in a death toll maintained by Saudi authorities, a Reuters tally indicated on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has come under heavy criticism for its handling of the disaster. Safety during the pilgrimage is a politically sensitive issue for the kingdom's ruling Al Saud dynasty, which presents itself as the guardian of Islam and custodian of its holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.

The figure, based on information provided by the state and religious authorities and local media reports in the home countries of the victims, would make it the worst such catastrophe to befall the annual pilgrimage since 1,400 people were crushed to death in a tunnel in 1990.

Saudi officials have stood by their official counts of 769 dead and 934 injured, which have not been updated since two days after the crush. The healthy ministry has said any discrepancies in death tolls may stem from countries counting pilgrims who had died of natural causes.

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Turkey didn't get the memo not to bomb US armed rebels. Watching helplessly the Washington watches it's Syria Strategy unravel even further.

More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from Islamic State. This is the story of the civil war so far, in eight short chapters.  BBC

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Washington's Syria "Strategy" In Complete Disarray As "Ally" Turkey Bombs US-Armed Rebels

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/27/2015 12:43 -0400

A little over a week ago in “Full Metal Retard: US Launches ‘Performance-Based’ Ammo Paradrop Program For Make-Believe ‘Syrian Arabs’” we outlined what is perhaps the most hilarious Pentagon scheme designed to arm rebels in Syria to date (and that’s saying something).

Following the comical demise of the latest “train and equip” program, the US is out of options for supporting the opposition in Syria and so Washington decided to go back to Old Faithful: the Kurds.
But that presents a problem.

The US is now flying sorties from Incirlik and Turkish autocrat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hates the Kurds and has gone out of his way to make it clear that Ankara doesn’t distinguish between the PKK and the YPG. For the uninitiated, here’s the problem broken down in bullet points:

• The US is flying from a Turkish airbase
• Access to that airbase came with NATO’s tacit approval of Erdogan’s move to crack down on the Kurdish PKK operating in Turkey (that crackdown is designed to bolster support for the government ahead of elections next month)
• Both the US and Turkey designate PKK as a “terrorist” group 
• BUT while Ankara equates the PKK with the Kurdish rebels battling ISIS in Syria, Washington actually supports those same rebels, setting up a conflict of interest
•  

Now clearly, this is beyond absurd. That is, Turkey only got NATOs support for the politically motivated crackdown on the PKK because Ankara agreed to bundle said crackdown with a military campaign against  ISIS. But the Syrian Kurds are the most effective ground force of them all when it comes to combating Islamic State.  Because those Syrian Kurds are aligned with the PKK, Turkey is effectively trying to say its army is fighting ISIS, the PKK, and YPG all at once even as both the PKK and the YPG are also fighting ISIS.

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Obamacare customers are facing an average 7.5 percent price increase for a key benchmark health plan next year; But the average rate hikes will vary dramatically from state to state

 POLITICO

Roughly 80 percent of Obamacare customers received subsidies. | Getty

Obamacare rates to rise 7.5 percent next year

But the figures will vary widely from state to state.

By Paul Demko

10/26/15 06:18 PM EDT

Obamacare customers are facing an average 7.5 percent price increase for a key benchmark health plan next year, according to limited data the Obama administration released just days before the start of a challenging enrollment season.

But the average rate hikes will vary dramatically from state to state — skyrocketing more than 30 percent in Alaska, Montana and Oklahoma while dropping 12.6 percent in Indiana.

The administration's analysis looks at the second-cheapest "silver" plan available to customers when open enrollment begins on Nov. 1. Those benchmark plans, which are among the most popular sold on the law's health insurance exchanges, are important because they're used to calculate how much federal support low- and middle-income exchange customers will receive toward their monthly premiums.

More than 70 percent of exchange customers chose silver plans this year, which cover about 70 percent of medical costs. Roughly 80 percent of Obamacare customers received subsidies, worth an average monthly credit of $270.

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Congress has 410 different caucuses, covering everything from algae to wine. Is it any wonder that nothing ever gets accomplished ?

The Freedom Caucus Makes News, but What About the Chicken Caucus?

Congress has 410 different caucuses, covering everything from algae to wine.

Wikimedia Commons
By Eric Pianin
October 23, 2015

When members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus meet in private, they typically discuss ways to thwart or topple their more moderate House Republican leaders or alter the rules to give rank and file members more legislative clout.

Not so for the House Chicken Caucus, which was formed this year by two lawmakers, a Democrat and a Republican, from poultry regions in California and Arkansas. Members of the caucus view their mandate as educating their colleagues and the public “about the history, contributions and issues of importance to U.S. chicken producers.”

SLIDESHOW: From Babies to Bourbon: 33 Surprising Congressional Caucuses
 
While just a few high profile factions within the 435-member House get much attention these days — most notably the roughly 40-member Freedom Caucus as well as the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — a myriad of other mostly obscure cliques are focused on pet policies and issues important to their constituents back home.

Those issues range from Irish affairs, cement production, cut flowers and shellfish to “financial and economic literacy,” hockey, songwriters and rock ‘n’ roll. There are caucuses for rodeos and toys, submarines and small brewers, motorcycles and sugar — and admirers of Ronald Reagan. There are groups built around regional or national issues — from the Hong Kong Caucus to the Albanian Issues Group to the Friends of Liechtenstein — and ones devoted to almost every major disease or meOR: dical disorder, from blood cancers to malaria to arthritis.

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY), a founding member of the House Bourbon Caucus, is ever ready to sing the praises of Kentucky’s Jim Beam and Early Times bourbon whiskey and promote the distillery industry. Reps. Mike Thompson (D-CA) and Dan Benishek (R-MI) of the Invasive Species Caucus are beating the drum to raise awareness of the dangers of the Asian Carp and other alien fish that are invading the nation’s lakes and streams.



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Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. At least since the Civil War, there hasn’t been a faction fighting both parties at the same time.

POLITICO

History Dept.

The Freedom Caucus’ Unprecedented Insurgency

At least since the Civil War, there hasn’t been a faction fighting both parties at the same time.

By Alan Greenblatt

October 18, 2015

AP Photo

Congress has never seen anything quite like the House Freedom Caucus. There’s always someone unhappy on Capitol Hill and it’s not unusual for malcontents to band together. A rebellion made up of members who refuse to work with either party, however, is something that hasn’t happened in living memory.

“This is an unusual and indeed unprecedented development in the history of the party,” says Geoffrey Kabaservice, a research consultant to the Main Street Partnership, a centrist GOP group.

 

 

Parties—particularly those with large majorities—almost inevitably split into factions. And congressional history is replete with examples of groups that balked at party leadership. But the insurgents we remember—the ones who weren’t quickly and completely marginalized—managed by and large to find common cause with members of the other party. Southern Democrats, for instance, forged a “conservative coalition” with Republicans that dominated Congress for much of the 20th century.

There hasn’t been a bloc like the Freedom Caucus for at least a century, one that refuses to work with its own party leadership while being steadfastly unwilling to reach across the aisle. “There have been groups that often broke from the party, but in doing so, they didn’t stand as a third force,” says former GOP Rep. Mickey Edwards. “This group is very different.”

The Freedom Caucus, rather than breaking from Republican ranks, has forced Republican leaders to break from them. It’s a perverse sort of political jujitsu. One of outgoing Speaker John Boehner’s supposed crimes was that he went begging Democrats for help passing legislation when he couldn’t find the votes within his own caucus. Some rank-and-file Republicans, meanwhile, have made a separate peace with Democrats on reviving the Export-Import Bank. Normally the opposite would happen and it would be the insurgents reaching across the aisle. But that presupposes an interest in governing.

“I can think of a number of major examples throughout history where a party has had divisions of consequence,” says Laura Blessing, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Government Affairs Institute. “It’s rare that those divisions would represent a position on the fringe of the political system, where they’re not working with either party.”

Both the tactics and the playing field have changed for today’s dissenters. In the past, some members would squawk at autocratic leadership or the stated policies of their own party and look for ways to disrupt proceedings, but they had some kind of endgame in mind. Once they deposed a leader or got their way on a key vote, they took some quiet satisfaction.

What is distinctive about the current crop of congressional rebels is their willingness to use any lever they can find to cause trouble—debt-ceiling fights, funding fights, leadership succession struggles. “The thing that (today’s) conservatives are very good at—because they don’t care about precedent or the party’s history—is trying out different things,” says Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin, a history of the decline of moderate Republicans.

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Many Low-Income Workers Say ‘No’ to Health Insurance

MSN News

Many Low-Income Workers Say ‘No’ to Health Insurance

The New York Times

By STACY COWLEY 6 hrs ago

 

© Logan R. Cyrus for The New York Times An employee at Golden Corral taking clean cups from the kitchen. Some Golden Corral restaurants began offering health insurance to employees, but few have…

 

 JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — When Billy Sewell began offering health insurance this year to 600 service workers at the Golden Corral restaurants that he owns, he wondered nervously how many would buy it. Adding hundreds of employees to his plan would cost him more than $1 million — a hit he wasn’t sure his low-margin business could afford.
His actual costs, though, turned out to be far smaller than he had feared. So far, only two people have signed up.

“We offered, and they didn’t take it,” he said.

Evidence is growing that his experience is not unusual. The Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, which requires employers with more than 50 full-time workers to offer most of their employees insurance or face financial penalties, was one of the law’s most controversial provisions. Business owners and industry groups fiercely protested the change, and some companies cut workers’ hours to reduce the number of employees who would be eligible.

But 10 months after the first phase of the mandate took effect, covering companies with 100 or more workers, many business owners say they are finding very few employees willing to buy the health insurance that they are now compelled to offer. The trend is especially pronounced among smaller and midsize businesses in fields filled with low-wage hourly workers, like restaurants, retailing and hospitality. (Companies with 50 to 99 workers are not required to comply with the mandate until next year.)

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Feds keeping us in the dark : 11 co-ops “are either on a corrective action plan or enhanced oversight. More than $900 million of the original $2 billion in loans has been lost.

Feds Hide Secret List Of 11 Staggering Obamacare Insurers

 

 A man looks over the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obamacare) signup page on the HealthCare.gov website in New York in this Oct. 2, 2013 photo illustration. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)

Richard Pollock

Federal officials have a secret list of 11 Obamacare health insurance co-ops they fear are on the verge of failure, but they refuse to disclose them to the public or to Congress, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has learned.

Just in the last three weeks, five of the original 24 Obamacare co-ops announced plans to close, bringing the total of failures to eight barely two years after their launch with $2 billion in start-up capital from the taxpayers under the Affordable Care Act.

All 24 received 15-year loans in varying amounts to offer health insurance to poor and low income customers and provide publicly funded competition to private, for-profit insurers. The eight co-ops to announce closings served populations in ten states: Iowa, Nebraska, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Nevada, Tennessee, Vermont, New York and Colorado.

Nearly half a million failing co-op customers will have to find new coverage in 2016. More than $900 million of the original $2 billion in loans has been lost.

 

The 11 unidentified co-ops appear to be still operating but are now on “enhanced oversight” by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, which manages the Obamacare program. The 11 received letters from CMS demanding that they take urgent actions to avoid closing.

Aaron Albright, chief CMS spokesman, said 11 co-ops “are either on a corrective action plan or enhanced oversight. We have not released the letters or names.” He gave no grounds for withholding the information from either the public or Congress.

CMS officials have stonewalled multiple congressional inquiries into the co-op financial problems. The latest congressional inquiry came in a September 30 letter to CMS acting administrator Andy Slavitt demanding transparency over the troubled program.

“We have long been concerned about the financial solvency of CO-OPs,” three House Ways and Means committee members wrote to Slavitt. “Which plans have received these warnings or have been placed on corrective plans,” the congressmen asked. To date, they have received no reply.
Insurance commissioners in Vermont were the first to refuse to license the federally approved co-op there in 2013 because they feared those financial plans were unrealistic. But then the dominoes began to fall this year, resulting in at least eight co-op failures. And if CMS officials are to be believed, more failures may be on the way.

Sen. Charles Grassley , a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee who has been an outspoken critic of the troubled co-op program, said transparency should be a top priority for the faltering program.

“Since the public’s business generally ought to be public, CMS should have a good reason for not disclosing which co-ops are troubled,” he said.



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Fury towards Erdogan intensifies after Ankara attack. Thousands rally.

 

 

Thousands rally against Erdogan as Turkey mourns deadliest attack

By Fulya Ozerkan, Camille Antunes October 11, 2015 7:16 PM

Associated Press Videos

Raw: Thousands Mourn Victims of Ankara Blast

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Ankara (AFP) - Thousands of mourners filled the streets of Ankara Sunday and vented their anger at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after 97 people were killed in the country's worst-ever terror attack, while the government raced to identify the two male suicide bombers it blamed for the bloodshed.

Flags flew at half-mast across Turkey on the first of three days of national mourning declared by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, as questions grew over who could have ordered Saturday's bombings on a peace rally in Ankara.

Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), one of the groups that had organised the rally, said it believes the death toll now stands at 128.

The attacks have raised tensions in Turkey just three weeks before snap elections are due on November 1 and as the military wages an offensive against Islamic State (IS) jihadists and Kurdish militants.

With the country on edge, Erdogan issued a statement condemning the "heinous" bombings and cancelled a planned visit to Turkmenistan but he has yet to speak in public since the attack that shocked the nation.

On Sunday, thousands of demonstrators thronged central Ankara's Sihhiye Square, close to the blast site by the city's main train station, to pay tribute to the victims.

View gallery

 

 

ATTENTION EDITORS - VISUAL COVERAGE OF SCENES OF INJURY OR DEATH 

An injured man hugs an injured woma …

 

 

Many of those gathered accused the government of failing to provide security at the ill-fated rally and several anti-government demonstrators shouted "Erdogan murderer" and "government resign!"

"I am a mother, I'm worried about my grandchildren, I am marching for our children, for our future. Each time there are people dead, I also die a little," said Zahide, who like many others carried a pink carnation flower to commemorate the victims.

The premier's office said 97 people were killed when the bombs exploded just after 10:00 am (0700 GMT) as leftist and pro-Kurdish activists assembled for the rally.

It added that 507 people were wounded, with 160 still in hospital and 65 in intensive care in 19 hospitals.

An AFP correspondent said the scene of the blast was littered with ball bearings, indicating the explosions were intended to cause maximum damage.

View gallery

 

A family mourns in an area allocated for families of victims of Saturday's twin blasts in Ankara …

 

 

- 'Topple the dictator' -

In an emotional address to the mourners in Ankara, the HDP's leader Selahattin Demirtas said that rather than seeking revenge people should aim to end Erdogan's rule, starting with the upcoming legislative elections.

Read More Here

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Fury towards Erdogan intensifies after Ankara attack

By Fulya Ozerkan, Camille Antunes October 12, 2015 1:43 AM

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Ankara (AFP) - Anger towards President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over Turkey's worst-ever terrorist attack intensified as authorities raced to identify the two male suicide bombers it blamed for the bloodshed.

The streets of Ankara filled with anti-government and pro-Kurdish protesters accusing the government of responsibility for the blast that ripped through a peace rally a day earlier, with several shouting "Erdogan murderer" and "government resign!"

In Istanbul on Saturday, a 10,000-strong crowd accused the government of failing to protect citizens by providing security for the event, carrying placards reading "the state is a killer" and "we know the murderers".

As tributes poured in from world leaders, Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), was cited as saying "State attacked the people. Condolences recipient should be the people not Erdogan" on the party's Twitter account.

In an emotional address to mourners in Ankara, Demirtas said that citizens should aim to end Erdogan's rule, starting with the upcoming legislative elections.

"We are not going to act out of revenge and hatred. But we are going to ask for (people to be held to) account," he added, saying the vote would be part of a process to "topple the dictator."

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Relatives mourn near the grave of a victim of the twin bombings in Ankara, during the funeral in Ist …

 

 

The party believes the death toll now stands at 128, higher than the 97 people the prime minister's office said were killed when the bombs exploded on Saturday morning as leftist and pro-Kurdish activists assembled by the city's main train station.

The official toll also said 507 people were wounded, with 160 still in hospital and 65 in intensive care in 19 hospitals

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- Erdogan silent 

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Benghazi Committee drinks wine, buys guns, doesn’t hold hearings ‒ former investigator

Published time: 14 Oct, 2015 01:43

US House Select Committee on Benghazi Chairman Representative Trey Gowdy and ranking member cummings talking before a Benghazi committee hearing © Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

 

The House Select Committee on Benghazi, a 17-month investigation into the 2012 consulate attack in Libya, has long been accused of being a partisan witch hunt. Now a former staffer is complaining about its extracurricular activities.

 

Over the course of the ongoing  Benghazi Committee investigation ‒ so far, a month longer than that of Watergate and counting ‒ there were bound to be some ebbs and flows to the committee’s workload. However, it is how they took advantage of that downtime that is raising questions over the point of keeping the committee in business.

Speaker John Boehner

 

✔ @SpeakerBoehner

Seven Democrats joined Republicans in voting to create the @HouseBenghazi Select Committee. http://j.mp/1L8b59p 

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Speaker John Boehner ✔ @SpeakerBoehner

The @HouseBenghazi Select Committee’s membership is less partisan than others created in the past. http://j.mp/1L8b59p 

5:51 PM - 13 Oct 2015

Speaker John Boehner

11 Facts You Need to Know Right Now About the Select Committee on Benghazi

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to hide her emails about Benghazi and Libya for years, including long after she left the Obama administration. In fact, she or her team may have even...

Wine Wednesdays
The committee has not held a public hearing since January 27, but that hasn’t kept its members from meeting up on a weekly basis. They’ve formed a wine club, nicknamed “Wine Wednesdays,” in which they drink from glasses imprinted with the words “Glacial Pace,” Major Bradley F. Podliska, a committee investigator who was fired in June, told the New York Times. The customized goblets are a dig at Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), who used the term in May to complain about the committee’s lack of urgency in completing its task.

“At every turn, the Select Committee comes up with a new excuse to further delay its work and then blames its glacial pace on someone else,” Cummings said in a statement at the time.


Benghazi gun-buying club

Wine Wednesdays are not the only social aspect of the Benghazi Committee. Its members have also set up a gun-buying club. They used the committee’s conference room to discuss the 9mm Glock handguns they wanted to purchase, Podliska said. A favorite agenda item for the club was the type of monograms that they wanted inscribed on the firearms.

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