Obamacare Road Show, Pt. II: Bring out the human kiddie shields

From: Michelle Malkin

(Makestickers.com)

My column shines light on the Hail Mary strategy of the Demcare-peddlers: Quick, hide behind the children! Just a reminder that President Obama will be in St. Charles, Missouri today for a closed-door, invitation-only Kabuki health care speech to high school students and then he’ll be heading off for a fund-raiser with Claire McCaskill. Tea Party activists are organizing two counter-protests — get all the info on the who, what, where, when at Gateway Pundit.

The column notes two new developments — Hill buzz over some Senate Democrat leaders’ plan to attach the nationalization of student loans to the health care reconciliation bill and the use of a new, dubious poster boy for Demcare, Marcelas Owens. The story doesn’t add up, and as usual, anyone who questions the logic and holes in these anecdotes will be labeled a “stalker.” Been there, done that…

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Desperate Dems cling to human kiddie shield
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Have you noticed something about the audiences that President Obama has cherry-picked to cheer his government health-care takeover road show? They’re getting younger and younger. Today, Obama brings the traveling campaign to St. Charles High School in St. Louis, Missouri for a closed-door, invitation-only speech. If he doesn’t end the endless “No More Time For Talk” talks soon, he’ll be peddling Democrat reconciliation tactics on Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob Squarepants.

But desperate times call for demagogic measures. True to form, the Obama White House is wielding the human kiddie shield as its last-stand defense for Demcare.

On Monday, Obama surrounded himself with a ticketed-only crowd of Arcadia University college students in Pennsylvania (sprinkled with purple-shirted officials from the Service Employees International Union, natch). The Washington-based commander-in-chief traveled outside his Beltway bubble to a campus bubble to trash the political climate which he leads.

“That’s just how Washington is. They can’t help it,” he pontificated as the idealist young students nodded like empty bobbleheads. “They?”

You won’t be surprised by Obama’s biggest applause line of the speech: Peddling a Big Nanny provision in the Senate-passed health care bill that requires insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Vowed Santa Obama: “If you’re a young adult, which many of you are, you’ll be able to stay on your parents’ insurance policy until you’re 26 years old.” Whoops and huzzahs erupted from the eager wards of the permanent, ever-expanding Nanny State.

As I’ve reported before, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover “kids” ranging in age from 24 to 31. And it’s these very government health care mandates that contribute to rising health care costs.

But there was no time for higher learning at Arcadia University. Out: education. In: adulation. “I love you!” screamed a cult follower in the stands. “Love you back,” Obama responded.

Now, comes word from The Hill that Senate Democrat leaders want to graft Obama’s single-player plan to nationalize the student loan market onto the Senate health care reconciliation bill. That way, Obama’s college-age foot soldiers can argue that a vote against Demcare is a vote against The Children.

How low can they go? One of President Obama’s youngest lobbyists – 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Washington state – traveled to D.C. on Tuesday on the dime of astroturf group, HCAN (Health Care for America Now). His 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. According to the family, Ms. Owens – a single mother of three — lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She received emergency care and treatment throughout her illness, but died in 2007.

Young Marcelas – goaded by his left-wing activist grandmother and promoted by Democrat Sen. Patty Murray — is now a regular on the pro-Obamacare circuit and is leading a congressional sit-in until the Democrat plan passes. He admits he doesn’t understand the complexities of health insurance reform and doesn’t “think it’s anyone’s fault” that his mom passed away. “But they could have done more” for her, he says.

It’s a heart-wrenching story, but the tale raises more questions than it answers. Washington state offers a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’s mom. Why didn’t she enroll? Second, she died nine months after she reportedly lost her health insurance. By the time she lost her coverage through her employer, she was apparently already in dire health straits. It’s not clear that additional doctors’ visits in the subsequent months would have prevented her death.

All that said, the Owens’ case demonstrates the flaws of the employer-based system of health insurance. It needs real reform. Unfortunately, the current crop of Democrat plans would leave the employer-based system fully intact. What we need are grown-ups to start over from scratch and leave the kids on the playground.

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MEPs vote overwhelmingly for an EU Tobin Tax

From: News » Daniel Hannan

As predicted, the European Parliament has voted for a tax on financial transactions, to be levied directly by Brussels. The vote went through by 536 to 80: only my own group, the European Conservatives and Reformists, voted solidly against the measure, although we had some support from UKIP and its allies as well as two Danish [...]

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The House Ethics Committee is a corruption-enabling cesspool

From: Michelle Malkin

You know it. I know it. And everyone disgusted with the culture of corruption in Washington needs to make their voices heard on it. The watchdogs are crippled. CYA is the order of the day. The Beltway has changed nothing since the GOP scandals and is still acting blind, deaf, and dumb toward the Democrat scandals.

USA Today weighs in on the pathetic, corruption-enabling cesspool known as the House Ethics Committee:

What does it take for a member of Congress to get in real trouble with the House ethics committee?

Quite a lot.

In fact, only one lawmaker — Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. — has merited even a wrist slap since Democrats were swept into the majority in 2007 on a wave of voter revulsion to scandals engulfing Republicans in Congress. Back then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through more stringent rules, vowed stricter enforcement and famously promised to “drain the swamp.”

Well, she’s going to need a bigger pump.

So far, the supposedly invigorated bipartisan House ethics committee has:

– Handed down its limpest discipline, an “admonishment,” after finding that Rangel had taken two free trips to Caribbean conferences even though he should have known that big corporations indirectly financed them in violation of House rules.

The committee has yet to finish reviewing Rangel’s more serious ethical problems, such as glaring omissions on his congressional financial disclosure statements. (Pending the outcome, Rangel has taken a “leave of absence” from his powerful post as chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.)

– Exonerated five others who took the same trips as Rangel. The committee bought their stories that they didn’t know about corporate sponsorship. Funny, conference photos show lawmakers standing in front of a bunch of corporate logos. Maybe they were blinded by the Caribbean sun.

– Essentially gave lawmakers a go-ahead to solicit campaign donations from business executives and lobbyists who apparently believe they’re paying for federal contracts. Last month, the committee cleared seven members despite the findings by an independent investigative panel that two of them — Reps. Peter Visclosky, D-Ind., and Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan. — might have tacitly tied requests for campaign donations to legislative earmarks profiting specific companies.

As I pointed out last week, the ethics committee steamrolled the OCE in the Pete Stark case.

USAT adds:

The Democrats like to point out that they created an independent Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to investigate allegations, recommend action to the ethics committee and issue public reports. But they promptly emasculated their new creation by failing to give it subpoena power and ignoring its findings in several cases, despite evidence that members violated House rules.

No teeth, no reform. No reform, no change. The swamp overfloweth.

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Gordon Brown launches the election campaign by reminding us of why we must get rid of him

From: News » Daniel Hannan

Gordon Brown has just given the electorate the best possible reason to sling him out. He has the “character”, he says, to captain Britain through the economic squalls.
Consider that character for a moment. The most striking feature of Gordon Brown’s personality is his utter inability to take decisions. Read Tom Bower’s biography, and you will [...]

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