We read on April 24, 2013, that lawmakers and their aides (both Democrats and Republicans) are quietly seeking exemption from ObamaCare:Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.Two classes in AmeriKa: the political class, regardless of political-party affiliation, and the rest (peons).
The talks...involve Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the Obama administration and other top lawmakers...
[...]
Several proposals have been submitted to the Office of Personnel Management, which will administer the benefits. One proposal exempts lawmakers and aides; the other exempts aides alone....
(hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance for the link in this post)
New information last night....
ReplyDeleteDem leaders won’t seek ObamaCare exemption:
Republicans hammered Democrats for allegedly seeking to carve themselves out of a requirement in the healthcare law.
Democratic leaders said Thursday they’re not seeking an exemption from a central requirement of ObamaCare — that members of Congress and their staff purchase healthcare coverage through insurance exchanges.
Republicans spent the day hammering Democrats for allegedly seeking to carve themselves out of a requirement in the healthcare law....
[...]
Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson flatly denied a report that the majority leader had sought an exemption for lawmakers and their staffers....
More at the above link.
As Pontius Pilate asked, "What is truth?"
More to the point, perhaps....Do any of WE THE PEOPLE trust the Congress critters not to make themselves the elite ruling class?
The Revolutionary Vanguard could be destroyed by unsound policies... so they obviously must be held immune from their own edicts!
ReplyDeleteNot to worry. They will find a work around. One can count on it.
ReplyDeleteThere is nothing to add to what Thersites said so brilliantly and succinctly.
ReplyDeleteThat's IT.
I recommend ever child be exposed -- repeatedly -- to Animal Farm every three years or so. It's message is clear, and should be unmistakable even to the mind-numbed robot mentality our rotten public education system instituted decades ago. My generation was probably the very last to escape it, but as I look back, I can see that even in the halcyon days of my childhood and adolescence (Post-War Euphoria and The Eisenhower Years!) the long shadow was beginning to fall across the land.
As it turned out, Ike was really a very "progressive" president, even though most of my parents' generation supported him in the mistaken belief that he would begin to restore the country to pre-New Deal Sanity.
Sadly, it never happened. He merely sowed the seeds -- or allowed OTHERS to sow the seeds -- of our eventual descent into the muck and mire of Statist Socialist Amerika, the Land of the Fleeced and the Home of the Craven.
The light of day must have been too bright. The dark of night is more appropriate for such matters.
ReplyDeleteApparently, even sagacious Saul Alinkyism's don't apply to Congress...
ReplyDeleteRULE 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.
-Saul Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals"
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges
-Tacitus, "Annals"
That vote will need to be published world wide.
ReplyDeleteAnd so it begins... or, well, strengthens. Just like in Animal Farm, things start small. Rulers get privileged here, or there, but don't exactly break the rules. Then they change the rules to fit their purposes, but only slightly (beds with sheets). Then its flat out ignoring and doing whatever the hell they want, along with a good dose of becoming the enemy and indoctrination of the children (the puppies anyone?) and just a dash of ignoring the pleading workers (the chickens). And thus the cake of corruption is baked.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is that Orwell was anything but right-wing. He was a socialist, and the beginning of Animal Farm clearly shows that. But he realizes, and shows, the quick downfall of that system: some will do nothing (the sheep), some will work themselves to death (Boxer), and a few will take all control and dictate (the pigs). His predictions have always been eerily accurate, but then again, human nature is human nature. We are a predictable lot.
And right now, Boxer is flagging, the sheep are numerous, and the pigs are getting away with murder. If I had to place where in the story we were, I'd say right at the end. After the tv/radio propaganda, after dealing with the humans, but still before the scene where the pigs and humans are indistinguishable. Right before, mind you.
The funny thing is... Orwell never wrote a happy ending to the book. Like in 1984, the totalitarian government is never overthrown, never beaten, and it looks like it is here to stay. I find that foreboding.
The scene is coming... lets see if the dogs and the horses are still enough to stand and fight... or if we're a majority of silly sheep.
Given all the people crying for handouts, I fear the latter.
-Wildstar
You have a good grasp of Orwell, Wildstar. Please don't let his identity as a socialist trouble you. Socialism and even Communism were taken very seriously as possible alternatives to the kind of Capitalistic society the Industrial Revolution brought about.
ReplyDeleteThe horrible unsafe, cruelly exploitative working conditions in the Welsh coal mines, the "Dark Satanic Mills" where little children were chained to machines and forced to work twelve hour days, the dreadful conditions in orphanages like Lowewood described so poignantly in Jane Eyre, and in so many of Dickens' novels, the plight or factory workers paid in coupons redeemable only at The Company Store, wretched housing, wretched sanitation, a virtually nonexistent health care system, draconian punishments for minor infractions of the law such as being hanged for stealing so much as a loaf of bread, etc. etc. etc. All this brought about the dawn of what-we -now-call a Social Conscience.
The evils of Marxism were not as apparent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they are to us today.
At any rate, what Orwell evoked with chilling clarity was neither a defense of Socialism or a condemnation of Capitalism, but rather the horror of living in world governed by a Power Elite who had assumed Total Control over Every Aspect of Everyone's Life.
Orwell's two best known works -- Animal Farm and Nine-teen-Eighty-Four -- are the most eloquent words ever written warning us against allowing ANY faction or ANY individual to assume Totalitarian Control.
NO ONE -- not the Church, not the Republicans, not the Democrats, not the Liberals, not the Conservatives, not the Communists, not the Socialists, not the Intellectuals, not the Aristocrats, not the Executives, not the Workers, not the Artists, not the Writers, not the Scientists, not the Engineers, not the Military, not the Doctors, not the Lawyers -- NO ONE -- is capable of handling inordinate, unchecked power without being corrupted by it.
THAT is the lesson Orwell taught us. It has nothing whatsoever to do with mere party politics of ANY kind.
Kinda sketchy.
ReplyDeleteWhy would the exchanges even be an issue for congressmen?
They have coverage. I don't get it.
... and it's only a proposal, from whom?
FT,
ReplyDeleteNO ONE -- is capable of handling inordinate, unchecked power without being corrupted by it.
THAT is the lesson Orwell taught us. It has nothing whatsoever to do with mere party politics of ANY kind.
Exactly!
We need term limits -- for starters.
Those in an ivory tower cannot govern properly because they have no clue whatsoever as to what's going on below -- on the ground.
Wildstar,
ReplyDeleteJust like in Animal Farm, things start small.
Boiling the frog!
Hi AOW.
ReplyDeleteFinally managed to get here.
If it's so bad that they need exemption then they should never have approved it in the first place.
Having said that i just posted the following: The Obamacare Hydra: Insurer Wants 25 Percent Premium Increase—but Will Still Lose Money.
Actually they wanted a FIFTY percent increase.
Gives you an idea of the future.
The whole thing stinks it looks like the gov will make a whole lot of money on this gimmick.
We do have "term limits," AOW, they're called ELECTIONS. The trouble is that the brainwashed, mind-numbed, electorate have been conditioned by the machinations of the enemedia and all branches of the entertainment industry, each of whom has profound communist sympathies to accept with extreme passivity the EXCREMENT that is shoved down their throats all day every day.
ReplyDeleteThe Electorate has been Seduced and lulled into a STUPOR by evil geniuses.
I completely agree with FT ... and I suspect that knowing they are evil geniuses is where leftist snobbery comes from. Only an evil genius would brag about such a thing.
ReplyDelete