Maryland Officials Were Warned for a Year of Problems with Online Health-Insurance Exchange

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post

Photo Credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post

More than a year before Maryland launched its health insurance exchange, senior state officials failed to heed warnings that no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan for how it would be ready by Oct. 1.

Over the following months, as political leaders continued to proclaim that the state’s exchange would be a national model, the system went through three different project managers, the feuding between contractors hired to build the online exchange devolved into lawsuits, and key people quit, including a top information technology official because, as he would later say, the project “was a disaster waiting to happen.”

The repeated warnings culminated days before the launch, with one from contractors testing the Web site that said it was “extremely unstable” and another from an outside consultant that urged state officials not to let residents enroll in health plans because there was “no clear picture” of what would happen when the exchange would turn on.

Within moments of its launch at noon Oct. 1, the Web site crashed in a calamitous debut that was supposed to be a crowning moment for Maryland officials who had embraced President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and pledged to build a state-run exchange that would be unparalleled.

Instead, by the next morning only four people had signed up using the Web site — and amazed that anyone had gotten through the system successfully, state officials contacted each of them to make sure they were real. The site’s problems continue to prevent Marylanders from signing up for health insurance. As of Friday, 20,358 people had selected private plans, and state officials have said they do not expect to come close to their initial goal of 150,000 by the end of March.

Read more from this story HERE.

Google’s Military Robotics: Humanoid Robots Future of Ground Warfare?

/5 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Photo Credit: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

Google CEO Larry Page has rapidly positioned Google to become an indispensable U.S. military contractor.

Google recently purchased Boston Dynamics, a robotics pioneer that produces amazing humanoid robots for the U.S. Defense Department.

This development invites attention to Google’s broader military contracting ambitions — especially since Boston Dynamics is the eighth robotics company that Google has bought in the last six months.

Just like drones are the future of air warfare, humanoid robots and self-driving vehicles will be the future of ground warfare according to U.S. defense plans.

There are many other reasons why the U.S. military is on path to become Google’s single largest customer. Likewise these reasons indicate Google has a closer working relationship with the NSA than it acknowledges publicly.

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska Governor Unveils New Plan for Gas Pipeline

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Arthur Chapman

Photo Credit: Arthur Chapman

Gov. Sean Parnell on Friday announced a new way forward on a long-hoped-for natural gas pipeline that includes scrapping the terms of a 2007 law he says no longer works well for the situation.

In a major policy speech in Anchorage, Parnell said the state and Canadian pipeline builder TransCanada Corp. have agreed to terminate their involvement under the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act. He made clear, however, that TransCanada would remain a partner in the project, just under new terms.

Parnell said he would seek legislative approval for the state to participate in a new commercial agreement with TransCanada; the North Slope’s three major players, Exxon Mobil Corp., BP PLC and ConocoPhillips; and the Alaska Gasline Development Corp. He said he expected a set of terms to be signed soon.

Natural Resources Commissioner Joe Balash called the commercial agreement a “broad roadmap” and statement of intent. He said in an interview that legislation would have to be passed to accomplish what is being contemplated and the state plans to enter a separate, more narrowly defined agreement with TransCanada for pipeline services.

The terms of the inducement act will remain in force for the time being, though the parties envision transitioning into the new arrangement once enabling legislation is passed, Balash said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Remembering An Earlier Time When a Theft Unmasked Government Surveillance

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

On March 24, 1971, I became the first reporter to inform readers that the FBI wanted the American people to think there was an “FBI agent behind every mailbox.” That rather alarming alert came from stolen FBI files I had found in my own mailbox at The Washington Post when I arrived at work the previous morning. ¶ It was the return address on the big tan envelope that prompted me to open it first: “Liberty Publications, Media, PA.”

I had worked at the Evening Bulletin in Philadelphia before coming to The Post in January 1970, so I knew of Media, a small town southwest of Philadelphia. ¶ The letter inside the envelope informed me that on the night of March 8, 1971, my anonymous correspondents — they called themselves the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI — had broken into the Media FBI office and stolen every file. They did so, I learned later, in the dark and as the sounds of the first Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier boxing match filled the streets.

“Enclosed you will find,” the letter said, “copies of certain files from the Media, Pennsylvania, office of the FBI which were removed by our commission for public scrutiny. We are making these copies available to you and to several other persons in public life because we feel that you have shown concern and courage as regards issues which are, in part, documented in the enclosed materials.”

I wasn’t aware of having shown any courage, but I was, to put it mildly, eager to read those files — 14, as it turned out, of 1,000 files that they had taken.

For 43 years the people who sent those files to me then have remained unknown to the general public. This week, five of the Media FBI burglars — a group that pulled off an act that led to congressional investigations of all intelligence agencies, congressional oversight and significant reforms in the FBI — are coming forward for the first time.

In a book I have written and in “1971,” a documentary film by Johanna Hamilton, the burglars tell their story — the ultimate result of a chance encounter I had at a dinner party in 1989 with acquaintances in Philadelphia, who told me they were involved in the Media burglary.

Read more from this story HERE.

Smart Rifle Never Misses, Now Comes in Semi-Automatic Form

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: TrackingPoint

Photo Credit: TrackingPoint

In the near future, you won’t even need to know how to fire a rifle to be a crack shot.

At the Consumer Electronic Show, the Austin, Texas-based start-up TrackingPoint showed off its all-new 500 Series AR Smart Rifle, a gun that makes it almost impossible for any user to miss.

TrackingPoint is the inventor of Precision Guided Firearms, a guided shooting system that the company says creates the most accurate guns in the world. The new rifle is the company’s first semi-automatic series.

This technology turns even a neophyte into a marksman, at least within a 500-yard range. The user simply “tags” the target, and the gun and ammo do the rest, all for a mere $9,950—the starting price for the new series.

In fact, the system is so accurate that a user will have up to five times the accuracy of an experienced shooter, said Oren Schauble, the company’s marketing director.

Read more from this story HERE.

Data Shows More Young Veterans Committing Suicide

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

Photo Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

Suicides among young veterans climbed sharply in a recent three-year period, according to a new government analysis focused on Veterans Health Administration clients.

The number of suicides among 18-to-29-year-old men increased from 88 in 2009 to 152 in 2011. That translates into a 44% rise in the suicide rate, which jumped to 57.9 suicides per 100,000 veterans.

Experts were at a loss to explain the increase. It occurred as the Department of Veterans Affairs was bolstering its suicide prevention efforts in response to a sharp rise in military suicides during a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

One possibility is that those efforts have been successful in drawing more suicidal young veterans to the VA for care, but that many still wind up killing themselves.

“If you have more people at risk, the rates are going to change,” said Dr. Timothy Lineberry, a suicide expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved in the analysis.

Read more from this story HERE.

LA County Votes to Restore Cross to Seal; ACLU Has Dracula-like Response

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which represents a population greater than a number of states, has voted 3-2 to restore the cross to the San Gabriel Mission church on the L.A. County seal to accurately depict the Mission, which now appears on the county seal without its cross.

The motion, filed by Supervisor Michael Antonovich, a U.S. Army veteran and a member of the American Legion, and Supervisor Don Knabe (both Republicans) was supported by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a political liberal who once headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in L.A. and was once a member of the Board of the ACLU of Southern California. Supervisors Zev Zarovslosky and Gloria Molina, the other two liberal Democrats on the five-member board, voted against the motion, as reported by the L.A. Times.

Attorney Peter Eliasberg of the ACLU, which reacts like Dracula to the sight of a cross and has become the intolerant Taliban of American progressive liberal secularism, immediately threatened to sue, to no one’s surprise.

Eliasberg is the ACLU attorney who spent 10 years fanatically suing to destroy the Mojave Desert Veterans Memorial cross. One has to drive to that remote desert cross honoring veterans to be offended by it – the cross is bolted atop a rock outcrop some 12 miles off the highway on a two-lane desert road. But that didn’t deter Eliasberg and the ACLU secular extremists from a decade of litigation trying to destroy it, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Alas, the cross-destroying crusader Eliasberg then made a fool of himself before the Supreme Court when he made a misleading misrepresentation about the memorial in response to a question from Chief Justice Roberts. Eliasberg was later embarrassingly admonished by Roberts during oral argument for Eliasberg’s misrepresentation to the Court when staff presented the chief justice with the true facts pertaining to his question.

Read more from this story HERE.

Cruz: President Has Engaged in Pattern of ‘Lawlessness on a breathtaking scale’

/17 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

Photo Credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has told a conservative conference that President Barack Obama is lawless, providing the right wing rhetoric that makes him so popular in his home state.

The conservative Republican laid out his reasoning for why he thinks the president is “dangerous and terrifying.”

According to the Statesman, Cruz also slammed Obama for what he referred to as a pattern of “lawlessness on a breathtaking scale.”

“We are a nation of laws and not men,” Cruz was additionally quoted as saying by the website. “If we had a system where a president can pick and choose what laws to follow at utter whim … that is seriously dangerous.”

The public policy conference at which he spoke was sponsored by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. Minutes before his address, the organization posted a photograph of Cruz on their official Facebook page.

Read more from this story HERE.

Add Another Name to the List of 2016 Hopefuls…

/4 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is headed to New Hampshire, the destination for top presidential contenders and long shots alike leading up to 2016′s presidential season.

Issa will speak at the Lincoln Day Dinner for the Concord Republican City and Merrimack County committees on February 7, U-T San Diego reported.

“There are two conversations that will shape the 2014 and 2016 elections and there couldn’t be a better place to start those conversations than in New Hampshire,” Issa said in a statement. “The first is whether or not the Republican Party can define itself as the party that supports individual opportunity and American entrepreneurship so that you can be the engine of your own prosperity, not government. The second comes down to how comfortable the American people are with a large, invasive and powerful government that escapes accountability with no check-and-balance.”

Under Issa’s leadership, the Oversight Committee has regularly gone head-to-head with the Obama administration, particularly on issues like the attack in Benghazi and the Internal Revenue Service’s practice of applying heightened scrutiny to some conservative groups.

Read more from this story HERE.

Documents Reveal Anger, Confusion Over Bridge Closings Linked to Christie Staff

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Documents released Friday reveal Port Authority officials were warned a plan to reduce lanes on the GW Bridge, which was apparently executed by members of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s staff as an act of political revenge, could be a “potential disaster” for commuters.

However, they pressed on with it anyway for four days, while fielding angry complaints from police and officials in Fort Lee that emergency response in the city was being hampered and residents could not get to work.

The over 1,000 pages of documents were released as part of New Jersey legislative committee’s investigation into the incident. They mostly involve the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the agency that runs the bridge.

The documents did not implicate Christie in the lane closures.

The case became a full-blown scandal on Wednesday, when a set of emails and text messages were released suggesting the lanes were closed by a top Christie aide to apparently punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for not endorsing Christie for re-election.

Read more from this story HERE.