Harry Reid: Obamacare First Step to Single-Payer System

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Photo Credit: APAs the nation enters the third week of the Obamacare health exchange implementation, it’s worth taking a second look at some interesting comments made in August by one of the chief architects of the law.

In short, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., never really thought the exchanges would work.

He just sees the Affordable Care Act as the first step to a fully government-run health care system, something that could be easier to achieve after the glitch-riddled, problematic opening of the federal health insurance exchanges this month.

During an appearance on a Las Vegas PBS program in August, Reid said he sees a national single-payer health system as the natural next step for health care in America. Reid said the nation had to “work its way past” insurance-based health care, according to a recap provided by the Las Vegas Sun newspaper.

“What we’ve done with Obamacare is have a step in the right direction, but we’re far from having something that’s going to work forever,” Reid said.

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Hobby Lobby Appeals to Supreme Court to Stop Obama Admin From Forcing it to Obey HHS Mandate

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesChristian craft store Hobby Lobby today filed papers with the Supreme Court asking it to take it case against the Obama administration, which is attempting to make it comply with the HHS mandate that compels religious companies to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs for their employees.

In July, a federal court granted Hobby Lobby a preliminary injunction against the HHS abortion-drug mandate. The injunction prevented the Obama administration from enforcing the mandate against the Christian company, but the Obama administration appealed that ruling recently. The government’s appeal makes it highly likely that the Supreme Court will decide the issue in the upcoming term.

The Obama administration submitted papers in September and Hobby Lobby filed its own papers today.

Hobby Lobby asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review its case and decide whether the Green family will be required to provide and pay for life-terminating drugs and devices in violation of their religious beliefs, according to an email from its attorneys to LifeNews.

“Hobby Lobby’s case raises important questions about who can enjoy religious freedom,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and lead lawyer for Hobby Lobby. “Right now, some courts recognize the rights of business owners like the Green family, and others do not. Religious freedom is too important to be left to chance. The Supreme Court should take this case and protect religious freedom for the Green family and Hobby Lobby.”

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HHS Brings in Verizon to Help HealthCare.gov

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Photo Credit: Charles Dharapak, APThe international telecommunications company Verizon has been tasked with helping the government fix the federal health exchange, USA TODAY has learned.

An informed source in the telecommunications industry said Verizon’s Enterprise Solutions division has been asked by the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the performance of the HealthCare.gov site, which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not been made official.

HHS office said Sunday the department would reach outside its government contractors to civilian companies that might be able to solve HealthCare.gov’s problems more quickly.

“Our team is bringing in some of the best and brightest from both inside and outside government to scrub in with the team and help improve HealthCare.gov,” an HHS blog post said on Sunday.

HHS did not respond to a request for confirmation about Verizon. The company also declined to comment.

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Homeland Security Spends $80 Million On Armed Guards for “Civil Disturbances”

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Photo Credit: Wikimedia CommonsThe Department of Homeland Security is set to spend $80 million dollars on hiring a raft of armed guards to protect IRS and other government buildings in upstate New York during “public demonstrations” and “civil disturbances,” once again prompting concerns that the federal agency is preparing for food stamp riots, anti-tax demonstrations or some other form of domestic unrest.

According to a solicitation posted on the Federal Business Opportunities website, the Federal Protective Service (a unit of the DHS), is looking for a contractor to supply armed Protective Security Officers (PSOs) to guard a variety of government buildings in the region, including “IRS buildings(s) during tax season.”

“PSOs will be required to be armed and some posts may require screening of visitors using x-rays/magnetometers,” states the solicitation.

The armed guards will be used during “public demonstration(s),” as well as “civil disturbances, or other unanticipated events on an as-needed basis.”

“This acquisition is for approximately 380,000 hours of Basic Service, 20,000 hours of Temporary Additional Services and 3,500 hours of Emergency Security Services per year. Currently, there are an estimated 205 guards protecting approximately 95 posts at over 55 buildings. The estimated value of this Contract is between $75M and $80M,” states the solicitation.

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Lawmakers Making Thousands, Funding Lavish Trips from ‘Slush Funds’

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Photo Credit: REUTERSMembers of Congress are routinely using campaign committees as a personal “slush fund,” according to a detailed report by “60 Minutes.”

The report found that lawmakers are using what’s known as “Leadership PACs” to fund trips to high-ranking golf courses, NFL games and other destinations – and are even personally making money off the PACs by lending to them and charging steep interest.

In the most egregious examples, CBS’ “60 Minutes” found that Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Calif., loaned her PAC $150,000 – and made $228,000 over a 12-year period by charging 18 percent interest.

Napolitano admitted to doing it, and an ethics watchdog said the practice is technically legal. In fact, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington found at least 15 cases where politicians were making loans to their campaign funds.

Napolitano, though, conceded she wasn’t giving campaign donors the details of her personal loan. “Well, you don’t go out and publicize that, but they know that I had a campaign debt,” she said.

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Shock Claim: HealthCare.Gov Needs 5,000,000 Lines of Code Rewritten to Work Properly

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Photo Credit: Liberty News This is getting uglier by the day. Not only did Government waste more money than necessary to develop the first iPhone in creating the goliath lemon website HealthCare.Gov, it appears they’re about to spend yet another round of massive money trying to fix it. In fact, according to the New York Times, up to 5,000,000 lines of code need to be rewritten.

In interviews, experts said the technological problems of the site went far beyond the roadblocks to creating accounts that continue to prevent legions of users from even registering. Indeed, several said, the login problems, though vexing to consumers, may be the easiest to solve. One specialist said that as many as five million lines of software code may need to be rewritten before the Web site runs properly.

“The account creation and registration problems are masking the problems that will happen later,” said one person involved in the repair effort…

Government at work.

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Stupid is as Stupid Does

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Photo Credit: AP While most of us took a relaxing break from work over the weekend, politicians did not. In fact, they were out en masse doing what they do best. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.

First up, Marco Rubio.

Florida’s junior senator has a lot of making up to do with his base after becoming the face of scamnesty in the Senate. He went quiet after the bill went to the House, then began appearing again with Ted Cruz in the defund ObamaCare fight. He helped Cruz considerably during his filibuster and he voted the right way on both cloture and on the spending bill. His name was being mentioned again by conservative websites who had all but disowned him.

And then, he went and blew it.

On Fox News Sunday (of all places), Rubio endorsed Mitch “Benedict Arnold” McConnell in his primary against Tea Party candidate Matt Bevin. Guess Rubio’s perfectly fine with that almost 3 billion dollar bribe McConnell got to sign the deal that Rubio voted against.

Stupid is as Stupid does.

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Study: 15 Percent of US Youth Out of School, Work

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Photo Credit: APAlmost 6 million young people are neither in school nor working, according to a study released Monday.

That’s almost 15 percent of those aged 16 to 24 who have neither desk nor job, according to The Opportunity Nation coalition, which wrote the report.

Other studies have shown that idle young adults are missing out on a window to build skills they will need later in life or use the knowledge they acquired in college. Without those experiences, they are less likely to command higher salaries and more likely to be an economic drain on their communities.

“This is not a group that we can write off. They just need a chance,” said Mark Edwards, executive director of the coalition of businesses, advocacy groups, policy experts and nonprofit organizations dedicated to increasing economic mobility. “The tendency is to see them as lost souls and see them as unsavable. They are not.”

But changing the dynamic is not going to be easy.

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Americans on Food Stamps Decline–From 47,760,247 to 47,637,497

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Photo Credit: APThe number of Americans enrolled in the federal government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—commonly known as food stamps—declined from 47,760,247 in June to 47,637,407 in July, according to data released this month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

At 47,637,407, there are still more Americans taking food stamps than there are people in Spain, which, according to the CIA World Factbook, has a population of 47,370,542.

The number of households benefiting from food stamps also declined from June to July, dropping from 23,116,892 to 23,074,914 in July…

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Police: Man, 68, Shoots At 22-Year-Old Man Upon Finding Him In Bed With Wife

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Photo Credit: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department via Getty ImagesA local senior citizen shot a 22-year-old man after he caught him sleeping beside his wife in their guest house.

According to ABC 15, the unnamed 68-year-old man found Stephen Trevor Chapman, 22, slumbering next to his 63-year-old wife. Authorities told the station that, upon discovering the pair, he woke Chapman by tapping him with a cane and telling him to leave.

Chapman reportedly responded by yelling and refusing to go. Officials with the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office then said that the homeowner, who is said to have Parkinson’s disease, fired what was referred to as a “warning shot” in Chapman’s direction.

The bullet hit a nearby wall, and Chapman sustained a minor hand injury from a stray fragment.

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