by | ARTICLES, BUSINESS, ECONOMY, ELECTIONS, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, POLITICS, TAXES
Peter Shumlin, a Democrat governor from one of the most liberal states, made a jaw-dropping admission when he released his much-awaited plan for a single payer health system in Vermont. Shumlin’s proposal called for massive tax increases to pay for the system, which Shumlin himself called “detrimental to Vermonters”. Shumlin stated,
“These are simply not tax rates that I can responsibly support or urge the Legislature to pass. In my judgment, the potential economic disruption and risks would be too great to small businesses, working families and the state’s economy.”
Support for this proposal was tepid at best. His plan, which he eventually submitted after missing two financing deadlines, called for “businesses to take on a double-digit payroll tax, while individuals would face up to a 9.5 percent premium assessment.” Shumlin also stated that federal funding for the transition into such a health system was now expected to be $150 million less than originally planned, a huge amount of money at stake for such a tiny state.
Perhaps feeling the heat from the extremely narrow election in November (which he actually hasn’t officially won yet), Shumlin basically denounced his own proposal as soon as it was released. What’s more, Obamacare is particularly odious in his state right now as well, as Vermont shelled out some $400,000 in taxpayer funds to Jonathan Gruber, for health care “consulting”.
Shumlin is finally learning that, with socialism, you eventually run out of other people’s money.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, QUICKLY NOTED, TAXES
From Fox Business:
“The health insurance industry says companies will give consumers more time to pay January’s premiums under President Barack Obama’s health care law.
The move is an attempt to head off potential problems as the Obama administration renews millions of current customers, while trying to accommodate new ones as well.
Renewing coverage each year is standard operating procedure for private insurance plans.
But 2015 is the first renewal year for the health law, and the process involves a massive electronic data transfer from the government to insurers, happening right around the holidays. Last year, many files had errors.”
The grace period was just announced after health insurance enrollment ended Monday, December 15th. Insurers are also aware for the potential problem of “double billing” from a consumer who switched plans, and will work to rectify any issues in a swift manner. So, if you purchased an Obamacare plan this year, you’ll have a little extra time to be certain that you were billed correctly, and only once.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, HYPOCRISY, POLITICS, TAXES
Last week, Kathleen Sebelius peddled the idea that Obamacare is merely “a very bad brand” and blamed misinformation via “a lot of paid advertising” for it; she also calculated spending on anti-Obamcare ads to be around $400 million:
“So Obamacare no question has a very bad brand that has been driven intentionally by a lot of misinformation and by a lot of paid advertising and I think we may need to call it something, in the future, different. But it’s working and now people are getting coverage. I think by the time that the enrollment started in 2013, clearly we had a terrible eight weeks of website disaster, which didn’t help. But by that time there had been $400 million worth of ads that had been run against the law”.
The problem with the narrative is that the Administration spend nearly $700 million during the same time frame touting the law. What’s more, even the government’s own advertising used the term “Obamacare”, which completely dispels the idea that Obamacare is “a very bad brand”.
Three days after the close of the first enrollment period, Washington Free Beacon gave a rundown of various federal and state costs associated with advertising Obamacare. The amount, compiled by the AP, was calculated to be $674 million for TV, radio, social media, and print advertising. The Obama Administration also took some some unconventional approaches to reach various audiences, including cartoons, a hippie playing the guitar, “doge” memes, cat GIFs, and paying NFL teams. You can read the detailed breakdown here.
And what about those government advertisements? Most of the ads paid for by the federal government with your tax dollars used the term “Obamacare” in them. For instance, remember the particularly visual ads run for the Colorado exchange? You can still view them here, at the catchy “Do You Got Insurance” website (can we at least use proper grammar?) EVERY single one of the ads has “thanks Obamacare!” emblazoned on them. That is the very definition of “branding” right there.
The Obama Administration embraced the term Obamacare because it was supposed to be the signature policy of Obama’s presidency — until disaster after disaster occurred: the website went awry, enrollment was under projection, Jonathan Gruber spoke out; you name it. Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
Just how much as the Obama Administration paid to advertise Obamacare? No one actually knows. In September, 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) explicity reported that the Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) “did not provide estimates of fiscal year 2014 obligations for certain categories of Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight-related transactions, such as advertising and other public relations activities.”
And that’s not all the GAO report found, with regard to Obamacare spending. The report also stated,
“GAO was unable to consistently verify the reliability of the data received from CMS. Specifically:
GAO was able to determine the reliability of CMS’s estimates for total obligations for fiscal year 2014, which was $3.7 billion; the number of staff as of September 30, 2013, which was 347; and total salary expenditures from March 2010 through fiscal year 2013, which were $79.8 million.
GAO could not determine the reliability of any of the other financial information CMS provided because CMS’s core financial system did not produce totals for much of the CCIIO-related information requested. For example, the system did not produce expenditure totals for CCIIO-related polling, focus groups, or advertising and other public relations activities because of how these activities are captured in the system.
Similarly, information related to reassignment of staff to CCIIO from other CMS and HHS units was not readily available. Consequently, the staff reassignment information provided to GAO was not complete, was not supported by documentary evidence, and could not be verified.”
So, $3.7 billion was spent on Obamcare for Fiscal Year 2014 alone — we just don’t know where. For Kathleen Sebelius to whine about $400 million in advertising against Obamacare just goes to show the depth of desperation for the Obama Administration to blame someone, anyone, for the failure that is Obamacare. And that the most toxic part of the brand Obamacare is “Obama”.
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, OBAMACARE, TAXES
If you are an Obamacare enrollee, you will not be able to file your taxes next year until you receive a new Obamacare form, the 1095A. That means if the government is not on time getting the forms out, taxpayers who need the form could face a delay receiving anticipated refunds.
The proposed deadline to send out the forms is January 31, 2015, which also coincides with the date that employers must issue W-2 to their employees.
Form 1095A is necessary: filers need the forms to calculate whether they received the correct subsidy from the government, or if they owe money to cover a difference”. The IRS has a working draft on the form, but doesn’t yet include the instructions on how to calculate the proper subsidy amount — and that’s the key.
Because of the extensive problems during the Obamacare rollout and initial signup period, some folks may find that the did not receive the proper subsidy. Additionally, changes to income during the year might also affect the outcome. The Form 1095A is designed to match up the income for 2014 with the subsidy amount received. Some might find they will didn’t get enough of a subsidy and will receive money back, while others could have the opposite problem: their subsidy was too high, and they now owe money back.
So Obamacare users — be on the lookout for the 1095A early next year. Even if you have all your documentation to file your taxes, you still may not file until you receive that form. Hopefully the government will not be as late on issuing it as it was with other Obamacare related items.
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
Last week, TIGTA revealed the existence of around 2500 documents “relating to investigations of the improper disclosure of confidential taxpayer information by the IRS to the White House.” December 1st was the deadline for the Department of Justice’s tax department to turn over those documents, as ordered by a judge. You can read more of that background story here.
The group involved in the FOIA request for documents is called “Cause of Action”, and they consider themselves a government watchdog of sorts. In an email last week from TIGTA on the matter, the department asked for more time (from Dec 1 to Dec 15) to go through the remaining 500 of the 2500 documents to determine if they were pertinent. This acknowledgment of the documents seemed promising that TIGTA would be forthcoming on the matter, as they have been pretty above board during the IRS Scandal in general.
However, yesterday TIGTA appeared to retreat from its openness by withholding the bulk of the documents. A letter from TIGTA counsel to the group noted that there were 2,509 pages of documents “potentially responsive to your request”, and of those, 2,043 were in fact responsive. However, TIGTA cited tax code and privacy as the reason not to disclose those documents, saying “All of the 2,043 pages of documents we have determined to be responsive were collected by the Secretary of the Treasury with respect to the determination of possible liability under Title 26 of the United States Code. These pages consist of return information protected by 26 U.S.C. § 6103 and may not be disclosed absent an express statutory exception.”
The group will receive 466 documents on December 15 that apparently aren’t protected information. However, the sheer number of documents being withheld, which are acknowledged to a) be correspondence between the White House and IRS, and b) to contain protected “return information” reveal a stunning breach of propriety. The letter also contained a fairly lame notation that “Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is now looking into ‘potential liability’ that his tax aides broke laws in sharing taxpayer information with the White House.”
Forbes raised some interesting points on the matter: “A key question is whether any officials at the White House have ever asked anyone over at the IRS to transmit private taxpayer information to the White House in violation of law. Another question, regardless of whether the White House asked for any taxpayer information, is whether the IRS ever transmitted any.”
So is there a pattern of targeting from the White House? And will the hard drive containing the withheld documents suddenly crash?
Forbes sullenly concluded that “the data may seem unimportant, and hopefully it will turn out to be. Still, the privacy protections for taxpayer data held by the IRS are among the most sensitive parts of the tax law. That makes any alleged transgressions of these rules serious. It makes this topic arguably the worst part of the IRS scandal so far.”
Indeed. 2000+ documents linking the IRS and the White House, yet unavailable for review. Is there still “no smidgen of corruption”?
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
As part of the IRS Scandal over the last 18 months, people have questions if, and how deeply, the ties exist between the IRS and White House. A group named “Cause of Action” sued to get access to any documents that show such communication.
Last week, the Justice Department apparently sent an email over the matter, asking for more time to finish the request made by Cause of Action, due to a potentially large number of documents that fit the request. Here is the available text of the email from the Justice Department’s tax office:
“My client wants to know if you would consent to a motion pushing back (in part) TIGTA’s response date by two weeks to December 15, 2014. The agency has located 2,500 potentially responsive documents and anticipates being able to finish processing 2,000 of these pages by the December 1 date. It needs the additional two weeks to deal with the last 500 pages to determine if they are responsive and make any necessary withholdings. We would therefore like to ask the court to permit the agency to issue a response (including production) on December 1 as to any documents it has completed processing by that date, and do the same as to the remaining documents by December 15. I note that the court’s remand was for a “determin[ation],” which the D.C. Circuit has recently explained can precede actual production by “days or a few weeks,” but we would prefer to simply agree on a date for turning over any of the remaining 500 documents that may be responsive.”
Here we have the admission that potentially 2500 documents exist which show taxpayer information being shared with the White House. This is a pretty large number; what information that is and in what context remains to be seen. So far, TIGTA has been a help, not a hindrance, in the IRS scandal. Will that continue with this latest revelation?
by | ARTICLES, BLOG, CONSTITUTION, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, TAXES
The White House released its latest regulatory agenda for the fall. This current amount contains 3,415 items for consideration. Did you miss the list? Most people did; the White House released the massive agenda on the eve of Thanksgiving. The Daily Caller notes that this latest document dump marked “the fifth time the Obama administration has released its regulatory road map on the eve of a major holiday”. It follows the footsteps of last spring’s agenda, when it was released right before Memorial Day.
The 3,415 regulations “includes 189 rules that cost more than $100 million.” These include several controversial EPA rules and regs, such as the redefinition of the “Waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act. Likewise, several educational proposals, which seem to expand federal reach into education, have raised eyebrows.
Center for Progressive Reform Executive Director Matt Shudtz remarked that “it’s a shame that the Obama administration goes about intentionally releasing such important agendas in stealth at times when Americans are the most distracted, especially when its wide range of rules and regulations touch virtually every American both here and abroad.”
To view the entire list, called the “Unified Agenda for Fall 2014” go here.
by | ARTICLES, ECONOMY, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS, TAX TIPS
Even though the government is bringing in record revenue, its spending is still outpacing its intake. CNS News did an analysis of Treasury Statements, and revealed that the Department of Treasury is currently operating like a Ponzi scheme:
“The Daily Treasury Statement that was released Wednesday afternoon as Americans were preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving revealed that the U.S. Treasury has been forced to issue $1,040,965,000,000 in new debt since fiscal 2015 started just eight weeks ago in order to raise the money to pay off Treasury securities that were maturing and to cover new deficit spending by the government.
During those eight weeks, Treasury took in $341,591,000,000 in revenues. That was a record for the period between Oct. 1 and Nov. 25. But that record $341,591,000,000 in revenues was not enough to finance ongoing government spending let alone pay off old debt that matured.”
During the 8 weeks since the start of the fiscal year, the Treasury brought in revenue of $341,591,000,000. However, old debt was maturing. In order to cover the old debt plus finance the government, it was forced to issue new debt. There was $942,103,000,000 in old debt. To cover its obligations, the government had to “roll over the old debt into new debt and issue enough additional new debt to cover the new deficit spending”.
CNS News explains how the debt occurred so quickly. “The vast amount of debt that the Treasury must roll over in such a short time frame is driven by the fact the Treasury has put most of the debt into short-term “bills” and mid-term “notes”—on which it can pay lower interest rates—rather than into long-term bonds, which demand significantly higher interest rates….If the Treasury were forced to convert the $1.4 trillion in short-term bills (on which it now pays an average interest rate of 0.056 percent) into 30-year bonds at the average rate it is now paying on such bonds (4.919 percent) the interest on that $1.4 trillion in debt would increase 88-fold.”
If the private company operated in this manner, you can be sure the Securities and Exchange Commission would be after them for fraud. But when its the government, all bets are off.
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, TAXES
Though Thomas Perez no longer looks like Obama’s pick for Attorney General to replace Eric Holder, it is necessary to keep a critical eye on his activities as Labor Secretary. In particular, Thomas Perez is the leading crusader of a notion called “disparate impact”, a concept which allows for charges of discrimination even when none has actually occurred.
Though the idea of “disparate impact” has been around in the business world for at least a couple of decades , it has been vigorously pushed into other sectors as well, particularly during Obama’s administration. This idea holds that “a defendant can be held liable for discrimination for a race-neutral policy that statistically disadvantages a specific minority group even if that negative “impact” was neither purposeful, foreseen, nor intended. In such cases, defendants can be forced to pay for harm caused not by their own actions, but by economic and statistical realities, even if beyond their control.”
Thomas Perez was particularly lucrative with disparate impact while serving as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, his position prior to joining Obama’s cabinet. National Review Online (NRO) covered some of Perez’s cases in recent years , noting that Perez “has applied that theory vigorously to force large settlements from financial companies even in cases where there was no evidence of actual racial discrimination”. In other words, employers can be sought after for violating the law, whether or not they actually did.
The White House in general, and Perez in particular, like disparate impact theory because it “sets a very low bar for proving discrimination. Under it, prosecutors need not prove intent, merely that minorities have suffered a disparate impact from some action”.
Perez also got involved directly in a court case which challenged “disparate impact” policy in housing, which had been accepted for review by the Supreme Court. While still in his role as Assistant AG, Perez personally flew to Minneapolis to negotiate a settlement, a move noted by the Weekly Standard, as Perez, “made a Supreme Court case disappear”.
Perhaps Obama passed on Perez to become the next Attorney General because he needed Perez’s talent for disparate impact to become more pervasive in labor law. As Labor Secretary, he has the ability to oversee all hiring and regulatory practices. Perez has already been charged with funding “union front groups known as work centers as an example of his bias”. As a “leader of the George Soros-funded Casa de Maryland illegal alien advocacy group, Perez lobbied for in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students, driver’s licenses and tax-subsidized day labor centers.”
Perez successfully used disparate impact in the financial and housing sectors and now seems keen to expand its use in the labor world as well. He has indicated a key goal of “leveling the playing field” in labor, though it can certainly be argued-after 6 years of Obama – that the playing field is already tipped in favor of labor. Perez will certainly try to achieve his “leveling” through the use of disparate impact, because the burden to show lack of discrimination falls on the employer – meaning guilty until proven innocent. Perez has the ability to do significant damage in his role as Labor Secretary, which is perhaps why Obama wanted to keep him exactly where he is.
by | ARTICLES, FREEDOM, GOVERNMENT, OBAMA, POLITICS, TAXES
Tens of thousands of Lerner emails have been found by the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). This past Friday, TIGTA announced to congressional staffers that they were located “among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.”, and that it “took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes”. TIGTA has estimated it could contain nearly 30,000 emails.
The emails date back to 2009 – 2011, an important time frame for the IRS scandal. This covers specifically the era during which Lois Lerner, as head of the IRS exempt-organizations division, engaged in targeting of conservative and Tea Party organizations which sought tax-exempt status ahead of the 2012 Presidential elections. Lerner claimed her computer crashed in Spring 2011, and the IRS declared those emails “lost”.
Washington Examiner noted that this past June, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified before Congress that the disaster recovery tapes — the ones recovered — only hold data for about six months, and “even if the IRS had sought the emails within the six-month period, it would have been a complicated and difficult process to produce them from the tapes.”
On the contrary, TIGTA has examined 744 tapes so far, and they are not finished, but have found an estimated 250 emails on the various tapes. Besides the estimated 30,000 of Lerner’s emails, TIGTA surmised that it is likely more missing emails will be recovered from the slew of other IRS workers who also experienced computer crashes.
The IRS issued a statement as a response to the TIGTA find, stating, “the IRS welcomes TIGTA’s independent review and expert forensic analysis. Commissioner Koskinen has said for some time he would be pleased if additional Lois Lerner emails from this time frame could be found.”
This is a ridiculous statement, as it was revealed just a couple of weeks ago from court documents pertaining to an IRS lawsuit over the matter, that the IRS hadn’t even bothered to look for the emails. In the document, the IRS wrote that they have not searched IRS servers because “the servers would not result in the recovery of any information.” The IRS further claimed no search was performed on the back-up tapes, because there was “no reason to believe that the tapes are a potential source of recovering” any lost emails.
Rep. Darrell Issa, who is overseeing the process, spoke about the IRS’s behavior upon hearing of the TIGTA find. “This discovery also underscores the lack of cooperation Congress has received from the IRS. The agency first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s emails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people.”
Issa also stated that the “The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups”, once the emails have gone through the proper redacting process by TIGTA to make sure taxpayer information remains protected. It is expected to take several more weeks before the tapes are ready for presentation to Congress.
It appears that the IRS was playing a huge game of chicken and just lost. They were betting that the public and Congress and TIGTA would not expend the time and money to bother combing through the disaster recovery tapes, and that we would just take their word for it that the emails were lost. More obfuscation from the “most transparent Administration ever”.
