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Polls

According to a new Arkansas Senate poll, Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor trails his Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton, by 7 points among likely voters in Arkansas, 48 percent to 41 percent.

The survey, which was first reported by POLITICO, was conducted Friday and Saturday for the Citizens United Political Victory Fund by Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway of the polling company, Inc./WomanTrend.

Cotton is ahead outside the margin of error, an advantage largely fueled by a wide 21-point lead among independents, and even among women whom favor Republican Tom Cotton by 4 points.

Previous Arkansas Senate poll numbers, the most recent taken during the partial government shutdown and before the failed rollout of Obamacare, found small leads for both candidates within the margin of error.

The focus shifting toward ObamaCare, which Sen. Pryor voted for against the will of his constituents, has done further damage to the already-embattled incumbent Democrat.

In the latest Arkansas Senate poll, 62 percent say they have an unfavorable view of the health care law, including 56 percent who strongly oppose ObamaCare.

“Mark Pryor is synonymous with Obamacare and Obamacare is synonymous with making life worse for the American people,” said David N. Bossie, president of Citizens United. “That’s why Pryor is losing to Cotton in the Arkansas Senate race.”

Pryor deputy campaign manager Erik Dorey pointed to polls conducted for Citizens United by another firm last year that wound up being far off the mark. But Democratic polling company Public Policy Polling, who typically finds larger than normal Democratic advantages, also found senate races in North Carolina and others to be shifting significantly in favor of Republican candidates.

The race has been rated “Leans Republican” on the People’s Pundit Daily interactive Senate Map for months, citing changing demographics and a persistent rightward shift in the state’s politics, which has accelerated under President Obama.

In an email, Dorey gave a prelude to the nuclear strategy the Pryor campaign intends to use, one which avoids the issue of ObamaCare.

“It’s no surprise that Congressman Cotton’s special interest backers have commissioned a bogus poll that wildly misses where we know this race stands,” he emailed. “Mark is ahead, and Arkansans still have a lot to learn about Cotton’s reckless votes to gut Medicare and Social Security, blow up the Farm Bill and end affordable student loans.”

Pryor is considered by People’s Pundit Daily to be the most vulnerable of the Democratic incumbents running for reelection, as well as other analysts.

The poll found Pryor is viewed favorably by 44 percent, most assuredly due to his family’s good name, and unfavorably by 39 percent. The challenge for him, however, is that only one-third of independents view Pryor favorably and 52 percent have a negative opinion.

Cotton, who went to Afghanistan and Iraq in the Army before being elected to the House last year, is still a relatively unknown quantity. He’s viewed favorably by 39 percent and unfavorably by 26 percent of likely voters. But Cotton enjoys the advantage of representing the largest swing district in Arkansas, something that has narrowed any potential path to victory for Pryor.

President Barack Obama won just 37 percent of the vote in the state last year, and according to the poll he’s viewed favorably by just 36 percent.

The poll, conducted by live interviewers, surveyed 400 likely voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.9 percent. The sample was 29 percent self-identifying Republicans, 32 percent Democratic and 35 percent independents.

View PPD 2014 Senate Map With Ratings And Analysis

According to a new Arkansas Senate poll,

Opinion

WASHINGTON — The education of Barack Obama is a protracted process as he repeatedly alights upon the obvious with a sense of original discovery. In a recent MSNBC interview, he restocked his pantry of excuses for his disappointing results, announcing that “we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly”:

“We’ve got, for example, 16 different agencies that have some responsibility to help businesses, large and small, in all kinds of ways, whether it’s helping to finance them, helping them to export. … So, we’ve proposed, let’s consolidate a bunch of that stuff. The challenge we’ve got is that that requires a law to pass. And, frankly, there are a lot of members of Congress who are chairmen of a particular committee. And they don’t want necessarily consolidations where they would lose jurisdiction over certain aspects of certain policies.”

The dawn is coming up like thunder as Obama notices the sociology of government. He shows no sign, however, of drawing appropriate lessons from it.

Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: Injured in the tail, that fact could take nearly a minute to be communicated to the sauropod brain.

Obama, of whose vast erudition we have been assured, seems unfamiliar with Mancur Olson’s seminal “The Rise and Decline of Nations,” which explains how free societies become sclerotic. Their governments become encrusted with interest groups that preserve, like a fly in amber, an increasingly stultifying status quo. This impedes dynamism by protecting arrangements that have worked well for those powerful enough to put the arrangements in place. This blocks upward mobility for those less wired to power.

Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis — how incentives influence behavior — to government. It shows how elected officials and bureaucrats pursue personal aggrandizement as much as people do in the private sector. In the public sector’s profit motive, profit is measured by power rather than money.

Obama’s tardy epiphanies do not temper his enthusiasm for giving sauropod government ever-deeper penetration into society. He thinks this serves equality. Actually, big government (BEG ITAL)inevitably(END ITAL) drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.

The day before Obama shared with MSNBC his conclusion that big government defends its irrationalities but is insufficiently big, his speech du jour deplored today’s increasing inequality and distrust of government. He seems oblivious to the mutual causations at work.

Of course Americans distrust one another more as more and more factions fight one another for preferential treatment by government. Of course government becomes drained of dignity, and becomes corrosive of social cohesion, as it becomes a bigger dispenser of inequality through benefits to those sufficiently clever and connected to work its levers.

Obama correctly says that not only do we “tend to trust our institutions less,” we also “tend to trust each other less.” Of course there are parallel increases in distrust: Government’s dignity diminishes as government grows to serve factions of those sophisticated at manipulating its allocation of preferences. Social solidarity is a casualty of government grown big because it recognizes no limits to its dispensing of favors.

Obama’s speech denounced “trickle-down ideology” and deplored growth that “has flowed to a fortunate few.” But the monetary policy he favors — very low interest rates, driving money into equities in search of higher yields — is a powerful engine of inequality. Since the Dow closed at 7,949 on Inauguration Day 2009, it has doubled, benefiting the 10 percent who hold 80 percent of directly owned stocks. The hope is that some of this wealth will trickle down.

Suppose there were not 16 government agencies “to help businesses, large and small, in all kinds of ways.” Suppose there were none. Such barnacles on big government institutionalize the scramble for government favors; these agencies are a standing incitement to bend public power for private advantage. Hence they increase distrust of government, diminish social solidarity and aggravate the most indefensible inequality — that driven by government dispensations.

Obama’s solution to the problem of the 16 is to “consolidate” them, replacing 16 small subtractions from good governance with one big one. Progressives consider this progress.

George Will’s email address is [email protected].

WASHINGTON -- The education of Barack Obama

News, Politics

The South Carolina Senate is fast-tracking bill nullifying ObamaCare in that state, raising hope among opponents the state could become a model for others.

House Bill 3101 passed the state House of Representatives in April and now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate with special-order priority, the Daily Caller reported Monday.

If the bill becomes law, South Carolina will be the first state to exempt both citizens and businesses from living under what Democrats have insisted is for better or worse “the law of the land,” or the Affordable Care Act.

The bill’s sponsor, state Senator Tom Davis of Beaufort, South Carolina, conducted committee hearings in cities around the state of South Carolina and says the bill would legally void or make ObamaCare impossible to implement.

“It will essentially have five components to it, all of which, in my judgment, are legal, effective, and within the state’s power to do,” the Republican state senator told the Daily Caller.

The crux of the legislation prohibits agencies, officers and employees of the state from implementing any provisions of ObamaCare, otherwise known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, leaving the job of implementation solely the responsibility of the federal government, which thus far has shown gross incompetence in the bill’s administration.

Davis would agree and argues the federal government simply doesn’t have the resources or manpower to implement all of the programs mandated by the law.

“What the Supreme Court said in Printz v. United States is that states are not merely political subdivisions of the federal government, to carry out what the federal government does; they are sovereign entities,” Davis told the Daily Caller.

“Congress can pass laws, but it cannot compel the states to utilize either their treasury or personnel to implement those federal laws.”

Provisions are included in the bill that outlaw state exchanges in South Carolina, provide citizens tax deductions to people equal to the tax penalties levied by the federal government, and requires the state attorney general to sue over whimsical enforcement of the law.

The bill is expected to pass the South Carolina Senate, which is dominated by Republicans along with a sizable number of Democrats under political pressure, and be signed into law by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a stance opponent of ObamaCare.

The South Carolina Senate is fast-tracking bill

Policy

Until now, it has been near impossible for consumers to fully experience ObamaCare sticker shock using the federal health care exchange. However, with the addition of the new “window shopping” option, Americans are now coming to realize the full extent to which out-of-pocket expenses, along with generally higher premiums, will increase the cost of their health care under the new Democratic law.

For individuals, who have already seen their insurance cancelled when ObamaCare destroyed that entire market, annual deductibles are often over $5,000. As many critics and proponents of marriage have long-claimed, the out-of-pocket expense is worse for married couples under the president’s new law. Couples generally see annual deductibles that are over $10,000.

The president and Democrats have been touting for years that insurance premiums under ObamaCare will go down, but in the rare case that premiums are lower, the tool insurers use to reduce that monthly cost is charging consumers higher deductibles.

The New York Times reported, in “El Paso, Tex., for example, for a husband and wife both age 35, one of the cheapest plans on the federal exchange, offered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, has a premium less than $300 a month, but the annual deductible is more than $12,000. For a 45-year-old couple seeking insurance on the federal exchange in Saginaw, Mich., a policy with a premium of $515 a month has a deductible of $10,000.”

Another example given by the Times came from Santa Cruz, Calif., “where the exchange is run by the state, Robert Aaron, a self-employed 56-year-old engineer, said he was looking for a low-cost plan. The best one he could find had a premium of $488 a month.” The annual deductible, however, will cost Aaron $5,000, which he correctly observed, “sounds really high.”

Mark A. York, who is a 60-year-old freelance writer in Hailey, Idaho, said that he began shopping the federal online exchange after he became one of millions who received a letter saying that his current insurance policy would be canceled because it did not meet the Essential Health Benefit Standards mandated by ObamaCare. In the exchange he found policies with premiums similar to what he is now paying, approximately $440 a month, but “the deductibles were so high — $4,000 to $6,000 a year — that it defeats the purpose of having insurance.”

The individual, private insurance market was destroyed when less than 2 percent of the plans complied with the ridiculous Essential Health Benefit Standards, which mandates that insurers offer the same exact coverage for all policies. But when the delay, which the president unilaterally granted to employers without constitutional authority expires, the same will happen to the employer-sponsored insurance market.

According to the Kaiser Foundation, the average deductible for an employer-sponsored insurance plan pre-ObamaCare cost consumers $1,135.00.

Plans in the marketplace are separated into four categories — bronze, silver, gold and platinum — which breaks down based on the various coverage standards, or the “share of costs” paid by insurance for an average enrollee. According to the New York Times, the administration’s experts expect “most people shopping in the exchanges are expected to choose bronze or silver plans, which provide less generous coverage than most employer-sponsored plans.”

While those plans supposedly “provide less generous coverage than most employer-sponsored plans,” consumers on the exchange will face high deductibles and high co-payments for medical services and prescription drugs even before they reach the cap on out-of-pocket costs, which is $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family.

When we dig into the regulations, deemed Esstential Health Benefit Standards, and prices associated with ObamaCare, we better help others understand how our PPD study showed that 145 million Americans will lose their current health plan.

Out of the 189 million Americans with private health insurance coverage, 170.9 million American are covered with employer-sponsored insurance, including workers and their dependents. A study by Jon R. Gabel with the University of Chicago, found that 65 percent of employees (which doesn’t count their dependents) in group health plans had higher-value coverage that would be classified as gold or platinum under ObamaCare regulations. Yet, in order to cover the cost of Medicaid expansion and partially subsidized insurance, those Americans must pay higher out-of-pocket expenses.

For many women, as well, it will not pay to have insurance when they get pregnant. The hospital cost associated with having a baby is literally less than their “shared out-of-pocket cost” that many women will also find “that it defeats the purpose of having insurance,” just as York says.

With the addition of the new "window

Politics, Polls

Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images – Lawmakers are due back in Washington on Tuesday. With a budget deal expected this week, congressional leaders hope to finish work quickly and leave town for the holidays as soon as Friday.

The budget deal news claiming lawmakers are in the midst of finalizing a short-term agreement this week, isn’t what Americans want from Washington.

It is typically the case that the American people foresee political events before politicians make them, and it is no different with the new budget deal both sides insist is close. A new Rasmussen national survey found that 66 percent of Americans think a long-term budget deal to avoid a partial government shutdown was likely, and they were right.

(Also Read: Budget Deal Reportedly In Sight, But Grand Bargain Nowhere In Sight)

Though the new budget deal tinkers around the serious issues, 56 percent would prefer a long-term budget deal that cuts spending instead, while just 12 percent agree with the Democrats’ premise of the sequester and extending long-term unemployment benefits, saying they would like to see spending increase.

Most politicians would clearly like to leave the budget as is to avoid making any difficult decisions, but only 25 percent say they want to keep federal spending roughly the same.

In a separate yet recent Rasmussen survey, 61 percent of American voters said they expected federal spending to increase under President Obama, which is the highest measurement on the question since November of 2010, and the 61 percent are correct.

A new report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projected the president’s health care law is set to increase total federal health expenditures to $5 trillion by the year 2022.

(Also Read: ObamaCare Cost To Push Health Expenditures To $5 Trillion By 2022)

Just 14 percent of American voters think spending will go down 21 percent believe it will stay about the same.

Though recent Congressional Budget Office projections deficit slowdowns over the next two years, annual deficits will be exploding again in 2016 as the baby-boom generation enters retirement, setting the debt on a potentially uncorrectable trajectory.

 

The budget deal news claiming lawmakers are

News, Policy, Politics

FILE – On Oct. 17, 2013, House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, left, R-WI, accompanied by Senate Budget Committee Chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-WA, speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington where they outlined their approach to tackling the nation’s debt problems. (AP Photo)

A budget deal for next year is reportedly in sight, but it would achieve the bare minimum, with hope for a grand bargain to control the nation’s out-of-control spending and debt nowhere in sight.

The deal negotiated by lawmakers sets basic spending levels to avoid a partial government shutdown in the future, and reforms small aspects of the sequester that benefit Democrats who want more government spending.

Congressional sources say House and Senate negotiators are close to reaching an agreement and lawmakers have until Friday to finish off their work for the year.

“‘Close’ is a staff term,” one senior lawmaker cautioned Fox News, suggesting it’s unclear whether those drafting the bill even yet have the votes accumulated.

However, the framework reportedly agreed upon doesn’t remotely resemble the kind of “grand bargain” congressional leaders, particularly House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, persistently argued was so vital to the future of American solvency.

The Washington Post reported that it would not include any significant tax or entitlement reforms, significantly reform the sequester cuts, and the national debt would continue to rapidly increase for the foreseeable future.

Congressional aides told the Post that the emerging plan would raise agency spending to just over $1 trillion for the next two fiscal years, while making minor attempts to offset some of that spending by cutting federal worker pensions and making other modest changes.

The deal is inadequate, to say the least, for any responsible Republican lawmaker who knows budget reform must be a top priority.

In fact, Chairman Ryan proposed federal workers pay an additional 5.5 percent toward their own retirement, saving taxpayers $130 billion over 10 years. And even big spending President Obama proposed a 1.2 percent increase in hopes of saving $20 billion over the same period.

However, according to aides, Paul Ryan and Patty Murray were talking about a far smaller number — less than $17 billion. In order to ensure the budget deal passes, House Republicans will need a large number of Democrats in the Republican-controlled House. House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, House budget negotiator Chris Van Hollen and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Barbara A. Mikulski, all Maryland Democrats with large constituencies of federal workers — are having what the Post referred to as “an outsize influence.”

“I saw those earlier episodes, these grand-bargain pursuits, as ultimately destined for failure because it required one of the parties in power to compromise core principles, and I just didn’t see that happening,” Ryan said in October. “That’s why it’s more appropriate to the moment we have to focus on common ground . . . to get some minimal accomplishments.”

But fellow-Republicans are sure to see this as a complete capitulation by the former Vice Presidential candidate, who championed budget deal arguments sounding more like a grand bargain than this fizzle.

The Post reported that congressional negotiators are hoping to finish off the bill in a matter of days and will take it straight to the floors of the House and Senate, bypassing their respective committees. Lawmakers have until January 15 to pass a budget deal or else risk another partial government shutdown.

The budget deal, however, is but one of the problems Congress will have to face in the weeks to come. While the current budget bill expires in mid-January, lawmakers have until only the end of the year to deal with several other items, including payments to doctors and long-term jobless benefits.

President Obama, as usual, didn’t make matters any easier, because he rearranged their schedules to attend memorial services this week for the late South African leader Nelson Mandela.

Ryan and Murray are also banking on the ability to squeeze billions of dollars out of the sale of broadcast spectrum. Revenue from spectrum sales may be “an easy thing to throw into a budget negotiation,” said Urban Institute budget expert Gene Steuerle. “But it seems like a gimmick.”

Long-term unemployment benefits are also expected to expire on December 28 for 1.3 million workers who’ve been without a job for longer than six months, which Democrats have already begun to press for to the tune of $25 billion.

President Obama used his weekly radio address on Saturday to appeal to Congress to extend it. “Extending unemployment insurance isn’t just the right thing to do for our families — it’s the smart thing to do for our economy,” he said.

Some Democrats threatened to hold up the budget deal unless the GOP agrees to extend jobless benefits, but some influential Democrats don’t seem inclined to do so.

“I don’t think we’ve reached that point where we’ve said this is it, take it or leave it,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, said the long-term benefits — which incredibly cover benefits after 26 weeks — are actually doing a “disservice to these workers” by making them less marketable to would-be employers, who are looking for workers who haven’t been absent from the workforce for as long as those benefits encourage people to stay unemployed.

Most economic data shows the longer the government offers unemployment insurance, the longer people will stay unemployed.

Lawmakers are also gearing up to agree on a plan to spend $8 billion on a temporary 3-month measure, merely delaying the inevitable for a ton of money, in order to prevent a 24 percent drop in Medicare payments to doctors. That cut is imposed upon by the president’s health care law, which is set to increase total federal health expenditures to $5 trillion by the year 2022.

Though recent Congressional Budget Office projections deficit slowdowns over the next two years, annual deficits will be exploding again in 2016 as the baby-boom generation enters retirement, setting the debt on a potentially uncorrectable trajectory.

“With this little package, we’re not going to climb out of the hole we’ve dug,” said the Urban Institute’s Steuerle. “All we’re doing is agreeing to stop throwing shovels at each other.”

A budget deal for next year is

News, World

Pro-European Union activists shout slogans during a rally in the Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2013. As thousands of anti-government protesters kept their vigil in Ukraine’s capital Saturday, officials sought to reduce their anger with assurances that Russian and Ukrainian presidents didn’t discuss Ukraine joining a Russian-led customs union at a meeting this week. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

KIEV, UKRAINE –  Anti-government Ukraine protests resulted in the toppling of a statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in the center of Kiev on Sunday. Angry protestors blockaded key government buildings amid massive crowds in protests, increasing the pressure on President Viktor Yanukovych, whom they are demanding be removed from office.

The biggest protest in the former Soviet republic since Ukraine’s pro-democracy Orange Revolution in 2004 led the government to fire back. The government announced an investigation into opposition leaders for an alleged attempt to seize power, warning the demonstrators they will face criminal charges if they persist.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians flooded the center of the capital city of Kiev, demanding Yanukovych be ousted following his decision to break ties with the EU in favor of closer relations with Russia.

Hundreds of police in full riot gear flooded into the center of Kiev to break up an earlier protest in the nearly three-week standoff.

“Ukraine is tired of Yanukovych. We need new rules. We need to completely change those in power,” said protester Kostyantyn Meselyuk, 42. “Europe can help us.”

Independence Square is truly filled with anti-Russia protestors as far as the eye could see, Ukrainians waving European Union flags sang the national anthem and shouted “Resignation!” and “Down the with Gang!” in a reference to Yanukovych’s regime.

“I am convinced that after these events, dictatorship will never survive in our country,” world boxing champion and top opposition leader Vitali Klitschko told media reporters. “People will not tolerate when they are beaten, when their mouths are shut, when their principles and values are ignored.”

The conflict escalated as night approached, with protesters beginning to blockade key government buildings in Kiev with cars, barricades and themselves in their tents.

Russia is deeply unpopular not only because of its history of oppression over the largest EU country, but because Putin and Russia have done everything within their power to stop the EU deal with threats of trade retaliation against Ukraine.

Putin views the Ukraine as a central part of his vision to restore the motherland to her former glory, with Ukraine natural resources fueling its power.

About a kilometer (0.6 miles) from the main square, one group of anti-Russia, anti-government protesters toppled the city’s landmark statue of Vladimir Lenin and proceeded to decapitate it Sunday evening.

Protesters were taking turns beating on the torso of the Lenin statue as it lay on the ground, while others lined up to collect a piece of the stone. The crowd chanted “Glory to Ukraine!”

“Goodbye, Communist legacy,” Andriy Shevchenko, an opposition football star-turned-lawmaker, wrote on Twitter.

The Ukraine protests erupted last month after President Yanukovych tossed out a long-awaited and long-planned treaty with the 28-nation European Union to focus on stronger ties with Russia. Protestors were also concerned by the amount of police violence and fears that Yanukovych was on the verge of bringing his country into a Russian-led economic alliance, which critics say would end Ukraine’s sovereignty.

“It’s not just a simple revolution,” Oleh Tyahnybok, an opposition leader with the national Svoboda party, told the crowd in a fiery speech from a giant stage. “It’s a revolution of dignity.”

One twitter user called Tyahnybok’s speech “the speech of the century,” while another called him a radical-right winger.

Yet a solution to the crisis appeared elusive, with the government making no concessions and the opposition issuing contradictory statements on how to proceed.

“We are extending our demonstration. We are going to fight until victory. We will fight for what we believe in,” opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk told protesters on Independence Square, which was visibly a sea of flags.

In a surprise move, Yanukovych announced Monday that he would sit down with three former Ukrainian presidents to discuss a solution. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was headed to Ukraine to help defuse the tensions.

In a phone conversation with Yanukovych, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso stressed “the need for a political” conclusion and told him that he would be sending EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton to Kiev next week to play the part of deal-maker. Yanukovych also discussed the crisis with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Valery Chaliy, head of the Razumkov Center think tank in Kiev, said the West must help resolve the crisis and prevent more violence. “It is evident that without international mediation this will not be solved in a peaceful way,” Chaliy said in a telephone interview.

The Ukraine protests Sunday took place in sub-zero temperatures at Independence Square, known as the Maidan, in a throwback to the Orange Revolution. Those protests annulled Yanukovych’s fraud-tainted presidential victory in 2004, and ushered his pro-Western opponents into power. Yanukovych returned to the presidency in the 2010 vote.

“I am turning to all Ukrainians: You must all go to the heart of the Maidan,” Yatsenyuk said.

During a huge demonstration a week ago, several hundred radical protesters hurled stones and attacked police as they tried to storm the presidential office. That prompted a violent breakup by the authorities, from which dozens were beaten and injured, including peaceful protesters, mere passers-by and even journalists.

Opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk called for calm, telling several thousand protesters on Independence Square that police were ordered not to storm the building, but just ordered to blockade the protest camp to deplete it of food and other amenities.

As tensions mounted, Yanukovych announced on his website that he would meet with Ukraine’s three former presidents to discuss the situation. However, as of yet, no date for that meeting has been given.

KIEV, UKRAINE -- Anti-government Ukraine protests resulted

News, Politics

Henry Chao, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Information Services testifies before the Energy & Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee November 19, 2013 in Washington. (M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO)

Emails released by House Republicans show officials knew in August the un-ACA online exchange handling small businesses would have to be delayed, raising a number of startling questions.

The administration knew that the site wasn’t functioning for small businesses or individuals, yet the administration did not announce the delay until shortly before the October 1 launch, which was also before the partial government shutdown that only occurred when Republicans led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) argued the law was a “train wreck.”

“As the paper trail broadens, we see more and more evidence that the administration was fully aware its signature health care law was not ready for prime time,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) said. “The documents we are now reviewing tell a much, much different story than what officials testified to Congress.”

One of the officials to which Chairman Upton is referring is mentioned in one of the emails, as well. In an email an official mentioned that fellow-colleague Chiquita Brooks-Lasure, who is a deputy policy director at CMS, had previously testified before the House Small Business Committee that the SHOP functions would indeed go live in October 1.

However, emails from July 26 and Aug. 13 show a clear contradiction and a clear understanding by officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that CGI Federal, who is the largest recipient of ObamaCare-related contracts and the private contractor in charge of SHOP, would not be able to complete the site on time.

(Also Read: Updated Study Of ObamaCare Website Cost Is Mind-Blowing)

Leaders at CGI Federal, one of which is senior vice president Toni Townes-Whitley, who also happens to be a Princeton University classmate of first lady Michelle Obama and a political donor for the president, promised on August 13 that the program’s main components would be ready on November 1 and 15, requiring CMS to announce a delay of 1 month and 6 weeks, respectively.

“The emails in question are between a small group of individuals involved in a broader decision-making process, and they reflect one piece of many conversations about managing deliverables and communicating expectations,” the spokesman said in a statement.

“The final decision to delay SHOP enrollment functions was not made until mid-September, and CMS announced the delay once we had complete information about what functionality would be available for small business owners on Oct. 1st.”

CMS announced the latest SHOP delay on Nov. 27, arguing that it resulted from the administration’s focus on fixing the individual exchange.

On August 6, Monique Outerbridge, director of the CMS Office of Information Services, wrote:

Guys, this is absolutely urgent and I need an answer on this today. If this is late we have to public announce we are late with a deliverable which means [CMS Administrator] Marilyn Tavenner and the Secretary will have to announce.

CGI official Mark Calem then proposed a new schedule that would push off the full launch until November 15.

Top IT project manager Henry Chao in response to the proposal to delay the launch, wrote back “Can we sign this with blood?”

We now know the answer to that question. Henry Chao, Deputy Chief Information Officer and Deputy Director of the Office of Information Services testified before the Energy & Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on November 19, during which he dropped the bombshell that upwards of 40 – 60 percent of the site had not yet been built. The payment systems were still nonexistent.

The very same day, during testimony heard in front of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, all of the security expert witnesses were forced to admit that Americans’ personal, private user information was not safe on the federal online exchange.

David Kennedy, a “white hat hacker,” who also testified during the hearing, told Greta Van Susteren in an interview that the security and code problems associated with the federal online exchange were “impossible” to fix by the president’s self-imposed deadline.

Despite having known full well that the site could not even function by the launch, and still isn’t functioning today, Harry Reid and President Obama refused to negotiate with Republicans during the government shutdown.

Instead, Democrats, particularly the administration, ardently protected a law that at least they knew wouldn’t even be working. And the parts of the law that are working, are even more unpopular than any opponent of the law could have dreamed of.

Emails Released By House House Energy & Commerce Committee

Emails released by House Republicans show officials

Culture, Holidays

The Postal Service have a program called Letters to Santa and have been doing so officially since 1912 when Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock gave postal employees and citizens permission to respond to the letters.

This year, employees and members of the public, charitable organizations and corporations can help the USPS respond to the letters to Santa at Post Offices around the country by participating in the Letters to Santa program. USPS has a system that keeps the address of the little children that are writing letters to Santa confidential and blessing children all over the world simultaneously. If there is an elf in you and you always wanted to be a part of Santa’s team, visit USPS here.

This is the first time we at People’s Pundit Daily have heard of this wonderful program and we would like to spread the word that USPS is celebrating their 101-year anniversary of the Letters to Santa program. If you would like to be part of Santa’s team, then below are the guidelines to follow.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Guidelines

USPS has a policy for “adopting” children’s letters to Santa that’s designed to protect their privacy. Individuals who would like to adopt letters are asked to do so in person, present valid photo identification and fill out a form that includes the list ofletters they are adopting.

Here’s how it works. A person wishing to adopt a letter can go to a Post Office, select one or more letters to take with them and sign the form. The child’s address on the envelope will have been blocked out and the letter assigned a number.

After the individual fulfills the child’s wishes with a gift, he or she returns with the letter and gift to the same Post Office and pays the postage for the package. A postal employee will match the number on the letter with the child’s address, apply a label to it and put the package in the mail stream.

To learn more about how you can help celebrate 101-yr anniversary visit USPS Letters to Santa!

Be a part of the 101-yr anniversary

News, World

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, right, stands with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, before their meeting at Tehran’s Saadabad Palace in Iran, Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013. Karzai arrived in Tehran for a one-day visit on Sunday to discuss regional and international issues with Iranian officials. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

An Iran-Afghanistan cooperation pact has been hatched out between President Hamid Karzai and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Tehran Sunday. The deal comes as Karzai resists signing a security agreement previously reached with the U.S., which Karzai himself negotiated.

“Afghanistan agreed on a long-term friendship and cooperation pact with Iran,” Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said, according to Reuters. “The pact will be for long-term political, security, economic and cultural cooperation, regional peace and security.”

Afghanistan previously signed a cooperation pact with Iran in August mainly pertaining to security issues, but Faizi said the proposed new agreement would have a broader scope with greater implications.

Rouhani said Sunday his country opposes the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan and the region, saying their presence generates tension, the official IRNA news agency reported.

IRNA quoted Rouhani as telling Karzai: “We believe that all foreign forces should leave the region and that the security of Afghanistan should be handed over to people of the country.”

“We are concerned about tensions caused by foreign forces’ presence in the region,” Rouhani was quoted as saying. He also called for more cooperation between Tehran and Kabul.

Iran has been opposing a planned agreement to allow U.S. forces to remain stationed on in neighboring Afghanistan since the beginning of the debate, as the two nations share 580 miles of common border lines.

Rouhani, the new so-called moderate president of Iran, has continued this opposition since rising to the presidency. He also said Iran opposes any foreign forces in the region, not just Afghanistan, but the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, where the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet has a base in the tiny kingdom of Bahrain.

On Saturday, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel laid out the framework to increase defense cooperation between states within the Gulf region, while at the same time insisting that America’s military commitment to the Middle East will continue. No attention was paid to the potential impact of the sequester on such ambitious plans.

In a speech on Saturday to Gulf leaders Hagel also insisted that the emerging global agreement that would limit Iran’s nuclear program doesn’t necessarily conclude the security threat from the Islamic republic is over.

The response from Iran added to the already-threatening statements made by the Iranian regime since the agreement was hatched out. Iran’s Defense Minister Gen. Hosein Dehghan, called the remarks by his American counterpart “threatening” on Sunday, adding that they pave the ground for mistrust toward the U.S. while revealing the influence of Israel — Iran’s arch enemy — on Washington.

The latest news comes amid Reuters reporting that Iran is moving ahead with testing more efficient uranium enrichment technology, according to a spokesman for its atomic energy agency, news that should concern world powers who just last month agreed a deal to supposedly curb Tehran’s atomic activities.

Iran signed an interim agreement over its nuclear plan with world powers last month. President Rouhani has supposedly been trying to convince skeptics and hard-liners at home that the move was not compromising on key issues of national sovereignty, thus the hardline comments of his own.

Israel has repeatedly criticized the deal and Netanyahu called it a “historic mistake,” recently calling for economic sanctions, which were beginning to work, to once-again be strengthened.

An Iran Afghanistan cooperation pact has been

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