GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Obamacare architect settles fraud charges

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From The Daily Caller.

Vermont’s Attorney General has settled the state’s claims of fraud against Jonathan Gruber…one of the chief architects of Obamacare.

Under the terms of the settlement, Gruber will no longer work as a taxpayer-funded economic consultant for the state’s health care system and he won’t seek to be paid any money he might be owed…

For its part under the agreement, the Vermont’s attorney general will not pursue legal action under the Vermont Civil False Claims Act…

State Auditor Doug Hoffer, also a Democrat, originally referred allegations of Gruber’s overbilling to the attorney general.

Donovan, the attorney general and still another Democrat, said his office determined that Gruber did, in fact, violate the Vermont Civil False Claims Act…investigators concluded that Gruber sent two invoices — and possibly more — falsely charging the state and its taxpayers…

[Of Obamacare,] “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass,” he said during one health care conference.

At another event, Gruber admitted that the Obama administration pushed through the so-called Cadillac tax — a tax on certain premium health care plans — “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we know it’s a tax on people who hold these insurance plans.”

Premiums under Obamacare went up 24 percent in 2016. The average number of insurers in each marketplace fell from 5.9 to 3.9.

Nice job, Eric Owens of TDC! I can’t add a thing, except my surprise that the deceptive architect of Obamacare would accommodate my stereotypes so perfectly, as to also be apparently a deceiver/fraud in his personal actions.

And, it boomerangs

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The “Trump Jr.” story is evolving into a story of *Democrat* collusion with Russia.

#NothingGate: Because yeah, they’ve got a lot to hide

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Scott Adams has dubbed the Trump Jr scandal #NothingGate – There’s nothing there, but it sure is terrible.

We all know the signs. A couple hours ago, MSNBC was quoting campaign finance law about how campaigns are not supposed to take foreign contributions.

FOR REAL. Yes, I Laughed Out Loud. Right in front of everybody at the gym.

The law clearly talks about money and OBJECTS (the ordinary meaning of “things”) of value. Here is what they were quoting:

A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.

First, the words are written *on the foreign national*. Second: Only in a McCarthy-ite, Salem Witch Hunt world could the words be stretched to cover knowledge (which, in the context of a campaign, is called opposition research). AND…AND…AND…IF the words are indeed to be stretched so very far, then Hillary’s campaign was equally-or-even-more guilty.

Seriously…Are these people thinking at all? Well, we know they’re not. This is “what insanity looks like”. These people aren’t following any rational thought process.

Why would they not? The obvious reason: Deflection. Distraction.

  • Let’s not talk about Hillary’s campaign violations.
  • Let’s not talk about her campaign’s meetings with officials of a foreign government, in an effort to obtain valuable knowledge (or opposition research) on her opponent from those foreign officials.
  • Let’s not talk about all the Saudi money (which would be illegal indeed) in her campaign.
  • Let’s not talk about the Hillary campaign’s documented, illegal levels of collusion with the media.
  • Let’s not talk about all the Fake News, “Hillary is ahead!” and “Hillary is a lock to win!”, that the media perpetrated to try to depress Republican/Trump voter turnout.
  • Let’s not talk about the basic fact that she was a terrible candidate – and she lost.
  • Let’s not talk about the massive Clinton Foundation corruption.
  • Let’s not talk about Hillary’s collusion in giving Russia 20% of America’s uranium supply, apparently in exchange for hefty speaking fees and other yuge donations.
  • Let’s not talk about her campaign chair, John Podesta, and his brother being on Russia’s payroll for years.
  • Let’s not talk about Hillary and the Obama administration colluding to obstruct justice, in the Hillary e-mail investigation.
  • Let’s not talk about the indictments coming, hopefully, for James “Leaker” Comey.
  • Let’s not talk about the unbelievable scandal of the Obama administration spying on domestic political opponents. And the intelligence agencies going along with it.
  • Let’s not talk about the fact that the entire “Russia hacking narrative” has been a lie from minute one and, accordingly, the leadership of U.S. intelligence agencies are seriously politicized and compromised, meaning President Trump had better clean house – for America’s good.
  • Let’s not talk about the Trump administration’s progress and successes.
  • No, no, no. Deflect, deny, distract, handwave, keep screaming “Trump!!!!1!”

Fortunately, none of this needs to matter. The Controlled Media, the Left, and the “political class” have lost a lot of power. What we’re seeing now are the throes of their cognitive dissonance; their refusal to believe it. Having done nothing whatsoever wrong in this matter, Trump – and Trump Jr. – need only stay strong and clear-headed, and they will survive; and survival is victory.

My one, little doubt about this situation would be: Whether they will stay strong? We shall see. I know, I know…their track record argues that they will.

Bat-wielding vigilante mobs punish dissenters

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At a U.S. college, mobs of neo-Nazi alt-Right fascist thugs have been roaming the campus, smashing windows and bashing people they disagree with. Kristallnacht!

Except that it’s Evergreen College and actually, it’s mobs of leftie fascist thugs roaming the campus, smashing windows and bashing people they disagree with.

Weinstein, the professor at the center of the sh*t storm, is claiming some students were even hit, but says they won’t report it to the police.

Why is this not national news? One guess…

A few other items for you that touch upon the theme of immoral left-wingers and/or watching left-wingers’ heads explode, while the media focus strangely on other things.

Bonus item: France says no trace of Russia hacking Macron.

The head of the French government’s cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack.

About a month ago, I had noted the eagerness (and absurdity) of U.S. media in accusing Russia.

Obama’s Regulatory Binge

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Making a pitch for Democratic candidates in 2014, President Obama told big donors in California Thursday night that Democrats favor free-market solutions and less government regulation.

“It turns out we’re pretty common-sense folks,” Mr. Obama said at a fundraiser at a private home in Palo Alto, Calif. “We believe in the free market [and] a light touch when it comes to regulations.”

This, like pretty much everything else that comes out of his pie-hole, was a big fat lie.

President Barack Obama’s last year in office set a high watermark for new federal rules and regulations as the outgoing Democrat sought to leave his mark on the country through a “pen and phone” strategy.

The total number of Federal Register pages in 2016 rose nearly 20 percent to 95,894, the most ever, and the number of final rules, at 3,853, was the most since 2005, according to a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

The Democrats once claimed not to be socialists (they claim that much less these days). They made this claim on the thin reed that since the state had not officially taken over all industry, they weren’t really practicing socialism.

But if the Government is micromanaging via regulation every decision a business can make… hiring, firing, location of capital assets, the form and specification of products … then what is the difference, really?

Sadly, the Republican half of the Washington Uniparty has shown only the most modest inclination to rein in these regulatory abuses.

More Obama-NSA abuses

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Yet another story that should be all over the media, but I haven’t seen it much. (If you have, let me know.)

Why wouldn’t it be covered? I find that it reflects great discredit on the Establishment (both political parties, Deep State and Controlled Media). As I started to say yesterday, they have ways to decide what you’re going to hear about. For as long as they can, they will bury stories that don’t fit their agenda.

To review some background:

  • Under the 4th Amendment, the government isn’t supposed to spy on U.S. people without a court-ordered warrant.
  • “The FISA Court” is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 “to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.” (Wiki)
    Note, foreign.
  • But FISA Court hearings are secret and only the government and the court judge are present, like a kangaroo court. The adversarial system is abandoned.
  • As such, FISA tends to be very lenient to the government. Over time, they have created a secret body of law that gives the government sweeping powers to do domestic warrantless surveillance under an alleged “special needs exception” to the 4th Amendment.
    • One example – In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked a FISA order that requires phone companies to provide a daily, ongoing feed of everyone’s phone call data to the NSA. Super invasive!
  • Even so, FISA isn’t toothless and doesn’t approve everything – as you shall see. They need to preserve respectability, at least in their own eyes.
  • FISA judges are appointed solely by the Chief Justice of the United States. In this regard, Establishment Republicans control the FISA court.

That’s just background. Now for the news, as reported by John Solomon and Sara Carter at Circa.com.

Under President Obama, the NSA secretly conducted years of surveillance and searches on Americans that not even the secret, super-lenient FISA Court would approve.

The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community…

The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm…

The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.

Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person’s identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.

Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

The intelligence court and the NSA’s own internal watchdog found that not to be true…

The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself…

RTWT. Naturally, the NSA is scrambling to reassure people that it has fixed the problem. Riiiiiiiight. And Susan Rice didn’t lie and none of the surveillance data was ever misused against Obama opponents or improperly unmasked. Riiiiiiiight.

To people who understand civil liberties and limited government, all this is a huge deal that shows how far out of control the U.S. “intelligence community” (Deep State) has gotten. Chris Farrell at Judicial Watch compares it to President Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus during the U.S. Civil War.

Where is the Special Counsel on this?

Or the media coverage? Bush’s NSA did some illegal surveillance in the 2000s – and in 2005, was duly slammed by The New York Times. A large kerfuffle. “But that was then.” It served the interests of someone powerful – someone in deep alliance with, or control of, The New York Times – to weaken Bush. Not so much with Obama, eh?

See the FISA Court’s declassified order spanking the Obama administration, here. By the way, note how large sections of the relevant law and dockets are blacked out, showing how the FISA system has created secret law that the citizens aren’t supposed to know about. That’s horrible.

Also from Circa: Comey’s FBI was neck deep in the abuses.

The FBI has illegally shared raw intelligence about Americans with unauthorized third parties and violated other constitutional privacy protections, according to newly declassified government documents that undercut the bureau’s public assurances…

Some scandal updates

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Anthony Weiner is to plead guilty “to a single charge of transferring obscene material to a minor, pursuant to a plea agreement…”

This is the same Anthony Weiner who

  • is still married to Hillary Clinton’s top aide, Huma Abedin
  • had thousands of Hillary Clinton’s illegally-handled emails on the same laptop that he used to commit his sex crimes with minors
  • caused former FBI Director Comey to reappear in the news last October, which many Democrats believe (probably wrongly) to be the cause of Hillary’s election loss.

It’s sad how Clintonites deflect the blame to Comey and Russia for all that, rather than putting it where it belongs on Weiner, Abedin and the Clintons themselves.

“A likely result of the plea is that Mr. Weiner would end up as a registered sex offender, although a final determination has yet to be made…”

UPDATE: Huma has finally just filed for divorce.

In other news, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Rape Investigation Is Dropped in Sweden.

The accusations were always of a “he said, she said” nature, with Assange saying that he had met the alleged victim several times amicably, for consensual sex.

The announcement represents a victory for Mr. Assange, 45, an Australian…

[but] In Britain, he still faces a warrant for failing to appear in court, and the Metropolitan Police in London said on Friday that they would arrest Mr. Assange, who has maintained his innocence, if he were to try to leave the [Ecuadorian] embassy…

[U.S.] Prosecutors have long been exploring the idea of charging Mr. Assange as a conspirator in the underlying offense of illegal theft of documents…

[but] The Obama-era Justice Department, which had gone as far as to present some evidence about WikiLeaks to a grand jury in Alexandria, Va., was deterred from pursuing the case further because it proved difficult to distinguish what WikiLeaks had done in publishing the classified information provided by Ms. Manning from what The New York Times and many other mainstream news organizations do.

Most news organizations that cover national security and foreign affairs regularly publish information from sources that is considered classified by the United States government. By long-established tradition, however, only the government officials who provide such information have been prosecuted, not the journalists who publish it.

IN STILL OTHER NEWS: Evidence has emerged that, while still just a candidate, the President conspired with Iranian mullahs to undermine the foreign policy of the existing administration. Which meets a reasonable definition of treason!

Oh, wait – it was President Obama, while still just a candidate, conspiring with Iranian mullahs to undermine the foreign policy of the Bush administration. And lefties haven’t given the tiniest crap about it.

Sometimes it’s fun to watch, part II

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The unimportant Stephen Colbert makes a fact-free slam about President Trump fellating Vladimir Putin. Nothing worth mentioning, there.

He imagines that he’s being relevant or edgy or manly. Still nothing worth mentioning.

People ask what would happen if any comedian made such a slam on President Obama (who, in a most embarrassing moment in 2012, promised the Russians to be nicer than he was letting on with American voters). Example #1,234,511,998 to point out the Left’s double standards. True, but still not much to mention.

Then #FireColbert becomes a thing as people start noticing that Colbert’s slur was essentially, um, homophobic.

Taking double standards to a new low, left-wing celebrities defend Colbert’s slur. (Among them, the execrable George Takei.)

Predictably, Colbert claims the devil made him do it (Trump).

What happens next?

Obama Debt Roundup

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I meant to do this awhile back, updating previous posts in the series.

When President Obama left office on January 20, 2017, the U.S. national debt was $19.9 trillion. ($14.4 trillion held by the public; $5.5 trillion “intragovernmental”, for example, Treasury bonds held by Social Security.)

When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the U.S. national debt was $10.6 trillion. ($6.3 trillion held by the public; $4.3 intragovernmental)

Obama more-than-doubled the part of the U.S. national debt that everyone agrees is important (what’s “held by the public”). And he nearly doubled the total.

And for what? Eight years of the weakest economy “recovery” on record.

Chocolate Ration Update

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Remember how we always suspected the Obama Administration was cooking the books on the unemployment numbers? We pretty much have confirmation on that.  This whistleblower tried to blow the whistle on data falsification at the Obama Department of Commerce, and was punished for it.

Let’s look at the one case that set Butler off — the cheating done by Buckmon, who is now deceased.

Buckmon would complete more than 100 cases in 10 days — more than three times his peers.

It turns out that Buckmon wasn’t actually surveying people. He was making up data and collecting overtime to account for the time it would have taken to get those interviews.

And this one man alone was cheating on such a large scale that it could affect the national jobless numbers since the bureau’s Current Population Survey is scientifically weighted and each response counts as 5,000 households.

So Buckmon’s 100 cases equaled 500,000 households — and he wasn’t the only one caught faking data, Butler said.