Obama's Corruption Chronicles:

[John A.]

video in link:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/0...listic-missile-launch-this-time-to-space.html

Iran readies another ballistic missile launch -- this time to space

By Lucas Tomlinson
Published March 12, 2016

Iran is preparing to launch a new long-range rocket into outer space as soon as this weekend, U.S. officials told Fox News.

The missile is known as a Simorgh, and officials are watching the missile on the launch pad as it is being fueled at an undisclosed location inside Iran.
Officials told Fox they have not seen this specific type of rocket launched in the past.

Iran has conducted four previous space launches.

Any test of a new ballistic missile would be an apparent violation of a UN resolution forbidding Iran from working on its rocket program.
A Simorgh rocket is designed to carry a satellite into space. Officials are concerned that any space launch uses the same technology needed to launch a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM.

The Simorgh rocket was first unveiled by then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2010.

Allthingsnuclear.org first reported the Iranian Simorgh missile was being prepared for launch last month and says it is capable of sending a heavier satellite into space at a higher orbit, showing greater capability then precious launches.

Iran has successfully placed four satellites into orbit beginning in 2009 the last occurring in 2015.

Iran's earlier space launches used a smaller rocket, a variant of the Shahab-3, according to allthingsnuckear.com

This week, Iran launched multiple ballistic missiles on one day for the first time since 2012, according to defense officials.

UN Security Council Resolution 2231 says Iran is “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

Thursday, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander said that Iran's ballistic missile program will continue to move forward, despite threats of international sanctions.

The U.S. State Department says the launches this week were not in violation of the nuclear deal, but “inconsistent” with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which was tied to the nuclear deal when it went into effect.

Secretary of State John Kerry raised concerns about Iran’s recent missile launches in a phone call with his Iranian counterpart Thursday, including reports that Iran scribbled “Israel must be wiped off the Earth” according to State Department spokesman John Kirby.

Both short and medium-range ballistic missiles tested recently by Iran are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

“Iran should face sanctions for these activities,” Hillary Clinton said Wednesday.

"The latest missiles launches are further evidence of Iran's aggression and of how its leaders intend to use the money it is receiving under the Obama nuclear deal." said House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.

Kirby said earlier this week that reports of Iran’s recent ballistic missile launches would be brought to the attention of the UN Security Council.
The launches would not violate the landmark nuclear deal implemented in January, according to Kirby.

Vice President Joseph Biden, while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu Wednesday did not acknowledge the missile launch directly, but he issued a strong warning to the Iranians.

"A nuclear-armed Iran is an absolutely unacceptable threat to Israel, to the region and the United States. And I want to reiterate which I know people still doubt here: if in fact they break the deal, we will act," he said.

Despite reports of Iran repeatedly violating the UN resolution by launching ballistic missiles, the State Department is confident additional sanctions could be called upon unilaterally if needed.

“We always have those tools available to us,” said Kirby this week.

In January, the Obama administration sanctioned nearly a dozen individuals and companies tied to Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Appearing in front of the Senate Armed Services committee in Washington, the outgoing head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Lloyd Austin said Tuesday, “Some of the behavior we've seen from Iran of late is certainly not the behavior you'd expect from a nation that wants to be taken seriously.”
Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies says the Obama administration’s policy toward Iran is muddled.

“I don't think we've sent clear signals. We seem to be dealing with the nuclear agreement as if it’s some kind of legacy. It won't be a legacy if Iran acts out in other ways,” he said.

 

[CaddmannQ]

So it's not a violation of the agreement but it's in violation of the United Nations agreement which is tied to the Iran nuclear agreement, so how is it not a violation?

When our jackass Administration decides to ignore it for their own benefit?

Follow the potential money: Obama had lifted the economic squeze & turned all this money lose to Iran, but what's he getting out of this deal?

What's coming back to him and his, under the table?

My guess is it's something substantial that has been promised.

And my guess is it hasn't been paid yet, because we're ignoring the recent violation & labeling it merely "inconsistent".

"What? Oh, sorry officer.
I wasn't speeding, I was just inconsistent with the current traffic situation."

So Iran is going to string them along & we will keep ignoring it....

 

[SHOOTER13]

Obama isn't worried about nothing else but his "legacy"...

...which I see as going down in the books as the worst president to ever sleep in the White House.

 

[SHOOTER13]

As More Gitmo Prisoners Go Free Intel Report Affirms Return to Terrorism
MARCH 10, 2016

While President Obama continues releasing terrorists from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo a new intelligence report discloses that dozens have reengaged in terrorism after leaving the compound at the Naval base in southeast Cuba. Of the 144 Gitmo prisoners freed by the Obama administration seven are confirmed to have returned to the fight, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Of the 532 captives released under the George W. Bush administration, 111 eventually reengaged in extremist causes, the ODNI reveals.

Gitmo detainees returning to terrorism is nothing new and in fact has been widely reported by Judicial Watch for years. As far back as 2010 JW wrote about an ODNI report to Congress documenting that 150 former Gitmo prisoners were confirmed or suspected of “reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities after transfer.” At the time the agency revealed that at least 83 “remain at large” and that if additional detainees get released some will “reengage in terrorist or insurgent activities.” That assessment came two years after the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency disclosed a sharp rise in the number of Gitmo detainees who rejoin terrorist missions after leaving U.S. custody. Using data such as fingerprints, pictures and other reports the defense agency, which gathers foreign military intelligence, determined that the number of Middle Eastern terrorists who returned to “the fight” after being released nearly doubled in a short time.

In 2014, years after liberating an Al Qaeda operative from Gitmo, the U.S. government put him on a global terrorist list and offered a $5 million reward for information on his whereabouts. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. JW published that embarrassing story as the Obama administration began freeing more and more Gitmo inmates to meet the president’s longtime goal of closing the compound. Still left at the top security facility are the world’s most dangerous terrorists, including 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi as well as USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The administration is set on bringing them to prisons in the U.S., which has caused fury among officials and legislators in states where the facilities being considered are located.

While those arrangements get settled, the administration has embarked on a frenzy releasing Gitmo prisoners to foreign countries—many in the Middle East—in a last-ditch effort to empty out the compound. Many will go back to their terrorist ways, according to the ODNI. “Based on trends identified during the past eleven years, we assess that some detainees currently at GTMO will seek to reengage in terrorist or insurgent activities after they are transferred,” the latest agency assessment states. “Transfers to countries with ongoing conflicts and internal instability, as well as recruitment by insurgent and terrorist organizations, could pose problems. While enforcement of transfer conditions may deter reengagement by many former detainees and delay reengagement by others, some detainees who are determined to reengage will do so regardless of any transfer conditions, albeit probably at a lower rate than if they were transferred without conditions.”

The intelligence dispatch also certifies that former Gitmo detainees routinely communicate with each other, families of other former detainees and previous associates who are members of terrorist organizations. “The reasons for communication span the mundane (reminiscing about shared experiences) to the nefarious (planning terrorist operations),” the ODNI report says. “We assess that some GTMO detainees transferred in the future will also communicate with other former GTMO detainees and persons in terrorist organizations. We do not consider mere communication with individuals or organizations— including other former GTMO detainees—an indicator of reengagement. Rather, the motives, intentions, and purposes of each communication are taken into account when assessing whether the individual has reengaged.”

 

[SHOOTER13]

12 Obamacare Insurance CO-OPs Fold After Getting $1.2 Bil from Govt.
MARCH 14, 2016

More than half of the government-funded nonprofit health insurers created by Obamacare have failed, sticking taxpayers with a $1.2 billion tab and leaving hundreds of thousands of people in more than a dozen states scrambling for medical coverage, a new federal audit reveals. The nonprofit insurers are known as Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan Program (CO-OP) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has pumped $2.4 billion into them under the president’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system.

Congress initially allocated $6 billion for the Obamacare CO-OP program, with the goal of establishing CO-OPs in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia. Thankfully, subsequent legislation slashed funding for the ill-fated experiment. In all, HHS has funded 23 of these dubious enterprises and 12 have already gone under after losing an astounding $1.2 billion that’s unlikely to ever be recovered. As a result 740,000 people in 14 states must search for new medical coverage they thought they had under the disastrous Obamacare plan.

Every resident of the United States who pays taxes should be outraged by this monstrous failure, exposed in great detail in a scathing report published by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The committee’s probe reveals that, even when the CO-OPs showed clear signs of financial failure, HHS kept giving them huge amounts of money in the form of “loans” the agency knew would never be repaid. In fact, HHS officials knew of serious problems with enrollment strategies, financial forecasts, management and pricing before approving the first loan, according to the panel’s findings. “HHS approved the failed CO-OPs despite receiving specific warnings from a third-party analyst about weaknesses in their business plans,” the report states.

The CO-OPs ultimately racked up a breath-taking $376 million in losses in 2014 and more than $1 billion in losses in 2015 yet the cash kept flowing. HHS knew how serious the problem was, according to the report, yet kept filling the CO-OP’s coffers. By the end of 2014, the 12 collapsed insurance nonprofits had already exceeded their projected worst-case-scenarios by more than $263 million, four times more than what they initially projected. Incredibly, that didn’t stop Obama’s minions at HHS from doling out another $848 million even as the CO-OPS were on a downhill spiral. “Even though HHS was aware of serious financial distress suffered by the CO-OPs in 2014, it failed to take any corrective action or enhance oversight for more than a year,” the senate investigation found, confirming that the health agency “regularly received key financial information from the CO-OPs” that clearly showed the failed insurers “experienced severe financial losses that quickly exceeded even the worst-case loss projections.”

For example the Kentucky CO-OP lost $50.4 million in 2014 yet went on to get enough taxpayer money to lose another $114 million the following year before ultimately collapsing, according to the report. When the Kentucky CO-OP went under its operating losses exceeded $163 million. Another example listed by the panel is the New York CO-OP, which lost an egregious $634 million in two years. The Illinois CO-OP lost $90 million. Even Maine’s CO-OP, which made $7.3 million in 2014, went on to lose $74 million the following year. Maryland’s CO-OP was the most successful of the remaining government-funded insurers and it lost a startling $10.8 million. A number of other examples of this massive boondoggle are listed throughout the report, which cites previous audits by different government entities documenting the many failures the Obamacare CO-OP program.

“The financial toll of this failed experiment is much steeper than has been previously reported,” according to this latest audit, which took nearly a year to be completed. “The twelve closed CO-OPs ran up more than $1.4 billion in losses over just the two years they sold plans. Based on the latest balance sheets obtained by the Subcommittee, the failed CO-OPs currently estimated non-loan liabilities (including unpaid medical bills) exceed $1.13 billion—which is 93% greater than their $585 million in reported assets. In addition, the CO-OP’s debt to the U.S. government stands at over $1.2 billion. Prospects for repayment are dim.”

Indeed, American taxpayers have once again been cheated.

 

[SHOOTER13]

$10 Mil to End “Diaper Disparity” after Free Diaper Laws Fail Twice in Congress
MARCH 16, 2016

On two different occasions Congress has rejected laws to give “needy” families government-subsidized diapers—in addition to free food and medical care—but President Obama is determined to make it happen, allocating $10 million in taxpayer money to the highly unpopular cause. The multi-million-dollar initiative is being promoted by the White House as essential to eradicate a national “diaper divide” and the goal is to abolish “diaper disparity” by expanding access to affordable diapers for America’s poorest families.

Behind this high-priced mission is Cecilia Muñoz, the White House Domestic Policy Director. A renowned open borders lobbyist in Washington D.C., Muñoz was vice president of National Council of La Raza (NCLR) before Obama brought her on as White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. A few years later the president promoted her to the more powerful and prestigious post of top advisor on domestic issues. Muñoz wields tremendous power, coordinating the policy-making process and supervising the execution of domestic policy in the White House. If she wants Uncle Sam to give poor families free diapers, it’s safe to bet that it will happen even if Congress has twice nixed the scandalous idea.

To get the ball rolling, the administration announced this month that it plans to spend $10 million to “test effective ways to get diapers to families in need and document the health improvements that result.” Because it’s unlikely that Congress will pass a law to accomplish this, Muñoz admits the administration is getting creative and using every tool it has to help solve this dire problem. The low-income families that will benefit from the administration’s diaper initiative already get essentials like food and health insurance from the government through a variety of federal programs such as Medicaid, the nutrition program known as Women Infants and Children (WIC) and food stamps. Diapers are just as imperative to babies’ health, according to Muñoz, who says that “no family should have to choose between keeping their babies healthy and keeping the lights or heat on.”

The costly initiative comes just months after Congress resoundingly rejected the second measure in four years to grant poor families government-subsidized diapers. The legislation, Hygiene Assistance for Families of Infants and Toddlers Act, was introduced in late November and would have allowed states to provide diapers or a diaper subsidy for low-income families. One of the federal lawmakers behind the measure, Connecticut Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, says one in three families struggle to provide diapers for their children yet they are a basic need. “No parents should have to choose between buying diapers for their child or buying groceries,” according to the veteran Democrat legislator. “Diapers are expensive, but necessary, to keep children healthy and in daycare, giving their parents the freedom they need to work.”

Years earlier DeLauro introduced similar legislation that also got slammed in Congress. It was called Diaper Investment and Aid to Promote Economic Recovery Act and Judicial Watch wrote about it when it was creatively presented in October, 2011 as an economic development and health measure. Without an adequate supply of diapers, a child cannot attend day care and therefore “working mothers have a harder time getting work and can fall even further behind,” according to the economic development argument of the failed law.

The congresswoman also asserted that infrequent diaper changes can lead to diaper rash, increased risk of urinary tract and skin infections and can even cause outbreaks of viral meningitis, dysentery, and Hepatitis A. At the time the veteran legislator was a ranking member of the House Labor, Health, Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee and the measure was expected to gain traction though it never stood a chance.

R U Shittin' Me !?

 

[SHOOTER13]

“Deeply Troubled” DHS System Blows Millions, Feds Want Extra $1 Bil
MARCH 18, 2016

Years after the U.S. launched an automated Homeland Security system essential to keeping the nation safe, it’s a malfunctioning flop that’s so far swallowed a mind-boggling $1.7 billion and needs an additional billion and several more years to perhaps get it to work. That’s not even the best part. A number of federal audits have documented the serious problems with this costly failure in the last few years and officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have simply ignored the government investigators’ findings and recommendations.

The program is known as Electronic Immigration System (ELIS) and was launched by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency that oversees lawful immigration to the country, in 2012. It was supposed to improve the current method of processing forms for benefits, visas and refugee requests at USCIS, which has more than 5 million people on visa waiting lists. In its latest report highlighting the serious flaws with ELIS, the DHS Inspector General attaches a letter to USCIS Director Leon Rodriguez blasting his agency for blowing off all of the watchdog’s past investigations. “This is our sixth review of a deeply troubled program which has, over its life, wasted hundreds of millions of dollars,” DHS IG John Roth tells Rodriguez. “In the course of our audit work, and that of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), USCIS has continually minimized the shortcomings of the program and resisted independent oversight.”

In fact, the agency watchdog writes that he’s “perplexed at USCIS’s non-concurrence,” which he points out is not rational, is contrary to department policy and suggests continued effort to promote disagreement rather than collaboration towards the shared goal of bolstering effectiveness and efficiency in agency operations. Despite this blatant negligence, the cash hasn’t stopped rolling and now DHS claims it needs another three years and an additional $1 billion if there’s any chance of getting ELIS to work properly. In its current form, the automated system “lacks critical functionality,” isn’t “user-friendly,” and has “significant performance problems” processing cases, according to investigators. Until the agency makes all the needed improvements—and there are many—it will be unable to meet its national security goals, the IG report affirms.

ELIS has been a disaster from its inception yet continues to get taxpayer dollars. It started with a $536,000 contract that quickly ballooned before authorities admitted it was a failure. It was supposed to improve the current, outdated method of processing forms for benefits, visas and refugee requests at USCIS. Instead, the pricey system drastically slows the process down. Past audits have documented that ELIS requires federal workers to dedicate twice as much time to each application, completely defeating the purpose. “The electronic immigration system was supposed to provide a more efficient and higher quality adjudication process,” according to a 2014 DHS IG report. “However, instead of improved efficiency, time studies conducted by service centers show that adjudicating on paper is at least two times faster than adjudicating in ELIS.”

Since it was created by Congress to protect the nation from terrorism after the 9/11 attacks, DHS has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on all sorts of outrageous experiments that have failed miserably. Among them is a highly touted system that was supposed to spot terrorists at airports. It was called Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) and it burned through a ghastly $878 million in six years before the agency finally pulled the plug last year because it proved repeatedly to be useless.

American taxpayers also got fleeced by a faulty DHS system, known as BioWatch, that was supposed to detect biological attacks. That brilliant initiative sucked up an eye-popping $1 billion over a decade before officials finally admitted it didn’t work. The agency had promoted it as a life-saving technology that would detect pathogens that cause anthrax, tularemia, smallpox, plague and other deadly diseases. Instead it became famous for false alarms and other glitches. Nevertheless, DHS wants Congress to pour more money into it to fix the glitches.

 

[CaddmannQ]

DHS needs to start shrinking rspidly, until it implodes and disappears.

 

[CaddmannQ]

DiaperGate!

 

[CaddmannQ]

So, really folks, out of all the federal agencies, there must be one that came in under budget? and maybe over performed even, so that everyone is really pleased with their work?

One? Is there?

 

[Deog]

I try not to read this thread, my blood pressure spikes and mutter fowl language aloud.

 

[SHOOTER13]

The purpose of this thread is to make the membership at large aware of the huge amount of Fraud, Waste and Abuse of power and taxpayer money wasted by this administration to either "right" a liberal "wrong" or to throw money at a problem that exists because the administration's liberal policies and attitudes created the problem in the first place.

We need to change the way the government intrudes into every aspect of our lives to the detriment of us all...and then that money saved can be put into budget projects the government IS supposed to control....like the rebuilding of our crumbling infrastructure...building a wall and staffing it to keep illegal aliens, drug trafficers, and terrorists out and improve security...re-building our armed forces so that nobody even thinks to mess with US... and NOT diapers for babies whose parents use it to buy booze and cigarettes in the corrupt welfare system created to be a helping hand....NOT a way of life for generations of uneducated ( because they didn't bother to finish school ) or the people who think they "deserve" every penny they get for some perceived wrong done generations ago.

My family didn't own slaves...and nobody financed my ass through grade school, high school, and college....made sure I had a decent lunch everyday...paid for me to be bussed out of my neighborhood to a good school...gave me a job with a decent wage...or made me study long and hard to get where I'm at in life today....NOBODY BUT ME MADE IT HAPPEN. I was never out a day of work in my life, from the time I became a paperboy at 10 years of age until I retired with a full pension after 35 years of service to this country with the DoD.

America NEEDS to wake up from the status quo and either put a broom or a foot in the ass of these lazy, uneducated, handout loving, "whoa is me" social pension believers...and now is as good a time as any !!

/rant

 

[CaddmannQ]

Many thanks for the rant Shooter13. I read every one of these posts since I joined for with great enthusiasm.

I will say this about our system . The prison system doesn't threaten the villains enough. If they're not afraid to go what good does it do?

If they don't care what good does it do?

I spent time as an engineer writing programs to punch out parts for security prison windows, for our California prison system. A totally boring but very lucrative job

I can tell you it's an expensive Enterprise.

There really is no work in prisons to help support this expense. There could be, but our criminal labor unions forbid it: "Criminals will take jobs away from labor."

Criminals would be taking jobs away from Union organizer criminals, who are using their Enterprise to "sell" those jobs to the rank-and-file union laborers.

You can't tell me much about Unions.
I was a Teamster.

The first thing they do when you get promoted to management in a union shop is send in some big heavy guy down to lean on you & make sure that you respect the Union's power to make your life a living hell should you f*** with them in any way.

You fight fire with fire, some people say.

Our World is orchestrated quite often by criminals fighting criminals, and they're fighting each other for the control of us, and the right to tax and manipulate us.

 

[SHOOTER13]

7 Obamacare failures that have hurt Americans...

Obamacare barely passed Congress in 2010. If people had known how it would develop, the health-care act would likely never have become law.

Back in 2009, when the law was proposed, and in 2010, when it was signed, the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) proponents were giddy with optimism. Proponents proclaimed the many promises of Obamacare. Millions of people would be enrolled by 2016. The number of uninsured would decline dramatically. Health-care costs and premiums would drop. Everyone would have coverage. The federal deficit would decrease. Of course, as President Obama promised, everyone would be able to keep their plans and their doctors.

The truth has turned out to be very different. That’s why all Republican candidates say they want to repeal the program. Here are seven things about Obamacare that turned out to be very bad.

1. Low enrollment. Many people would not have jumped on the Obamacare bandwagon if they had known the relatively small number of Americans who would actually be enrolled on the exchanges by 2016. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that between 9.4 million and 11.4 million signed up in 2016.
In contrast, in March 2010, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 21 million people would be enrolled on the exchanges.

2. High numbers of uninsured. Under Obamacare, the number of uninsured was supposed to decline from 50 million to 22 million in 2016 and remain at that level. Instead, there are still 31 million uninsured, and the number is never projected to go below 29 million, according to CBO.

The Kaiser Family Foundation (February 2016) says that around 10% of the population (32.3 million of 316 million Americans) lacks health-insurance coverage. If the goal of health-care reform is to extend insurance coverage to more Americans, there are surely more effective — and less costly — ways to achieve this goal.

3. Lost doctors. In a presidential weekly address on July 18, 2009, President Obama said: “Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family’s doctor should be — and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor.”
Various sources note that a common (and popular) way to reduce premium costs has been to reduce the number of doctors in the insurer’s network, which leads to a much greater likelihood of people losing their doctors than without the ACA.

Initially the ACA required only 20% of “essential community providers” to be included in networks, but the number went up to 30% after there was a backlash from hospitals. According to a NIH study, 15% of plans offered on the exchanges exclude doctors from at least one kind of specialty.

4. Lost plans. Speaking in the Rose Garden, on July 21, 2009, President Obama said: “If you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it. Let me repeat that: If you like your plan, you’ll be able to keep it.” But it wasn’t true. Many plans disappeared because they did not comply with the ACA regulations.
Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, recently released a report about Obamacare’s effects on competition among insurers, concluding that outcomes have worsened for most Americans, in terms of choice of insurers and plans. Over the past year, the number of insurers offering plans in exchanges has dropped by nearly 6%.

Many states have lost more than 80% of their insurers: Alabama went from 23 to 3, Arkansas went from 24 to 4, and Wyoming from 21 to 1, just to name a few. Only New York did not lose over half of its insurers, going from 28 to 15 insurers, a 46% decline.

5. Higher premiums. President Obama claimed that the Affordable Care Act would reduce annual insurance premiums by $2,500 for a typical family. Yet a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust found that, since 2008, average employer family premiums have climbed a total of $4,865. From 2015 to 2016 the most popular exchange family plan, Family Silver, saw a 10% average increase in its premiums. In some states, premiums rose by nearly 40%.

In 2015 the average annual family premium was $17,545 per year, and the average premium for a single policy was $6,251. Young men were particularly hard-hit. Average premiums rose by 49% from 2013 to 2014, the year Obamacare was supposed to go into effect.

6. Higher deductibles. Practically no one forecast that even after spending additional thousands of dollars a year for health insurance, families would have to spend thousands of dollars more on medical care before being able to take advantage of insurance for more than annual check-ups. Many people get sticker shock. The New York Times, long a cheerleader for Obamacare, reported that many people can’t afford to use the health insurance that they have purchased because of the deductibles.

New York Times reporter Robert Pear wrote that the median deductible in Miami was $5,000 in 2015. It was $5,500 in Jackson, Miss., and $4,000 in Phoenix. One Chicago family of four paid $1,200 monthly for coverage yet had an annual deductible of $12,700.

7. High costs. The Office of the Actuary of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has projected that Obamacare will result in an additional $274 billion in administrative costs alone over the period of 2014 through 2022.

Legislative options that would repeal and replace Obamacare, such as the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act — passed on Jan. 6, 2016, and vetoed by President Obama on Jan. 8, 2016 — are projected to save taxpayers even more: $474 billion over the 2016-2025 period, the Congressional Budget Office notes.

Many members of Congress voted for Obamacare to help the American public and put America’s health-care system on a sounder foundation. For most Americans, the opposite has happened. Health-care expenses for many individuals and families are higher, their insurance costs are higher, their choice of doctors and insurance is diminished, and the total costs of the program are burdening a weak economy.

Had members of Congress known then what they know now, they would never have passed Obamacare.

 

[CaddmannQ]

"Had members of Congress known then what they know now, they would never have passed Obamacare."

If they were students of history they'd never have passed it either.

Government involvement in anything means increased costs.

A new plan means lots of new people to run the plan. The old system won't run it.

Since the government isn't regulated by economics, nothing they do can make a profit, and everything they do is always run at a net loss.

Why? Because government employees in charge can't really be held responsible for those losses, consequently their losses increase year by year.

If they get caught, they can usually just fire some underlings and everybody in Washington smiles and carries on. Nobody goes to jail.

The government can't even run the post office at a profit. How can they run a complicated business like the health care industry?

 

[SHOOTER13]

How Clinton's Email Scandal Took Root...

Hillary Clinton’s email problems began in her first days as secretary of state. She insisted on using her personal BlackBerry for all her email communications, but she wasn’t allowed to take the device into her seventh-floor suite of offices, a secure space known as Mahogany Row.

For Clinton, this was frustrating. As a political heavyweight and chief of the nation’s diplomatic corps, she needed to manage a torrent of email to stay connected to colleagues, friends and supporters. She hated having to put her BlackBerry into a lockbox before going into her own office.

Her aides and senior officials pushed to find a way to enable her to use the device in the secure area. But their efforts unsettled the diplomatic security bureau, which was worried that foreign intelligence services could hack her BlackBerry and transform it into a listening device.

On Feb. 17, 2009, less than a month into Clinton’s tenure, the issue came to a head. Department security, intelligence and technology specialists, along with five officials from the National Security Agency, gathered in a Mahogany Row conference room. They explained the risks to Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, while also seeking “mitigation options” that would accommodate Clinton’s wishes.

“The issue here is one of personal comfort,” one of the participants in that meeting, Donald Reid, the department’s senior coordinator for security infrastructure, wrote afterward in an email that described Clinton’s inner circle of advisers as “dedicated [BlackBerry] addicts.”

Clinton used her BlackBerry as the group continued looking for a solution. But unknown to diplomatic security and technology officials at the department, there was another looming communications vulnerability: Clinton’s BlackBerry was digitally tethered to a private email server in the basement of her family home, some 260 miles to the north in Chappaqua, N.Y., documents and interviews show.

Those officials took no steps to protect the server against intruders and spies, because they apparently were not told about it.

The vulnerability of Clinton’s basement server is one of the key unanswered questions at the heart of a scandal that has dogged her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Since Clinton’s private email account was brought to light a year ago in a New York Times report — followed by an Associated Press report revealing the existence of the server — the matter has been a source of nonstop national news. Private groups have filed lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigations were begun by congressional committees and inspector general’s offices in the State Department and the U.S. Intelligence Community, which referred the case to the FBI in July for “counterintelligence purposes” after determining that the server carried classified material.

The FBI is now trying to determine whether a crime was committed in the handling of that classified material. It is also examining whether the server was hacked.
One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey. The FBI has accelerated the investigation because officials want to avoid the possibility of announcing any action too close to the election.

The Washington Post reviewed hundreds of documents and interviewed more than a dozen knowledgeable government officials to understand the decisions and the implications of Clinton’s actions. The resulting scandal revolves around questions about classified information, the preservation of government records and the security of her email communication.

From the earliest days, Clinton aides and senior officials focused intently on accommodating the secretary’s desire to use her private email account, documents and interviews show.

Throughout, they paid insufficient attention to laws and regulations governing the handling of classified material and the preservation of government records, interviews and documents show. They also neglected repeated warnings about the security of the BlackBerry while Clinton and her closest aides took obvious security risks in using the basement server.

Senior officials who helped Clinton with her BlackBerry claim they did not know details of the basement server, the State Department said, even though they received emails from her private account. One email written by a senior official mentioned the server.

The scandal has pitted those who say Clinton was innocently trying to find the easiest way to communicate against those who say she placed herself above the law in a quest for control of her records. She and her campaign have been accused of confusing matters with contradictory and evolving statements that minimized the consequences of her actions.

Clinton, 68, declined to be interviewed. She has said repeatedly that her use of the private server was benign and that there is no evidence of any intrusion.
In a news conference last March, she said: “I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two.”

 

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During a Democratic debate on March 9, she acknowledged using poor judgment but maintained she was permitted to use her own server: “It wasn’t the best choice. I made a mistake. It was not prohibited. It was not in any way disallowed.”

The unfolding story of Clinton’s basement server has outraged advocates of government transparency and mystified political supporters and adversaries alike. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., who is presiding over one of the FOIA lawsuits, has expressed puzzlement over the affair. He noted that Clinton put the State Department in the position of having to ask her to return thousands of government records — her work email.

“Am I missing something?” Sullivan asked during a Feb. 23 hearing. “How in the world could this happen?”

Hillary Clinton began preparing to use the private basement server after President Obama picked her to be his secretary of state in November 2008. The system was already in place. It had been set up for former president Bill Clinton, who used it for personal and Clinton Foundation business.

On Jan. 13, 2009, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton registered a private email domain for Hillary Clinton, clintonemail.com, that would allow her to send and receive email through the server.

Eight days later, she was sworn in as secretary of state. Among the multitude of challenges she faced was how to integrate email into her State Department routines. Because Clinton did not use desktop computers, she relied on her personal BlackBerry, which she had started using three years earlier.

For years, employees across the government had used official and private email accounts.

The new president was making broad promises about government transparency that had a bearing on Clinton’s communication choices. In memos to his agency chiefs, Obama said his administration would promote accountability through the disclosure of a wide array of information, one part of a “profound national commitment to ensuring an open government.” That included work emails.

One year earlier, during her own presidential campaign, Clinton had said that if elected, “we will adopt a presumption of openness and Freedom of Information Act requests and urge agencies to release information quickly.”

But in those first few days, Clinton’s senior advisers were already taking steps that would help her circumvent those high-flown words, according to a chain of internal State Department emails released to Judicial Watch, a conservative nonprofit organization suing the government over Clinton’s emails.

Leading that effort was Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff. She was joined by Clinton adviser Huma Abedin, Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy and Lewis Lukens, a senior career official who served as Clinton’s logistics chief. Their focus was on accommodating Clinton.

Mills wondered whether the department could get her an encrypted device like the one from the NSA that Obama used.

“If so, how can we get her one?” Mills wrote the group on Saturday evening, Jan. 24th.

Lukens responded that same evening, saying he could help set up “a stand alone PC in the Secretary’s office, connected to the internet (but not through our system) to enable her to check her emails from her desk.”

Kennedy wrote that a “stand-alone separate network PC” was a “great idea.”

Abedin and Mills declined to comment for this article, according to Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon. Lukens also declined to comment, according to the State Department.

As undersecretary for management, Kennedy occupies a central role in Clinton’s email saga. The department acknowledged that Kennedy, as part of his normal duties, helped Clinton with her BlackBerry. But in a statement, the department said: “Under Secretary Kennedy maintains that he was unaware of the email server. Completely separate from that issue, Under Secretary Kennedy was aware that at the beginning of her tenure, Secretary Clinton’s staff was interested in setting up a computer at the Department so she could email her family during the work day.

“As we have previously made clear — no such computer was ever set up. Furthermore, Under Secretary Kennedy had very little insight into Secretary Clinton’s email practices including how frequently or infrequently then-Secretary Clinton used email.”

As it happened, Clinton would never have a government BlackBerry, personal computer or email account. A request for a secure device from the NSA was rebuffed at the outset: “The current state of the art is not too user friendly, has no infrastructure at State, and is very expensive,” Reid, the security official, wrote in an email on Feb. 13, adding that “each time we asked the question ‘What was the solution for POTUS?’ we were politely told to shut up and color.”

Clinton would continue to use her BlackBerry for virtually all of her government communication, but not on Mahogany Row.

 

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Her first known BlackBerry communication through the basement server came on Jan. 28, 2009, when Clinton exchanged notes with Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, then chief of the U.S. Central Command, according to a State Department spokeswoman. It has not been released.

Few knew the details behind the new clintonemail.com address. But news about her choice to use her own BlackBerry spread quickly among the department’s diplomatic security and “intelligence countermeasures” specialists.

Their fears focused on the seventh floor, which a decade earlier had been the target of Russian spies who managed to plant a listening device inside a decorative chair-rail molding not far from Mahogany Row. In more recent years, in a series of widely publicized cyberattacks, hackers breached computers at the department along with those at other federal agencies and several major corporations.

The State Department security officials were distressed about the possibility that Clinton’s BlackBerry could be compromised and used for eavesdropping, documents and interviews show.

After the meeting on Feb. 17 with Mills, security officials in the department crafted a memo about the risks. And among themselves, they expressed concern that other department employees would follow the “bad example” and seek to use insecure BlackBerrys themselves, emails show.

As they worked on the memo, they were aware of a speech delivered by Joel F. Brenner, then chief of counterintelligence at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, on Feb. 24 at a hotel in Vienna, Va., a State Department document shows. Brenner urged his audience to consider what could have happened to them during a visit to the recent Beijing Olympics.

“Your phone or BlackBerry could have been tagged, tracked, monitored and exploited between your disembarking the airplane and reaching the taxi stand at the airport,” Brenner said. “And when you emailed back home, some or all of the malware may have migrated to your home server. This is not hypothetical.”

At the time, Clinton had just returned from an official trip that took her to China and elsewhere in Asia. She was embarking on another foray to the Middle East and Europe. She took her BlackBerry with her.

In early March, Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell delivered a memo with the subject line “Use of Blackberries in Mahogany Row.”
“Our review reaffirms our belief that the vulnerabilities and risks associated with the use of Blackberries in the Mahogany Row [redacted] considerably outweigh the convenience their use can add,” the memo said.

He emphasized: “Any unclassified Blackberry is highly vulnerable in any setting to remotely and covertly monitoring conversations, retrieving e-mails, and exploiting calendars.”

Nine days later, Clinton told Boswell that she had read his memo and “gets it,” according to an email sent by a senior diplomatic security official. “Her attention was drawn to the sentence that indicates (Diplomatic Security) have intelligence concerning this vulnerability during her recent trip to Asia,” the email said.

But Clinton kept using her private BlackBerry — and the basement server.

The server was nothing remarkable, the kind of system often used by small businesses, according to people familiar with its configuration at the end of her tenure. It consisted of two off-the-shelf server computers. Both were equipped with antivirus software. They were linked by cable to a local Internet service provider. A firewall was used as protection against hackers.

Few could have known it, but the email system operated in those first two months without the standard encryption generally used on the Internet to protect communication, according to an independent analysis that Venafi Inc., a cybersecurity firm that specializes in the encryption process, took upon itself to publish on its website after the scandal broke.

 

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Not until March 29, 2009 — two months after Clinton began using it — did the server receive a “digital certificate” that protected communication over the Internet through encryption, according to Venafi’s analysis.

It is unknown whether the system had some other way to encrypt the email traffic at the time. Without encryption — a process that scrambles communication for anyone without the correct key — email, attachments and passwords are transmitted in plain text.

“That means that anyone could have accessed it. Anyone,” Kevin Bocek, vice president of threat intelligence at Venafi, told The Post.

The system had other features that made it vulnerable to talented hackers, including a software program that enabled users to log on directly from the World Wide Web.

Four computer-security specialists interviewed by The Post said that such a system could be made reasonably secure but that it would need constant monitoring by people trained to look for irregularities in the server’s logs.

“For data of this sensitivity . . . we would need at a minimum a small team to do monitoring and hardening,” said Jason Fossen, a computer-security specialist at the SANS Institute, which provides cybersecurity training around the world.

The man Clinton has said maintained and monitored her server was Bryan Pagliano, who had worked as the technology chief for her political action committee and her presidential campaign. It is not clear whether he had any help. Pagliano had also provided computer services to the Clinton family. In 2008, he received more than $5,000 for that work, according to financial disclosure statements he filed with the government.

In May 2009, with Kennedy’s help, Pagliano landed a job as a political employee in the State Department’s IT division, documents and interviews show. It was an unusual arrangement.

At the same time, Pagliano apparently agreed to maintain the basement server. Officials in the IT division have told investigators they could not recall previously hiring a political appointee. Three of Pagliano’s supervisors also told investigators they had no idea that Clinton used the basement server or that Pagliano was moonlighting on it.

Through an attorney, Pagliano declined a request from The Post for an interview. He also refused a request from the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees to discuss his role. On Sept. 1, 2015, his attorney told the committees that he would invoke his Fifth Amendment rights if any attempt was made to compel his testimony. He was later given immunity by the Justice Department in exchange for his cooperation, according to articles in the New York Times and The Post.

In a statement, Clinton’s campaign said the server was protected but declined to provide technical details. Clinton officials have said that server logs given to authorities show no signs of hacking.

“The security and integrity of her family’s electronic communications was taken seriously from the onset when it was first set up for President Clinton’s team,” the statement said. “Suffice it to say, robust protections were put in place and additional upgrades and techniques employed over time as they became available, including consulting and employing third party experts.”

The statement added that “there is no evidence there was ever a breach.”

 

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The number of emails moving through the basement system increased quickly as Hillary Clinton dove into the endless details of her globetrotting job. There were 62,320 in all, an average of 296 a week, nearly 1,300 a month, according to numbers Clinton later reported to the State Department. About half of them were work-related.

Her most frequent correspondent was Mills, her chief of staff, who sent thousands of notes. Next came Abedin, the deputy chief of staff, and Jacob Sullivan, also a deputy chief of staff, according to a tally by The Post.

The majority went to two different addresses that Clinton sometimes used interchangeably on a single chain of email, hdr22@clintonemail.com and hrod17@clintonemail.com, making it immediately apparent that the emails were not coming from or going to a government address.

Most of her emails were routine, including those sent to friends. Some involved the coordination of efforts to bring aid to Haiti by the State Department and her husband’s New York-based Clinton Foundation — notes that mixed government and family business, the emails show.

Others involved classified matters. State Department and Intelligence Community officials have determined that 2,093 email chains contained classified information. Most of the classified emails have been labeled as “confidential,” the lowest level of classification. Clinton herself authored 104 emails that contained classified material, a Post analysis later found.

Before the server received a digital certificate marking the use of standard encryption, Clinton and her aides exchanged notes touching on North Korea, Mexico, Afghanistan, military advisers, CIA operations and a briefing for Obama.

Clinton adviser Philippe Reines wrote a note to her about Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Reines started his note by reminding Clinton that Reines’s “close friend Jeremy Bash is now [CIA Director Leon E.] Panetta’s Chief of Staff.” The rest of the note was redacted before release, under grounds that it was national-security-sensitive.

On Sunday, March 29, 2009, just hours before standard encryption on the server began, Sullivan emailed Clinton a draft of a confidential report she was to make to Obama. “Attached is a draft of your Mexico trip report to POTUS,” Sullivan wrote.

In the high-pressure world of diplomacy, the sharing of such material had been a discreet but common practice for many years. Officials who manage problems around the clock require a never-ending flow of incisive information to make timely decisions.

Not all classified material is equally sensitive. Much of it involves discussions about foreign countries or leaders, not intelligence sources and methods. Working with classified materials can be cumbersome and, in the case of low-level classification, annoying.

On Feb. 10, 2010, in an exchange with Sullivan, Clinton vented her frustration one day when she wanted to read a statement regarding José Miguel Insulza, then secretary general of the Organization of American States. Sullivan wrote that he could not send it to her immediately because the department had put it on the classified network.

“It’s a public statement! Just email it,” Clinton shot back, just moments later.

“Trust me, I share your exasperation,” Sullivan wrote. “But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can’t even access it.”

Early on June 17, 2011, Clinton grew impatient as she waited for “talking points” about a sensitive matter that had to be delivered via a secure line.

“They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax. They’re working on it,” Sullivan wrote his boss.

Clinton told him to take a shortcut.

“If they can’t, turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” she said.

Clinton spokesman Fallon said she was not trying to circumvent the classification system.

“What she was asking was that any information that could be transmitted on the unclassified system be transmitted,” he said. “It is wrong to suggest that she was requesting otherwise. The State Department looked into this and confirmed that no classified material was sent through a non-secure fax or email.”

Security remained a constant concern. On June 28, 2011, in response to reports that Gmail accounts of government workers had been targeted by “online adversaries,” a note went out over Clinton’s name urging department employees to “avoid conducting official Department business from your personal email accounts.”

But she herself ignored the warning and continued using her BlackBerry and the basement server.