[From article]
Congress established that the only subsidy available to them would be the same income-based subsidy available to every other eligible American accessing insurance through an exchange. This was the confidence-building covenant supporters of the law made to reassure skeptics that ObamaCare would live up to its billing. They wanted to appear eager to avail themselves of the law’s benefits and be more than willing to subject themselves to the exact same rules, regulations and requirements as their constituents.
Eager, that is, until they began to understand what they had actually done to themselves. For instance, by agreeing to go through an exchange they cut themselves off from the option of paying for health care with pretax dollars, the way many Americans will continue to do through employer-supplied plans. That’s when they went running to President Obama for relief. The president supplied it via the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which issued a convoluted ruling in October 2013 that ignores the clear intent and language of the law. After groping for a pretext, OPM essentially declared the federal government a small employer—magically qualifying members of Congress for coverage through a Small Business Health Options Program, exchanges where employers can buy insurance for their employees.
Neat trick, huh? Except that in issuing the ruling, OPM exceeded its statutory jurisdiction and legal authority. In directing OPM to do so, President Obama once again chose political expediency instead of faithfully executing the law—even one of his own making. If the president wants to change the law, he needs to come to Congress to have them change it with legislation, not by presidential fiat or decree.
[. . .]
Well PT Barnum knew the truth. There’s a sucker born every minute. In reality all real men of the people wear Rolexes,
[. . .]
Gates offers a catalogue of various meetings, based in part on notes that he and his aides made at the time, including an exchange between Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he calls “remarkable.” He writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. “
[. . .]
After all, we knew or should have known what Obama was. But there was always the faint hope that cooler heads would checkmate him. What is really shocking is how far Washington will go to get along. But maybe Gates was doing his best. It’s just that the definition of the “right thing” has changed beyond recognition.
[. . .]
Implicit in Ron Johnson’s suit and Gates’ memoir is that the politicians in Washington are shafting each other to a minor extent. But in the main they are busy doing a job on the voters. And in that project too many Republicans and Democrats are in it together.
[. . .]
Times of trial are paradoxically harder on men who must struggle with their consciences than on those who are unburdened by them.
[. . .]
“Ernst Janning” in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg. Janning played the part of a decent judge fallen in with Nazi officialdom. The allied tribunal hears witness after witness testifying to his sterling character. It is enough to get him off but near to acquittal he makes a statement indicting himself. ‘I am guilty’, he said, ‘guiltier than anyone, because unlike these morons on the stand with me, I knew better than they.’
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/01/07/a-city-of-two-tales/
A City of Two Tales
January 7th, 2014 - 2:51 pm
by Richard Fernandez
* * *
[From article]
his harshest remarks are saved for Vice President Joe Biden.
“I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates writes of the vice president. According to the White House statement, Obama “disagrees with Secretary Gates’ assessment.”
http://www.mediaite.com/online/white-house-responds-to-gates-biden-a-leading-statesman-of-his-time/
White House Responds to Gates: Biden a ‘Leading Statesman of His Time’
by Matt Wilstein
6:45 pm, January 7th, 2014
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