Armed Federal Bureaucrats Outnumber U.S. Marines

Democrats have no compunction attacking American citizens’ Second Amendment rights; however, they seem to be quite at ease arming federal government bureaucrats.  The Washington Free Beacon reported the following:

There are now more non-military government employees who carry guns than there are U.S. Marines, according to a new report.

Open the Books, a taxpayer watchdog group, released a study Wednesday that finds domestic government agencies continue to grow their stockpiles of military-style weapons, as Democrats sat on the House floor calling for more restrictions on what guns American citizens can buy.

The “Militarization of America” report found civilian agencies spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between 2006 and 2014. Examples include IRS agents with AR-15s, and EPA bureaucrats wearing camouflage.

“Regulatory enforcement within administrative agencies now carries the might of military-style equipment and weapons,” Open the Books said. “For example, the Food and Drug Administration includes 183 armed ‘special agents,’ a 50 percent increase over the ten years from 1998-2008. At Health and Human Services (HHS), ‘Special Office of Inspector General Agents’ are now trained with sophisticated weaponry by the same contractors who train our military special forces troops.”

 The Department of Health and Human Services has armed agents who’re trained in warfare?  Has Obamacare been weaponized?  Exactly, who’s the enemy here?

Source:

http://www.conventionofstates.com/bureaucrats_with_guns_now_outnumber_military?utm_source=Convention+of+States+Project&utm_campaign=375b0ee80f-6_25_16_COS_Weekly_Roundup&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_45196125c1-375b0ee80f-216301385

Obama Bureaucrat Violates Law, Steals from Treasury

Once again, we are finding out the Obama administration has no regard for Congress, the rule of law or the American people.  The bureaucrats that infest this lawless administration spit on us every chance they get.  What did they do this time?  Sylvia Burwell, secretary of Human and Health Services, illegally transferred $2 billion in taxpayer monies to insurance companies.  Obamacare has turned into a huge failure and the only way to keep this program afloat is to raid the U.S. treasury.  The Hill reported the following: 

The reinsurance program was designed to collect $10 billion in its first year of existence, 2014, while collecting another $2 billion that would be deposited into the U.S. Treasury.

 But not enough money was brought in to cover those amounts, so the administration, through regulations in 2014, prioritized giving money to insurers. None of the money was given to Treasury for the first year.

 Republicans say that action clearly violates the healthcare law, which states that $2 billion “shall be deposited into the general fund of the Treasury of the United States and may not be used for the program established under this section [i.e. the payments to insurers].” 

 To support their case, Republicans point to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that found the administration’s interpretation “would appear to be in conflict with a plain reading” of the law

This country has a profound problem.  Federal bureaucracies have taken it upon themselves to ignore laws by implementing rules and regulations they deem appropriate.  Here is Secretary Burwell’s explanation for violating U.S. law:

The administration has emphasized that no complaints were raised at the time the decision was announced in regulations, and in fact said that all of the comments were positive. The American Academy of Actuaries praised the decision to prioritize payments to insurers over the Treasury, saying the move could help lower premiums.

“We believe that we have the authorities, and as I mentioned [earlier], we actually published for comment and notice the approach that we were going to take to use those authorities, and did not have any of the concerns raised as part of that public process,” Burwell said under questioning at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week. 

These federal bureaucracies are a making a mockery of our constitutional republic.  The time for comments was completed during the legislative process where our elected representatives forged this law, and even that was bastardized by the Democrats.

Americans had better wakeup to the fact we are no longer citizens.  We have become subjects and our rulers are nameless, faceless, federal government bureaucrats who have a pen and a phone.  But hey, according to them, we can at least find solace in an obscure comment section in some buried rule and regulation no one, not even our congressmen are aware of.

Source:

http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/272617-gop-obamacare-payments-break-the-law

N.C. Audit Uncovers Medicaid Abuse

As you can expect, a North Carolina state auditor found abuse, nepotism and possible fraud in the Department of Health and Human Services.  Medicaid, once again, is the program where suspect activity has taken place.  Carolina Journal reported the following:

The audit placed much of the blame for the mayhem in OMMISS on now-retired director Angeline Sligh, the subject of a 2013 audit detailing $237,500 in overpayments. 

According to the audit, Sligh chose temporary staffing agencies outside of normal channels, paying them $598,673 for commissions that exceeded the rates charged by the state-operated temporary staffing service. Employees collected $234,724 in unjustified overtime, and ineligible employees received $26,026 for holiday pay.

In all, 5,841 hours of overtime were recorded by temp workers “without documented justification,” the audit said. Undocumented overtime was a problem cited in past audits. 

Those employees “could not provide reasonable explanations” to justify the overtime, according to the audit. Some cited making copies or name tags, answering phones, and “lots and lots of typing” for their overtime. 

By going to an outside temp agency, Sligh was not constrained by state rules limiting temporary employees to 12 months of service. Some temp workers stayed with the agency for years.

The audit said Sligh’s “abuse of her authority through the hiring process caused these excessive costs.”

According to the audit, Sligh hired 15 people connected to her, including her daughter, ex-husband, and ex-husband’s wife. Six were members of her church, and one was a son of a fellow church member. Also hired under Sligh’s watch were a neighbor’s daughter, her hairdresser’s sister, and two ex-colleagues at St. Augustine’s University.

The audit said agency paid 12 temporary employees $807,741 “more than their qualifications justified,” according to the Office of State Human Resources. In numerous instances Sligh overruled the temp agency’s determination of appropriate pay scales and directed them to beef up the amounts.

As examples from July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2014, the audit noted, one manager was paid $89.39 per hour, 78 percent more than appropriate, and $244,420 more than justified. A business analyst should have received $33.57 per hour but got $70, a 109 percent increase, resulting in $199,183 in excessive payments. A second business analyst should have been paid $23.31 per hour, received $36, and collected $60,404 more than justified. A health insurance claims consultant collected $74 hourly, or 73 percent above a justifiable level, for $103,484 more overall. 

The audit said Sligh improperly received 2,120 hours of compensatory time to which she was not entitled. The comp time allowed Sligh to save her sick time and vacation days, potentially inflating her retirement benefits that are calculated partially on those accumulated days. Wos denied the comp time bumped up Sligh’s retirement pay.

The audit admonished DHHS Chief Information Officer Joe Cooper, Sligh’s supervisor, who signed off on the comp time even though he was informed by department HR officials that Sligh was not entitled to the perk.

Meanwhile, democrats are throwing temper tantrums because republicans refused to expand this money pit agency without reforming it.  Go figure.

Source:

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=12047

Secretary Sebelius: I Don't Work for You

Will Sebelius Resign?  Hell no!  She doesn’t work for the majority of the people who want this program shutdown.  No, she works for the slavers in Versailles, D.C.  

Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius responded moments ago to questions about whether she will resign in the wake of the Affordable Care Act’s problematic rollout. Her response is raising some eyebrows. 

“My goal is to actually get the website up and running,” she told reporters. “The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don’t work for and who do not want this program to work in the first place. I have had frequent conversations with the president and I have committed to him that my role is to get the program up and running and we will do just that.” 

A group of 33 House Republicans on Wednesday sent a letter to President Obama calling for her resignation. ”The scope of the problem is so great that, were this a private company or military command, the CEO or general would have been fired,” they wrote. “We are, therefore, calling on you to hold Secretary Sebelius accountable for the fiasco that is HealthCare.gov and ask for her resignation.”

One way to get rid of her is to convince Barack Obama that she is a practicing Catholic.  Sebelius would have the Messiah’s footprint emblazoned on her ass as she is kicked out the door.

Source:  http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/362166/sebelius-i-dont-work-people-who-want-me-resign-nro-staff

Obamacare's Tower of Regulations

When this Obamacare monstrosity goes into effect, there will be a lot of people stunned at how punitive this law is.  Click on the link below to read whats in store for us in 2014.


Source:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324874204578441032081716170.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Obamacare Exchanges Sticking it to the States

Remember when President Obama promised that your insurance premiums would decrease if his “Affordable Health Care Act” was passed?  Well, as we are all becoming painfully aware of, cost are increasing.  And what about those states that refused to setup exchanges in lieu of a federally operated one?  Guess what?  The Obama administration figured a way to stick it to us.  Here is how the feds screwed North Carolina.

“Insurers would pay $181 million in fees to fund the operation of a federal exchange,” said Kerry Hall, spokeswoman for the Insurance Department. “The insurers would pass those costs on in some form to consumers. … It’s not state dollars.”

Proposed rules the federal government issued in November “indicates that a federal exchange would charge insurers who are participating in the exchange 3.5 percent [monthly] for premiums,” Hall said. That money would be used to pay administrative costs for the Obamacare exchanges, and the percentage is subject to change by HHS.

The state plugged that 3.5 percent number into previous cost-projection studies that estimated the number of uninsured people in North Carolina who would be required to purchase insurance under Obamacare, Hall said. From that, analysts determined overall fees paid by the insurance market would be $181 million.

“We’ve also done some analysis with the best information that is available” to determine how much it would cost to operate a state-based exchange, Hall said. “It might be closer to $90 million or $100 million, so roughly half the cost of a federal exchange.”

However, she acknowledged, “It’s a fuzzy estimate, but from everything we’ve seen we’re confident it would be less than a federal” exchange, and the state did its best to analyze cost differences.

“There really are too many unknown factors to come up with a great number” because of the many ways a state exchange could be designed, differing levels of customer service in each state, and what individual state governance would be, Hall said. “It’s not an apple-to-apple comparison, so you have to take our estimates with a grain of salt.”

Hypothetically, she said, a state-run exchange could use the same approach in affixing fees on insurance companies that take part in the online marketplace that would be established. Obamacare mandates that uninsured people must buy insurance. Those not eligible for Medicaid under Obamacare’s expanded income guidelines would buy policies from the exchange.

States also could appropriate money through their general funds or raise revenues by placing advertising on the online exchange, Hall said. The source of money would depend totally on how the state exchange was set up.

Had North Carolina pursued a state-operated exchange, the state Insurance Department would have administered the program. On Jan. 17 the federal government awarded grants of $12.2 million and $73.9 million to establish the exchange.

Notice the stipulation that administration fees are subject to change by the Department of Human and Health Services.  I’m sure they’ll change as frequently as a bureaucrat adds a regulation.  Get ready for a huge sticker shock in 2014, state ran or not. 




Obamacare is a nightmare and it hasn't even been implemented yet.  What a liar!

Source:  http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=9910

ObamaCare Has Spawned 13,000 Pages of New Regulations

Congratulations America! We can give up the pretense of a limited federal government. The Department of Human and Health Services has drafted 13,000 pages of new ObamaCare regulations, and their just getting started. Fox News reported the following:

The IRS, Health and Human Services and many other agencies will now write thousands of pages of regulations -- an effort well under way:

"There's already 13,000 pages of regulations, and they're not even done yet," Rehberg said.

"It's a delegation of extensive authority from Congress to the Department of Health and Human Services and a lot of boards and commissions and bureaus throughout the bureaucracy," Matt Spalding of the Heritage Foundation said. "We counted about 180 or so."

No one can’t say the federal government isn’t hiring. They need an army of bureaucrats to wield this monstrosity, not to mention an oprichniki to harass and punish recalcitrant citizens. The IRS is hiring 4000 new agents to make sure we toe-the-line. Can anyone say ‘politicians lied, liberty died’?

Welcome to a post-Constitution American.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/07/03/efforts-to-implement-obamacare-law-raise-concerns-massive-government-expansion/#ixzz1zxL8A5ph

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/cost-of-freedom/2012/04/02/report-irs-hiring-approximately-4000-agents